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Why should marriage plus kids equal happiness? A Post-Modern Spinster makes her case for life without marriage
Kate, a married friend, said to me in that kindly patronising tone reserved for mad old women and naughty children: “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped running around like a middle-aged teenager and tied the knot before it’s too late?”
“Too late for what?” I thought – a lifetime membership of Ikea and a man who is going to turn from Mr Perfect into Mr Sulk/Unfaithful/Slob within two years.
The truth is, while wedded bliss is great for some women, there are those of us who are not cut out to find a man, marry and reproduce. I am 43, unmarried, without a child and I am not crying myself to sleep.
Why should I? This is not the 19th century: I am not going to freeze to death in a workhouse. Nor is it the 20th century: I am not going to write an angsty desperate-to-be-married Bridget Jones-style diary or worry about the biological time bomb.
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