beingofserenity
Well-Known Member
What happens if our society becomes gender neutral?
Black Women And Late Marriage
- Thread starter Kanky
- Start date
barbiesocialite
Well-Known Member
Keyword *BOSS*
This is why my initial posts in this thread differentiated between women with late marriages based on circumstance and availability of options vs single women who are actively/aggressively upwardly mobile where later marriages are not just a choice but encouraged and preferred.
People don't like to admit this but children and spouses will hold you back. The put guaranteed and permanent limitiations on individual, professional, social and financia success. While one can still reach their goals regardless of marital status, how deep in, high up and the level of quality one can go as an unattached indivual whos life is entirely their own will always be more than what can practically be achieved when your life, decisions and behavior are permanetly attached, determined by and actively influenced by other people.
You can only control yourself.
Life is unpredictable. a spouse and kids are guarteed extra stressors and incovienent interptions. Cant control everything that happens to them but what does affects your life just as much. Kids don't care if they get sick on the day of you were going to finally get the promotion you were working for. Your finanacial goals dont plan for unexpected hosptial bills from your spouses recovery after a life threatening car accident. If your dream opportunity fell in your lap today but required an immediate decision to move across the country tomorrow. If you're married you can't go without first discussing it with your spouse to compromise and make a plan that must involve yet successfully work for you, them, your kid AND the job. Meanwhile if you're single, you can drop everything or do whatever you want whenever you want to supoort your life. You can give 100% to any investment, task, interest or goal with no intereputions.
Young marriage is not just undesirable but to some women its simply not an option. Its a blatant negative. Their happiness and life values dont support young mommy/wife life. For these women, the possibility of fertility treatments usually won't make them want or wish they married and had kids any earlier than they did. They like their life at late marriage and shudder at the life they would have had if they did it any earlier.
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Femmefatal1981
Well-Known Member
Really? You found that unbelievable on an evangelical campus? Not to over generalize but that's the who reason those girl go to college, lol. Many of them NEVER intend to work outside the home, some don't even care to graduate. ACU is a local university that comes to mind, those girls didnt play.How true!
OAN, are we also accounting for things like culture/sub-culture and religion in terms of marriage? It was mentioned earlier in the thread the whole BA/BS then MRS thing, and it was interesting (when I was an undergrad) to observe how big of a thing the MRS was at the Evangelical college I attended. This of course does not make the couple immune to divorce, etc. but I just found the environment very fascinating, how the young women were very excited and into finding their FH's during college and many of them got married right around college graduation or shortly thereafter.
My foremost thought in going to college was getting my degree and getting a job so I wouldn't be impoverishedI just couldn't believe how some girls went to college on a mission to snag a husband in addition to a degree. Depending on your views, it may or may not be such a bad strategy?
Through a turn of events and connections, I ended up meeting, dating, and eventually marrying my DH at 24 (we dated for about a year before he proposed).
Fellow Cali ladies, I understand where you're coming from.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
My question would be what other choices would BW in this situation have besides settling or opting out? Moreover, BW have been complaining about this for years AND with ratios of marriageable Black men to marriageable Black women being 1:2, how much longer are we going to debate IF this is happening? It's kinda happening and of course not to everyone, but often enough that it needs to be "handled".
Galadriel
Well-Known Member
I hadn't known many Evangelicals before then (esp. as a community) so I guess it was a bit of a shock to me. You are right, they don't play.
barbiesocialite
Well-Known Member
I actually think a MRS degree makes sense for the average woman. It's practical. If I have a daughter she'll probably end up with a MRS degree. Unless she comes out with my personality and life interests, she probably wont be able to help it. I'm her mother.
I'm just like my mother who he is like her mother. If I ever learned anything from my mother it's been how to spot a good man who wants to take care of you and thinks your special enough to want to marry you. College is like a buffet with options everywhere easisest and best place to get it done if you want to get married.OT: Come to think about it, I think my motherly is secretly angry with me because I'm not married. Some women arent married because they havent found it yet but for me she knows it's intentional. I can get married if I want to but I dont want to yet. I have a bit of a history of almost getting married then jumping ship since I was a teen. I was supposed to married 10 years ago and on my 2nd husband by now (no kids tho lol). Like a year and a half ago I briefly enteratined a longterm friend that would marry me if he could. But as soon as he started saying the L-word, offered to buy me a car, help me with school and talking about putting me up in his house I stopped talking to him overnight. My mother was pissed because we both knew where it was going but I refuse to let it happen. She practically blackmailed me to push me into it. Simetiems I ft yeel like I'm one of the only chicks that isnt ready to get married even though I could find a husband fairly easy if I tried. I will one day but I feel bad I dont feel like most other female peers who are excited for marriage. Either they got it, are tring to get or really want it. I don't want it or any kind of permaent committed relationship of any kind as of yet. I'm genuinely not ready even though I know I should be. I do have a slight fear that it might take me too long to finally get ready. There's soemthing wrong with me.
