There was more to the story...

[Marty McFly]

In mid January the New York Times reported that 51% of women aren't married. CBS news did a piece on this news as well. The story was also posted on the CBSNews.com website. Here's a little from that article:

...CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace reports. For the first time, more women in America are unmarried than married. Women like 29-year-old Jessica Cohen of New York. "We don't need men anymore," she says. "I mean, we want men, we want someone to share everything with, but I don't think we need to rush."

According to a New York Times analysis of census results, 35 percent of women in the "Ozzie and Harriet" days of the 1950s were single. That number jumped to 49 percent in 2000 and to 51 percent in 2005.

Why the trend in saying "I don't?" Younger women are marrying later or just living with someone instead, while older women are living longer than their husbands and are choosing not to take another walk down the aisle.

"I've been through two marriages, and single is better for me," one woman explained.

Another reason: More women are working and supporting themselves.

As one Dallas woman explains, "I'm single right now and I feel actually happy about it."

A Miami woman says the best part of being single is "you can flirt a little bit." So there it is. Women are just saying 'no' to getting married, maybe saving that for later in life. More women just prefer the single life and don't want to be tied down.

End of story, right?

Not so fast.

Think what you will about Thomas Sowell, but his latest article says that the 'stats' are misleading.

The Times defined "women" to include females as young as 16 and counted widows, who of course could not be widows unless they had once had a husband. Wives whose husbands were away in the military, or in prison, were also counted among women not living with a husband.Entire article... (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/02/06/all_the_news)

Folks, is it any wonder that TV news is slipping when 'we' mislead our viewers and fail to give them the entire story? The story was presented to show that more women aren't getting married, but that wasn't the case!

Many of you are quick to criticize talk radio, bloggers and columnists for 'taking' the audience. But I think anyone wanting their news feels deceived and bamboozled when they find out the 'rest of the story' elsewhere.

Your turn.

[Ferrycrossthemersey]

When you're right, you're right. As soon as I heard about that story, I could almost "smell" the misleading stats; I instantly recognized it as a "natural" for TV, i.e., a story you could fool with, bring in cute video, etc., just to have a piece people would "talk" about.

[Bandit '07]

Ummm, well, you might want to let Mr Sowell know that the Times didn't set that age definition ... the Census Bureau did.

Link (http://www.census.gov/acs/www/acs-php/experienced_users_guide.php?acs_topic=Marital+Stat us)

And the Times did note the age was women over the age of 15 in the original story ...

Among the more than 117 million women over the age of 15, according to the marital status category in the Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey, 63 million are married. Of those, 3.1 million are legally separated and 2.4 million said their husbands were not living at home for one reason or another.

That brings the number of American women actually living with a spouse to 57.5 million, compared with the 59.9 million who are single or whose husbands were not living at home when the survey was taken in 2005.
And while it is arguable that 16 is not a good benchmark ... on the other hand ... if that's the benchmark used in past surveys, you should really use that to get a true picture.

[ February 06, 2007, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: Bandit '07 ]

[News Is Broken]

Who marries a 15 year old? Without getting indicted, I mean...

[2:30]

The answer: someone in Virginia.

But that's not the point.

As usual, the voice of the sewer was misleading his sheep. After all, who else could come up with the "point" of the story...and decide that it had to do with marriage as a failed institution (his analysis, not mine.)

The fact is that it was a trend story. Whether you quibble with the top line number, the fact is that more and more of us want less and less to do with you. Given the trolls around here, who could blame us?

Whether it's 51% now or 47% now or 40% now, who cares? It's a trend. And it's going in the direction of women who are increasingly independent. Get used to it.

[Diplomat]

Marty,

Thanks for posting. This one also appeared in one of our local papers today. I always appreciate Dr. Sowell's reasoned perspective.

[Sir Dropham Pants]

Originally posted by News Is Broken:
Who marries a 15 year old? Without getting indicted, I mean...Jerry Lee Lewis?
http://www.fiftiesweb.com/jerry-lee-myra.jpg
(although 15 may have been a bit old for "the killer")

[Sir Dropham Pants]

Originally posted by 2:30:

The fact is that it was a trend story. Whether you quibble with the top line number, the fact is that more and more of us want less and less to do with you. Given the trolls around here, who could blame us?

Whether it's 51% now or 47% now or 40% now, who cares? It's a trend. And it's going in the direction of women who are increasingly independent. Get used to it.Yeah, facts shmacts. Why not just report it's 99%? If the numbers are not important, why report the numbers?

[2:30]

The fact reported by the Times was - apparently - entirely accurate. It's the spin the righties are trying to put on it that's at issue. They don't dispute that 51% of women are single - they merely claim the statistic is misleading.

My point is that no matter what statistic you choose, the trend is for more women to be single.

One would think that even someone with dropped pants could figure that out.

[Marty McFly]

Are you serious?!

The 'stats' included women whose husbands who were deployed elsewhere and women whose husbands were in prison or jail.

That does NOT make them single, nor does it mean that more woman are choosing not to marry. That's not spin on the 'rabid righties' part at all.

Those 'stats' also include women who had been widowed! From the article, if a husband dies, the woman is obviously stating her desire to be single!

