Like a vocal number of her high achieving peers, the 39-year-old Bolick remains single not because she is cursed by nature– we know that because in an unusual and, I dare say, cynical decision, the magazine put Bolick’s sultry face and lace bodiced figure on its cover — but because of a taste for independence and a lack of acceptable candidates for her hand…

Like most marriage-is-dead arguments, Bolick’s hinges on two statistics badly in need of deconstruction. One is that only 48% of American households are headed by a married couple compared to 78% in 1950. That’s a striking decline but it has little to do with any loss of interest in the institution.

Most of the unmarried households are made up of young immigrant men, elderly women who, thanks to modern medicine, are out living their husbands for many years, and young singles who are marrying at historically late ages.