All the Single Ladies

In her presemtuosly assertive article "All the Single Ladies" -a title playing on Beyonce's hit "Single Ladies", author Kate Bolick uses her personal life combined with a series of distorted statistics to examine why so many American women are single and explain why marriage is no longer a necessary for one to "have it all" and lead a fulfilling life.

Bolick begins her in depth look at the changing value of traditional marriage by stating that Americans are not only marrying at a higher age, but they are marrying less overall. The median age for women to get married today is 26 -a drastic change from 50 years ago when the median was 20. She explains this increase through a very limited scope saying "we no longer need husbands to have children, nor do we have to have children if we don't want to". She continues to explain that because of options such as adoption and invitro fertilization "Biological parenthood in a nuclear family need not be the be-all and end-all of womanhood". She attempts to prove that women are no longer in a rush to marry for purposes of reproduction by saying that since 1976 the proportion of women in the 40s who have not had children has doubled. Bolicks arguments seems convinving because she inserts statistics and facts after each generalization she makes, but after taking a close look one can easily recognize that she a) fails to contextualize those facts and b) ignores other possible explanations. The social and medical changes in America that have allowed for the normalization of adoption and invitro fertilzation can be seen as one of many factors that have impacted the value of marriage, but it is not the only nor the greatest explanation for this change. Bolick ignores the economic factor -Many individuals cannot afford to have children because of the cost of healthcare, childcare, education and all of the other factors that an individual has to take into account in assessing the financial burden and responsibility that comes with a child. Bolick also fails to address the religious factor -Marriage is no longer fully intertwined with religion, but the creation of this institution was a product of religion. As scientific reason has become increasingly more important, religion has become less pertinent and influential and as a result marriage has become less important.