The XX Factor: What women really think.

I Do, Part Two

Yes Means I Do

[M]any women report feeling peer pressure to avoid giving serious thought to marriage until they're at least in their late 20s. If you're seeking a mate in college, you're considered a pariah, someone after her "MRS degree." Actively considering marriage when you're 20 or 21 seems so sappy, so unsexy, so anachronistic. Those who do fear to admit it—it's that scandalous.

How did we get here? The fault lies less with indecisive young people than it does with us, their parents. Our own ideas about marriage changed as we climbed toward career success. Many of us got our MBAs, JDs, MDs and PhDs. Now we advise our children to complete their education before even contemplating marriage, to launch their careers and become financially independent. We caution that depending on another person is weak and fragile. We don't want them to rush into a relationship. We won't help you with college tuition anymore, we threaten. Don't repeat our mistakes, we warn.

Yes, there are advantages—obvious ones—to getting married. I don’t think kids today are unaware that it’s a financially preferable arrangement. But this “our children” angle seems disingenuous. In fact, the whole piece seems targeted not at “indecisive young people” and their enablers, but at young women in particular. Maybe I’m as out of touch with shifting social conventions as the author, but I don’t sense coequal lecturing of men about the ills of dependence. (In my head, men receive more of a "wild oats" conversation.) Not to speak of withholding tuition!

I suppose Regnerus’ argument troubles me most where it suggests—with little proof—that a conservative, gendered norm is returning to what had been his generation’s wayward adventure into higher education and marriages “with math on their side.” Further, it’s hard to tell of what he complains: Does Regnerus want more marriages, younger marriages or more stable marriages?

If he had made the point that marrying early and then continuing the 20s and 30s trajectory of college, bars, apartments, mistakes, MBAs, JDs, MDs, and PhDs, that would suggest his flacking for marriage were based on some theory of economics and companionship. But his nagging is targeted at the women who have collectively embraced third wave feminist cake-eating because then they won’t procreate. Men who wait and wait for the ring “get there,” he says—whereas women must “beg, pray, borrow and pay” to reclaim fertility later in life. In other words, Regnerus conflates enthusiasm for child-rearing with enthusiasm for marriage—a mythology one would think modern reality continually explodes.

Rich Kids Have Enough of a Leg Up Already

A guest post from Slate intern Emily Lowe: 

I have to disagree with you, Jessica, on the idea that college admission boards favoring rich kids is not a problem. There are already plenty of ways in which the children of deep-pocketed parents have a leg up on their less-privileged counterparts. Starting as early as pre-K, wealthy families have the option of sending their kids to swanky private schools, where the combination of stellar faculty, name recognition, and powerful alumni networks paves the way for admission to top-notch colleges. 

College students from wealthy families can also take unpaid internships in New York City and Washington, D.C., while their not-so-wealthy counterparts spend summers working jobs to cover living expenses that might not be so résumé-boosting. (I'll openly admit to being one of the former; I get to intern for the XX Factor this semester while many of my classmates must dedicate those out-of-class hours to paying gigs.) There's also the more extreme example of some parents buying internships for their kids, a phenomenon Slate's Tim Noah discussed here.

Jess, you ask in your post: "Is it worth going into serious financial jeopardy so you can have an Ivy League degree?" But the recession's impact isn't limited to the biggest and best private schools. It's hitting everyone, from the Ivies to the smallest liberal-arts colleges. That means students in need of financial aid will have trouble getting into any school where money is tight—and that's every school. Sure, it would be great for the next wave of coeds not to have huge student loans to pay back when they enter the workforce. But if the alternative is no college degree at all, a few thousand dollars' worth of debt doesn't sound so bad.

Colleges Give Rich Kids a Leg Up This Year

Though some have speculated that the recession might create more equality in the domestic sphere, apparently the recession means less of an even playing field when it comes to college admissions. According to the New York Times, in this time of plummeting endowments, colleges may be looking more favorably on students who can afford tuition without financial aid.

Colleges say they are not backing away from their desire to serve less affluent students; if anything, they say, taking more students who can afford to pay full price or close to it allows them to better afford those who cannot. But they say the inevitable result is that needier students will be shifted down to the less expensive and less prestigious institutions.

I wonder if this is such a terrible thing. Even without the recession, my generation is crippled with staggering debt, mostly from higher education. If there's no guaranteed reward of a moderately well-paying job at the other end, is it worth going into serious financial jeopardy so you can have an Ivy League degree?