The Editor, Sir:

The vast majority of parents of girls, who have invested their love, money and time in seeing them through college to become professionals, will not live long enough to witness them exchanging married vows.

The cause is that, for every one son that matriculates for university, he is outnumbered by seven girls. This was not so in the '70s. In fact, in the '60s, the reverse was the norm. The known fact, that boys mature at a slower pace than their female counterparts, has been accepted from time immemorial.

The fact is, we have been losing our boys to a huge pool of male underachievers, where it is seemingly 'cool' for them to accept a wife who is much more qualified academically and earning more than they do.

They may aspire to becoming a famous DJ. However, they painfully learn that in this field, many are called but few are chosen. They may, out of desperation to compete with the well-paid female professional, toy with the idea of dealing in drugs, but soon realise many are caught and little few survive to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Men who enter into unions with these better-off professional women, soon feel emasculated, and thereafter, their pants-wearing wives become victims of a union destined for failure. The reality is that men have not been nurtured and socialised to relate to a wife who earns more than they do.

Frustrated professionals

The current trend is impacting on the economy in a very negative way, bearing in mind that a country's human resource represents its greatest asset. It has created a large reservoir of frustrated professional women, who find themselves in the unenviable position of too many dogs, chasing too few bones.

Many have been waiting out of patience for Mr. Right. However, they soon envisage that the biological clock is ticking and having a child out of wedlock was never seen as an option. They are literally left with the painful choice of between being with a married man or the unequally yoked, insecure, sweet mouth and cunning 'worthless man'.

The society is not producing sufficient eligible men for these successful women whose only sin is their sacrifice in pursuing their goal of becoming worthwhile citizens.

At the same time, boys are more prone to using their productive time 'holding the corner' and idling their lives away.

One is left to wonder whether this undesirable state of affairs, which force women into unions with partners with whom they are unequally yoked, is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah, when he foretold at chapter four, verse one as follows:

"And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying , We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach."

- Bert S. Samuels, bianca@cwjamaica.com, attorney-at-law, Kingston