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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 10, 1986
PAGE 15
and grown to 1,200 members, that encourages this single
parenthood.
The group is called Single Mothers By Choice.
Barbara Jo Davis, a pediatric nurse in Richmond, VA, decided
when she turned 30 two years ago that she "wasn't going to hold
out" for marriage forever. But childbearing "was something I
didn't want to miss out on," she recalls.
Fearful that she
might not marry before menopause, Ms. Davis became pregnant
through artificial insemination. She gave birth to twin boys
last July.
Unlike married couples, however, still-single adults usually
must manage their lives alone. So innovative home-maintenance
services catering to singles have sprung up. Memphis, Tenn.,
builder Don Tillilie says that he quickly sold 28 duplex homes
last year after offering free maid service for a year•••• There
also now are "life organizers" or "rent-a-wife" services on
both the East and West Coasts. The wife-substitutes aid busy
singles, mainly women, by waiting for a plumber, unpacking
long-neglected moving boxes, getting groceries or arranging
parties.
Clients "don't have the time to do the picayune,
everyday things a wife does, like buying plants when a plant
dies," says Leah Blitz, a life organizer in Potomac, MD••••
Still-single adults who enjoy living alone sometimes are
surprised to discover their secret anxieties about staying
unmarried.... [One] California real-estate agent thought the
prospect of remaining single "didn't bother me at all" until
she got depressed reading a magazine account of a controversial
new study that says women her age face less than a 5 percent
chance of ever marrying. She says she burst into tears twice.
The survey mentioned above--which concluded that college educated women
who are still single at the age of 35 have only a 5 percent chance of ever
getting married--formed the basis of the cover article in the June 2
NEWSWEEK entitled "Too Late for Prince Charming?" Here are excerpts:
The traumatic news came buried in an arid demographic study
titled, innocently enough, "Marriage Patterns in the United
States."
But the dire statistics confirmed what everybody
suspected all along: that many women who seem to have it all-
good looks and good jobs, advanced degrees and high salaries-
will never have mates.
According to the report, white,
college-educated women born in the mid-'50s who are still
single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the
age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent. Forty-year-olds are more
likely to be killed by a terrorist: they have a miniscule 2.6
percent probability of tying the knot.
Within days that study, as it came to be known, set off a
profound cris'Isc5'f confidence among ranks of single women. For
years bright young women single-mindedly pursued their careers,
assuming that when it was time for a husband they could pencil
one in.
They were wrong•••• The study•••points out that for
those who wait, "not now" probably means "never"--and it