What is it about?
This paper gives an in-depth look at how 36 heterosexual, well-educated women in New York City experience pressure to marry and start families. Our participants talk about an ideal timeline with three steps. First they first work on self-development for a few years, then they become "ready" to find a partner, and then they begin searching for that partner in a serious way. Women feel a looming deadline to achieve these steps before age 35, by which point others expect them to married and to have started having children. Some women become at risk of being off-schedule with this ideal timeline. These women experience judgment from friends and family.
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Why is it important?
Sociologists have talked about the family choices of elite women for a long time. But most of the research talks about the plans college students make for a far-off future, or about the struggles of women who have already made tough decisions about what kinds of families to form. Our research fills a gap by talking about the experience of elite women aged 25-35 who have graduated college but have not yet started families.
Perspectives
Writing this paper was absolutely fascinating. I am in the same age, sexual orientation, and educational category as the women who participated in our study, and much of their experiences resonated with mine. I love sharing this paper with my friends because I think it is an empirical example of the social timelines we all take for granted. In fact, these timelines are highly classed and gendered. So far, I've found that people in college-educated, young adult circles are not surprised by these findings--they match what many of us expect and experience. However, I encourage young adult readers to critique the demanding package of expectations people have for elite women, especially in light of the pressure that comes with these expectations. Readers in other generations have been interested to see what kind of social clocks exist for heterosexual women beginning adulthood currently.
Casey Stockstill
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Condensed Courtship Clock: How Elite Women Manage Self-development and Marriage Ideals, Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, January 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2378023117753485.
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