Look before you leap

Lifestyle - Others
Cheong Suk-Wai
11 June 2006, Straits Times

Well-educated women today have resoundingly debunked doomsayers who, 20 years ago, predicted that they were more likely to be killed by terrorists by age 40 than to be married. But are they marrying for the right reasons and at the right time?

RAPE flowers tossed their heavy lemon-yellow heads every which way in the spring breeze as I vroomed down a motorway in Britain some Sundays ago.

I was in a car driven by my host, Lydia Watkins, who works for the Lincolnshire Tourism Board.

We were castle-spotting around the British county for me to write about its locales spotlighted in The Da Vinci Code movie.

As ribbons of road unravelled before us, so did our tongues, loosened by cosy camaraderie.

Lydia spoke wistfully of growing up in workingman's Brigg, as the child of a broken home. By her late 20s, she herself was a divorcee, with a daughter who's now six.

Eyes shining, she told me that it was thanks to her current boyfriend that she'd be able to attend the Cannes Film Festival for her job, as he got on well with her daughter and would keep house while she was away.

Then, apropos of nothing, she rued: 'Sometimes, I wish I had started on a career earlier before settling down.'

No, I told her, you've had it better than most. 'How many women have married, given birth, been there for her child throughout the crucial early years - and now pursued a career that's taking her to Cannes?'

She smiled, squeezed my arm and said, put like that, life was falling into place for her at last.

All that came back to me a few days ago when I read a report on the marriage prospects of well-educated American women in the June 5 international edition of Newsweek.

Twenty years ago last week, that newsmagazine famously stated that a 40-year-old single woman was 'more likely to be killed by a terrorist' than to ever marry.

The world, happily, doesn't always march to the beat of alarmist drums because, today, Newsweek found that being a university graduate actually makes a woman more, not less, desirable as a life partner.

It cited the latest studies on late marriages from Princeton and the University of Maryland in the United States, which found that about 90 per cent of well-educated women would eventually marry at least once in their lifetime.

This trend is being mirrored in Singapore. The Statistics on Marriages and Divorces 2004 report shows that, on average, about 70 per cent of university-educated men married university-educated women between 2002 and 2004.

In fact, the report noted further that, between 1994 and 2004, there was actually an increase in the proportion of grooms who wed brides who were as qualified, or even better-qualified, than they were.

Also, Census 2000 reported that in 2000, some 16 per cent of Singaporean men aged between 40 and 44 were still single, compared to 14 per cent of Singaporean women in the same age group. This was a reversal of the 1990 trend when proportionately more women in that age group remained single than men.

So should I, still single and four years away from The Big 4-0, perk up at all this and pop the bubbly?

Not yet, perhaps.

In today's world, you have to wonder whether marriage is more a problem than a solution, however happy a problem that might be.

It's hard to believe that it's only been 100 years or so since civilised society recognised the right of most women to higher education, to vote, to birth control, to standing up to abuse.

But if you think all this means that women are winning the war of the sexes, think again.

What sort of win is it when the women are left wishing they had octopus arms to juggle all that society expects of - nay, extracts from - them for having made headway in the sex wars?

Society dictates that working women be good daughters, mothers and wives too. All men need to do, really, is help put bread on the table and not behave too badly at work and play.

If one wanted to be cold-blooded about it, one could say women today have brought their lot upon themselves in trying to be as rich, clever and powerful as men.

That's resulted in such commercial bluster as 'The men just don't get it', 'You can have it all' and 'Never underestimate the power of a woman', which all work so well to sell credit cards, how-to magazines and other woman-pleasing paraphernalia.

And The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown sure knows who he is wooing with his yarns about the 'sacred feminine', or the notion that women once ruled the world.

Thing is, if these messages were all true, they would not sell as well. People get all shook up over what could be, not what's obvious.

There are other intractable clashes in the sex wars.

Last Thursday, chat show host Oprah Winfrey grilled five men who'd cheated on their wives as to why they'd done so.

After one among them wiped away his tears that had flowed when he confessed his infidelity to the millions tuning in, he cited his wife's pleas that he do the dishes as a big reason that drove him into the arms of The Other Woman.

His four fellow adulterers nodded in sympathy, if not empathy.

'My wife just didn't understand me,' he wailed.

What he meant, of course, was that because his wife was not willing to let him do as he pleased, he took that as licence to look for a woman who would.

But marriage is about building bonds, not breaking them.

So, yes, unlike Lydia's current boyfriend, some men just don't get it. Let's not even get started on even more prevalent sex war ammunition that life provides these days - including infertility treatments, Internet porn, intrepid careers.

I don't mean all this to come across as sour grapes. In an age of staggering choices, ergo temptations, much-relaxed sexual mores and greater mobility, entering into marriage - for either sex - may be the greatest leap of faith one could ever take.

suk@sph.com.sg