Meeting Places and Romance
Digging for Roots
It didn’t take my husband long to discover that our fathers were 5th cousins, via an eighteenth century common ancestor. That meant we are sixth cousins, and our three sons are their own 7th cousins (for a while thereafter they took delight in greeting each other with cries of "Cuz!"). more »
Insecurities - Past and Present
Later, when I was in my teens, I went with three girlfriends to my first dance. Remember, it was a different era. Back then, kicking up your heels as a group was unheard of; and girls would rather be seen shopping with their mothers than dancing with each other. And no way was it acceptable to ask a boy to dance. So we stood there like marked-down dresses on a clearance rack waiting to be approached by buyers. more »
Thank You, Ian
Ian kissed me often and seriously after that first [kiss]. I was thrilled every time. I had fantasies of what it would be like to be his wife. I knew the 'facts of life' in a strictly text-book sense, and I longed to try sleeping with him. Maybe it was a childhood spent reading The Morte d'Arthur and teen years immersed in Tolstoy and Dickens, familiarity with Bible stories and conventional churchly morality, as well as a father who might have been living in the previous century when it came to his attitude about his daughter. Whatever it was, I was determined to be a virgin bride. more »
The Pew Research Center's New Economics of Marriage: The Rise of Wives
Among married adults at each education level, men had larger household income increases than did women. Those who gained most of all were married male college graduates, whose household incomes rose 56%, compared with 44% for married female college graduates. more »