Carrie Lukas: Do colleges, culture prepare women for life?

During the next 10 years, the typical female college graduate will face decisions that will determine her life’s course. She’ll get a job and start down a career path. She’ll meet potential mates and may consider getting married. She’ll make important health decisions: She may consider engaging in casual sex. She’ll think about having children. If she decides to begin building a family, she’ll face choices about her role as a parent and how to balance family with career. She may also consider divorce.

Does the typical woman graduating from college have the information she needs to make decisions that will improve her chances for long-term health and happiness? Probably not. Chances are she’s been given a lot of bad information — much of it in the name of political correctness.

She’s been surrounded by a culture that makes it difficult for her to describe right from wrong. Even as she hopes for marriage, she sees divorce as the natural end for unions that aren’t entirely happy. She’s been saturated by popular culture that glorifies promiscuity and has read feminist literature saying it’s old-fashioned to associate sex with marriage and love. She’s sometimes confused about the role sex should play in her own life, whether she should view it as a casual activity meant simply for pleasure, or as something more meaningful. She wants a fulfilling career and has listened to feminist political organizations that urge women to work full-time and make money. She struggles to reconcile these perspectives with her own hopes and desires.

Colleges and popular culture do women a disservice by promising that government can shield them from life’s tradeoffs and by ignoring research on the consequences of womens’ choices.

Young women deserve the truth. Marriage — an institution demonized in women’s studies texts as a prison created by men to dominate women — is associated with higher levels of reported happiness for women. Of course plenty of single women lead happy and fulfilling lives, but most women prefer to marry.

New graduates should keep this in mind as they begin post-college relationships. Movies and television encourage an extended adolescence, with little thought given to the pitfalls of modern dating. The media portrays casual sex as an enjoyable hobby for 20-somethings, but it can have serious physical and emotional consequences, particularly for women. Sitcoms showcase cohabitation as a natural step on the way to marriage — an ideal way to try out a potential mate without messy legal obligations. But reality off the screen is that shacking up often doesn’t lead to marriage, and when it does, such marriages are more likely to fall apart.

Feminists rightly encourage young women to dream big when it comes to their careers. Today’s grads should appreciate and take advantage of the incredible opportunities before them. Yet women should also be realistic about the role they want work to play in life and project a decade hence. If they aspire to be home with children or working part time, it’s worth thinking about what occupations are best suited to balancing career with family. Work doesn’t have to define us.

Finally, young women should know that they can’t put off children forever. The media celebrates women who have babies at 45 or 50, leading many women to believe that they have time to burn. The stories usually omit the costs, discomfort and imperfect success rate of treatments to extend fertility. We don’t like to talk about it, but age does affect a woman’s shot at having children. Female fertility begins to decline in the late 20s and many women face challenges getting pregnant after age 35. Treatments can help, but they’re expensive and aren’t foolproof. If children are a priority, women need to plan ahead.

Women graduating today have more opportunities than any other generation in history. They can anticipate bright futures. Yet it’s truth — sometimes unpleasant — that will empower these young women to achieve happiness, however they define it. It’s time to start questioning feminist dogma and popular culture. Welcome to reality.