It's misleading, it's deceptive. It's pathetic journalism at best.

It's also a reason more people turn to bloggers, talk radio and syndicated columnists to get the rest of the actual story.

[2:30]

Sure, Marty. Whatever you say.

But before you suck up more of your little green whatevers, you might do well to actually read the story you're slamming. Check what it actually said, as opposed to what some desperate for attention moron wrote about it.

Your sole complaint appears to be that some small percentage - in your view - should not have been counted sa single, even though they obviously ARE single. Well, whatever. The trend is still the trend.

[Almost Virga]

Is it possible to conclude that if more women are single, more men are as well? Or do we have a glut of women?

[Roy Hobbs]

Originally posted by 2:30:
The answer: someone in Virginia.

But that's not the point.

As usual, the voice of the sewer was misleading his sheep. After all, who else could come up with the "point" of the story...and decide that it had to do with marriage as a failed institution (his analysis, not mine.)

The fact is that it was a trend story. Whether you quibble with the top line number, the fact is that more and more of us want less and less to do with you. Given the trolls around here, who could blame us?

Whether it's 51% now or 47% now or 40% now, who cares? It's a trend. And it's going in the direction of women who are increasingly independent. Get used to it.Wow. Hate men much? I hope the Valentine's Day Sale on Male Dart Boards goes well for you. Yikes!

[ February 06, 2007, 11:49 PM: Message edited by: Roy Hobbs ]

[Marty McFly]

Originally posted by 2:30:
Sure, Marty. Whatever you say.

But before you suck up more of your little green whatevers, you might do well to actually read the story you're slamming. Check what it actually said, as opposed to what some desperate for attention moron wrote about it.

Your sole complaint appears to be that some small percentage - in your view - should not have been counted sa single, even though they obviously ARE single. Well, whatever. The trend is still the trend.1) I did read the entire story. I just didn't include all of it here on Medialine.

2) Thomas Sowell isn't desperate for attention. If he were, it would surely backfire on him.

3) A 17 year old girl IS probably single... But including them as part of the stats to show more women are CHOOSING to be single is misleading.

4) A woman whose husband is deployed somewhere doesn't classify her as 'single' just because her spouse isn't home.

5) A woman whose husband is in jail or prison doesn't make her 'single.'

6) It was a shock to see you post something other than an anti-Bush article. It seems that you are indeed capable of original thought... although it didn't really account to much.

[The Mockingbird]

3) A 17 year old girl IS probably single... But including them as part of the stats to show more women are CHOOSING to be single is misleading. Why is that? Especially if you're making comparisons to 40 years ago based on data that DID include them?

[2:30]

Because it fits his agenda of the moment - which is trying to defend his bizarre conception of what society should be, while simultaneously bashing those who accurately report on the trends away from his vision.

[The Mockingbird]

One of the trends is that people are waiting until later in life to get married...

[Clubbeat]

Hey 2:30...It appears that you agree with the numbers. If that's the case, I'd like to know what makes you feel this way?

My mother-in-law feels like this. She has been single for nealry 50-years...since my wife's dad split. Her thing is that men are all dogs, treat women like shiat and want nothing from women other than some nookie, cooked meals and keeping the kids and house clean and straight.

She really thinks black men are the worse (yes, we're African-American).

I'm not sure, but I would bet that you're much younger than her. So whay do you and others like you feel this way?

Just curious...

[TV Dad]

Originally posted by The Mockingbird:
One of the trends is that people are waiting until later in life to get married...True, but for women, waiting often means that once they DO decide they're ready for marriage, the field of acceptable men is seriously depleted. I know a number of middle-aged single women who, though they are fully capable of living alone and supporting themselves, would definitely choose to have a husband if they could find the right guy.

[Marty McFly]

Originally posted by 2:30:
Because it fits his agenda of the moment - which is trying to defend his bizarre conception of what society should be, while simultaneously bashing those who accurately report on the trends away from his vision.I do have an agenda. I want the press to present the news in its entirety and accurately. This was not the case with this story.

The best 2:30 can come up with is that this is nothing more than spin from the 'righties.'

[Diplomat]

Well said, Marty!

[ZuZu's Petals]

in relation to this topic... this was interesting too.

Real estate: Who's buying now
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Changing American demographics and social norms are altering the real estate landscape: the average home buyer is very different compared with buyers of generations past.

The biggest group of home buyers by far is still married couples, accounting for 61 percent of all homes bought, according to the National Association of Realtors.

But single women now purchase 22 percent of all homes. Single men accounted for only 9 percent of purchases.

According to Pat Vredevoogd Combs, the president of the National Association of Realtors, that shows real change. "Thirty-five years ago, when I started out as a realtor, a single woman couldn't even get a mortgage," she says.

Part of the reason why women have become so big a buying bloc is that more women are single than ever before. The New York Times recently concluded, after an analysis of Census Bureau data, that 51 percent of all American adult women now live without a spouse.

There's more : http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/23/real_estate/new_real_estate_buyers/index.htm

TV Dad is right. Often, for women, single is not a choice. They would choose to be married - but the pickings are slim.
And I don't know why?

Are there so few men? This article also suggests - if only 9% of home sales are to single men - that there must not be many men out there. That's a big difference 22% vs 9% If so, where are they? Living with their unmarried girlfriends I suppose... in the house that she bought?

