The XX Factor: What women really think.

Of Spinsters & Specter

That late-twenties average age of marriage was called the "Western model," since it took hold in Western Europe, not southern or eastern. Some historians have suggested that the relatively high traditional average age of marriage was one of the economic engines behind western Europe's success. People in eastern and southern Europe married their daughters off at comparatively young ages, with correspondingly damaging effects on fertility (high), maternal and child mortality (high), and female productivity (low). If you wait to get married, and both parties save up their pennies to invest in the shop and the kids, it's good for you, good for economy, and good for society. It's ahistorical to suggest otherwise. So there. 

BUT I can't pause to write that paragraph because like Emily B, I am absolutely gobsmacked by Specter switching parties. Yes, the Republican party has moved sharply to the right (and to the south—the olde New England Republican, capitalist, fiscally moderate, and socially liberal, is on life support) since he was first elected. Are Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe next?

Like you, Emily, I have the image of Arlen Specter attacking Anita Hill's credibility—and doing it hatefully, misogynistically—seared into my retinas. I swore back then never to forgive, as I suspect did hundreds of thousands of women, appalled by what we saw. But waiting right beside that image is another one: of Ted Kennedy sitting limply on the same Senatorial panel, silent and powerless to defend Hill because of his own mottled history. Politicians are imperfect, much like the rest of us, albeit with more power and more media exposure. I suppose—like the rest of us—they must be assessed by the totality of their deeds, not by the worst of their televised moments.  

The Spinsterhood of the Traveling Pants

I'm glad E.J. mentioned the outdated and offensive label "spinster" (evoking the hag cartoon on an "old maid" playing card deck), because recently in news stories describing talent show contestant Susan Boyle, I've noticed the insulting characterization making a comeback. But what is the correct term for unmarried women in the post-feminist world? As Kerry noted recently about sociologist Andrew Cherlin's research, in a culture where "marriage matters more here than elsewhere," in the United States, "only a marriage ring guarantees first-class citizenship."

Meantime, though the term spinster is rude, the condition it describes, unmarried women over 40, is common. I'm very glad Dayo brought up the Mark Regnerus essay on the appallingly short shelf life of women. Like Emily, I married relatively late in life. I was 35 when I got engaged, 25 years ago, and had life experience, a career, and a child. But, as a baby boomer, even at my mid-career age, there were comparatively plenty of single available men. Although I agree with Meghan's assessment that Regernus presents a narrow-minded and patronizing sociological premise, he was not wrong when he wrote, "Marriage will be there for men when they're ready. And most do get there. Eventually." Distressingly, however, somewhere along the line, many single ladies with career and education priorities find they have entered a no man's land. Awkwardly, as Jess facetiously (I think) supports, the geezerish single men my age prefer to date women 10 to 20 years younger. 

In the sixth season of Sex And The City, the inestimable Candice Bergen, as Carrie Bradshaw's powerful, glamorous, Vogue editor, scolds the younger woman for dating Aleksandr Petrovsky (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov), one of the infinitesimally few age-appropriate men available. As Enid, Bergen tells Carrie, "There are no men, anywhere. I am a 50-something woman and there's a very small pool, it's very small, it's a wading pool, really." She tells the advice columnist, "so what I want to know, is why are you swimming in my wading pool?" 

The answer is that a man shortage also affects women in Carrie's cohort. The character Mia played by Hope Davis in the new season of another HBO series, In Treatment, despairs of ever meeting a "smart, interesting, available man who's over 40." She tells the single, attractive therapist played by Gabriel Byrne, "they're either married or there's a very good reason why they're not...and if they're divorced, they want them young."  

It sounds grim, but it's not necessarily so. A close friend much younger than I, who treats my husband and me so nicely that our daughter wrote on her Facebook page "thanks for taking care of bonnie and jim" is a former lawyer in her early 40s, stunningly attractive and funny, who has a gardening and flowers business. Though not lacking in male friends who "shoulda put a ring on it," my friend has never married. Wondering if, as an old married lady, I was poorly attuned to the word's connotations, I asked what she thought of the word spinster. "Sure, I'd like a partner and children" she answered the more general question, "but right now I have neither and I'm still pretty happy." In fact, she told me, "I'm into spinster power."