Marriage, the declining institution

Among modern women, explains Kate Bolick:

If, in all sectors of society, women are on the ascent, and if gender parity is actually within reach, this means that a marriage regime based on men's overwhelming economic dominance may be passing into extinction. As long as women were denied the financial and educational opportunities of men, it encouraged them to "marry up" – how else would they improve their lot? Now that we can pursue our own status and security, and are therefore liberated from needing men the way we once did, we are free to like them more, or at least more idiosyncratically, which is how love ought to be, isn't it? When Gloria Steinem said, in the 1970s, "We're becoming the men we wanted to marry," I doubt even she realised the prescience of her words.