Laura Rahe, wife of Professor of History Paul Rahe, released a new book, “From Courtship to Marriage: Reflections for the Modern Woman,” in November 2013.
“It seems to me as though theres a lot of silence in our culture about courtship and marriage,” she said. “I intended, more than anything else, to make a conversation starter.”
Rahe began writing just over a year before the book was published, when she had less work than usual at the Kalamazoo law firm where she works part-time.
“I had a little spare time, and my kids were a little older, so I felt I had that window of opportunity to actually write everything down, and I’m glad I had that,” she said.
She and her husband talked for some time about writing a book together that focused on courtship and marriage. But he became involved in another project, and she began working on this one.
“The book is full of common sense and that common sense is quite uncommon today,” Paul Rahe said.
The book stems from the idea that even though young women can’t completely control their personal lives, there are still many things that they can impact though the relationship decisions they make early on, Laura Rahe said.
“One the one hand, if you ask people in college, ‘Do you hope, someday, to marry and have a family,’ most of them say, ‘Yes,’” she said. “On the other hand, we’re seeing a breakdown in the trajectory towards marriage among young people.”
Rahe’s book is directed to young women who are interested in the possibility of marriage and children, but specifically to those who think it’s an issue to be considered at some undefined point in the future.
One of the phenomena that Rahe noticed while researching her book was the lack of awareness regarding the biological clock, she said.
“Science is starting to say that a woman’s fertility declines dramatically after the age of 32,” Rahe said. “There needs to be a cultural awareness that the ability to have children is not something that we can take for granted.”
Not only is there a basic lack of information regarding the problem, but there are also ideological pressures at play telling women that careers and family are incompatible, Rahe said.
“There is a not-necessarily-factual perception that having children will destroy your chance ever to develop your career,” she said. “Young women should just be a little cautious of other people’s agendas for them.”
Rahe offers a tremendous amount of advice regarding courtship, but beyond a few immutable principles, most of it is designed to provide points of consideration, primarily centered around the courtship phase of a relationship.
“I had a good deal of trepidation writing about marriage,” Rahe said. “I thought someone who has married for 40 or 50 years would be in a much better position to say something on that topic than I am. But I’m here writing on courtship, which I do think I have some things to say about, and I didn’t think I could adequately address the issue of courtship without marriage.”
The book was published by CreateSpace, an Amazon company, and is currently available on Amazon.com.
