SHORT TAKES : Brown: Marriage Not a Necessity

Actress Blair Brown balks at the notion that all single women are looking for a man. Brown, a non-married, working mother, says, “I don’t think women are waiting for that key piece any longer.”

“It’s not that they don’t want that closeness,” Brown said in an interview in the August issue of McCall’s magazine, “but we’re more like men now. Women don’t have to settle, and they don’t anymore.”

The 40-year-old actress, who stars in cable television’s “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” says her time is divided between long workweeks and weekends in the country with her 8-year-old son, the product of her nine-year relationship with actor Richard Jordan. Although the couple split up about five years ago, Brown says they remain close.

As for why she never married, Brown says:

“When I was younger, it was certainly about breaking the rules, but I think now it’s just a question of following your own heart and finding you’re just not in sync with whatever the norms are.”