Solo Mother

What a crock of NYTimes BS — journalism and society at its finest.

by christina on January 16th, 2007

Please tell me that schools today are teaching children how to read statistics and come to their own conclusions? Because the piece of fluff the New York Times pulled out of its nether regions is a great lesson in how to make the numbers say whatever you want them to. GASP! 51% of Women Are Now Living Without a Spouse! Oh, I get it. Uncoupled women are the new witches. Let’s all go to Salem and burn ourselves. It’s all hooey, anyway. If you stroke the numbers nicely, they’ll say anything you want them to. 51%, indeed. Let’s start with the fact that the statistics include females from the age of 15. Last time I checked, it was mighty difficult, if not downright illegal, to marry 15 year olds. How many women between the ages of 18 to 24 get married? In 2007? Got stats for 2000? How about 1980? How about 1970? How many of these women are widows mourning the loss of a lifetime’s companionship: 9%. These women might have found a kind of freedom they didn’t have in married life, but is it fair to include this demographic in the snide, implied glee the article uses to portray today’s unshackled females? And how about the oh so obvious detail, right there on the handy-dandy GRAPHIC that states that 49% of today’s women are living with spouses, and 2% more are married with absent spouses… um. Let’s see. 49 + 2 = 51% who are still married…. Many of those 2% are living in temporary arrangements, let’s say, MILITARY DEPLOYMENT? that has nothing to do with the strength of the marriage. Cause that’s what the undercurrents whisper, isn’t it? Marriage is dead, long live marriage.

The real fun of this useless piece of electronic paper is in the comments. I’ve never seen such a whiny bunch of hooey in my life. Get real, people. Men are whining because women aren’t subservient any more. I’ll quote Rob in his oh so vainglorious, arrogant ignorance:

I am a 41 year old American male. Women have always said that I am very good looking, extremely funny, very sexy, and by the way, I make a very good living. In my mind, the idea of living with a woman in today’s society is almost ludicrous. I have many charming and handsome guy-friends, and when we discuss this subject, we literally laugh out loud. We unanimously love and respect women and want a good woman to share our lives with, but when we look around, they simply aren’t there. American women need to take a good look in the mirror. Never will you see women questioning themselves, but boy will they blame the men for their problems. That lack of self-reflection, in of itself is suspect. Most women in American society behave in a manner that makes them seem undesirable to a reasonable man as a serious mate. Most American women behave like men, and my friends and I would rather just hang out with our guy-friends than get serious with a woman who basically acts like ‘one of the boys’ anyway (as most American women do). American men are looking for a woman they can respect, because they know that only that kind of woman will ever really respect them. Stop blaming us guys on your problems, do a little self reflection, and accept the lot in life you have made for your selves. I love super strong, highly intelligent women who are respectful, but there simply are very few around.

OOh, yeah, Robert. You’re such a catch. NOT.

Check out Dean, #300: “Too many guys are stuck in the post-war employment model working in an office as a substitute for the industrial age factory. The quicker employers work out more flxible work arrangements for a range of jobs the better off out society will be. Its the guys who have to change. I think the women have pretty much worked this one out already.” Or #286, Calvin: “The problem is that men still need women in the exact same ways we needed them 5, 10, 50, 100, 200 and most likely 1000 years ago. So yes I will admit that we need to change the ways in which we think about the roles of women in our lives. However, women seem to think they need men much less because they believe they have become so independent.” Uh. Yeah? So? Calvin, dear, the point seems to be that women have a financial independence that has historically been denied them, and are able to take care of themselves, thereby yanking the rug out of the traditional barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen scenario. K. Willey, #262, really hits the nail on the head. Go on, go read it.

How many of the unmarried women included in that lovely, headline-grabbing, attention-getting 51% are in committed, monogamus relationships without benefit of clergy to tell them it’s a keeper? There’s the occasional outrage in the blog comments mentioning that women aren’t allowed to marry women, so let’s also keep in mind that some number of those committed, unmarried women are in love with the woman of their dreams but can’t make it legal, no matter how sure they are that she’s ‘the one’.

Let me say it loud and proud right now: I’m single. Forget the piece of paper that says I’m divorced. The day my husband sat across from me in a Paris cafe and denied that there was any single thing he could do to improve himself was the day I decided fuck it, this is no marriage, this is over. But I am not alone. I am not lonely. My son has a larger, more loving family now than he did when we lived overseas with his father. I’ve got husbands I can borrow all over the city to do husbandly things for the house, the kid, the rituals of life. For the inbetween the sheets stuff, I’ll leave everyone’s husbands alone. I’ll borrow one of those single men out there who’s in no hurry to marry, either.

There’s a family of single mothers and fathers forming in my neck of the woods, and I’ll gladly join them without marrying any of them. The definitions of ‘family’ are changing, yes, but I don’t necessarily think they are changing for the worse. We might just be loosening the stranglehold the Church has on our sex organs, and oh what powerful organization actually likes it when the cash cow finally realizes how badly it’s getting milked? I don’t know a single mother who doesn’t fight with savage fierce determination to give the best to her children. I also hate to admit, I know fewer men than women who do the same. I’m hoping that’s just my past history, not a general trend. I hear encouraging stories all the time about co-parenting that works well between divorced couples, with healthy, happy children. I don’t know any of those broken homes the media keeps harping about. I know lots of happy kids whose parents don’t sleep in the same house.

And while I’m on a rant, let me give a shout out to the single fathers of the world with full custody of their children and are stepping up to the plate and being mother and father to the kids cause mom has dropped off the face of their lives. The gay and lesbian couples adopting children or having children through some form of spark and childbirth, who love their children so hard and breathless that they feel about to explode, without the safety net that marriage affords heterosexual couples. The Bostonian relationships among women that give comfort, contentment, companionship, without the pain of being treated like shit by a man. Let me trill a gypsy trill with my women friends who love and laugh with me, who shine so bright with love for my son that I know he is safe. Let’s hear it for the grandparents who give their time, their wisdom, their patience so often when us frazzled single moms and dads can’t. Yes, I would have preferred that my marriage somehow survive. It didn’t. If this is what 51% truly looks like, then I say hurrah. It’s about time. Let’s break down the walls and live more like a village, less like impoverished kings and queens behind our moats and walls.

(Props and computer cords to Stealthbadger for pointing this one out to me)

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