There is one group of people - social conservatives, religious conservatives - who honestly feel that women's place is in the home and that wives should submit to their husbands.

There is no going back to a time when most women will feel compelled to enter or stay in a bad marriage just for economic security or social respectability. So today, the best way to get women once more interested in getting married and having children is for men to accept women's new insistence on equality. This is, I think, why educated women in America, are now more pro - marriage and more disapproving of divorce than other groups of women who have less experience with egalitarian partners or less clout in getting their needs met in relationships.

Increasingly, men are realizing exactly that - that having an educated, economically independent partner reduces the pressure on them to be the sole provider. Many men are also beginning to understand that participating in housework and childcare can be rewarding. Women with higher education and/or earnings are so much less likely than other women to divorce, that by age 40, they are more likely to be married than any other group of women.

Contrary to popular opinion, 'Leave it to Beaver' was not a documentary.

Putting women's traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It's the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.

In industrial countries where male privilege is still firmly entrenched - in Spain, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, for example - women are delaying marriage longer than in America, and often resisting childbearing as well. They are less likely than American women to say that marriage is a good deal.

Nostalgia wouldn't begin to capture your sense of loss, ... The Way We Really Are Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families.