unmarriedamericasaygood-byetothetraditionalfamily.docVIP

UnMarried America Say good-bye to the traditional family. Heres how the new demographics will change business and society. Michelle Conlin Business Week. Oct 20, 2003 Most Thursday nights, Hillary Herskowitz slips on her Seven jeans, chooses from among her dozens of shoes, and steps out for an evening sipping Ketel One and tonics with the modish throngs of Manhattan. The 35-year-old communications director and her designer-clad wing girls -- a pediatrician, a health-care manager, and an executive recruiter -- cruise the citys swankiest bashes: the posh private parties, the paparazzi-stalked soirees. They dont just watch Sex and the City. They live it. But after 13 years of this behind-the-velvet-ropes scene, they have yet to find the one thing they want most: husbands. The search has taken on a more desperate flavor of late; the women now plan to haunt sports bars in their stilettos. It feels terrifying because the biological clock is ticking, and I want to have kids, says Herskowitz. And I never, ever thought Id wind up here. Thirty years ago, a single woman like Herskowitz would have been considered an aberration. An old maid. Today, shes so typical that the highest IQs in Hollywood and on Wall Street and Madison Avenue are fixated on dreaming up products for the swelling ranks of unattached urbanites just like her. Add to these monied romantics a growing number of gay couples such as Luke Schemmel and Jonathan Shapiro, who are raising two adopted kids; divorced parents such as Jason Lauer and Terresa Lauer, who share custody of their 7-year-old son; single parents like Mark Cunha, a widower who is raising a son and daughter alone; and young men like Vincent Ciaccio, who broke his Italian mothers heart when he got a vasectomy three years ago at the age of 23 because he didnt want to get tied down. Along with the growing numbers of cohabitants and elderly unmarrieds, these wildly divergent types are the force behind a huge demographic shift taking place in