The Grim Beeper

My thoughts:

1. The poor economy seems to be driving down the divorce rate. Many family lawyers say when times are tough, couples who would otherwise divorce stay together because they know divorce would financially devastate them both. Quite simply, they can’t afford to divorce.

2. Most of the women I knew who married and are still married decided to marry as young women, before reaching age 25. This seems to have held true regardless of whether in school, grad school, employed or unemployed, educational level or socioeconomic status. Those women put finding a mate at the top of their priority lists. They also either didn’t ride the carousel, or decided to get off the carousel early.

3. College education means better paying jobs. More women in college means women will have more earning power on average than men. Women marrying men with less education and less earning power means more unhappy marriages on average, increased societal dysfunction, and more divorces. And it’s likely that most of those women who divorce won’t remarry.

4. In retrospect, the problems Susan points out so well have been at least 40 years in the making. It will take at least a generation or two, if not longer, to turn it around.

Thank you Susan for speaking honestly about fertility. Too many women want to use rare celebrity examples of “advanced maternal age” (most assisted with modern science) to show that they can have children later only to be forced to confront the truth when options are most limited.

There is no perfect answer but at least young women can make informed decisions of the trade offs they are making.

Just saw something on AC360 last night about marriage rates having dropped 5% from 56 to 51% in America.

Deti,

Those treatments also tend to result in multiple births. Triplets at 40?!

That’s because the doctors have to use 12+ eggs per cycle due to womb hostility, and if one egg does make it, there’s usually division failure resulting in twins. Hello? How many more signs do you need from Mother Nature to GTFO? The sad thing here is that naturally infertile young couples have to fight tooth and nail to receive treatment on the NHS, whilst “voluntary” single mothers get all sorts of financial aid and encouragement. It’s disgusting.

I don’t get the college ratio thing btw. Is it because the men are actually earning less than their hypothetical wives or is it just because they don’t have the piece of paper?

Something else that should be noted in all this:

26.5 is the average age of women who get married. Lower socioeconomic females get married younger and wealthier college educated women get married later. For them, lets make the average, oh, 28.

Let’s say some poorer girl get married at 23 and divorces 5 years later, she is back on the market at 28.

A 28 year old woman who gets married and divorces 5 years later is now 33.

We all know what the SMP is like.

IOW, it is not a great idea for a marriage minded female to get divorced after, say, 5 years if she marries later in life.

Yes, but those types don’t marry as much.

Susan, you do understand that that is part of what makes them high status.

That accountant who went to the local State U and comes from a “nice” family and wears Izod shirts…not so much.

Just think of those older Apple versus PC commercials.

@ Isabel:

“That’s because the doctors have to use 12+ eggs per cycle due to womb hostility, and if one egg does make it, there’s usually division failure resulting in twins. Hello? How many more signs do you need from Mother Nature to GTFO?”

I’ve known a couple of women over 36 who tried this. For most, a couple of rounds and $2o K later, no viable pregnancy. It’s very sad, really. And high risk, and high expense. At that rate she’s better off trying to adopt.

“The sad thing here is that naturally infertile young couples have to fight tooth and nail to receive treatment on the NHS, whilst “voluntary” single mothers get all sorts of financial aid and encouragement. It’s disgusting.”

That must be in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. In the US, most insurance plans do not pay for infertility treatments or procedures. A $15K IVF procedure is all out of pocket. Most people in the US can’t even come close to affording that, and for most it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

As to the college ratio, in the US fewer men attend college. When I went 25 years ago it was more equivalent almost 1:1 men to women. Now it’s approaching 60% women. I gather there are a lot of reasons for this: a lot of men either don’t see the value in a college education, or don’t succeed at it when they try, or can’t afford it, or see bleak economic prospects whether they attend college or not so they simply don’t put forth the effort. It’s still true that people regardless of gender earn more with a college degree than without. So if women have more education and the resultant increased earning power, that puts most of them at higher status than most of the men they come in regular contact with.

Hope,

Is this what happens when college education turns into a profitable industry?

It has been “profitable” for non-profits for a pretty long time. Harvard has over 25 BILLION in cash. Billion, with a “B”.

Post-WWII generations and their various programs simply opened the floodgates.