[2:30]

...It appears that you agree with the numbers. If that's the case, I'd like to know what makes you feel this way?
Well, if she's been single for 50 years, I'm younger than she is, for sure.

But...I'm not sure what you mean by "agree with the numbers" - do I agree that the trend among women is to get married later, if at all? Yes. And I have two friends in their late 30s - both highly educated with solid jobs - who are currently pregnant (by choice) and have decided they aren't marrying the fathers - they're going to raise their children on their own.

That wouldn't be my choice - raising kids is hard work, and I think kids are far better off with two parents...but my friends aren't alone in choosing to do it their way. (That one of them happens to be from a really wealthy family isn't hurting, though!)

I think that on a statistical basis, it's accurate to say that women are less interested now than they used to be in the Christian right/paternal dominated model of family. I can see where that would make some men - particularly those insecure about their abilities - upset. After all, if they don't have some deity putting them in charge, their competence won't get them there on merit.

[Marty McFly]

Please hear me out 2:30. I couldn't care less if 97% of women choose to never marry, have kids out wedlock or never go to church.

I DON'T CARE.

My sole issue is the way this story was reported. That's why this thread is in the J Forum and not the Free For All.

This line in the report is misleading:
For the first time, more women in America are unmarried than married.

Again, a woman whose husband is deployed in Iraq is NOT UNMARRIED.

A woman whose husband is in prison is NOT UNMARRIED.

99% of all 17 year old girls may be unmarried, but them being included in those stats is MISLEADING. The majority of 17 year olds are single?! Gee... ya think?!

Including women who are widowed in the report only skews the numbers and isn't accurately portraying reality.

'Meet Sue! Sue just lost her husband of 22 years in a plane crash. Jot her down as single in the survey!'

Imagine this report:
'The latest study shows that being single is the popular choice for today's younger women*, choosing not to walk down the aisle until later in life.'
*Study shows that 98% of women ages 17-22 are single.

Gee... ya think?!

It's tabloid, sensationalism 'journalism' at best and it does our viewers a disservice as well as discredit the press.

We should strive to do better and ask tougher questions about reports in the newsroom.

Here's another example:
A year ago I was on the desk and a report came out that showed about 200 people die every year in our state due to some sort of carbon monoxide poisoning. I smelled something funny, so I asked if they could provide the names of people in our viewing area who indeed did die because of this. Just doing the math, we should have had at least 30-50 deaths in our viewing area alone because of it! The response I got what was that those deaths were 'estimates' and expected projections.

I threw the release in the trash. I wasn't falling for it. No story. More importantly, no BOGUS, sensational story hit our air.

The same should have happened at the NYT and CBS news. More than half of all women is a LOT. Numbers don't lie, but they can be manipulated to show what you want to show. Someone in those newsrooms should have smelled something funny and asked the questions to see if everything added up correctly.

[Diplomat]

You are absolutely right, Marty. And so was Dr. Sowell.

[2:30]

No, twinkletoes, he's entirely wrong, as is your sewer dwelling pal. Why not look at the Times article, instead of the sewer translation. It turns out the story doesn't say the women are single - it says they are living "without spouse." That, of course, means those whose spouses are a long way away for a protracted period of time.

So, let's look at the actual story, which turns out to be exactly right. As I suggested, it's the sewer spin, based in political agenda, that's interfering with accurate reporting:

51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse

BYLINE: By SAM ROBERTS; Ariel Sabar, Brenda Goodman and Maureen Balleza contributed reporting.

SECTION: Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1413 words

For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.

In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

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.

''This is yet another of the inexorable signs that there is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people's lives,'' said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. ''Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage.''

Professor Coontz said this was probably unprecedented with the possible exception of major wartime mobilizations and when black couples were separated during slavery.

William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington, described the shift as ''a clear tipping point, reflecting the culmination of post-1960 trends associated with greater independence and more flexible lifestyles for women.''

''For better or worse, women are less dependent on men or the institution of marriage,'' Dr. Frey said. ''Younger women understand this better, and are preparing to live longer parts of their lives alone or with nonmarried partners. For many older boomer and senior women, the institution of marriage did not hold the promise they might have hoped for, growing up in an 'Ozzie and Harriet' era.''

Emily Zuzik, a 32-year-old musician and model who lives in the East Village of Manhattan, said she was not surprised by the trend.

''A lot of my friends are divorced or single or living alone,'' Ms. Zuzik said. ''I know a lot of people in their 30s who have roommates.''

Ms. Zuzik has lived with a boyfriend twice, once in California where the couple registered as domestic partners to qualify for his health insurance plan. ''I don't plan to live with anyone else again until I am married,'' she said, ''and I may opt to keep a place of my own even then.''

Linda Barth, a 56-year-old magazine editor in Houston who has never married, said, ''I used to divide my women friends into single friends and married friends. Now that doesn't seem to be an issue.''

Sheila Jamison, who also lives in the East Village and works for a media company, is 45 and single. She says her family believes she would have had a better chance of finding a husband had she attended a historically black college instead of Duke.

