A WOMAN’S CHANCE OF MARRIAGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16452, 14 June 1921, Page 9

A WOMAN’S CHANCE OF MARRIAGE.

There were 287.0(30 women married last year, or, to put it in another way, out of every thousand marriageable women forty-one found husbands during the year. It is not a high percentage, but it is about -the average, if one excludes the phenomenal year of 1915. But a. woman’s chance of marriage may be better than these figures suggest. For locality can be a- great factor in her luck. Certain districts lean to marriage just as others are. unfriendly to it. The London area holds out far and away tho best chance of marrying; and, generally speaking, urban districts are proportionately more .fertile in brides than’ ruralThere is a difference, however, in rural areas. Thus, if a woman finds herself in Hunts she will greatly improve her chances of marriage by emigrating to, say, Essex; aud, again, by stepping over the border into Hampshire she will still further increase them. By moving from Bucks into Berks a girl enhances the probability of her marriage. Surrey is not a bad county for the would-be bride, but Kent is a better. No woman need give up hope. Over 220 women above seventy years of ago married last year. On the other hand, “ sweet seventeen ” is less popular than she used to he. Twenty years a,go nearly twice as many brides of this ago went to the altar. Alost marriages naturally take place between bachelors and spinster?- But widows, oven before the war, were remarrying in larger numbers. And as they approach middle age, the widow’s chance is far better than that of tho spinster. Thus, out of every thousand marriages there were only nineteen spinster brides of forty, as compared with a. hundred and thirtytwo widows of that ago, and ten spinsters of forty-lire as against one hundred and eight widows of the same The outlook for the roman who has. passed her first, youth is-improving. Although the youngest men usually marry .women about their own age and the older men marry women who are younger, yet in the critical yeai*3/between thirty and forty the balance is redressed, for the ages of bride and bridegroom then become nearlv identical. Consequently, as men are now marrying later and middle-aged widowers are remarrying more freely, it follows that if a woman does not become a wife when she is in her twenties, the chance of her finding a. husband when she is in lier thirties is undoubtedly increas-

Forty-five thousand women of that age were married Inst year.—ALß., in “The Daily Mail.”