On today's Culture page, staff writer Cheryl Wetzstein follows a discussion on marriage trends featuring Kay Hymowitz, author of the new book Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age. Mrs. Hymowitz spoke recently at a Heritage Foundation forum, and the article notes:

College-educated women never went in for "the 'Murphy Brown' thing," she told the Heritage event, referring to the popular 1990s sitcom about a professional single woman who became a mother. Instead, they were more likely to follow the script where they get a job, get married and then have children. "And they raise their children with their husbands," says Mrs. Hymowitz, noting that the unwed-childbearing rates and divorce rates for female college graduates are very low, about 4 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

In 1992, when Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the "Murphy Brown" show for celebrating out-of-wedlock motherhood, he was denounced by Hillary Clinton for being "out of touch with America." Fifteen years later, mainstream social scientists -- and millions of success-oriented American women -- apparently agree that Dan Quayle was right.

-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor