Letter from Boston Singled Out By MASAKO YAMADA	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
独身の悩み 以前、このコラムで雅子さんは、周囲で結婚の話題が増えているとレポートしました。今週は逆に、独身の仲間にスポットを当てます。雅子さん自身は独身生活を楽しんでいますが、そうでない人も多いようです。特に大学の研究室で働く仲間や知人の中には、交際する時間も相手もないという切実な悩みを抱えている人もいます。

Several weeks ago I wrote about the recent tide of weddings among my friends. Now I feel I must speak of the others, including myself, who are not yet married. I have lots of friends in their late 20s and early 30s who are happy to be unfettered and free of the responsibilities of having a family.

I must admit I have a hard time understanding why so many young couples feel the need to get married so early. People change signficantly during their 20s. Right now, I am 26 and I feel very comfortable being unmarried. I have a boyfriend, but I also have a social life independent of him, one involving my labmates, my music partners, my friends from high school and college, and others whom I've met along the way. I'm free to hang out with them whenever I want.

I am also free to engage in various activites by myself, such as going to concerts and restaurants. I can also stay late at work whenever I want. I know that things wouldn't be the same if I had a hungry family waiting for me at home. I think this is the way many of my single friends feel.

But when I probe beyond the surface, I hear many of them express their deeper fears. One of my friends, a social butterfly in her 30s, told me that she hangs out with peers who think it's OK to be free at 30 ... but to be single and childless forever? That's entirely different.

She told me that her parents tell her that she won't have as many choices if she doesn't get settled soon. She laughed and said that she can wait for couples to start divorcing and choose from the "newly recycled" crop of men in their 40s.

I have met many intelligent, interesting, dedicated graduate students and professors who complain that they don't even have the opportunity to date. They may be too busy jump-starting their careers to nurture a relationship, live in isolated university towns where not many potential mates are available, or suffer from a certain lack of social smoothness preventing them from playing up their positive attributes.

Researchers spend so much time getting their Ph.D.s and pursuing postdocs that a large part of the dating pool gets married off before they can really start looking.

Research centers and universities in the States are< often located in the middle of nowhere, and many well-read and world-trav eled researchers and professors are forced to move to these places to pursue their careers. What happens if they are single?

They are not very likely to mesh with the locals, and dating undergraduates and grad students is considered taboo. They are forced to date either other researchers or professionals working in the area.

The fact is, there are simply not many single female researchers in their 30s living in such an isolated area. If an area is not very rich in general job opportunities, there are not likely to be many professional women working there, either.

I know of a researcher who was married as a graduate student but whose wife refused to move with him to a small city where he was offered a professorship. If a married woman would rather get divorced than move somewhere for her husband, why on earth would single women choose to go to such a place?

I'm sure that many people envision romantic first-meetings with their future spouses, but the realities of the academic life make this difficult. Given the grave situation among single researchers, I suppose it's not too surprising that they often turn to alternative methods of meeting people, such as the Internet and personal ads. I can't criticize this, since it's often a last-straw tactic.

As for professors dating their graduate students or postdocs: Professors can ruin their careers permanently if it becomes public, but when I see the deep loneliness of singles pursuing the academic life and the apparent lack of social opportunities elsewhere, I can't help feeling that there is some sense to it.

And I can't help thinking that although it may seem that couples that get married so confidently in their teens or early 20s are blind, they might actually have something genuine - some insight or some happiness that these older singles may never possess.

Shukan ST: Sept. 1, 2000

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