“Among today’s college graduates, 25% of women will not marry college educated men.”

Not if polygamy is legalized. I can actually see that happening in the next 10 years.

“I just feel like it’s something else that they lump onto women that we have no control over. ”

Huh, WTF? Some women are so deranged it makes my head spin. Well, actually it doesn’t anymore, I’m used to it.

Yes, but I think it depends on where you live. By orders of magnitude there are fewer of those high status “artists” and wannabe rock stars in the midwest, where I live. Most of those artists and garage band dudes have low status day jobs at subsistence wage levels. Those men aren’t the marrying type and most recognize them as unmarriageable. Most women flock to them for tingles, not marriage — which, of course, seems to be part of the problem.

Deti, I was not trying to lay out the solution, but help paint the picture, as it were.

Susan was, in that instance, simply talking about girls wanting high status males. Being able to get him to lock it down is another matter. Personally, I think that they would be better off spreading their legs for accountants.

Ramble, the obedience, being quiet, memorization annd regurgitation, etc. is how education is in most other countries, and actually a lot stricter and more regulated. When I moved to the US, I was struck by rowdy and chaotic school classrooms were, and wondered how any learning actually happens.

However, in other cultures, young boys are praised to be more intelligent, more capable and simply better than girls, and the expectations are different. Boys also tend to be better at STEM subjects which are more prestigious in other places. There is a lot more emphasis on competition, which is a more masculine style. Test scores and grades are publicized, and the low achievers are shamed for being bad and told to work harder. Boys form hierarchies based on academic achievement instead of sports.

At least, that is the case when I was growing up in Asia.

Ramble, the obedience, being quiet, memorization annd regurgitation, etc. is how education is in most other countries, and actually a lot stricter and more regulated.

Who says that America should be like Indonesia (as just one example).

Most Americans love our slight Cowboy spirit. (Please do not OVER read that statement. Please do not take it to some stupid extreme.)

Free thinking, energetic, creative, etc.

Having a bunch of energetic, physical, hands-on, experience driven, rambunctious boys attempt to sit still and memorize facts about Beowulf is not the answer.

For some, yes…but not for all.

I doubt polygamy will be legalized. If it is, it’ll take more than 10 years.

1. It’s just not supported by culture. It doesn’t seem to enjoy the same kind of cultural acceptance that gay rights and gay marriage have. And even that has taken 40 to 50 years.

2. Most men can barely support one wife financially, let alone more than one.

3. Polygamy would be optional and only the top alpha men who even want to marry would exercise the option. But polygamy doesn’t fit the optimal mating strategy for men: a rotating harem. Of alphas who marry, they tend to gravitate toward a wife/regular sex partner with a series of ONSs and flings on the side. The apex top men who can do this and want to do so, do so now regardless of legal or social conventions.

“There is a lot more emphasis on competition, which is a more masculine style”

And THAT is key. In the U.S. the schools simply punish boys for being boys instead of finding ways to take their natural state and use it to help them learn. I can’t speak to other countries as I have no experience with their school systems. I can say that what I see here is a lot of boys being treated badly for wanting to act naturally. I was a quiet kid, so sitting still all day reading and writing didn’t throw me off. But most of my friends got in trouble a lot in grade school. And frankly, those early experiences pretty much turned them off from school for the rest of their lives. They felt like they were unfairly treated, and since the school wasn’t “fair” and they had no chance of “winning”, they gave up playing the game at all.

the “game” I’m talking about is actually participating and learning in school, instead of doing what most did: just enough to get by. If we are going to make school so terrible for young boys, why are we so surprised when they grow older and have no desire to try?

Joe, I don’t think that education is necessarily coddling. At least, it shouldn’t be. There are people who graduate college these days who can’t even spell properly. The smartest aren’t being challenged, and the mediocre slide through the system and graduate with the same piece of paper.

Ramble, I do admire American creativity and free-thinking spirit. Some great innovations have come from this country. But would you disagree with the following statement? Most people are not creative or free-thinking. They do well in structure, tradition and clear boundaries. That is also a critique of sexual liberation, letting young people’s sexual imperatives run wild.