''Considering all the weddings I attended in the '80s that have ended so very, very badly, I consider myself straight up lucky,'' Ms. Jamison said. ''I have not sworn off marriage, but if I do wed, it will be to have a companion with whom I can travel and play parlor games in my old age.''

Carol Crenshaw, 57, of Roswell, Ga., was divorced in 2005 after 33 years and says she is in no hurry to marry again.

''I'm in a place in my life where I'm comfortable,'' said Ms. Crenshaw, who has two grown sons. ''I can do what I want, when I want, with whom I want. I was a wife and a mother. I don't feel like I need to do that again.''

Similarly, Shelley Fidler, 59, a public policy adviser at a law firm, has sworn off marriage. She moved from rural Virginia to the vibrant Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., when her 30-year marriage ended.

''The benefits were completely unforeseen for me,'' Ms. Fidler said, ''the free time, the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I have alone, which I value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of work, travel and cultural events.''

Among the more than 117 million women over the age of 15, according to the marital status category in the Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey, 63 million are married. Of those, 3.1 million are legally separated and 2.4 million said their husbands were not living at home for one reason or another.

That brings the number of American women actually living with a spouse to 57.5 million, compared with the 59.9 million who are single or whose husbands were not living at home when the survey was taken in 2005.

Some of those situations, which the census identifies as ''spouse absent'' and ''other,'' are temporary, and, of course, even some people who describe themselves as separated eventually reunite with their spouses.

Over all, a larger share of men are married and living with their spouse -- about 53 percent compared with 49 percent among women.

''Since women continue to outlive men, they have reached the nonmarital tipping point -- more nonmarried than married,'' Dr. Frey said. ''This suggests that most girls growing up today can look forward to spending more of their lives outside of a traditional marriage.''

Pamela J. Smock, a researcher at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, agreed, saying that ''changing patterns of courtship, marriage, and that we are living longer lives all play a role.''

''Men also remarry more quickly than women after a divorce,'' Ms. Smock added, ''and both are increasingly likely to cohabit rather than remarry after a divorce.''

The proportion of married people, especially among younger age groups, has been declining for decades. Between 1950 and 2000, the share of women 15-to-24 who were married plummeted to 16 percent, from 42 percent. Among 25-to-34-year-olds, the proportion dropped to 58 percent, from 82 percent.

''Although we can help people 'do' marriage better, it is simply delusional to construct social policy or make personal life decisions on the basis that you can count on people spending most of their adult lives in marriage,'' said Professor Coontz, the author of ''Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.''

Besse Gardner, 24, said she and her boyfriend met as college freshmen and started living together last April ''for all the wrong reasons'' -- they found a great apartment on the beach in Los Angeles.

''We do not see living together as an end or even for the rest of our lives -- it's just fun right now,'' Ms. Gardner said. ''My roommate is someone I'd be thrilled to marry one day, but it just doesn't make sense right now.''

Ms. Crenshaw said that some of the women in her support group for divorced women were miserable, but that she was surprised how happy she was to be single again.

''That's not how I grew up,'' she said. ''That's not how society thinks. It's a marriage culture.''

Elissa B. Terris, 59, of Marietta, Ga., divorced in 2005 after being married for 34 years and raising a daughter, who is now an adult.

''A gentleman asked me to marry him and I said no,'' she recalled. ''I told him, 'I'm just beginning to fly again, I'm just beginning to be me. Don't take that away.' ''

''Marriage kind of aged me because there weren't options,'' Ms. Terris said. ''There was only one way to go. Now I have choices. One night I slept on the other side of the bed, and I thought, I like this side.''

She said she was returning to college to get a master's degree (her former husband ''didn't want me to do that because I was more educated than he was''), had taken photography classes and was auditioning for a play.

''Once you go through something you think will kill you and it doesn't,'' she said, ''every day is like a present.''

[CKMD]

So what was the headline?

[Marty McFly]

2:30, in the first post of this thread I posted the CBSNews.com article. The NYT article says women are living without a spouse. The CBS News article on their website says that more woman are now unmarried rather than married.

THAT IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

You can be married and not live with your spouse.
You can not be married and still be unmarried!

Trying to make you understand that the story was very misleading is pointless. Your refusal to accept nothing else but 'it's rabid-rightie spin' is very narrow minded.

[Diplomat]

2:30, you are VERY wrong about this. That, plus the bigoted comment threw in, are just one more nail in the coffin of your credibility.

[CKMD]

Then Sowell picking on the NYT is unfounded since they were not just picking and choosing but actually did print all the news?
Right, Marty?
CBS was wrong, NYT was right and Sowell was wrong about what he said about the NYT article...right?

Say it with me....half of what Sowell said is wrong.

[Diplomat]

I think 2:30 was wrong and her lie about traditional marriage is typical of her.

The way the paper used quotes from people distorts the meaning of the actual data. That's not surprising; I'm guessing the writer wanted quotes that would fit their conclusion and agenda.

[2:30]

Marty-

From the NY Times article, third paragraph: Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.
I have no idea what process CBS.COM used to generate their story, and I haven't read it - but if it is as you describe, it would seem based on the paragraph above. If the paragraph above is accurate (and I haven't checked the census data personally) then the cbs.com story is accurate, at least in that detail.

