Life prospects of a mature woman, unmarried

A profound change in the status of women is evident in recent trends in women’s educational attainment, labour force participation, and patterns of marriage, divorce, and childbearing. The present article reviews federal statistics which describe these trends as well as some of the recent social science literature on the status of women. It is suggested that one way of summarizing these trends is in terms of the declining importance of the family life cycle in a woman's total life cycle, or alternatively, the diminishing social importance of the distinction between married women and those who are unmarried. In this regard, the article is devoted to the study of the subjective image of the future of unmarried and not having children of women aged 36-40. Life prospects, considered as a systemic education, reflect the features of the design of women’s own life in the areas of family, professional activity and career, leisure, recreation and entertainment, and creativity. A psychological study allowed us to identify the specifics of value-semantic, cognitive and emotional-evaluative dimensions of the life prospects of unmarried women...