Leslie and Ben and Liz and Criss: NBC Comedies On Modern Marriage | ThinkProgress

There’s very little in popular culture that would have told Leslie, or that tells any woman, that she’ll find a partner who isn’t just happy to be supportive when it’s a fit, but who, when his interests and hers are in conflict, will prioritize hers, and choose and work to support them again and again. And there’s something remarkable about Ben’s declaration that “In my time working for the state government, my job sent me to 46 cities in 11 years. I lived in villages with eight people, rural communities, farming towns, I was sent to every corner of Indiana. And then I came here, and I realized this whole time I was wandering around everywhere looking for you.” Ben didn’t just find Leslie. In looking for the recovery of his own reputation, Ben found Leslie’s career instead, and made it his cause—the man’s come so far that he’s even capable of being touched by what appears to be the mysterious resurrection of Lil’ Sebastian.

In case you missed this last week.

theatlantic: The High Price of Being Single in America As two straight women with no desire to get married, we are not against marriage per se. We’re not callous and repressed man-haters. We’re not bitter about ex-boyfriends who cheated or tried to teach us the correct way to pour laundry detergent (ok, well maybe a little bitter about that last one). We’re not even necessarily uncomfortable with the institution’s arguable gender expectations and socio-political history. We just don’t much care whether we’re married, or not. But governments and corporations do. Read more. [Image: Universal] everything about this.
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theatlantic:

The High Price of Being Single in America

As two straight women with no desire to get married, we are not against marriage per se. We’re not callous and repressed man-haters. We’re not bitter about ex-boyfriends who cheated or tried to teach us the correct way to pour laundry detergent (ok, well maybe a little bitter about that last one). We’re not even necessarily uncomfortable with the institution’s arguable gender expectations and socio-political history. We just don’t much care whether we’re married, or not. But governments and corporations do.

Read more. [Image: Universal]

everything about this.

An Ode To My (Not) Marrying Friends « A Practical Wedding: Ideas for Unique, DIY, and Budget Wedding Planning

In the next few years, you might come under some fire for not “settling down.” I want you to know that I’m ready to call bullshit when it happens. I need you to know that I don’t think you ever need to get married, if marriage is not what you want for yourself. I promise never to treat you like you’ve failed at some test, or like you’re an incomplete person, just because you haven’t succumbed to monogamy. And I promise to stand up for you if my family, or your family, ever suggests that marriage might be the next logical step in your life (because it’s not, unless you want it to be).

And in the next few years, if the world tries to make you feel less proud of your accomplishments, because you’re still “missing” part of the equation? I. Will. Shut. That. Shit. Down.

And if you do one day choose to get married, for whatever reason, I promise not to treat you like I knew it was going to happen all along. Because that’s just obnoxious.

In short, I promise to support you in all the ways that you’ve supported me, and to do it without question.

Some days I need some affirmation. (My sis shared this on FB)

One official estimates that up to 8,000 Kyrgyz girls are kidnapped and forced into marriage annually. Few statistics on bride kidnapping are available, but one study last year found that 45 percent of women married in the eastern town of Karakol in 2010 and 2011 had been non-consensually kidnapped.
The Bridenapping Epidemic of Kyrgyzstan - Azita Ranjbar - International - The Atlantic

Source: The Atlantic

newsweek:

cheatsheet:

nwkarchivist:

Marriages are in decline based on a Pew Research Center analysis, where just 51% of adults 18 and over are married. Here’s our 2006 cover story ‘The Marriage Crunch’, and the notorious cover that inspired it.

And then last year, there was this:

Once upon a time, marriage made sense. It was how women ensured their financial security, got the fathers of their children to stick around, and gained access to a host of legal rights. But 40 years after the feminist movement established our rights in the workplace, a generation after the divorce rate peaked, and a decade after Sex and the City made singledom chic, marriage is—from a legal and practical standpoint, anyway—no longer necessary.

Wait—we predicted a single 40-year-old woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than get married. That’s insane. Whoops!

So this is the article they reference so often in Sleepless in Seattle.

Source: nwkarchivist

In China, the sexist term “leftover woman,” sheng nu, is widely used to describe an urban, professional female over the age of 27 who is still single. This derogatory term has been aggressively disseminated by the Chinese government, warning women that they will become spinsters if they do not marry by the time they turn 30. The irony of the media campaign is that China’s sex-ratio imbalance has resulted in a surplus of tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a bride.
China’s “Leftover” Women : Ms Magazine Blog (via npr)

(via npr)

theatlantic: All the Single Ladies Recent years have seen an explosion of male joblessness and a steep decline in men’s life prospects that have disrupted the “romantic market” in ways that narrow a marriage-minded woman’s options: increasingly, her choice is between deadbeats (whose numbers are rising) and playboys (whose power is growing). But this strange state of affairs also presents an opportunity: as the economy evolves, it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal. Above: The author, photographed in Los Angeles on September 9, 2011. Read the rest of Katie Bolick’s cover story and check out the November issue of The Atlantic here.
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theatlantic:

All the Single Ladies

Recent years have seen an explosion of male joblessness and a steep decline in men’s life prospects that have disrupted the “romantic market” in ways that narrow a marriage-minded woman’s options: increasingly, her choice is between deadbeats (whose numbers are rising) and playboys (whose power is growing). But this strange state of affairs also presents an opportunity: as the economy evolves, it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal.

Above: The author, photographed in Los Angeles on September 9, 2011.

Read the rest of Katie Bolick’s cover story and check out the November issue of The Atlantic here.