Regarding Richard Whitmire's "The Right Man Is Getting Harder to Find" (Taste, Jan. 22): I am a spinster fast approaching retirement age, and believe it or not, that doesn't break my heart. I have four sisters with eight marriages among them (and counting), and I have not noticed over the past 40 years that their marriages did any of them a bit of good.
To paraphrase a wry feminist back in the day, instead of playing Ally McBeal, I have become the man my mother hoped I would marry.
Kate Shaw
Toronto
I read with interest the article regarding how some accomplished, college educated women are having difficulty finding a mate with better credentials than they possess. Mr. Whitmire is on to something when he points out how women have come to view men as superfluous in many ways. They are no longer seen as necessary in their roles as husbands, providers and fathers, let alone appreciated.
Unfortunately, my field, psychology, has contributed to this view in its misguided efforts to make everybody feel good about their broken families and out-of-wedlock births. I clearly remember the National School Psychology's monthly publication promoting a film to be shown to elementary children entitled "It Doesn't Matter Who Is in Your Family, As Long as There is Love." Nothing could be further from the truth. Children who grow up without a married, biological father living in the home are (as a group) more likely to exhibit a long list of problems: higher rates of depression, anxiety, ADHD, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, school failure, delinquency, etc. We have to stop spinning single motherhood as heroic and the opportunity to have a baby as "deserved" by every woman, and start talking about how harmful it is to children and society. Maybe then women wouldn't think it was an acceptable option to purposefully bring a child into the world without a father. Perhaps they would look at men as necessary for their children's well-being.
Jerri Sendach, Ph.D.
Boca Raton, Fla.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 