Passages by Gail Sheehy
Author:Gail Sheehy [Sheehy, Gail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780698138667
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-07-31T16:00:00+00:00
NEVER-MARRIED MEN, PARANURTURERS, AND LATENCY BOYS
Less often seen are these three patterns.
By all accounts of statistics and studies, men need marriage more than women do. Only five percent of American men over 40 are unmarried. Divorced men remarry sooner than divorced women do. Widowed men remarry much sooner than bereaved women do. And while the number of men choosing to remain single is on the increase among the under-35 population, the ranks of bachelor men beyond that age continue the traditional trend toward thinning out fast.13
Older men, in particular, are at a loss to find within themselves a renewal of purpose once the external world has devalued them. Or, as Margaret Mead succinctly puts it, âMen are much more likely to die when they retire, while women just keep on cooking.â
The supportive aspects of marriage for men received a high vote in the Harvard Grant Study. (Remember, when Vaillant scored his subjects for overall adult adjustment, a stout 93 percent of the âbest adapted menâ had made a stable marriage before 30 and stayed with it until 50.)
The myth that marriage offers an equally supportive structure for the development of men and women is dealt a blow, however, when husbands and wives are compared. As everyone knows, women enjoy physical health equal to that of men and better health beyond age 65. But as everyone doesnât know, the mental health hazards suffered by married women are far greater than those of married men. Sociologist Jessie Bernard has brought to light startling evidence on this score. More married women than married men have felt they were about to have a nervous breakdown; more have experienced psychological and physical anxiety; more have had feelings of inadequacy in their marriages and blamed themselves for their own lack of adjustment. More wives show phobic reactions, depression, passivity, and mental health impairment. It is not just a sex difference. For when the mental health profile of wives is compared with that of single women, the married group shows up just as unfavorably.14
This leads to the most stunning myth crusher of all. Women without husbands are the frustrated incipient alcoholics washed up by our culture on the island of despair, whereas the free-swinging bachelor is to be envied by all. Correct? Absolutely false.
Psychologists Gurin, Veroff, and Feld report that single women in this country experience less discomfort and greater happiness and appear in most ways stronger in meeting the challenges of their positions than single men. Unmarried men suffer far more from neurotic and antisocial tendencies and are more often depressed and passive. Age only widens the distance between the two.
Between the ages of 25 and 34, there is not a great deal of difference in education, occupation, or income between the single men and single women. But by the time they reach middle age, 46 to 54, the distance between them has stretched to a gulf. The single women are more educated, have higher average incomes, and work in more prestigious occupations. And it is
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