To ascribe a political motive to the reporting, as Sewell does - and which you seem to support, based on your link and original post, appears to be based on nothing more than Sewell's completely unsupported, unattributed surmise. He's entitled to his opinion, and you are to yours. But he's a certified tin foil hat wearer (as is the guy in your chorus).

The headline? As above. It's accurate.

[Diplomat]

Typical of certain people to label someone "tinfoil" just because he renounced his former leftist beliefs and strayed off the liberal plantation.

Marty is right. The NYT played around with the data and used quotes to support its conclusions and beliefs. Dr. Sowell was right to point out an example of misleading reporting.

[ February 07, 2007, 07:43 PM: Message edited by: Diplomat ]

[CKMD]

It's funny, Dip.
You and I are reading the same exact thing and have walked away with completely views of a fact based article.
Very funny, indeed.

[Diplomat]

Originally posted by Can't Keep Me Down:
It's funny, Dip.
You and I are reading the same exact thing and have walked away with completely views of a fact based article.
Very funny, indeed.I saw the article elsewhere, too, and it had a different slant, so to speak.

[Marty McFly]

From 2:30-
I have no idea what process CBS.COM used to generate their story, and I haven't read it - Hmmm... why not read the very first post of this thread?

This is like discussing a 2 hour movie with someone who only saw the trailer but feels they know all they need to know about the film.

[2:30]

OK, let's play your game, and go through your partial post of the CBS.COM article, comparing it (and your comments about it) to the New York Times article. For the moment, we'll ignore your chirping chicken's unsourced insistence that the original included "manipulated" data...

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace reports. For the first time, more women in America are unmarried than married. That's straight out of the Times article, which, as noted above, said, in the the third paragraph "in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time"


Women like 29-year-old Jessica Cohen of New York. "We don't need men anymore," she says. "I mean, we want men, we want someone to share everything with, but I don't think we need to rush." The Times had similar comments, from different individuals.


According to a New York Times analysis of census results, 35 percent of women in the "Ozzie and Harriet" days of the 1950s were single. That number jumped to 49 percent in 2000 and to 51 percent in 2005.
Times: "In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000."

CBS is still accurate.


Why the trend in saying "I don't?" Younger women are marrying later or just living with someone instead, while older women are living longer than their husbands and are choosing not to take another walk down the aisle.

"I've been through two marriages, and single is better for me," one woman explained.

Another reason: More women are working and supporting themselves.

As one Dallas woman explains, "I'm single right now and I feel actually happy about it."

A Miami woman says the best part of being single is "you can flirt a little bit."
Again, comments in line with the Times article.

Now, let's get to your comments:

So there it is. Women are just saying 'no' to getting married, maybe saving that for later in life. More women just prefer the single life and don't want to be tied down.
An accurate reflection of the sentiments of some of the women quoted in the article.

From there you launch into your pitch for the sewer view, that really this is all some leftie media conspiracy. That the view is unsupported by anything other than the belief of a known lunatic fringe commentator doesn't seem to bother you - and that's fine, if you want to buy into that kind of politics. I prefer better attribution.

[writer2]

Just to make everyone crazier, I thought I'd share an article I saved in my email some time ago. It seems relevant:

Home Alone Together
By JILL BROOKE
Published: May 4, 2006

MAUREEN TOOHEY, 39, a twice-divorced hairstylist from Mahopac, N.Y., believes that girlfriends have it over wives or live-in lovers. That is why when Evelio Labarta, 37, her boyfriend of three years, hints at marriage — or even living together — she issues a swift veto.

"My last husband would lie around like Al Bundy and expect me to be waiting on him all the time," Ms. Toohey said. "Evelio helps with the dishes and he's grateful for what I do. When we see each other, he takes me out to dinner and doesn't expect me to cook every night or do his laundry. And when I do cook, he appreciates it."

She can take her time putting her 5-year-old daughter to bed, she said, without worrying that there's a husband in a nearby room "competing for attention."

Mr. Labarta, a driver for DHL, the shipping company, is also divorced and lives nearly an hour away in Mamaroneck, N.Y., with his aunt. He admits that his friends think he's lucky to have a woman who is not pressuring him to live with her.

"My friends think I have a good deal," Mr. Labarta said. "It's a little unusual but it works."

Actually, it is becoming a lot less unusual. Two decades after Woody Allen and Mia Farrow defied convention by living apart even after starting a family, researchers are seeing a surge in long-term, two-home relationships.

They have even identified a new demographic category to describe such arrangements: the "living apart together," or L.A.T., relationship. These couples are committed to sharing their lives, but only to a point.

Hard numbers are difficult to come by; the United States Census does not measure these relationships. However, a survey-based British study published last year by John Haskey, a statistician who heads the Family Demography Unit at the Department of Social Policy at Oxford University, estimated that a million couples in Great Britain are currently in L.A.T. relationships. Other recent studies have found the trend on the rise in Holland, Sweden, Norway, France and Canada.

David Popenoe, the co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, a leading center of marriage and family studies, says that it is clear even from the fragmentary evidence available — "partly what we know anecdotally, partly the fact that every other significant European trend in family life has turned out to be happening in America" — that L.A.T. relationships are on the rise in the United States, too.

