David Brooks needs a new hobby

I usually don't bother reading Brooks' columns, life is too short, and his points are too inane, but I couldn't help but emit a snort of derision after reading the opening paragraph tease of his latest spun-ass-gold. As the phrase goes, his ass is so close to his mouth you can smell the shite on his breath.

David Brooks: The Elusive Altar
If all the world were south of 96th Street, what a happy place it would be! If all the world were south of 96th Street, then we could greet with unalloyed joy the news that after decades of social change, more American women are living without husbands than with them.

We could revel in the stories of women — from Riverside Drive all the way to TriBeCa! — liberated from constraining marriages and no longer smothered by self-absorbed spouses. We could celebrate with those — the ad executives as well as the law partners! — who now have the time and freedom to go back to school and travel abroad, and who are choosing not to get remarried.

But alas, there are people in this country who do not live within five miles of MoMA, and for them, the fact that many more people are getting divorced or never marrying at all is not such good news.

For voluminous research shows that further down the social scale there are millions of people who long to marry, but who are trapped just beyond the outskirts of matrimony. They have partners. They move in together. Often they have children with the people they love. But they never quite marry, or if they do, the marriage falls apart, with horrible consequences for their children. This is the real force behind the rise of women without men.

The research shows that far from rejecting traditional marriage, many people down the social scale revere it too highly. They put it on a pedestal, or as Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins puts it, they regard marriage not as the foundation of adult life, but as the capstone.

They don’t want to marry until they are financially secure and emotionally mature. They don’t want to marry until they can afford a big white-dress wedding and have the time to plan it. They don’t want to marry until they are absolutely sure they can trust the person they are with.

Oh, heavens-to-betsy! I think Brooks is suggesting that people who have yearly income of $25000 or less should receive financial incentives from the government to encourage them to marry. Or something. I've luckily never been married, and I've spent my time in sub-poverty economic status, and somehow, I don't think the two are related. Marriage is just a social construct, after all.

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