ABSTRACT
T here was a time, not long ago, when the questions that college and high school students would typically pose about marriage were almost entirely self-referential. Should I marry him? Is she the one for me? Do I really love her, or will this too pass? Sometimes, a potential bride, or groom, would take a longer view. Should I marry now, or should I wait until I’m finished with high school, or college, or graduate school? For some young people in this same generation, these questions were of a decidedly more agonized cast: Will he marry me, so that the baby I’m carrying will have a father? Or, should I marry her, because she is pregnant with my child? For a relative few, the questions were both agonizing and deeply alienating: Should I marry, so that I might one day develop heterosexual appetites? Should I marry, not for intimacy, but for its opposite, so that I might better disguise myself? And for many others-the bachelors, bachelorettes, playboys, swinging singles, doting uncles, and old maids of mid-century-the marriage market was a muddle: for inarticulate reasons, just not an option, or, perhaps, just not their cup of tea.
