Should Smart Women Say “I Don’t”?

The case against marriage is apparently gathering steam. In this month's Atlantic Monthly, writer Kate Bolick argues that she's perfectly happy being 39 and single, and investigates whether marriage is logical—forget about necessary—for the modern woman. With girls out-learning boys in school, and women out-earning men at work, the traditional incentives for marriage are slowly falling away, and even beginning to disappear altogether. The result: marriage has become an option, not a necessity, which in itself is a revolution. "American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity," Bolick writes. "At the rate things are going, the next generation’s pool of good men will be significantly smaller. What does this portend for the future of the American family?"