Bolick, Kate. "All The Single Ladies." The Atlantic Magazine. The Atlantic Monthly Group, November 2011. Web. 11 November 2011.
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Throughout the article called "All The Single Ladies", by Kate Bolick, she explains how in recent years and recent studies, the number of marriages in our country have decreased due to many women's idea of getting married being disrupted, the increasing rate of unsuccessful men in the United States, and the non-traditional romantic ways that have been inclining a great deal. Bolick has a post-modern view on relationships due to her experience with men in her lifetime, and her family views that were forced upon her when she was younger. She continues writing about Stephanie Coontz,a social historian at Evergreen State College in Washington, who noticed an uptick in questions from reporters and audiences asking if the institution of marriage was falling apart. She wrote a book and did plenty of studies showing from the beginning of our time, the 'hunting and gathering' stage in history, all the way up into our current decade. She states, “The transformation is momentous—immensely liberating and immensely scary. When it comes to what people actually want and expect from marriage and relationships, and how they organize their sexual and romantic lives, all the old ways have broken down.” Bolick continues her piece with certain aspects on why marriage has been affected in recent years. Firstly, we put marriage off. "In 1960, the median age of first marriage in the U.S. was 23 for men and 20 for women; today it is 28 and 26. Today, a smaller proportion of American women in their early 30's are married than at any other point since the 1950s, if not earlier." Marrying less is also a factor, along with the fact that women no longer need husbands in order to conceive children. The last factor is the current generation of men who are increasingly not successful which changes women's view of even settling down with a man.
Kate Bolick's article is strictly a female view on the change in relationships in recent years and how marriage rates have decreased as well. This article is significant because it exemplifies how our generations are changing significantly when it comes to romantics and love. Although her article is a woman's point of view and may come off to some as offensive to men, it does show the statistics of marriage and why many woman have decided to not marry or to wait to get married. She states, "We took for granted that we’d spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we’d finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30. That we would marry, and that there would always be men we wanted to marry, we took on faith. How could we not?" Her views had been poured upon her because that was what she was told when she was younger. The certain aspects that Bolick discusses are fairly intriguing when it comes to how the times have changed and why. The first one was that many put marriage off. It is very interesting to see that just about fifty years ago, people were getting married at the young age of 20-23. Now, people get married in their early 30's and try to make sure that they are sure they want to be with that partner for the rest of their life. Even then, divorce rates have increased because of the inclining rates of struggles that married couples have to deal with. The second factor is that it is a fairly new creation that women do not need men in order to conceive a child which may be a main motivation for women to get married. Lastly, the rate of unsuccessful men has increased since 1960 which causes women to not marry someone who does not have their life together. This article shows the significant changes that our generation is facing when it comes to marriage, love and romantics and the female view of why women choose not to marry. Kate Bolick puts a different view on the major generation gap that has been proven throughout her statistics.