A lot of foreigners work inside the US in top, cutting-edge fields of research and technology. In order to innovate in a lot of those fields, they need a lot of smarts, but also hard work and rigorous training, which does mean sitting quietly through studies — not of Beowulf, though. Most of them probably didn’t read Beowulf.

Those with fertility issues are in the small minority at your age.

Susan, do not perpetuate bullshit.

If you are implying that “real”fertility problems are not likely to show up, for the average woman, until, say, 35 and later, then, I understand.

But fertility is not the only issue. Likely health problems for the child are also a major issue.

And these things have simply not been investigated as much as they could have been.

On the harsher side:
Autism
Birth Defects
Birth weight
Un-descending Testes
etc.

On the “lighter” side:
GIRD
Allergies
etc.

Whenever these discussions come up it is only fertility that gets mentioned and rarely anything else.

Girls simply don’t want to get pregnant, they want to give birth to a healthy baby.

If yours were healthy, wonderful. But, so far, the stats for the general population are not lying.

Also, older women tend to be heavier and heavier women tend to give birth to children that will have weight problems. How much of that is nature versus nurture is another issue.

Exactly. Women will compromise, either by relaxing their demands, or remaining single.

Until that moment, it is “Tell em lies, tell me sweet little lies“.

@deti:
As to the college ratio, in the US fewer men attend college. When I went 25 years ago it was more equivalent almost 1:1 men to women. Now it’s approaching 60% women.

Not necessarily true. I understood it’s more about the overall amount of college-admissions exploding – where women have just increased their relative amount more than men. People get more education than ever before (and colleges graduate people with “less skills.”)

Take a look to the short overview @ http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/college-has-been-oversold.html . There are more seats in communications, journalism, visual arts, psychology, humanities, business etc. faculties. Those have long been female dominated. Then again, “Male-dominated” STEM-faculties have had pretty stable intakes.

It’s not hard to see a picture of Y-generation women actually having it way, way worse than just by looking at the SMP problems. For many of those so called “career women”, the future without a provider is unstable at best. I suspect there’s a fair amount of (educated) women for whom finding a stable marriage is genuinely becoming a last resort. I’m troubled…

Oh shit, did I quote the wrong person?

Rivelino and Ted, the problem with a girl in her early 20s looking 10 years older is that a lot of men who are going to get married are already married by then. Weren’t you both already married in your early 30s? Thus she’s left with a higher proportion of men who specifically don’t want to marry, or who are very picky because they can afford to be. If he happens to be a great catch, and no other woman had snagged him yet, AND he’s willing to propose to her in a short time, then good for her. I just find that more unlikely.

I would suggest that girls look at the nerdy men of their same age group before they look at men who are 10 years older. Out of the girls who are married or in a LTR and post here, a huge proportion are to a nerdy / STEM guy. We are obviously self-selected, but it does say something.

This post is a pretty good summary of where we are currently at with regards to this particular set of social phenomonen. I think it’s also good you mentioned “misandrist family law” as an real reason that actual, real-life men would have to not get married.

The more I learn about this, the more I think Dalrock is onto something: the current trends don’t portend the disappearance of marriage—only that marriage is about to become so scarce that it will become a status symbol in itself. I think women are going to learn to actually value the men who deign to bless them with long-term investment, because so few men are willing to do so. The landscape will be littered with cautionary tales—struggling single moms, cougars who played the game just a little too long only to get washed up—and sooner or later women will begin to take this to heart and engage in smarter reproductive decisionmaking at younger ages, when it counts most.

Not in my lifetime though, probably.

Hope, btw, previously I had referenced Indonesia as an example when I really meant to reference someplace like Singapore. Yes, I know that they don’t have that much in common, nor are they all that close to one another. My mistake.

“Among today’s college graduates, 25% of women will not marry college educated men.

That estimate is actually rosy because it assumes that men will want to marry in equal numbers to women. The data was not analyzed by sex, but in an era of misandrist family law that’s a dubious claim.”

Another thing it assumes is that if a college educated man wants to marry, he would necessarily want to marry a college educated woman. This is probably not true.

I have a college education, but the woman I’m with does not, and not only does it not bother me in the slightest, I can’t even imagine why it would. Chalk it up to another example of men being different than women.

I have no idea if maternal age of 28 is correlated with low birth rate, autism, un-descended testes and all the other stuff you listed, but I doubt it.