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RocStar
Well-Known Member
I was specifically referencing being forced to be an OOW mother.
I agree the ratios are off and there are some challenges, but I don't think it is because of Black men NOT wanting/willing to date Black women.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
I think the reasons are mixed and among those reasons is Black men NOT wanting/willing to date Black women. Like I've been saying all thread, we can all argue back and forth about whether or not this is a real phenomenon, but for ME, enough Black women that are interested in the kids/marriage thing have been complaining and/or kind of pushed into pretty undesirable situations due to time running out, desperation, etc. that I think we should start to take it seriously.
It is a special (not in a positive way) kind of marginalization when the basic things like reproduction and building a family are so elusive for a high percentage (definitely not all) of BW, despite their best efforts. BW shouldn't have to be super strategic, thirsty or obsessive to have a family at a reproductively healthy age. They shouldn't have to perfect, make all the right moves, have the best hair or body or face to be able to achieve these things (if that's what they want). They shouldn't have to move across the country, either, like some have suggested; that's not realistic or reasonable because some can't find employment or may have ties and responsibilities that keep them where they are.
Is this thing elusive for everyone? Of course not, but like I keep saying, denying what so many BW are experiencing across states, ethnicities, countries, age groups and personality types is nonsensical. I'm hoping that one day the board can actually move beyond the negating, denying and oneupmanship (proving how smart or unicorn they are with their choices and utopian social groups) and actually discuss realistic and effective things that BW can actually DO to help themselves. Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, this is happening and if even 40 or 30% of Black women of child bearing age that want to get married can't find a mate, that's a hell of a lot of unfulfilled Black women. All the statistics people are using are either contradictory or don't tell the whole story. X number of BM are married to BW, but what is the quality of that marriage? Did those women marry up or down? Which class groups do they belong to? Are these inter-ethnic relationships? We rely so heavily on quantitative work and yet we don't problematize it. Moreover, Black women are very understudied in academia, so are we going to wait for the ivory tower to validate what many of us anecdotally already know?
Simply put, Black women need options. Not lip service, denial, judgment or blame, but actual solutions and strategies.
bubbles12345
Well-Known Member
I see this happening to most of my black female friends if they ever do get married. They don't really date. If they do date it's with loser men or netflix and chill type of guys or I don't do labels types of guys. Smh
caligirl
Well-Known Member
Thank you for saying this! It's hard trying to be "that girl"
CaraWalker
Well-Known Member
is this thread interesting? i got a little bored on the first page cause it seem like more of the usual but if there is some good info in here i will read it.
Brwnbeauti
Well-Known Member
But white/other women are these things.
The ones who marry well.
Consider the high profile wives we discuss here (black or white)
Kim K
Neyo new lady
Bosch(so) wife
Marjorie
First Lady
Candy Carson
I'm sure there are others
ambergirl
Well-Known Member
All of this. And some other uncomfortable truths we tend to ignore.
The conversation quickly devolved into "I am a unicorn who doesn't care about fertility," but this is what I was hoping we'd talk about. There are a lot of black women who would like to be married and have children without freeze drying their eggs and waiting until middle age and many of those women can't find anyone suitable to do this with. I'm not sure if "date a white man" is a solution for most of them but something has to give.
I know a lot of girls who went to business school, law school and even medical school looking for their MRS degree. If you want a husband with a high income you'd might as well hang out where future high income earners are. Half the lawyers I know are SAHMs.
MsSanz92
Well-Known Member
In some regard, many Black women are forced to settle for having children OOW if they want children. If you have large portions of the men around you disinterested in marriage, but you want a child, you will have to settle for being a single mother, whether it means having a deadbeat baby father, adopting, or using a sperm donor. While some women are content with it, the common consensus is that having a spouse to help you raise a child is much easier.
