Mother of Princeton men tells women they'd better get to marrying
 

https://socialreader.com/me/channels...dingExternal-1


" Why else would Susan Patton, the mother of two Princeton-attending sons, direly warn young women in a letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian that if they don't snatch up the bright young men in college---men like her son---then they will run a very high risk of being forever alone with their cats and their books?"

Oh, cheese and rice, that is HILARIOUS.

Potential future MIL material for sure, said no woman ever.

She actually defended herself on Huffpost saying she was divorced and wished she'd married a Princeton man. :rolleyes: Thanks for the insight into your personal baggage, lady.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-...women&ir=Women

From the original letter:

"...you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you."

As mentioned in the comments section below the article SWTXBelle posted, I also agree with this comment.

I have found this to be very true.

I agree with where she is coming from. It's much harder to meet people once you are out of school. On the other hand, there are variables that you don't really know yourself at 18-22.

I guess I missed my opportunity! ;)

Yeah, that ought to help her Special Snowflake sons' dating lives.

Women in college aren't always there, nor should they be, looking for a Mrs. If they don't find a husband in college or ever but have a fulfilling career, are they somehow less womanly or complete than their peers that did? I think taking advice from a woman who unhappily married and has delusions of grandeur about all the Princeton men that could have been is the last thing college women need to think about. FWIW, just because you have a large pool of single men around you in college doesn't mean you are surrounded by a large pool of men looking for marriage...as evidenced by the number of accomplished, single women who escape higher education without rings on their hands every year.

I think it depends on your values. Someone else may say that their church is where they will find someone "worthy". For every man with an Ivy Diploma, there's probably a proportional amount of assholes to those without greenery on their matricular documentation.

Amen to this, Low C.

I agree! I hate how some people act like there's something wrong with you if you want to meet your future husband at college. I can't think of many better places to find educated men with a better possibility of being successful in life. You can be a feminist and want to get married and have your babies young. I think it is all about being free to make the choices that are right for you!

I would patently disagree with this statement. I didn't do a lot of dating in college because I just wasn't into the whole thing. But I found men improved DRAMATICALLY after 30. I think some women might be ready to settle down in their early 20's but guys IMO are not mature enough to deal with all of it that young. I might suggest maintaining a hands-off relationship with the guys you think might have potential once they figure it out, but latching onto him 5 years before he's ready will result in frustration and/or unnecessary divorce. When I was starting to meet the quality guys in my early 30's they ALL seemed to be divorced, and to a man they had all gotten married just before they turned 25 and on reflection they would admit they got married at that time because that's what you're supposed to do. They maintained social convention instead of holding out a few more years to actually be ready to settle down.

And FYI there is no correlation between a fancy diploma and a quality personality. Douchiness has no social ceiling.

There is a big difference between "I am going to school to earn a degree and start my career and if I meet someone, that's a nice bonus" and "I am going to school to meet someone instead of having a career". The latter is problematic, for a whole bunch of reasons, the least of which is the consumption of educational resources for someone who never plans to use them.

I think it's very sad and unenlightened that you think the only people who deserve a college education are the ones planning on working outside the home.

:Dl^

As someone who met my amazing husband the very day I moved home from college after graduating, I have to disagree with the article.

I did go to college wanting to find a career AND a spouse because I knew those were things I wanted in life. I agree that there will probably never be an easier time to meet men than during college. I remember many of my friends (Greek and non-Greek) making wedding plans our senior year and I felt a little panicky. I went on to graduate school and still didn't meet Mr. right...so I moved back home to start my career. I had kind of given up on marriage so of course that's when I met Mr. Right. I wish I could go back and tell my college self to quit worrying about it. Had I met my future husband while I was in college, it never would have worked out so there's a good reason we met when we did.

So, what will I tell my daughter? Enjoy college, have faith, God has a plan and timing is everything.

There are large amounts of research that demonstrate that the level of education that a MOTHER attains has the most direct influence on the level of education that her children attain (as opposed to the father).

So, if you plan on having children, regardless of whether you plan to work outside the home or inside the home, my recommendation as someone with advanced degrees in Education would be to go to college :)

Most of us are not half the people we eventually become (for good or bad) during our collegiate years. There's just too much growing and developing yet to do. Yes, it's possible to meet Mr. or Mrs. "#1" in college and live happily ever ever, but not likely. As I said, too much self-discovery/development yet to do.

Who's joining me on the sofa? I've got fresh caramel corn and ranch flavor corn from Prayerfully Popped. Made some fresh lemonade for Arnold Palmers. BYOB.

FWIW: is this an April Fool's thread or what?

I get part of what Momma Patton is saying, but the whole things is kind of complicated, isn't it?

