Michelle Obama may have become an archetypal African-American female success story.

Michelle Obama may have become an archetypal African-American female success story—law career, strong marriage, happy children, but the reality is often very different for other highly educated Black women.They face a series of challenges in navigating education, career, marriage and child-bearing, dilemmas that often leave them single and childless even when they’d prefer marriage and family, according to a research study recently presented at the American Sociological Society’s annual meeting. Yale researchers Natalie Nitsche and Hannah Brueckner argued that “marriage chances for highly educated Black women have declined over time relative to White women.”