While yes, most Black men do marry Black women, it is particularly skewed along racial lines. While other groups out marry more, we cannot ignore that particularly for Black men who move up in certain social circles, marrying a lighter skinned/non-Black woman is the norm and seen as the social expectation. I and many Black women I know have see this countless times starting as early as high school. Almost all of the professional Black men I know who are married are married to light skinned/mixed/non-Black women it's not just some coincidence.
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I don't think that most black women are trying to be unicorns married to especially wealthy, high profile men. There are a limited number of rich men to go around and most people won't end up married to one. I don't know how much strategy is needed to marry one of these men. If you socialize with wealthy men and are an attractive marriageable woman then you'll probably end up with one. Most black women are not surrounded by wealthy men. You should not have to do a lot of planning and plotting to marry the kind of guy that will be a middle class/upper middle class husband and father.
I started to deny the bolded, but it is true for my social circle. Also most of the highly educated and professional black women that I know who are still single are dark skinned. The light skinned girls are almost all married.
ETA: These women are also not mothers. Educated women tend not to have children out of wedlock, which means that many of these women will never have children.
UmSumayyah
Well-Known Member
Like it or not, age remains the biggest determinant of fertility. "No matter how much you take care of yourself, you can't slow down ovarian aging," says Dr. Kutluk Oktay, medical director at the Institute for Fertility Preservation at the Center for Human Reproduction in New York City....
Your ovaries have a life span. Making a baby requires a healthy egg, but eggs become more scarce as you age. You're born with about a million eggs, but most of them never mature. By the time you reach puberty, you're down to half your original supply, and the number continues to fall each year. And not every egg that survives can make a baby. Even in your prime, about half of all eggs have chromosomal abnormalities, and the proportion of eggs with genetic problems increases as you age, explains Dr. David Adamson, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Eventually, you simply run out of viable eggs. "As of today, we have no way of changing that," he says. "It's the natural course of human life."
Fertility peaks in your 20s. Most women hit their fertile peak between the ages of 23 and 31, though the rate at which women conceive begins to dip slightly in their late 20s. Around age 31, fertility starts to drop more quickly — by about 3 percent per year — until you hit 35 or so. From there, the decline accelerates. "The average 39-year-old woman has half the fertility she had at 31, and between 39 and 42, the chances of conceiving drop by half again," says Adamson. Approximately one in four women age 35 or older have trouble getting pregnant. --http://www.webmd.com/baby/features/fertility-101
Reality doesn't care about our feelings.
Women are of course still valuable human beings at 30, and as long as they live. But the probability of having a healthy pregnancy and baby declines. This is no big if you don't want kids anyway. But if you do, no amount of hand-wringing and protestation will change the facts.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
Again, that brings it back to quality. What are the quality of these women, men and their relationships? Besides Michelle Obama, whom I would argue was well educated and doing her thing and Barack pursued HER and wanted to marry her, whom else on this list models a relationship worth desiring? I know nothing about Candy Carson, so I can't comment on her. It's one thing to just get married, but it's quite another to have a lasting and loving relationship that is authentic and not mired with deceit and selfishness (Kim K, Bosh's wife, NeYo Lady and Marjorie). I'm speaking about average everyday women who aren't looking for a come up or to try and steal someone's man and just wants kids and companionship. The only two that married well are the First Lady and Candy Carson and there's no evidence that they were scheming to get those men. They also married about 20+ years ago, when it was still en vogue and expected that BM would marry BW.
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UmSumayyah
Well-Known Member
You are right to bring up the point of age groups when discussing trends. Broad history is great, but smaller "snapshots" would also be illuminating. For instance, what percentage of 30 year olds were married in 1985 vs. 95. 2005 and 2015? That might paint a different picture.
And celeb marriages, yuck!
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
I was hoping that the conversation would eventually evolve into a real discussion about the aftermath. Should they freeze their eggs, have kids on their own, adopt? Are there communities of support?
The conversation quickly devolved into "I am a unicorn who doesn't care about fertility," but this is what I was hoping we'd talk about. There are a lot of black women who would like to be married and have children without freeze drying their eggs and waiting until middle age and many of those women can't find anyone suitable to do this with. I'm not sure if "date a white man" is a solution for most of them but something has to give.
I know a lot of girls who went to business school, law school and even medical school looking for their MRS degree. If you want a husband with a high income you'd might as well hang out where future high income earners are. Half the lawyers I know are SAHMs.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
I also wonder about the consequences of the bolded. What are the next generation of Black kids going to be like? If many of the very achieving Black women are not reproducing, what does that look like in 20 years? What about when these women get to retirement? We need to stop waiting until stuff happens before we react and be proactive. How can we support Black women in these situations?
