Modern Singlehood
Lavin, Abigail
Modern Singlehood The Me Decades are gone. What comes next? by Abigail Lavin The self-help section of your local Barnes & Noble is essentially a catalogue of human egoism, folly, and desperation....
...Thank God for Jennifer Marshall, who turns these misbegotten recipes for self-actualization on their heads...
...This refreshing view is, at once, merciful and merciless...
...They have it all, but feel incomplete...
...But with more options comes more ambiguity: Women are "allowed" to remain single, and many choose to do so...
...In fact, no woman fits neatly into the archetype of Penelope or piranha: "Women who have had to be self-sufficient for years find themselves in a difficult position: they want emotional support, but it doesn't appear they need it," she writes...
...Amid the romantic rat race, the cacophony of others' expectations, and the endless swirl of options, Marshall asks, what can help us maintain balance...
...Not ourselves, not men, and not marriage...
...Stranded between the autopilot of adolescence and the anchor of marriage, a girl can feel adrift in some twilight zone between legitimate episodes of her life...
...Marshall, director of domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes with thoughtfulness and an optimism that make this a rewarding read for people outside her target audience of "never-married Christian women in their midtwenties to midforties who are generally well-educated and living mostly in suburban or urban areas...
...Marshall examines modern dating from multiple angles, drawing on Jane Austen, discussing the pros and cons of online and speed dating, and analyzing the pitfalls of the campus hook-up culture...
...But instead of mourning bygone social norms, Marshall challenges readers to adapt to the particularities of modern life...
...Comparing ourselves with others becomes apples and oranges: If we put our trust in "cosmic choreography," Marshall says, then each of us can "have the assurance that where you are is where you are supposed to be...
...God isn't running a tourist agency...
...As the gap widens between college graduation and wedding bells, many women feel they are in uncharted territory...
...Marshall offers helpful meditations on living deliberately instead of simply killing time until life begins to resemble our fantasy version of the future...
...As background research, Marshall conducted interviews with 12 women in four cities and solicited extensive written feedback from three others...
...Plan B does not exist...
...Because Now and Not Yet is not marketed as an overtly Christian book—there is no mention of God or religion on the front cover, and only a passing reference to faith on the back—an unwitting browser may be put off if she flips open to the chapter on "God's callings...
...Instead of attempting to micromanage ourselves into an uncompromising vision of the good life, what if we stepped back and lived for the sake of something larger than personal fulfillment...
...it was about knowing God...
...Before God, Marshall points out, a woman is not accountable as a feminist or traditionalist but simply as herself...
...it's about glorifying God...
...Her research enables her to pepper her writing with colorful quotations and first-person experiences...
...In the early 1970s the average age for a first marriage was just under 21...
...In her debut book, Marshall presents a self-help guide which tells us that helping ourselves is not the point—a daring proposition in our era of individualism...
...Three out of 10 American women are unmarried at age 30...
...But taken as a whole, chances are that a married agnostic man or a Jewish teenager could find nourishment in Marshall's writing, which is spiritual but not unctuous, sensible but not prosaic...
...consult us about whether we'd prefer the direct or scenic route...
...She offers original advice on how best to enjoy the life we're living rather than the life we've patched together for ourselves from snippets of romantic movies...
...The common thread across a wide variety of experience is the struggle to cope when reality does not match one's expectations of what age 25, 30, or 45 is supposed to look like...
...You have not been demoted to consolation plan B if you are single, unemployed, or generally not where you thought you'd be at this point in life...
...Gen X girls coming of age after the passage of Title IX saw unprecedented options in education, athletics, and the workplace...
...By contrast, God's call helps us orient ourselves toward a fixed point of reference: Himself...
...Marshall does advocate a certain type of individualism...
...Bestselling titles include 1937's How To Win Friends and Influence People (Tip #1: Don't let them see you reading this book), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex (stop procreating), The 4Hour Workweek (yeah, right), and Why Men Marry Bitches (helping single women maintain holier-than-thou attitudes since 2006...
...That's the risk of fixing our sights on Destination Marriage as the North Star...
...It's not all about you...
...Life isn't what you thought it would be...
...Many educated, successful women deal with the Sex and the City paradox: Though tired of shibboleths from their mothers' generation, they still find themselves frantically searching for a mate...
...Too bad...
...But Marshall posits that this is not due to a lessened desire for marriage among women—nine out of 10 high school girls still say that a good marriage is an important factor in their future plans—but mackled romantic rituals and women's lib, which left women with more choices but did not necessarily arm us with the ability to choose well...
...For a broader perspective, Marshall conducted an online survey of 650 women and held focus groups of Christian men in their 20s and 30s...
...Life isn't about finding ourselves...
...But the expectation of marriage is strong enough that, when we meet an unmarried fortysomething woman, part of us can't help but wonder what led her to her "lonely" situation...
...If God has a plan for each of us, what's the point of keeping up with the Joneses...
...Thirty-one women participated in focus groups in Washington, New York, Chicago, and Long Beach, California...
...As Marshall puts it, "What makes us think we can demand concierge treatment from God, as though He needs to Abigail Lavin is a graduate student in China...
...Is marriage an end in itself, or is it part of a larger picture...
...that is, the tailor-made nature of an individual's relationship to God...
...Today it is over 25...
...But because this is largely a work of sociology, let's get back to Marshall's target audience and the question of marriage...
...How can we hope for marriage without fretting about it...
...Male readers would benefit particularly from the section on modern romance, which dispels the myth that a woman's professional success and her desire for romance are mutually exclusive...
...Here the advantages of faith-based self-help are manifest...
...Marshall harks back to her parents' generation, when "life wasn't about finding yourself...
...Her discussion of feminism as a movement begins with Title IX, the 1972 federal mandate of educational equality between the sexes...
Vol. 12 • September 2007 • No. 48