I do not have the references on hand at the moment, but from what I have read, the fertility/healthy-baby combo starts going downhill after 26. It is not rapid, but significant enough that,
1.) It should be mentioned, and
2.) it keeps getting worse each year after 26.

” “However, as has been discussed here before, quite a few guys express a desire to have sex with 21 year olds, but not to marry them or even date them seriously.””

I think feminism’s shaming of age-gap relationships is at least partly to blame here. Mid-20′s guys have been brainwashed that if they desire a younger woman they are dirty and patriarchal. It’s a shame, because a lot of those couples could be successful marriages if one or both of them got past the false idea that their relationship is wrong.
Badger´s last [type] ..Irish Breakfast

It’s pretty clear that young people in general are maturing much later than they did a generation ago.

Exactly how mature do you want those guys to be?

That is, a guy who is more likely to be admonished by teachers for being “disruptive”, less likely to be admitted to a 4 year college, less likely to be employed at 22, more likely to be laid off if employed (i.e. the Mancession), more likely to make less money at that age if employed, more likely to be raped in divorce court, more likely to lose custody of his children, more likely to…well, you get the idea.

Men, as far as I can tell, are reacting to an environment. But, attempting to lead a life that would make marriage a possibility at 25 is simply not going to happen for most in this environment.

Susan, what kind of home could some 25 year old guy afford in Brookline or Washington DC? And, if DC, could he or would he raise a child in that neighborhood?

“quite a few guys express a desire to have sex with 21 year olds, but not to marry them or even date them seriously. Guys seeking an LTR or even a wife want someone whose life experience is a bit closer to their own. ”

The issue here is maturity. Guys in their 30′s are not looking for drama and fashion tips. They want a women that can have intelligent conversations on topics other than pop culture.

I for one become VERY interested in a women after she demonstrates that she thinks about more than Jersey Shore and the latest fashions. In fact, for me it adds at least one point of SMV value. Nothing gets on my nerves as much as a young woman (or man for that matter) that can’t converse about important (or at least current/relevant) topics other than media fed crap.

Take away? Ladies, please please PLEASE read. Not romance novels either. News, current event, politics, religion, etc. And after you read, form an opinion. You don’t have to become an expert at all, just know enough to talk a little. If you find a guy that is passionate about a specific subject, he will likely LOVE being able to “educate” you if you only know the basics. In fact, it will go a LONG way towards making those early awkward conversations (in early dating) much less so.

This is exactly how I handle sports. I know enough to be able to participate in those “manly” football conversations, but I spend most of my time listening and adding commentary. Of course, it helps that I live in Steeler country! (sorry, had to plug the home team!)

Those of you in your 20s can have marriage and a family if you want it, but you can’t have it all. My generation of feminists lied to you about that.

Hi Susan–Respectfully speaking, this is a little ironic coming from you, a woman who, if she doesn’t have it all, still has most of it. You have two kids, a loving husband, what you describe as a lovely home in a UMC neighborhood and a Wharton MBA (?, if I recall correctly.) You’ve pretty much achieved the “feminist” dream of our generation.
As you may remember from when I used to post here often, I had quite a struggle with infertility and miscarriage, but I still ended up with a family situation that is pretty similar to yours. If this dream was all a lie, you and I are living it..and as far as I can tell, enjoying it. At least I am.
While IRL I do tell young women my infertility story as a cautionary tale, my happy ending also belies the point I am trying to make. The very presence of women in my community who continued to practice law or medicine while raising two or more kids further belies the point. (Hell, even at this point in MY life, I envy those women their ability to balance it all.)
Young women need to know the facts about declining fertility, but the negative rhetoric that surrounds this issue is counter-productive. The truth isn’t that you can’t have it all; try and you’ll end up a childless cat lady. It’s more like not everyone gets it all, and most of us don’t get it all at the same time. A very fortunate and hardworking few do “get it all;” many more get most/ a lot; some get a little; a few get nothing. Some lucky breaks and lot of careful planning and awareness will get you quite a bit. It’s when people try to say something different that honesty about the number looks like a “scare tactic.” Hence the backlash.

“From Moe the bartender: The older they get, the cuter they ain’t.”

Actually Aunt Patty.

Yeah, “balance” is a joke. If you have to work because it’s that or starvation, that’s one thing. But doctors and lawyers with husbands almost certainly never face this. They are doing it because they want to for whatever reason. That means they have to outsource the raising of their children in very large measure.

So, no, you cannot “have it all” if that is defined as high powered UMC career + being primary caregiver (i.e., mommy) to your kids.

Sorry.

One group for whom this is not bad news is omega males, the single largest segment of the population that no one has ever studied or written about. Shut out of the market for women they can feel attracted to, they dwell in a stratum far below the drama described above. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Isabel – That may be the case in recent history, but as time goes on you will find more men in their 30′s that have not yet married. And, although right now that group may not be the best to choose from, as the ranks grow selection will be much better.

Unless my son finds a real gem, I’m going to suggest he puts off marriage until his late 20′s or early 30′s and then look for a younger but mature woman to start a family with. My thinking is: He will be in a much better position once he is established to select a better mate. That is provided all the remaining women are not carousel riders… And THAT is why I will suggest he find a younger woman: to snag her before she rides too long.

I agree Dragnet. I’m not sure which is chicken and which is the egg, but I’m pretty sure that men will not step up until women do. Frankly, they don’t have to.

Hi Hope,

A second pregnancy loss? I am so terribly sorry to hear this.

I am scared that I won’t be able to have a healthy baby. This year I had a stillbirth almost at term and a miscarriage due to chromosomal issues.

I can surely understand your feelings, but don’t give up just yet. Miscarriages like yours happen very frequently, even among younger women. If I remember a conversation that I had with my infertility doc, something like 2/3 fertilized embryos do not result in live births due to chromosonal issues. Most spontaneously abort before mom even realizes she’s pregnant. So much can go wrong that it’s a miracle that any of us are here. Baby Liam’s death, so tragic, seems sort of random to me, not like something that would repeat itself.

I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs, not on any prescription medication, exercise, eat healthily, 19 BMI, no risk factors, no family history of miscarriages, and so it’s hard to hear that my chances are much lower than just 5 years ago.

Your chances are lower statistically but not necessarily individually. If I weere to read a year from now that you had a healthy baby, I would be completely unsurprised. All the positive things you list are still working in your favor and since you have gotten pregnant in the past, I would assume that you still can.

At the time I had my older son, I had a history of social drinking, was a former smoker, was dependent on two prescription medications including thyroid hormone–the lack of which affects fertility, exercised sporadically, ate somewhat unhealthily, had several risk factors related to age, and a history of miscarriages and of endometriosis (like Grerp). The odds were really against me, but today I have two healthy and (dare I say) gifted soms whose birth bracketed my 40th birthday. It was a long hard slog, but I did it. I’d say that your odds are considerably better than mine were, so I have little doubt that you’ll eventually have the family you want. It just isn’t always pretty getting there.

FWIW, my heart goes out to you. It’s horrendously tough, but hang in there.

Some girls won’t admit it no matter how desperately they really want it …

Christ, I have been saying that forever.

So I guess Mr. HUS has bought into the feminist shaming.

Well, he married a ONS, does not ask you about your past, raised an independent daughter and a beta son and now this, so…maybe.

Hi Ted/Escoffier,

Susan and I go back a ways, so we are familiar with each other’s life goals and patterns. And mine is so similar to hers, including a long hiatus from career to be a SAHM, that I’m sure she knows that I wasn’t criticizing her choice.

Interesting that both of you jumped to that though, especially since my original comment referenced that she and I were coming from roughly the same place…

As to full time professional moms being poor moms, I’ve known some great professional moms and some rather self-absorbed ones, but I’ve also known women with no professional aspirations who spent more time on their soap operas than their kids. Good and bad moms come in many varieties. I do envy the competence of women I see who can keep a lot balls in the air. I just knew that, at the advanced age I had my kids, I wasn’t going to be one of them.

J, it’s just a fact that, in a 24 hour day, you are going to sleep for roughly 8. That leaves 16. If you work, kiss goodbye to at least 10 more and for a UMC career woman, 12 and up is not uncommon (when you factor in morning primping and commutes).

