Penna Dexter

It may not be their ideal life dream, but a Wall Street Journal analysis concludes that “American women have never been this resigned to staying single.”

In response to major demographic shifts and also divergent beliefs about what a family should look like, today’s single women are less anxious to get married than they used to be and less interested in marriage than their male peers.

In her piece, titled “American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage,” Rachel Wolfe, economy reporter for the Journal, writes “A rise in earning power and a decline in social stigma for being single has allowed more women to be choosey.” She cites a 2023 survey of over 5000 U.S. adults conducted by Pew Research Center in which “48% of women said that being married was not too or not at all important for a fulfilling life, compared with 39% of men — up from 31% and 28% in 2019.”

In an American Enterprise Institute survey of college-educated women, also done in 2023, half of respondents said they’re single because they haven’t found anyone who meets their expectations.

Throughout her article, Rachel Wolfe presents stats that show that American women of marriageable age are better educated and have better career prospects than men. She quotes sociology professor Brad Wilcox, a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies who says, “people prefer to date in terms of comparable education or income.”

Lyman Stone, a researcher at IFS points out that “Men’s odds of being in a relationship today are still highly correlated with their income.” In an interview for an article in The Atlantic, he said “a lot of young men today just don’t look like what women have come to think of as ‘marriage material’.”

The bitter fruit of 60’s feminism is that many women really do want marriage, but they don’t think they need it.