In December, in my half-lit bedroom, I watched the series finale of Insecure on my laptop. There was Molly in her designer wedding dress, husband on her arm. Were we being elitist? Molly and I tried dating men who made less money than we did. Did we need to be more open-minded? Molly and I went back and forth about only dating Black men. Did we need to work on ourselves? Molly and I went to therapy. For Molly, it was the last of these that made her relationship-ready when a suitable partner an actual partner at her law firm arrived. I was soon to be 37 and still single.
'Marrying Down' Costs Educated Women $25K a Year
But wistfulness for a husband looks different in the light of day. My life might not look like the one American women have been taught to strive for — a husband, a house and two kids — but it is a happy one. So why do I flinch each time I see that statistic? As a Black woman, I was brought up to undermine stereotypes, to defy the odds. The pandemic has only deepened my ambivalence about the supposed connection between matrimony and happiness. Yes, the pandemic has been lonely for singles. But unlike many partnered women, I had not needed to drop out of the workforce to be the primary caregiver for children, nor had I found myself grumbling over being laden with an unfair portion of the household management. Often, when discussing singleness, there is a focus on what is lacking from a life unpartnered. Rarely do we consider what must be exchanged for a life lived with someone else. Brianna Meeks learned firsthand that other lives were possible. Raised Black, Baptist, and in the South, she got married at It felt like a really weird identity crisis. By 25, Meeks was over her marriage.
About the Authors
And it is not. I have my own apartment. But let me tell you something, it is not. Meeks has dated women exclusively since moving to Washington, which, for her, has shifted the conversation about what it means to be a single Black woman. In the queer community there are so many different kinds of ways to be a person, that there are many different kinds of relationships, so the possibilities are endless. Ultimately, Meeks has found confidence in knowing who she is and what she wants versus trying to follow a preconceived script of what a happy life should look like. We know how to stand firm. Are you going to do this? Are you going to do that? Asha French , a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, chose to rip up the nuclear family script when she learned she was pregnant in her early 20s. She thought about most of the concerns young, unmarried mothers-to-be think about, but there was also joy and illumination. I love the work that is mothering. But she sees beyond the marketing when she looks at the women in her family. I can make my own money. I can get a Ph. I can buy a house … It does not mean I want to be independent forever; everybody wants to belong to some sort of relationship. There are so many privileges that the marriage narrative obscures. Saida Grundy , a feminist sociologist of race and ethnicity at Boston University, supports this notion.
https://www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Richard-Geres-Dating-History-Cindy-Crawford-Alejandra-Silva-and-More-12.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=allThe Growing Racial and Ethnic Divide in U.S. Marriage Patterns
This would explain why so much of the concern around the overall increasing singlehood in the United States seems to have an economic bent. Not a good sign for what …? But, for me, a lack of marriage is symbolic of a lack of romantic love in my life. So what happens when we divorce love from marriage and marriage from capitalism? It could end a lot of the stigma around singlehood. Marriage is a specific kind of relationship that privileges partnerships where one spouse is earning significantly more money than the other. No one is late. No one is left out. No one is wrong. No one is bad. No one is unlovable because they are single. But we do need to talk about men. Black men specifically. Most Americans are still marrying within their race. That misogyny, that gender inequity, that antagonism is actually a key driver for why many women actively choose to remain single. We need their stories, too. And their blog posts.Why do men want to box themselves in in these specific ways? Why is there a cultural imperative for sameness among men that is rooted in dominance, authority, and control? Not everybody wants to be in their relationship like that. A lot of men are looking for a partner to be emotionally vulnerable with. Dianne M. Marriage is a civil right. Stewart also agrees with Moorman that many Black men want more — and are more — than the narratives being offered about them. There are Black men I know personally who prefer the benefits of love and partnership over the perceived benefits of patriarchy. These men delight in the rewards of bonding with their spouses and children, but they need to speak openly about it. And I think that doing so will take a profound level of courage. Stewart says that telling our stories can grant Black women more freedom to just be. That testimony, that story, that kind of witnessing, changes the public narrative. Faith Lindsey, an year-old freshman at Temple University, told me that in her friend group marriage is not an aspiration for most. Pretty much for the same reason, the systems are not set up well enough to bring kids into this world. Lindsey says her queerness has shaped her relationship values. So, it gives me, and I know so many other people, so much freedom. Abandoning the marriage script does not mean that Gen Z is an army of carefree Black girls. Rather, according to Lindsey, the pressure has shifted to other areas. I want to chat with a Black woman who has raised her children, who is no longer married, and appears to be thriving.
How dating as a Black woman from a mostly white city has impacted what I want in relationships
Then, I think about Stewart saying how important it is for Black woman to tell our stories and all the stories not represented by the women I spoke to. Black transgender women. Asexual Black women. Stories centered in colorism, texturism, and featurism. Stories of Black women without degrees. Immigrant Black women. Black aunties. Black women happy in their marriages. So many Black women, so many stories to tell, so many stories that will continue to go unheard until we move beyond the statistics. She spends her free time living beyond her emotional means and hyping up her friends on social media. By Minda Honey February 14, Jamie Coe. Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure.
The lighter the shade, the higher the probability of marriage
Professor of sociology and faculty research associate at the Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. The United States shows striking racial and ethnic differences in marriage patterns. Compared to both white and Hispanic women, black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability. Kelly Raley, Megan Sweeney, and Danielle Wondra begin by reviewing common explanations for these differences, which first gained momentum in the s though patterns of marital instability diverged earlier than patterns of marriage formation. Raley, Sweeney and, Wondra argue that the racial gap in marriage that emerged in the s, and has grown since, is due partly to broad changes in ideas about family arrangements that have made marriage optional. Race continues to be associated with economic disadvantage, and thus as economic factors have become more relevant to marriage and marital stability, the racial gap in marriage has grown. In , 70 percent of non-Hispanic white children ages 0—18 and roughly 59 percent of Hispanic children were living with both of their biological parents. The same was true for only a little more than one-third of black children. Others suggest that common factors, such as economic distress, contribute both to family instability and to developmental problems in children. Regardless, even if many single-parent families function well and produce healthy children, population-level differences in family stability are associated with distress for both parents and children. We begin by describing racial and ethnic differences in marriage formation and stability, then review common explanations for these differences.
Votre commentaire: