Here's a story that's both less and more than it appears. Because the whole focus is on the increase of women living without a spouse, the writers feel compelled to offer a whole set of reasons for the phenomenon:
Several factors are driving the statistical shift. At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom.
In addition, marriage rates among black women remain low. Only about 30 percent of black women are living with a spouse, according to the Census Bureau, compared with about 49 percent of Hispanic women, 55 percent of non-Hispanic white women and more than 60 percent of Asian women.
In a relatively small number of cases, the living arrangement is temporary, because the husbands are working out of town, are in the military or are institutionalized. But while most women eventually marry, the larger trend is unmistakable.
But if you look deeper into the story, you discover that the percentage of women married and living with spouses is awfully close to the percentage of men who are married and living with spouses -- 49 percent and 53 percent, respectively. And that apparent difference can be explained completely by the simple fact that women live longer than men and thus have longer widowhoods. So the real story is that about half of us -- men and women alike -- now live alone. That is the big deal here.
Why this is happening can be the subject of lively debates, and there are probably many reasons that partially explain it. I think one of the big factors is the culture of impermanence we're living in. We once expected things to last. Now, we don't, whether they are jobs, marriages or the latest version of Windows. We've gone from three networks to a choice of millions of videos on YouTube, and in a world that confronts us with such choices every day in every area of life, it seems quaint to think that something will last long enough to be as important to us several years down the road as it is today. Till death us do part? Get serious.
