Post by OverseerCWFJ on Sept 13, 2004 15:21:15 GMT -5
Oprah has been making it clear that marriage is out of style and a fading institution. Is her dire prediction right?
Unmarried America by M. Conlin
Say good-bye to the traditional family. Here's how the new demographics will change business and society.
Most Thursday nights, Hillary Herskowitz slips on her Seven jeans, chooses from among her dozens of shoes, and steps out for an evening sipping Ketel One and tonics with the modish throngs of Manhattan. The 35-year-old communications director and her designer-clad wing girls -- a pediatrician, a health-care manager, and an executive recruiter -- cruise the city's swankiest bashes: the posh private parties, the paparazzi-stalked soirees. They don't just watch Sex and the City. They live it. Advertisement
But after 13 years of this behind-the-velvet-ropes scene, they have yet to find the one thing they want most: husbands. The search has taken on a more desperate flavor of late; the women now plan to haunt sports bars in their stilettos. "It feels terrifying because the biological clock is ticking, and I want to have kids," says Herskowitz. "And I never, ever thought I'd wind up here."
Thirty years ago, a single woman like Herskowitz would have been considered an aberration. An old maid. Today, she's so typical that the highest IQs in Hollywood and on Wall Street and Madison Avenue are fixated on dreaming up products for the swelling ranks of unattached urbanites just like her. Add to these monied romantics a growing number of gay couples such as Luke Schemmel and Jonathan Shapiro, who are raising two adopted kids; divorced parents such as Jason Lauer and Terresa Lauer, who share custody of their 7-year-old son; single parents like Mark Cunha, a widower who is raising a son and daughter alone; and young men like Vincent Ciaccio, who broke his Italian mother's heart when he got a vasectomy three years ago at the age of 23 because he didn't want to get tied down. Along with the growing numbers of cohabitants and elderly unmarrieds, these wildly divergent types are the force behind a huge demographic shift taking place in this country: We're on the verge of becoming -- at least in the legal sense -- a nation of singletons.
The U.S. Census Bureau's newest numbers show that married-couple households -- the dominant cohort since the country's founding -- have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today. That means that the U.S.'s 86 million single adults could soon define the new majority. Already, unmarrieds make up 42% of the workforce, 40% of home buyers, 35% of voters, and one of the most potent -- if pluralistic -- consumer groups on record.
Yet even as marriage is on the wane, infatuation with the institution has never seemed so fierce -- from the debate over same-sex unions to President Bush's marriage-promotion campaign to reality TV's depiction of wedlock as a psychological Super Bowl. The culture may be so marriage-crazed, though, precisely because the rite is so threatened. Indeed, we are delaying marriage longer than ever, cohabiting in greater numbers, forming more same-sex partnerships, living far longer, and remarrying less after we split up. (go to Part II)
Unmarried America by M. Conlin
Say good-bye to the traditional family. Here's how the new demographics will change business and society.
Most Thursday nights, Hillary Herskowitz slips on her Seven jeans, chooses from among her dozens of shoes, and steps out for an evening sipping Ketel One and tonics with the modish throngs of Manhattan. The 35-year-old communications director and her designer-clad wing girls -- a pediatrician, a health-care manager, and an executive recruiter -- cruise the city's swankiest bashes: the posh private parties, the paparazzi-stalked soirees. They don't just watch Sex and the City. They live it. Advertisement
But after 13 years of this behind-the-velvet-ropes scene, they have yet to find the one thing they want most: husbands. The search has taken on a more desperate flavor of late; the women now plan to haunt sports bars in their stilettos. "It feels terrifying because the biological clock is ticking, and I want to have kids," says Herskowitz. "And I never, ever thought I'd wind up here."
Thirty years ago, a single woman like Herskowitz would have been considered an aberration. An old maid. Today, she's so typical that the highest IQs in Hollywood and on Wall Street and Madison Avenue are fixated on dreaming up products for the swelling ranks of unattached urbanites just like her. Add to these monied romantics a growing number of gay couples such as Luke Schemmel and Jonathan Shapiro, who are raising two adopted kids; divorced parents such as Jason Lauer and Terresa Lauer, who share custody of their 7-year-old son; single parents like Mark Cunha, a widower who is raising a son and daughter alone; and young men like Vincent Ciaccio, who broke his Italian mother's heart when he got a vasectomy three years ago at the age of 23 because he didn't want to get tied down. Along with the growing numbers of cohabitants and elderly unmarrieds, these wildly divergent types are the force behind a huge demographic shift taking place in this country: We're on the verge of becoming -- at least in the legal sense -- a nation of singletons.
The U.S. Census Bureau's newest numbers show that married-couple households -- the dominant cohort since the country's founding -- have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today. That means that the U.S.'s 86 million single adults could soon define the new majority. Already, unmarrieds make up 42% of the workforce, 40% of home buyers, 35% of voters, and one of the most potent -- if pluralistic -- consumer groups on record.
Yet even as marriage is on the wane, infatuation with the institution has never seemed so fierce -- from the debate over same-sex unions to President Bush's marriage-promotion campaign to reality TV's depiction of wedlock as a psychological Super Bowl. The culture may be so marriage-crazed, though, precisely because the rite is so threatened. Indeed, we are delaying marriage longer than ever, cohabiting in greater numbers, forming more same-sex partnerships, living far longer, and remarrying less after we split up. (go to Part II)
