Economically independent women can now flourish whether they are wives or not. Wifeless men, by contrast, are often a mess. Compared to married men, their health is worse, their employment rates are lower, and their social networks are weaker.38 Drug-related deaths among never-married men more than doubled in a decade from 2010.39 Divorce, now twice as likely to be initiated by wives as husbands, is psychologically harder on men than women.40 One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men. Wives were economically dependent on their
...more