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
I completely agree that fertility is REAL and women are on a time limit, BUT my only qualm is let's talk about what Black women could do if they want kids. I'm trying to find ways for Black women to be agents rather than victims. We al know about fertility, we know marriageable Black men are hard to find for a host of reasons, now let's stop lamenting it and make an alternative plan for Black women to have fulfilling lives. As you posted, time is ticking and they have until about 40 if they want to have even 1 kid, so GO! What's the plan?
UmSumayyah
Well-Known Member
Everyone has to make their own plan.
Date/marry down or don't.
Date/marry out or don't.
Maximize your appeal or don't.
Have oow kids or don't.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
I think that's a bit individualistic, don't you? Many women don't know what to do and I think communities of support are important here. It's a delicate subject and you seem very laissez faire about it. Moreover, each one of these choices have a lot of social stigma and real life consequences, so are BW going to be given a break? Supported? Shunned? Ostracized? We shouldn't just leave them to sink or swim. Other groups when faced with a challenge, work together to create networks of support and push new ideas and ways of doing things so that their groups can have the best possible outcomes. We should take a page from their book.
MsSanz92
Well-Known Member
This reminds me of a conversation I had several weeks ago about how many BW who should be having children, because they possess traits that would yield children with better quality lifestyles such as a college educated parent who has more earning potential and financial stability, as well as access/knowledge of social/cultural capital are not having children. Women who don't have much to provide their children are the ones who are having the most children. While yes, in general poor people have more kids than those who are financially stable, it's particularly problematic for Black people because much of the strides that Black people have experienced post-Civil Rights Movement such as access to college education, better paying white collar jobs, etc. unfortunately will not be experienced by many in the next generation. You already see this happening for some Black people, where you have Millennial children of Gen Xers/Baby Boomers having far less financial stability and opportunity than their parents. I'm seeing Black Millennials raised solidly middle class from college educated two parent households dropping out of school, having kids OOW, the whole nine. Even though their parents would be labeled as "the right type of people to have children", they're suffering as well.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
This! We gotta think beyond ourselves! Are we passing down our capital to other generations or does it live and die with us? Most other groups give their kids a leg up and yet, we have yet to figure out that we need to do the same if we intend to stop being the permanent underclass. Every generation, Black folk have to damn near start over and can only get so far before retirement. It's annoying to watch. We know better. I think it will be interesting to see how this next generation turns out, especially with so many being raised by non-Black moms. I wonder if this is by design. Feels like it.
MsSanz92
Well-Known Member
Honestly, the solution would be to form these support communities for BW for whichever direction they plan to take. I'm imagining therapy/affinity groups for BW who date less educated men/men who make less than them, BW who date outside of their race, BW who are choosing to adopt or raise children by themselves, BW interested in becoming more appealing to certain kinds of BM, BW who don't want to marry or have kids at all, EVERYTHING. This is critical because although much of the onus has to fall on BM and our society in general changing its landscape to better support stability in Black people's lives, it will probably never happen. At this point, we need to focus on self-preservation and support for other BW out here. You'd be surprised, there are a lot of BW out here who just complain about these different issues in their lives and feel like they have no one else to turn to and discuss these problems, or no support. By creating these support and affinity groups/resources, I think it will be a step in the right direction.
UmSumayyah
Well-Known Member
There are support groups or just groups of the like-minded for bw who make any of those choices. Marriage/lack thereof has group consequences but only the individual can make the choice. We've got message boards, books, and blogs advocating, supporting or understanding all of those choices. This has been discussed ad nauseum, some people will be pro-active, some reactive and some paralyzed by indecision.
I'm not sure that there is a whole group solution to this because each person's situation is so different. Some women will be OK with dating down and being the breadwinner in their marriage. (This could never be me.
) Some women will decide that they have enough family and community support to raise children without a husband. (For the vast majority of black women trying it, this is not the case. Check to see if those folks want to be your support BEFORE you get knocked up. ) Some black women will date out to find a quality husband.
Kurlee
Well-Known Member
I agree. There's also a mental health side to this, too. What happens to these women when they hit a certain age and kids are no longer an option (45+) and they may be unmarried? Will they be just fine or broken? I think we forget that these women are people are more than statistics. Historically, has this kind of thing happened before? If so, how was it handled?
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