No "Good" Men?

In the last week, I have seen three women who tell me there are no "good" men out there. Karen is a 36-year-old professor of molecular biology, Jane a 42-yr-old attorney, and Julie a 34-year-old stem cell scientist. All of these women are attractive, intelligent, and financially comfortable, and all have given up on finding the right man to have a child with. The men they meet, they tell me, are threatened by their careers and the fact that they don't "need" a man for financial security. Many men in these women's age group, they say, are divorced or commitment-averse and want to "play" rather than "settle down" and have a family.

These women are not alone in their decision to become single parents. In a study released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center, over 40% of the babies born in this country are born to unmarried women. This represents a dramatic increase over the past 20 years. In 1990, that number was just only 28%.

What's so interesting about this number is that this increase is largely attributable to women over the age of 30 with the greatest rate of increase being among Caucasian women.

Just how likely is it that a woman will find the man of her dreams and the father of their child in a dating world dominated by Internet dating? That question is the subject of an upcoming blog.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1586/changing-demographic-characteristics-american-mothers