Word: womens
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Lord will not pardon him" who marries his daughter to an old man or takes a wife for his infant son. Literature abounds with bawdy cautionary tales describing the jealous geriatric husband and his ripe, relentless bride. For all the sniggers, though, older men have historically married much younger women. Given the hazards of childbearing until 50 or 60 years ago, it was not unusual for a man to bury one or two young wives. In those days, death provided the variety now offered by divorce. On the arduous American frontier, progress was marked by the graves of countless brides...
...remained with her for ten years. Sometimes the unions have been rather pathetic, as when Singer Edith Piaf, at 46, one year before her death, married a former Greek hairdresser more than 20 years younger. In modern France as well as elsewhere, older women and younger men tend to have affairs rather than marry. For one thing, the typical older woman is a divorcee and would forfeit alimony by remarriage. Numerous sages have extolled such liaisons on the familiar ground that older women provide an invaluable education, and are more interesting both intellectually and sexually than any ingenue or debutante...
...sees in May is fairly obvious, but what does May see in December? Christmas, wags answer; and not even the most romantic would deny that money and marriage are often intertwined. Still, today's unions of old and young seem to involve more than sex or cash. As women grow more emancipated and financially independent, the necessity of marrying older men is disappearing. Now the considerations are more psychological and esthetic. It is a commonplace that some young girls turn to older men in a psychological quest for their lost fathers. Some men resent this thought, but they should...
...December defenders consider the pessimists obtuse and oblivious of the record. For one thing, the men who marry younger women these days are generally marked by conspicuous success or at least a mature sense of their own character; and those qualities go far toward cementing marriage. Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall when he was 45 and she 20. Said he: "The mature man is more experienced. He has read more books, seen more of the world. He knows how to court a woman. He has learned the hundred little courtesies that make her happy she is a woman...
...marriages thus considered look even worse. Yet there is no evidence that they turn out any worse than most unions-and possibly they work a lot better. Older men, for example, are no longer obsessed by their careers, and are much less likely to become obsessed with other young women. They are more indulgent; and besides, with them a woman is much less conscious of her own aging. Above all, the old and young partners are generally apt to consider their marriages more thoroughly beforehand than coevals might...