学得好,嫁得好

2012-04-29

英语学习 2012年6期

关键词：教育

Today women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelors degrees and more than half of masters and Ph.D.s.2 Many people believe that, while this may be good for women as income earners, it bodes ill for their marital prospects.3

American women face “a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be ‘marriageable men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do.”4 Educated women worry that they are scaring away potential partners, and pundits claim that those who do marry will end up with unsatisfactory matches.5 They point to outdated studies suggesting that women with higher earnings than their husbands do more housework to compensate for the threat to their mates egos.6

Is this really the fate facing educated heterosexual7 women: either no marriage at all or a marriage with more housework? Nonsense8. That may have been the case in the past, but no longer. For a woman seeking a satisfying relationship as well as a secure economic future, there has never been a better time to be or become highly educated.

For more than a century, women often were forced to choose between an education and a husband. Of women who graduated from college before 1900, more than three-quarters remained single. As late as 1950, one-third of white female college graduates ages 55 to 59 had never married, compared with only 7 percent of their counterparts9 without college degrees.

Some of these women chose to stay single, of course, and that choice has always been easier and more rewarding for educated women. But the low marriage rates of educated women in the past were also because of the romantic and sexual prejudices of men.

That is exactly what happened in the mid-20th century. From 1940 to the mid-1970s, the tendency for men to marry down educationally became more pronounced and the cultural ideal of hypergamy—that women must marry up—became more insistent.10

Postwar dating manuals advised women to “play dumb” to catch a man11—and 40 percent of college women in one survey said they actually did so. Men in the postwar period were threatened by the thought of a woman with more or even as much education as they had.

But over the past 30 years, these prejudices have largely disappeared. By 1996, intelligence and education had moved up to No. 5 on mens ranking of desirable qualities in a mate. The desire for a good cook and housekeeper had dropped to 14th place, near the bottom of the 18-point scale. The sociologist Christine B. Whelan reports that by 2008, mens interest in a womans education and intelligence had risen to No. 4, just after mutual attraction, dependable character and emotional stability.12

The result has been a historic reversal of what the economist Elaina Rose calls the “success” penalty for educated women.13 By 2008, the percentage of college-educated white women ages 55 to 59 who had never been married was down to 9 percent, just 3 points higher than their counterparts without college degrees. And among women 35 to 39, there was no longer any difference in the percentage who were married.

African-American women are less likely to marry than white women overall, but educated black women are considerably more likely to marry than their less-educated counterparts. As of 2008, 70 percent of African-American female college graduates had married, compared with 60 percent of high school graduates and just 53 percent of high school dropouts14.

One reason educated heterosexual women may worry about their marriage prospects today is that overall marriage rates have been slipping since 1980. But they have slipped less for educated women than for anyone else. Furthermore, college-educated women, once they do marry, are much less likely to divorce. As a result, by age 30, and especially at ages 35 and 40, college-educated women are significantly more likely to be married than any other group. And according to calculations15 by the economist Betsey Stevenson, an educated woman still single at age 40 is much more likely to marry in the next decade than her less educated counterparts.

Even for women who dont marry, its better to be educated; a 2002 study found that never-married white women with more education than average lived “the longest, healthiest lives of all groups.”

One of the dire16 predictions about educated women is true: today, more of them are “marrying down.” Almost 30 percent of wives today have more education than their husbands, while less than 20 percent of husbands have more education than their wives, almost the exact reverse of the percentages in 1970. But there is not a shred of17 evidence that such marriages are any less satisfying than marriages in which men have equal or higher education than their wives. Indeed, they have many benefits for women.

Certainly, some guys are still threatened by a womans achievements. But scaring these types off might be a good thing. The men most likely to feel emotional and physical distress when their wives have a higher status or income tend to be those who are more invested in their identity as breadwinners than as partners and who define success in materialistic ways.18 Both these traits are associated with lower marital quality.

The most important predictor of marital happiness for a woman is not how much she looks up to her husband but how sensitive he is to her emotional cues and how willing he is to share the housework and child-care.19 And those traits are often easier to find in a low-key guy than a powerhouse.20

I am not arguing that women ought to “settle21.” I am arguing that we can now expect more of a mate than we could when we depended on men for our financial security, social status and sense of accomplishment.

1. M.R.S.:=Mrs.，夫人，太太（跟已婚妇女谈话或通信时用于其姓氏之前的尊称）；Ph.D.: 博士。

2. bachelor: 学士；master: 硕士。

3. 许多人相信，尽管这也许有助于女性的收入增长，但对他们的婚姻前景却不利。bode ill: 凶多吉少。

4. 美国女性面临着“传统上认为的‘适婚男性锐减的状况——这些男性接受的教育更高，赚得也比她们多。”

5. scare away: 把……吓跑；potential: 有可能的；pundit: 权威，专家；match:婚姻。

6. outdated: 过时的；compensate for: 补偿；ego: 自尊。

7. heterosexual: 异性恋的。

8. nonsense: 荒谬的想法/看法。

9. counterpart: 与对方地位相当的人。

10. 从1940年至20世纪70年代中期，男性娶的女性受教育程度没自己高的趋势更加显著，高攀（指女性嫁给受教育程度比自己好的男性）的文化理想也愈加引人注目。

11. manual: 指南；play dumb: 装傻。

12. 社会学家Christine B. Whelan称：到2008年，男性对女性受教育程度和智力的兴趣已经上升到第四位了，仅次于相互吸引、可靠的品质和情感的稳定性。