My primary issue is the tone of the article and letter - blaming women and threatening that they'll become spinster cat ladies if they don't stop being such frigid b****es. How did this become entirely womens' fault again? Because of one random (and I'd imagine, misleading) study about dating behavior of college women?

Listen - it's a two-way street, and men have the advantage of time on their side: the expectations we impose on them as a society tend to develop with age (ability to provide, status, etc.), and they don't have much of a limit on when they can start families.

I'd argue that we've put a lot of pressure on young women nowadays to pursue all of their career goals, but we tell them they can't be aggressive in pursuing relationship goals for fear of scaring men off.

Then, as Mrs. Patton points out, there's still pressure for women to marry an appropriate choice - either her equal or better, older or the same age, etc. Then you add educational attainment and intelligence to the mix. It seems like a no-win for women, doesn't it?

This all reminds me a lot of this article, published in The Atlantic in 2008, where a successful woman makes the case for settling down early in life because as a woman, your choices will always diminish with age. Joy.

No, I think everyone deserves a college education. In my ideal world, everyone would be able to obtain a college education, and further, would be able to attend the type of elementary and high schools that prepare them for success at the university level.

However, we don't live in my ideal world, we live in a society with limited resources for higher education, and thus we have to make decisions on who does and does not get to go to college.

So, as a person who pays taxes that support both public and private universities throughout the country, and the financial aid that allows students to attend, I would prefer that the limited resources be allocated to those with ambitions toward a post-college career or other path that contributes to society beyond one's own family.

Granted, if you don't "work" outside the home, but volunteer or otherwise contribute strongly to your community, that's effectively the same thing, but there is a huge amount of intellectual capital lost when highly-educated women choose to leave the workforce.

But really, this all misses the larger point: regardless of what individual women choose to do with their lives, societal forces exist that push women out of the workplace and into the home, while similar forces don't exist for men. So if your goal is gender equality (and mine is) the question is not really "is it okay for women to go to college just to find a husband?", the question is "why do women do this and men don't?", and in this context of this article, why didn't this woman write the same thing to the men of Princeton?

I know that we should be learning for learning's sake, but I truly don't see the point of a college education if you don't plan to have a career "outside the home." It seems like a waste of time and money, but please understand that I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who grew up in a blue collar family, was the first in my family to attend college, and financed my education with loans and scholarships. Why would I have gone to college and taken on that debt just to keep house? I'm all for the choice, but it is financially irresponsible to go to college unless you are paying cash or you plan to work off the debt.

My vote for post of the day!

College is not trade school. If college is all about getting a degree so you can go out and work, then we should close down liberal arts colleges immediately and make everyone major in stuff like business and engineering.

My momma has a degree and is the best momma in the world. She is my role model. She took care of our home and family and raised several wonderful, smart, educated and giving children. We were loved and nurtured and read to and prepared to become upstanding and happy adults. She helped at our school, volunteered in very challenging places, supported my daddy in every way and helped us with our homework and made us delicious homemade food. I'm sorry you think that life and those accomplishments are beneath an educated woman.

I did not get my degrees planning to use them for a career

I got them because education is a good in and of itself. I got them because I firmly believe that a democracy requires an educated citizenry. I got them because I wished to be educated for my personal development, and because I planned to have children. I wanted my children to have the advantage of an educated mother.

In fact, I ended up in education because I wanted my girls to have a private school education, and the only way I could do it was teaching at the school I wanted them to attend.

I love teaching, and can't imagine not doing it. But I still maintain that education doesn't have to be vocational training.

Then, wouldn't it work both ways? The male students are also surrounded by excellent, "marriage-worthy" women. Why is Patton's letter directed only at female students? I think people would have less of a problem with her if she were encouraging all students to form secure, long-lasting relationships, and not just telling the women that they need to snare a man.

There's also the heterosexism aspect of this, but that's a whole other can of worms.

I respect what you are both saying and I agree to a certain extent, but again, it really comes down to your economic station in life. If you've grown up living paycheck to paycheck and are financing your education on borrowed money, then yes, college is vocational school for many Americans. It's an unfortunate truth for those of us who have grown up in a less economically stable environment and without the benefits of advisers and examples of what we can do and be. I wish it were different, but then we go and complain about the philosophy majors who cried during Occupy Wall Street that they took out $100K for a 4 year degree and can't get a job to pay it back. If you can afford it, then yes, college is for learning. If you cannot, it is for a trade like business, engineering, etc. No one should be denied a college education, and I am not saying that anyone should. My point is that those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds view college differently.

