PrintMay 20, 2011
Married Women - Better Sex, More Money
Actress Cameron Diaz recently called marriage a "dying institution." Then, she declared, "I don't think we should live our lives in relationships based off old traditions that don't suit our world any longer." Miss Diaz, in case you didn't know, is a big Hollywood star who has had high-profile non-marital relationships with other big Hollywood stars like Justin Timberlake and Matt Dillon.
Diaz's remarks are in line with other anti-marriage views that the cultural elite are trying to push onto the public in today's culture -- especially the themes, "Marriage is bad for women," and "A woman doesn't need a man." A recent popular movie, Eat, Pray, Love, based on a New York Times best-selling book by Elizabeth Gilbert, is about a woman who was "sentenced to wed" in order to avoid her Latino lover's immigration problems. The author's opinion is that men benefit from marriage more than women. Women, she declared, "often find that they've gotten the short end of the stick." She explained, "Women give more and as a result they give up more. I think the other problem is that women go into marriage with such high expectations, really inflated romantic ideas about what this relationship is going to be. ... [T]en years later women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be." In an interview, Gilbert told CNN, "Looking at study after study, it becomes quite chilling to see how very much more benefited men are by marriage. Married men perform in life exceptionally better than single men, they live longer, they're richer, they're happier."
So goes the message from the elites to young women: "If you marry, you lose and he gains."
Gilbert's assumption about marriage being better for men than for women is a common myth, one that experts say stems from the negative effect of marriage on women's careers, the stress of motherhood, and misperceptions of the danger of domestic abuse. According to marriage researchers David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, recent studies find "men and women benefit about equally from marriage," but in gender-specific ways. The Witherspoon Institute's "Ten Principles" project noted that both husbands and wives benefit in financial, emotional, physical, and social ways, but the benefits of marriage for wives are more sensitive to the quality of the marriage than are the benefits of marriage for the husbands. Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier, and more financially secure lives when they are married. Husbands generally gain greater health benefits, while wives gain greater financial advantages.
Put in plain, simple terms: married women are happier and better off financially.
It is tragic enough that so many young women today are skeptical about marriage because of the deluge of negative messages that they receive from the media and entertainment industries. Worse still is the fact that many are also convinced by the pervasive attitude that all a couple needs is passionate sex; they do not need a "piece of paper" to prove their love. Unlike Diaz and other high-profile influencers, most young women aren't making millions of dollars a year. Most of them have not reckoned with the fact that having a baby out of wedlock means a 50-50 chance that they will end up in poverty. Having a second child out of wedlock raises the likelihood of ending up in poverty to more than 60 percent.
Unfortunately, our nation's poverty experts continue to take the easy road and address the derivative problems associated with poverty (limited job opportunities for unwed mothers, racial discrimination, and the temptation to make easy money through gambling or drugs) that it is politically correct to discuss, rather than tackle the thorny, controversial issue of the decline in marriage and mounting numbers of single mothers and absent fathers. More than forty years of failed social welfare policies have amply demonstrated that when the wrong solution is applied to a bad situation, increases in funding simply magnify the problem.
Although it counters popular perceptions that sex with one person will inevitably get boring and monotonous, married couples enjoy better sex than either sexually active single couples or cohabiting couples. "The most comprehensive and recent survey of sexuality" indicates that married couples enjoy sex and are better satisfied with their sex lives -- both emotionally and physically -- than are either sexually active single couples or cohabiting couples. Popenoe and Whitehead report, "Forty-two percent of wives said that they found sex extremely emotionally and physically satisfying, compared to just 31 percent of single women who had a sex partner. And, 48 percent of husbands said sex was extremely satisfying emotionally, compared to just 37 percent of cohabiting men." The researchers explained, "The higher level of commitment in marriage is probably the reason for the high level of reported sexual satisfaction; marital commitment contributes to a greater sense of trust and security, less drug and alcohol-infused sex, and more mutual communication between the couple."
The continued elitist contempt for marriage is ironic in light of the overwhelming billions of people around the globe who watched the television coverage of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton -- perhaps an indication that people still hold marriage in esteem and that the dream of love and romance culminating in a marriage of grand passion and lasting endurance still prevails in spite of the attacks that marriage has undergone in recent decades. The text of the traditional ceremony marked the solemnity and sacredness of marriage. The public ceremony, while more grand than most, marked for the royal couple -- as it does for thousands of commoner couples and those in their circle of family, friends, and associates -- the threshold a couple crosses when they give their bodies as well as their hearts into the keeping of one another. How fitting to be reminded that marriage -- Holy Matrimony -- takes place "in the sight of God" and that marriage is "adorned" by Christ and "beautified by His presence." How appropriate to hear that marriage is not to be entered into "unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly; but reverently, discreetly, soberly and in the fear of God, duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained."
Janice Shaw Crouse, author of the soon-to-be released Marriage Matters, is also a columnist and political/cultural commentator and senior fellow at Concerned Women for America's think-tank.
