Further Beyond the "M" Word: A Response to Arlene Skolnick

I have long admired Arlene Skolnick's writing on the family, but both my empirical study of long-term single women and my reading of the demographic data lead me to reject her view in "Beyond the 'M' Word" (Dissent, Fall 2006). Skolnick argues that the United States is experiencing just a period of flux in the indestructible institution of marriage. She believes that the high divorce rate, decreasing remarriage rates, rise in out-of-wedlock births, increasing cohabitation, and the rising age of marriage reflect merely difficulties in moving from a male breadwinner marriage system to one of a union of working and intimate equals—a transition that, she says, may take another generation or so. During this period and beyond, Skolnick asserts, marriage will "remain central to American culture."