In 1991, Robert White, 69, a San Francisco real estate investor, and Elke Zuercher-White, 61, a practicing psychologist, made what was then an almost unheard-of choice, when they decided to marry but live in separate spaces.

Even today, Mr. White said, people often look at them as though they are "from Mars" when they explain their marriage, but they've never questioned their decision. "You have an appreciation for each other when you're not constantly in each other's way," he said. "It's kind of like the first date every time I see her."

In many cases, though, L.A.T. relationships are driven less by maintaining romance than by familial obligations. In an era of increased longevity, many older couples see L.A.T. relationships as a way of avoiding complicated inheritance issues, Professor Popenoe said.

Younger couples often turn to L.A.T. arrangements after failed marriages, particularly if there are children involved. According to widely accepted interpretations of American census statistics, when people remarry after divorce, the new marriages fail at a significantly higher rate — more than 60 percent, versus 50 percent or less for first marriages.

Jeannette Lofas, a clinical social worker and the founder of the Stepfamily Foundation, a counseling organization in New York, advocates living apart, because blended families are so vulnerable to internecine resentments and power struggles.

"Although social pressures encourage stepfamilies blending, only one out of three stepfamilies survive," she said. "I always say to people, would you go on a plane to San Francisco with your child if you had a two-thirds chance of not surviving it?"

As much as anything, though, the rise in L.A.T. relationships may be due to a growing unwillingness to compromise, particularly among members of a generation known for their self-involvement.

"In many cases Baby Boomers want to have the freedom to live on their own terms," said the author Gail Sheehy, whose latest book is "Sex and the Seasoned Woman" (Random House). "As you age, you have more commitments and possessions in your life that you are attached to that the other person may not want to share."

When Donna Davis, 47, a librarian in Hattiesburg, Miss., met Jim Puckett, 59, a physician, in 1990, she didn't want to give up her apartment in town to move to his secluded rural home 10 minutes away.

"I like my quiet time," Ms. Davis said. "Jim's house is messy and full of all of his collected hobbies." In their almost daily encounters, usually at her house, she said, "I feel like I get a lot of togetherness, and a lot of time to myself."

Although they have periodically talked about marriage and the possibility of merging households, they have always found each other's requirements — she wanted to modernize the kitchen in his house and enlarge his bathroom, he would have needed a music room for his piano if they had stayed at her house — more than either was willing to contemplate.

Even when there's plenty of money to soften the discomforts of sharing a home, many seem determined to avoid them.

"I am as devoted as any husband to her," said Marvin Frank, a private investor in Chicago, of his girlfriend of eight years, Laurie Winter. "But I like my alone time and being around my stuff, not Laurie's."

Mr. Frank, 48, spends one or two nights a week at his house downtown, and the rest of his time with Ms. Winter in the suburb of Highland Park, but it is his housekeeper, not hers, who irons his shirts. Ms. Winter, 47, was at first uncomfortable with Mr. Frank's desire for a relationship "like Oprah and Stedman's," as he put it, but eventually she came to accept and even like the terms of their arrangement.

"He's not changing the bulbs or paying for the mortgage but he takes me out for dinner, pays for all the entertainment and travel, buys me jewelry and treats me so well," said Ms. Winter, an arts patron who is divorced. And when it comes to her two daughters from her marriage, now 13 and 20, she added, "I deal with the parenting issues and my kids don't feel threatened by him."

Carolyne Roehm, the New York socialite and author, is similarly unwilling to sacrifice control of her space. Ms. Roehm, 54, said she is perfectly happy with her extreme version of the L.A.T. relationship, with Simon Pinniger, 53, a businessman who lives 1,700 miles away in Aspen, Colo.

She is decorating his house, where she is installing plenty of recessed lighting, not something she would want in her own house, "but he's a man and he wants it," she said. "He jokes that you need a miner's cap to see in my apartment because I like soft lighting."

Ms. Roehm said she is not interested in making compromises to move in together, even if that makes her sound selfish.

"I have my own life, my own identity and want to keep it," she said. "I like having the things I love around me."

But the relationship doesn't suffer from the distance between them, she said; after all, she was willing to fly out on a moment's notice when Mr. Pinniger voiced concern about the color of his fireplace stones.

Not everyone is so sanguine about these relationships, however. Professor Popenoe, of Rutgers, acknowledges that living apart makes sense for the elderly and for divorced couples with children. For others, though, he worries that it might impair the ability "to form long-term relationships."

Dr. Scott Haltzman, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown University and the author of "The Secrets of Happily Married Men" (Jossey-Bass, 2005), agrees.

"One of the challenges of marriage is to learn how to live with a person and integrate that person into your life," he said. "By living apart, you are losing the opportunity to gain that level of intimacy and cooperation." That scenario, he added, assumes that other people's needs are an imposition. Marriage presents an opportunity to learn selflessness as well as giving and forgiving, he said, whereas a long-term romantic arrangement that doesn't involve cohabitation "glorifies individual needs."

The most frequent complaint he hears from divorcing couples, Dr. Haltzman said, is that the participants want more time and space for themselves. "I do think this trend helps us realize that alone time is an important element" in romantic relationships, he said.

