Sixteen years ago, Newsweek Magazine printed an infamous cover story called “Too Late for Prince Charming.” It predicted that a 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being attacked by terrorists than she did of finding a husband.
More recent studies find the odds for these women marrying are much higher, but that original scary Newsweek statistic planted itself firmly in conventional wisdom, and today remains part of the consciousness of many single women in America.
Television sitcoms and films glamorize the plight of sophisticated, educated, women looking for long-term love, but some observers are saying that plight is not something for each woman to bear, but one that society needs to examine, to start finding new ways to play matchmaker.
Guests:
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of Why There are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman, and Co-Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.