An insightful twitter thread from earlier this year on how too much of the discussion on marriage rates implicitly takes a male point of view, and so misses about half the subject: Kate Bahn: @LipstickEcon: "I'm having a lot of feelings about this article that summarizes AEI and Opportunity America on how men's declining economic stability has reduced marriage rates...
....First, trust that I'm single not because I'm worried a man can't provide. I want to provide for myself, and I'm worried that heteronormative relationships will reduce my ability to do that for myself. But, second, and larger issue, is that this research tends to be very male-centered, on men's economic status and how it affects women. It's more complicated than that. Yes, a partner's economic status does affect your own, both immediately and long-term career planning, but larger economic trends, like men's declining EPOP, has actually been relatively greater for women.
Research on marriage trends that centers men's economic status and women are merely the objects just reifies a lot of the problems with traditional gender roles, ones that are no longer relevant to a modern economy in which women work and are independent. Realistic policy approaches recognize people where they are, maybe single and happy with that, and helps them find economic stability there, like making home ownership more feasible for single people and low cost childcare for single parents...
Heidi Hartmann @HeidiatIWPR: "Agree that declining marriage rates is.mainly about women being increasingly able to support themselves. Marriage should not be economically coerced...
Shawn Fremstad: @inclusionist: "Seems like independence can explain the downward trend, but there's also the class disparity in marriage (and marital stability), which conservatives point to in arguing problem is 'culture' (of working class people)...
#shouldread
#gender