But advocates of L.A.T. relationships, like Judye Hess, a family therapist in Berkeley, Calif., see them not only as an indicator of what's wrong in long-term relationships, but also as a potential solution. Ms. Hess, who has been part of an L.A.T. couple for eight years, is writing a book on the topic (which she has labeled "dual dwelling duos") with her companion, Simon Friedman, 47, a computer consultant.

"Many people are trying to fit themselves into a very narrow model for long-term relationships that does not work for their personalities," said Ms. Hess, 61. If more people saw living apart as an option, she said, "it might save them a lot of pain and breakups."

For someone like Julianne Foley, the rewards outweigh the drawbacks. Ms. Foley, a financial services executive who lives in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., said she endured a suffocating marriage in which her ex-husband expected her to line up his shoes in the closet with their laces tied in perfect bows. She now relishes the distance in her five-year relationship with her boyfriend, a banker who is also divorced and who lives nearby.

"It used to be that I met everyone's needs before my own," said Ms. Foley, 46. Although it's more expensive to live alone, the emotional costs of living with someone are too high, she said. "You can't put a dollar value on being your own person."

--30--

[writer2]

An observation on this particular catfight: Marty, 2:30 can be very rude, but I'm interested in your response to her latest post.
Sorry, 2:30, don't mean to offend and I know you probably don't care what I think anyway. ;)

[ February 08, 2007, 06:50 AM: Message edited by: writer2 ]

[Marty McFly]

Again, a married woman whose husband is deployed does not make her unmarried.

A married woman whose husband is in jail does not make her unmarried.

Including women who meet this criteria in the survey does NOT make the opening line correct:
For the first time, more women in America are unmarried than married.

2:30 is focusing on ONE thing in this debate: Thomas Sowell. Why? Because he's considered a part of 'the right' because he doesn't always agree with the left. Therefore, ANYTHING he says is considered venom (spewn venom, at that) from the sewer and political spin.

2:30 can't get past that. But I guarantee you that she'll find yet another bumper sticker to put on the back of her hybrid car today.

[The Mockingbird]

Hybrids aren't just a symbol of pretentiousness, they are a step in a cleaner environment.

[2:30]

I don't have any bumper stickers on my hybrid.

But I do get over 45 mpg.

And, Marty, no...though Sowell is almost invariably off the deep end, this isn't about him. It's about you and your group's deep need to attack real reporters, no matter how accurate their stories. All it takes is for the story to challenge your vision of how things should be, and you're convinced it's some great media conspiracy against your preferred way of life.

If it weren't so pathetic and so virulent, it might be funny.

---
OK, in retrospect, that was too snippy.

And my other car is a Corvette, which doesn't get 46 miles to the gallon. But it has one hell of a stereo, and a NASCAR bumper sticker.

[ February 08, 2007, 07:22 PM: Message edited by: 2:30 ]

[Marty McFly]

Who is my group that attacks real reporters?

If you read the initial post, you'd see that I 'attacked' NO ONE. You seem to have this tinfoil hat conspiracy that I'm 'out to get' somebody or the media if it goes against my line of thinking about society.

You might notice (but might not) that I'm not focusing on 'society' or women choosing not to be married, etc.

My focus is on the report. The numbers are skewed because what's included SHOULDN'T BE INCLUDED.

But in your head, it's about me and my group's 'deep need to attack real reporters, no matter how accurate their stories. All it takes is for the story to challenge my vision of how things should be, and I'm convinced it's some great media conspiracy against my preferred way of life.'

What a narrow and obtuse line of thinking.

[writer2]

On the plus side, you guys are actually talking to each other. Kind of.

[ February 09, 2007, 09:09 AM: Message edited by: writer2 ]

[writer2]

Posted in the interest of fairness:

The Public Editor
Can a 15-Year-Old Be a ‘Woman Without a Spouse’?

By BYRON CALAME
Published: February 11, 2007

THE opening paragraph of the article sounded like grown-up stuff: “For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.”

It was a statistic that put the story on a fast track to the front page, providing a noteworthy benchmark for a well-established trend. But the new majority materialized only because The Times chose to use survey data that counted, as spouseless women, teenagers 15 through 17 — almost 90 percent of whom were living with their parents.

Major newspapers and broadcast and cable news programs picked up on this tipping point, spotted by Sam Roberts, a veteran Times reporter who writes frequently about census data. A few media outlets stopped to question the logic of including teenage females, before going on to discuss the Jan. 16 article’s interesting exploration of the “newfound freedom” for women that was reflected by the new majority.

Several readers, including some who perceived the article as an attack on family values, challenged the inclusion of 15-year-olds, in e-mails to me and in comments posted on the Web version of The Times. “The article is a little deceiving because it is based on the percentage of women 15 and older who are not married,” wrote one reader, noting that “it’s not even legal to marry at 15” in many states. I couldn’t agree more.

The failure to prominently and clearly explain the methodology of the survey used was one of several journalistic lapses that I found in the handling of this story. The single passing reference to the range of ages included in the overall data from the Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey, or A.C.S., came below the midpoint of the article. Given the teenage “women” issue, editors should have made sure at least that the age range of the survey was more fully explained before the continuation of the article on an inside page.