I am not demeaning anyone's choices. I was just sharing the perspective of someone who has come from a different economic background and how they view a college education. In fact, I am envious that someone can go to college, major in whatever they want, and not have to work in a career to support themselves and repay their debt to finance that education. We would have a very different society if more people had those choices! I am quite envious of my European friends whose countries don't charge for college. You have much more freedom to pursue your interests and the kind of life you truly want.

I'm plopping down with you. Met Mr. Poppins after school, and he didn't go to Ole Miss for even one class. And the idiot I did marry from undergrad? He divorced me while I was in Law School.

Like it or not, some of the people attending Princeton probably fit into your category of not particularly worrying about how they're paying for college so they have the freedom to be above a "trade school" mentality. But I think ADPiUCF is putting herself into too small of a box. You don't have to have grown up economically disadvantaged to need to actually get a job based on your education. The only people who don't are the very wealthy who don't ever need to get a job, and there just aren't that many of those people in the US.

Quote of the year!

This! Some things in life can be planned. Finding Mr (or Mrs) Right isn't one of those things. I went to college in a place where some girls felt such enormous pressure to have a ring on their finger by graduation - mainly because all of their other friends were doing it - that they ended up pushing away the guys they were with who were more than happy to wait.

Exaaaaactly.

If your only intention is to "snap up" a man as if he were a cute dress at a sample sale, I suppose you could do it if you tried. If you really want an equal relationship, though, you should probably rethink looking at men in this manner.

P.S. Those "best men" who are "snapped up" early? Get back to them when they're 40+ and see how many of them are still with their snapper, or if they are, if they're happy.

Not really, anymore. I don't have hard numbers, but over the last few years there have been just as many women in college as men, with it nearing more women in college than men.

If you are an educated woman (in the liberal arts, natural sciences, applied sciences, or business), then you more than likely want a man (assuming a heterosexual relationship) who is just as educated.

In other words, the pickin's are getting slim for college educated women who want to marry a college educated man.

A few years back Essence magazine, or Ebony, was advising educated Black women to come to terms with the fact that there are not as many equally educated Black men. So, if an educated Black woman wants to marry a Black man, then she may have to settle.

The article was along the lines of if you are an educated Black woman with a MS degree, and want to marry a good Black man, then that good man may be in a service industry like garbage pick-up.

I've got a novel idea...just don't get married. It's not the end all be all of life. Don't get me wrong. I love my husband, and we have an amazing relationship...BUT marriage is hard enough without settling for the random dude that is "good enough." So many marriages already fail with the best of intentions without walking in with lowered expectations.

That makes two of us!

I've now hit the age where my friends are divorcing in droves, and almost every one of them says they knew better than to marry their college boyfriend/girlfriend.

In the words of Katharine Hepburn: "If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married."

and then, my personal favorite:

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."

Have a good day. I'm cutting the cat quilt into four pieces and shipping it to four GCers who are Not Very Nice.

I know if I ever had to start dating again, I would have a totally different List of Qualities than I did at 20 when I met my husband. But, I also know some of those come from the experience of being married, and may never have crossed my mind even if I had stayed single til 30. Of course, some of them would have, because I now know at least somewhat what I want my life to look like outside of Academia. Honestly, it's not that much different than life inside Academia, but that's more my husband's issue than mine, since he thought once I was out of college, I'd stop acting/theatre stuff and concentrate of a "real" job.

Point being that you should have a realistic view of your post-college life before getting married. It's often not what you think it will be.

My measly two cents again...over half of the girls I knew who had to have a ring before spring are now divorced and some are on their second or third marriage. Right after they were married, they moved to new cities and only had each other and not all of the activities of college. It seemed to be more of a competition amongst the girls to get a ring and no one else. How silly. A lot of my friends daughters are now waiting until their late twenties to marry, after they've been out in the real world, which seems to make more sense.

I've trying to get my husband to move into the cardboard box house I made for him right outside the front door. Now with 1/4th of a KAT quilt, I just my convince him to move. :D

On the other hand, I waited until after the first year of law school to get hitched to my now wife who I had been seeing at that point for 5-6 years and we've been married 7 years since then and are just fine.

Different strokes/different folks... and a 1/2 success rate for marriage in this day and age doesn't sound too bad. In fact, as a divorce attorney, I am very happy with that statistic.

If something happened to my husband, it would probably take a lot to get me to marry again, simply because the rate of success of second marriages and beyond is so dismal. I know you can't live your life by statistics, but they're statistics for a reason. Everyone thinks they're going to beat the odds, but they'd have to be severely in my favor to take that bet.

Yes, it's not a bad statistic. I just wish some of my friends wouldn't have gotten married because they didn't know what else they were going to do, as they have since stated. I'm also blessed to have married a year out of college to a wonderful man who has put up with me for almost 28 years now. I think in our case it's because he is five years older than me and more mature than guys who had just graduated.