Spinster image outdated

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32846, 21 February 1972, Page 6

Spinster image outdated

(By

DAVID GUNSTON)

What happens when a woman (or a man) does not marry? What are the reasons for staying single? What is the result of such a decision? Recent psychiatric surveys :have been looking sympathetically and revealingly into the state of the unmarried, which in this context means "never married,” not the separated, divorced, or widowed. Some of their i findings are surprising; all of them interesting. The image of the embittered spinster who has 'turned her back on all men —maladjusted, unhappy and acidulous — has persisted for generations. But today’s evidence points overwhelmingly against it. Whatever may have been true in the past, this is no longer the rule today. Present-day spinsters (and many of them agree it is time the term itself was changed) are likely to be just as happy and fulfilled as their married friends; in many cases more so. There is no longer any justification whatever for the use of that word, or the even more inappropriate "old maid,” as a term descriptive of frustrated bitterness, deserving of pity, or suggesting condescension on the part of the user. LABELLED If for one reason or another a woman doesn’t marry, she can no longer be assumed to be unhappy, let alone maladjusted. On the other hand, something of this label can still cling to the unmarried man with some — although not always complete — justification. For it has been found that the unmarried woman is almost invariably happier and better-balanced than the average unmarried man in a similar situation. This is partly because of the tradition of it being the man’s prerogative to take the initiative in any courtship. This gives a man far greater opportunities for marriage than most women are willing to accept, but inevitably it also means that the world feels that non-marriage in men is virtually synonymous with emotional disturbance and/or some psychological or physical abnormality. In addition, a woman with some slight psychological handicap may still be attractive to the right man and so retains some chance of eventual marriage, whereas a man’s chances in such circumstances are permanently nil. Even if this implied slur on the bachelor is completely unfounded, the general attitude towards a persistent bachelor — the sheer

force of public opinion believing its own fallible assumptions — tends to make such a man unhappier than he might otherwise be. So in that sense, the unmarried woman is far likelier to be the happier of the two types of “loners.” Other things being equal, what makes a girl decide to stay single, even when all her friends go to the altar or registry office?

For some, of course, there is clear dedication to some calling or vocation — nun, nurse, social worker or teacher. That nearly always provides an acceptable and fulfilling alternative to marriage. Sometimes, however, a woman will invent apparently noble reasons of duty (looking after an elderly parent is a typical one) that conceals a basic unwillingness to marry. Honour is seen to be satisfied, and the truth is admirably concealed from the world. Leaving aside the unmarried state in woman as a conscious, considered, and reasonable choice, we are then left with a variety of neurotic reasons for staying single. Nearly all of them have some degree of fear behind them. Fears stemming from childhood (unhappy home life rather than isolated traumatic experiences); fears of sex; fears of the male image and the male world — so strong and overpowering—fears of child-bearing; fears of total commitment to another human being; fears of what is felt to be lifelong servitude or slavery. As Dr Irving Bieber, of the New York Medical College, told a recent “psychoanalytic symposium on marriage,” “failure to marry in either sex is the consequence of a fear of it.” From Freud downwards, psychologists have always believed that women have a greater stake in getting married than do men. They are impelled by forces deeper that they realise to nudge, cajole, coax, or tempt hesitant men into matrimony, and there are indeed powerful social, psychological, and economic reasons for this. RESISTANCE

Psycho-analytic experience has always shown that normally, both men and women desire a marriage relationship. So a definite resistance to “taking the plunge” reveals a strong degree of fear, most of which associates it with danger and harm to the self.

“There is increasing recognition,” says Dr Bieber, “that bachelorhood is symptomatic of psycho-pathology, and that even though women may yearn for a husband, home, and family, they withdraw from fulfilling their wishes because the anxiety they associate with marrying is more powerful than their desire for it.”

This is undoubtedly also true of many bachelors. They would dearly like to have a wife, but their fear of women as such, their dread of conjugal sex, their horror of female domination all add up to anxieties far stronger than the original basic desire. So they avoid taking a wife,

[realising all too well that the 'longer they delay marriage, (the less their chances of it j become. The sources of such powerful fears have lately been studied in some depth—notably by Dr Saul H. Fisher, of New York University. He finds that childhood memories figure strongly in the lives of most unmarried women, and that encouragingly—if surprisingly—it is a deep fear of repeating the bad home life of one’s childhood that is the chief cause of marriage- phobia today. Encouraging, because it would seem that good marriages breed good marriages. Other marriage fears in women, Dr Fisher has found, may stem from an overdependency on a clinging mother—perhaps in the absence of a father — or maybe in a family saddled with a weak, inadequate father who failed to provide protective support for his daughter when young. Mothers who provoke feelings of guilt, particularly about sex, are especially responsible for daughters who openly admit they could never tolerate a relationship as intimate as marriage. Yet, providing a young girl has a good maternal relationship with her mother, even the disadvantage of a brutal; drunken, or persistently unfaithful father proves no bar to a happy marriage in her turn. Many unmarried women retain a deep fear of having children—not necessarily the ordeal of childbirth, but the whole long rigmarole of rearing children. And some, of course, fear the sexual relationship so much they can never contemplate marriage. These, however, form a very small group, although Dr Bieber reported that he discovered in his researches “three cases of women who remained virgins even though they did marry.” Quite a number of such women do marry in later years, especially when their child-bearing years are past. Conversely, some women so abhor the prospect of marriage that they refuse to marry the willing fathers of their children. Both sexes who retreat from marriage often indulge unconsciously in subtle maneouvres to avoid not only it, but almost any contact with possible partners. They tend continually to minimise the opposite sex by faultfinding or living behind a self-built barricade of scorn (“Oh, men!” say the women; “I’ve got no time for women!” say the men). Men may mirror all the fears of women except those concerning child-bearing, and they usually add one of their own—the economic. Many bachelors genuinely fear the demands a wife and family would make on their earning capacity, and some want to keep roving—occupationally speaking — and understandably fear that marriage would limit this. Nevertheless, it is clear that being unmarried need not mean being unhappy. Whether one is married or single, life is still very much what we make it.