Are Ladies Who Keep Dodging "I Do" Setting Back The Feminist Movement?

Single ladies aren't building their future around a ring on their finger anymore, instead statistics show long-term trends of women advancing their education, devoting energy to building a thriving career, and earning in a higher income bracket-- a seemingly boastful offset of the trade-off of resisting a wedding band. How is giving up on the institution of marriage what equates success for the modern woman? Those who are opposed to their personal commitment to monogamy and marriage are certainly entitled to be. But can't a woman with romantic notions as well as strong personal and professional aspirations also have a husband without feeling like she's succumbed to old -fashioned ideals?  Why must women tear down others' similarly well cultivated choices to validate their own?

"In this month's Atlantic Monthly," according to The Daily Beast, "writer Kate Bolick argues that she's perfectly happy being 39 and single, and investigates whether marriage is logical—forget about necessary—for the modern woman. With girls out-learning boys in school, and women out-earning men at work, the traditional incentives for marriage are slowly falling away, and even beginning to disappear altogether. The result: marriage has become an option, not a necessity, which in itself is a revolution."

Has marriage been a necessity since women's suffrage? Young women in the United States are not being forced into marriage nor do they need it. They are choosing to maintain their autonomy, spending time exploring life and society, carefully choosing a partner, struggling and succeeding as single moms and divorcees. This is where heterosexuals show that they've lost touch with the government-endowed privilege that their homosexual brothers and sisters are fighting for every day-- more than a social and governmental contract, a  so-called necessity, marriage is a product of past and a pact of a future of love.