(The author's Atlantic Monthly article "Dan Quayle Was Rig...)
The author's Atlantic Monthly article "Dan Quayle Was Right" ignited a media debate on the effects of divorce that rages still. In this book she expands her argument, making it clear Americans need to strengthen their resolve with regard to divorce prevention, new ways of thinking about marriage, and a new consciousness about the meaning of commitment.
(Based on extensive research and interviews, Why There Are...)
Based on extensive research and interviews, Why There Are No Good Men Left explores the romantic plight of this high-status woman with findings that are sure to rouse debate. Cultural historian, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead documents the new social climate in which the demands of work, the epidemic of cohabitation, the disappearance of courtship, and the exacting standards of educated women are leading them to stay single longer-and to find the search for a mate even harder when the time is right. From the frontlines of college, where dating is dead, to the trenches of corporate solitude, Whitehead reports on a wholesale shift that has stacked the marriage deck against the best and brightest women. The thirty-something, perplexed single woman is today’s new cultural icon.
Barbara Whitehead is an American writer, sociologist, and advocate of family and marriage. Whitehead writes on family and social issues for many publications.
Background
Ethnicity:
Barbara Whitehead has German, English, Irish, Scottish, and French ancestry.
Barbara Whitehead was born on November 10, 1944, in Rochester, Minnesota, the United States, to William A. (a surgeon) and Muriel (a nurse) Dafoe. Her brother is a famous American actor, Willem Dafoe. They also had six other siblings.
Education
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead studied at the University of Wisconsin and became a Bachelor of Arts in 1966. Whitehead attended the University of Chicago and received a Master of Arts degree in 1972 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1976.
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is a writer, sociologist, and advocate of family and marriage. She serves as the co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University and is active in state and national organizations that encourage family solidarity, responsible fatherhood, and public values. Her first book, The Divorce Culture, analyzes the tremendous rise in divorce in America, searches for reasons behind it, and looks at the effects of divorce on children and society in general. Based on a controversial article Whitehead published in 1993 in the Atlantic Monthly, the book endorses the traditional nuclear family arrangement and affixes blame for a variety of social ills squarely on divorce, and by extension those who put their interests above those of family by seeking divorce. Her work makes clear that Whitehead is not a supporter of divorce, particularly in relationships that have produced children. She maintains that it is the institution of marriage that creates the strongest parent-child bonds and that other forms of family arrangement such as a single-parent, cohabiting parent, and step-parent families cannot provide equivalent levels of love, nurturing, socialization, and structure.
Whitehead provides considerable evidence to support her stance, including the results of scientific studies, a variety of statistics, and other material. She traces the rise of divorce to the increased female participation in the paid workforce but also ascribes the high divorce rate to national changes in attitudes during the 1960s, particularly the idea that divorce is an individual issue and personal decision unrestricted by the needs or interests of other members of the family.
Despite the book's earnestness, critics such as Vallianatos report that elements of Whitehead's argument veer toward the extreme, such as her suggestion that out-of-wedlock fathering is a potential precursor to child sexual abuse, and that single and cohabiting parents who bring new lovers into a home environment create a dangerous and erotically charged atmosphere antithetical to the sedate and affectionate environment of a traditional household. In the end, Whitehead endorses a widespread change in consciousness and in perceptions of divorce, in the hopes that those changes in thinking will illuminate the dangers of divorce and reawaken in people the desire for a traditional family household.
Whitehead explores the modern-day realities of dating and finding a stable, marriage-minded relationship in Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman. Though her research and interview subjects belong to a certain type of person - young, educated, good-looking, professional white women - Whitehead extrapolates from their experiences a representative experience for women in the early part of the twenty-first century. It is becoming more and more difficult for single women to find a suitable mate and establish a stable marriage, Whitehead notes. She identifies two major reasons for this evolution of marriage patterns in the post-baby-boomer generations. First, many women are taking greater control of their own lives, particularly in terms of career and education. Women are focusing on finishing school and establishing their professional careers before considering marriage. By then, however, they have left one of the most fruitful environments for mate-finding - school - and are left in a world where it is more difficult to meet and evaluate potential mates. Second, new methods of dating and courtship have evolved that did not exist before, such as Internet dating, paid matchmaking services, and speed-dating, in which men and women spend ten minutes or so with each other, getting acquainted and making preliminary assessments, before switching round-robin style to another potential suitor, where the process begins again. These new systems, according to Whitehead, have the potential to replace the traditional spouse-finding methods that seem to have faded away in the new millennium.