I’m officially one of those SWANS..

..Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse. Hmmm…

Books reviewed by Stephanie Coontz;
Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women, by Christine B. Whelan, and Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice, by Rosanna Hertz.
–read further at www.washingtonpost.com

I didn’t read the books yet- just came out so must be expensive & not in our local library. I was bloghopping (refer: gregmankiw.blogspot.com- interesting! a professor of economics at Harvard University) & at the same time IMing with a long-lost friend from Down Under & the all time favourite question pop-up eventually, “You’re still single?” “Ya la, last I checked, am still is..” Heheheh.. So, again have to come up with my own entry related to this ‘evergreen’ topic.*

You can't have it all (have your cake and eat it too?), women have long been told. The price of female achievement, goes the centuries-old conventional wisdom, is loneliness…

"The more successful (career wise) the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child," argued economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett in 2002.

Last year, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed that America faces "an epidemic of professional women missing out on husbands and kids" because men remain unwilling to enter equal relationships with educated, high-powered women (Er..am not saying I’m one of those but how else to explain the current state of singleton? Not that I didn’t try/usaha). And in the first two-thirds of the 20th century, as women gained greater access to higher education (just check-out the recent local statistics esp. at the IPTAs) and professional work, such was indeed the case. Women who earned bachelor's degrees and PhDs (Am I doing it because I couldn’t find anyone to marry me? OR I couldn’t find anyone to marry me since I’m doing it? Rest assured, it is just a random thought..Ha-ha, sounds like another study should be on the way – to check on the direction of causality (one- or two-way) between blahblah…since correlation doesn’t prove causation but then again I digress- sorry Simah!) were more likely to miss out on their "MRS" degrees (dunno what this is lor..) than their less-educated sisters…

Whelan's book does not answer the question posed by her title -- why do smart men now marry smart women? (PLS, you tell me but not one of those internet jokes- you know the ‘mathematical equations’?)-- nor does she explore the declining marital prospects for poorly educated women and men. Low-income, poorly educated men have the worst prospects of any group in today's marriage market (Mat Rempit, drugs addicts, kaki ragut, etc. come under this jurisdiction I guess but definitely excludes the hi-income & highly educated homo guys- by simple deduction je), suggesting that it is a mistake to frame the revolution in marriage as a woman's issue (see? I told you so!). More men than women describe being married as their ideal state (sunnah Nabi tu…sape tak nak? MasyaAllah), and men who remain single fare far worse emotionally than do their female counterparts (Hohohohoho..ambik kau!).

Whelan's book is aimed at the demographic group she calls SWANS -- Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse. Whelan commissioned a poll of 1,629 high-achieving men and women ages 25 to 40 and found that almost half the women reported fearing that their success in the world of work was a disadvantage in the world of love (at the end of the day, jodoh pertemuan semua di tangan Allah – no argument here). Whelan reassures them (Thank God!) that men increasingly do want to marry equals, that most men are not intimidated by educational and career success. (There’s hope for me yet!)

P/s: On retrospect – back in one of my earlier econometric lectures, there was this one very insensitive/inconsiderate ‘professor-he-IS-not’ who make fun of this phenomenon by proudly suggesting a hypothetical research example, something like- “A study of the Determinants of the State of ‘Andalusia’ aka Andartu: A Probit Model” which include among others the use of dummy/binary dependent variable which is regress on years of education, level of choosiness, blahblah…I was sitting right in front of him & until today, he surely ranked very low according to my eyes & humanities index…

Btw, SWANs sound much better than Andalusia or Andartu eh?

(The pictures are really slow in-coming since I’ve to temper with them individually to make sure I remain anonymous & protect the identities of my new friends & others involved – Actually I didn’t ask for permission yet! Am busy lor..& dunno when is the next trip so gotta extract & savour every morsel of the experience)