So there was a thread over at the Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn’s blog, on marriage, which got me to thinking.
In a response to the question of whether upper-middle-class, or more often poor women, are single mothers, a commenter said, in discussing upper-middle-class single-moms-by-choice who never get married but still want a child, “Many women these days are much pickier than they used to be in terms of finding a mate (which is a whole different discussion as to whether this a result of women’s lib and greater career opportunities) and many forego getting married as they are not willing to ‘settle’ for a subpar relationship simply so they can ‘achieve’ the goal of getting married, which many no longer see as a huge priority.”
But here’s what’s striking: he says “marriage is no longer a huge priority” — but having children is. Why would that be? Certainly there are plenty of couples for whom the marriage is important, but they don’t want kids, and other people for whom it’s the reverse.
My guess is that there’s a big element of maintaining control; for people with this mind-set, to be married is to lose control. Maybe not in the “controlling husband” sort of way, but still in the need to compromise to another’s wishes in any number of small or large ways: everything from what to have for dinner to whether to buy a house or a condo to where to live in the first place. And there’s the further less tangible losing control: the fear that your guy, even if he’s great now, will change in the future.
(Of course, there are women who simply never meet anyone who’s remotely marriage material, but, given the opportunities via e-harmony, etc., I’m not sure that the numbers of women who fall into this category has changed.)
Of course, that implies that having a kid allows one to maintain control more than having a husband — but that’s an even more uncertain prospect. You can always divorce a husband if necessary, but you can’t divorce a kid. And even if you’re upper-middle-class with tremendous financial stability, you’re still at risk of your kid being, well, not what you expect. Being educated doesn’t guarantee you that you’ll avoid being regulars at the pediatric therapy clinic, doesn’t ensure you that you’ll have one of those high achievers rather than a kid who struggles through school. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee that your kid will never stomp up to his room, crying, and slam the door saying, “it’s not fair!” A child is an autonomous being, not a mini-me, and it seems to me to be a fairly risky endeavor to choose to have a child as a husband-substitute, as someone to provide companionship that’s otherwise missing, especially for women who discarded prospective mates as not worthy.
Anyway, this is pure speculation . . .
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