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.