It’s always strange when you finish a book, to see how it fits into the categories offered by publishers. My three nonfiction books were, one by one, total misfits: Each is a serious book about women, or women and men, with the academic approval I’d hoped for but with commercial appeal that made them popular, too. So, …
Big news in the Daily Mail Reporter: In a study of 2,000 British women, the search for Mr. Perfect seems to be a complete bust. “While many chaps have positive attributes, the majority are deeply flawed,” the hard-hitting study reveals. “In fact, in [this] study…. most ranked their partner as only 69 per cent perfect.” …
That women are now the majority of the workforce is not a terrible thing. So how come, with every new achievement of women, there is a corresponding outcry about the “end of men!”? When did anyone ever cry “The end of women!” throughout all the previous centuries during which men were the majority of the workforce? I know men …
For a survey I was conducting some years ago in a woman’s magazine, I asked readers:What do you think the primary purpose of marriage is? Among the options offered were the obvious ones: To have a family. Monetary stability. Settling down. Sharing a life. I offered one, though, that stuck out in this roster of noble …
One of my favorite authors is the late Carolyn Heilbrun, whose wisdom about women still moves me when I pick up, as I often do, “Hamlet’s Mother,” or “Writing a Woman’s Life,” two of her books. The title of my blog, InHeynsight, is a rewriting, but not a rethinking, of her words—words I used as a chapter …
A woman who appeared on my cable show not long ago revealed, when I announced that fifty percent of all American women will live with or marry a man with children, the following (familiar, alas) story. She’s close to retirement and has been saving for years. Her adult son doesn’t need money, so her small …
A group of young men were complaining to me the other night about their live-in girlfriends. “In three months, my fiancée has been home nine nights out of sixty-two,” Elliott said. “The other nights she’s playing tennis, learning French, seeing her friends.” “That’s terrific,” I said. “What’s so terrific? I never see her.” So I …
Marriage was once immutable, like forests and wild animals and clean air. It was as inevitable and reliable as the tides. But it isn’t inevitable anymore, nor reliable. With the majority of the people in the United States now single people, not married ones, we’re looking at a clearly more fluid entity when we look at …
A very long piece in The Atlantic this month has pointed out several things we’ve been talking about in my books and blogs for over a decade. Which only illustrates the extreme disconnect between what has been going on statistically in this country for years and what the culture wishes to deny. The author of …
I’d rather talk about weightier issues than relationship etiquette, but I just heard for the second time this week about another person who ended a relationship by email. I can’t stand it: How rude and cowardly can you get? It was a woman, alas, so we can’t blame it on gender cluelessness.. She said she …
