Ladies, Don't Give Yourself Away

[Danielle Crittenden, in What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, says] the modern combination of sexual libertinism and late marriage conspires . . . to deny women what they most want and need — a staple marriage to a faithful husband who will not abandon them or their children.  If young women withheld sex, young men would be far more inclined to marry in their 20s . . . an age at which women are at the peak of their allure and fertility.  These days, millions of women waste their 20s in a series of fruitless “relationships” with men who decline to “commit.”  After turning the corner of 30 or 35, when beauty and fertility are declining, desperation often sets in.  Panic is only exacerbated, Crittenden reminds us, by the presence of a new crop of 20-somethings providing free sex.

Mona Charen, The backlash picks up speed, Creators Syndicate, 1/12/99