In an op-ed on CNN, “Rupert Murdoch is tying the knot (again). Why the blowback is misplaced”, Boston University sociologist Deborah Carr makes the case for a more optimistic look at romance in one’s golden years.
Although the white, privileged Carr just couldn’t avoid working the word “white privilege” into her essay, we’ll forgive her that transgression. Sociologists at universities in New England are probably fired if they publish anything in the public space that doesn’t contain the term “white privilege,” after all.
Carr points out that while older adults can actually enjoy romance, companionship, and…sex, there are complications involving finances and adult children when one marries or remarries later in life. It is also likely that one of the spouses will become an end-of-life caregiver at some point. Carr’s piece is balanced, on the whole. She isn’t asserting that seventy is the new thirty.
Rupert Murdoch is 92 years old, and he’s about to marry Ann Lesley Smith, who is 66. Deborah Carr gently scolds Internet wisenheimers who made jokes about the next ceremony being a funeral, and—of course—the inevitable speculations about impotence. Continue reading “Increased human lifespans, and the weighty decision of marriage”