But editors may have made the problem worse. I saw the top portion of a draft of the article prepared by Mr. Roberts in which the age range was first mentioned in the 10th paragraph. The first reference in the published story was in the 21st paragraph.

When readers did get to the mention of what ages were included, it was incorrect. It indicated that the numbers reflected A.C.S. data on “more than 117 million women over the age of 15.” Similarly, the footnote to the graphic accompanying the article said the data there were “for people over age 15.” Both mentions of the age cutoff were so minimal that some readers missed the supposed exclusion of 15-year-olds.

Mr. Roberts has now said that 15-year-olds were included in all the data in both the article and the graphic. But there hasn’t been any correction of the two misleading explanations indicating that the data were for females 16 and older.

When I began to look into reader concerns about the article shortly after it appeared, it became clear that there was confusion over the issue of 15-year-olds. Mr. Roberts initially told me, and wrote in an e-mail, that 15-year-olds had been excluded from the “raw numbers” cited in the article, mainly because he had discovered some states’ restrictions on marriage at that age. So the statements in the article and graphic that 15-year-olds were not counted seemed at first to be consistent with what Mr. Roberts had told me and the office of the standards editor last month.

My subsequent questions, however, led to Mr. Roberts’s eventual acknowledgment that 15-year-olds had been fully included in all the data. Seeking to explain that shift, he wrote in a Jan. 30 e-mail to me: “When I realized that nothing would change by eliminating 15-year-olds, I left the numbers as is, again for consistency.”

Actually, leaving out 15-year-olds would have cast statistical doubt on the new majority. A calculation done for me by Times consultants at the Queens College department of sociology in New York shows that the number of females 16 years old and older not living with a spouse in 2005 exceeded the total living with one, but by a small number that was well within the margin of error.

Mr. Roberts is now defending the inclusion of 15-year-olds on the basis of historical comparability and consistency. He points out that the Census Bureau has collected and reported marital data on them for decades — going back to a time when marriage at that age was more common than today. (Even the Census Bureau can recognize that times do change, however: it once included 14-year-olds in its marital status data, but no longer does so.)

Only one aspect of the methodology was adequately explained high up in the Jan. 16 article. Readers were advised that women living without a spouse — the new majority — included “a relatively small number” whose husbands were temporarily away from home serving in the military or out of town working, or who were institutionalized. The article never alerted readers, however, to the exclusion of the mostly spouseless females in “group quarters,” such as college dormitories; counting those residents would have tended to bolster the number of women living without a spouse and the new majority.

Readers could have been given a fuller and more realistic perspective on the 2005 data on women living without spouses, in addition to a presentation of basic historical data that provided consistency and comparability. With a long-acknowledged trend topping 50 percent by one count, the main thrust of the article was assessing the kind of women who constitute this new majority. And that should have included pointing out that almost 90 percent of the more than six million females ages 15 to 17 in the new majority are still living with their parents.

Common sense would also seem to have called for telling readers how many women above high school age were living without spouses in 2005. Simply subtracting the numbers for the A.C.S.’s 15-to-17 category from the total provides the data for females 18 and older. It shows that 48 percent of them were living without husbands — short of the 51 percent reached when high-school-age females were included — a fact that merited equal billing in the article. Eliminating all teenagers and counting only women 20 and older would have shown that 47 percent were living without a spouse in 2005, according to my math.

Consultants to The Times at Queens College can provide historical data on the percentages of females in various age categories who were living with, and without, a spouse. (They use samples of individual raw Census Bureau data that can vary slightly from the A.C.S. numbers.) The consultants gave me historical data for all females 15 and older, as well as all those 18 and older. My rough plotting of the percentages of females living without a spouse in each of the two age ranges since 1950 produced trend lines that were essentially parallel.

The eye-catching assertion that more women in America were living without a husband than with one obviously vaulted this article to Page One. “It is true that the 51 percent benchmark probably lifted this story onto the front page,” Jack Kadden, a deputy national editor who oversaw its preparation, wrote in an e-mail. “It is certainly what caught our attention.”

It was discouraging to find yet another article with an unusual angle that didn’t seem to encounter many skeptical editors as it made its way to the front page. “At the Page One meeting there was agreement that the story was especially newsworthy because of the for-the-first-time-more-living-alone-than-with-a-spouse angle,” Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, wrote to me in an e-mail. “No questions about the methodology or age categories were discussed.”

In the wake of this controversy, Bill Keller, the executive editor, has decided to meet with staffers with expertise in statistics and demographics to create a “vetting network to help with the editing of articles dealing with those subjects,” Craig R. Whitney, an assistant managing editor and the standards editor, said Thursday.

After dealing with three weeks of questions from readers and from me, Mr. Roberts on Monday expressed a little less certainty about the new majority trumpeted in the first paragraph of his article. He wrote to me: “I think the essence of the article remains accurate: that, depending on how one adjusts the census’s definition, about half — maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less, depending on the age group — of American women are living without a spouse at any given time.”

Readers deserved this kind of more tempered perspective back on Jan. 16 — and a more tempered story, displayed on an inside page.

-30-

The public editor, Byron Calame, is the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly on the Sunday Op-Ed pages. The Public Editor The Public Editor

[ February 12, 2007, 11:43 PM: Message edited by: writer2 ]