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The Last Taboo: Older Women--Younger Men
| Article
# : |
15650 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1989 |
2,385 Words |
| Author
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Steve Kaplan
Steve Kaplan is a widely published free-lance writer living in
St. Paul, Minnesota, who is also a contributing editor of St.
Paul Magazine. |
Older woman-younger man relationships may represent one of the last taboos in today's free-thinking society. Stereotypes, often negative, abound in perceptions of such relationships. Marcia Appel knows this only too well. Appel, an attractive, energetic blonde, recalls saying goodbye to her younger boyfriend (who later became her husband) at the airport. As he was getting onto the plane, she burst into tears. A woman standing next to Appel turned and said, "Is your son going off to college, too?"
It is hard to imagine Appel, barely seven years older than her husband, being mistaken for his mother. But too much of America, if a woman is with a younger man, it is assumed she must be his mother or aunt; the thought of her being his lover somehow makes people uncomfortable and is vaguely unacceptable. However, these perceptions do not reflect today's realities.
The truth is that more than one out of five marriages today involve women who are older than their husbands, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. In one out of every seventeen marriages, the bride is at least five years older than the groom. Almost one-third of divorced women marrying men who have never been married before are older than their husbands. And census statistics show that marriages in which the woman is older than the man are rapidly increasing across the United States. When you think about it, these data make good demographic sense.
The simple fact is that the older a woman gets, the less chance she has of finding a mate among men her own age. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are three times as many divorcees, widows, and single
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