So someone else has to be with your kids. You physically cannot. Now, in the time that you have, you can be good with them or not on a sliding scale. But the brute fact is, someone else is delivering the bulk of the care. In a decisive sense, that someone else is “mommy.”

The only way to fix this would be by manipulating temporal mechanics to allow you to be in two places at the same time. Geordi LaForge and Data could spend decades on that project and not come up with a solution.

He thought it was too vast an age difference, and that a man that age should be looking for women closer to his own age. So I guess Mr. HUS has bought into the feminist shaming.

In the past year, I have had opportunities to discuss arranged marriages with both a Hindu woman and a Lubavitch Chasid. Both told me that an age gap of more than 10 years in generally avoided in matchmaking and that the Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote the Jewish equivalent of an encyclical opposing large age gaps. Some very traditional cultures agree with Mr. HUS.

My parents were 9 years apart. My dad’s final years and eventual death were very hard on my mom. She probably died 5-7 years earlier than she might have had he been alive and healthy. It seems like marrying a much older man is virtually signing up for that.

We’ve already got Kate Bolick getting a TV show. I can already see the sitcom where the Pulitzer prize winning journalist marries Joe the Plumber.

Wouldn’t the sitcom be better if Joe liked the “accomplished journalist”, but married her younger, hotter niece?

Yes, I can see this. At least, it makes me think of the sex cartel – when women en masse weren’t putting out, men got married much sooner.

Which is why slut shaming was so important to previous generations of women. It was good for themselves and their daughters (and sons).

#82 olive

“Re: Marrying an older guy. I’ve actually thought about this quite a bit, and I’ve decided if I was ever back on the market, I’d go for guys in their early 30s.”

smart girl.

#83 isabel

“How? You do realise that pre-feminism, most women still married within or near their age group? And that one look at historical records (biggest one being WWI) and town halls would disprove this feminist machination to deprive men of young fanny? They called it assortative for a reason.”

let’s see data. i find that hard to believe. a man was supposed to provide for his wife. much easier to do if he is significantly older.

“A man who deliberately avoids and dodges marriage in favour of the carousel for over a decade isn’t really a man to prioritise. Particularly ones who go into matrimony solely for the prospect of ‘exclusively banging a hot 24 year old’. ”

isabel, you don’t understand men. i am a man. you should listen to me if you want insight into the male psyche.

a man can want to fuck a lot of girls in his 20s, and then find a girl to adore in his 30s. completely normal. healthy, even.

#91 olive

“To be honest I think Rivelino is recommending girls marry older guys because HE wants to get with a 24 year old and he’s 36 if I remember correctly. So. His reasoning is based in his own self-interest most likely.”

very true, i just wrote the same thing on my blog. i have a massive crush on a 24 year old girl right now, and i am 36, and i keep on having these stupid crazy idea of marrying her and running off with her.

so i definitely have “an agenda” when i recommend this, but i believe in this case, my agenda only proves my point.

#95 susan

“So I guess Mr. HUS has bought into the feminist shaming.”

i think you’re right! i think you should press him on this subject. maybe he can even write a blog post about his thoughts.

#100 ramble

“Well, he married a ONS, does not ask you about your past, raised an independent daughter and a beta son and now this, so…maybe.”

exactly.

and yeah, what was your DAUGHTER’S reaction to being asked out by a 34 year old man?
Rivelino´s last [type] ..Do sluts suck better dick?

#117 susan

“She was open to the idea. She thought he was attractive. She did want to know if he’d been married already, though. She didn’t want to date someone who had been divorced. Hardly surprising at her age.”

yeah, at 22 i can see her wanting “fresh new love”, but divorced men truly are the best bet as far as “older men” go. past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. if he was such a romantic that he got married before, it is much more likely that he will want to get married again.

obviously, kids would be a deal breaker.

and yes olive, i say that because i have no kids

so susan, let’s talk more about your daughter. she is single i take it?
Rivelino´s last [type] ..Juggler got married!

” Here’s a thoroughly revolutionary concept: Keep the dames out of college. Yeah, I said it.

That final bit caused quite a stir among some women in the blogosphere. I was on board until then, but yikes, eliminating the competition to get men into college is not going to fly in a global economy, even if I didn’t find the suggestion sexist.”

No more sexist than affirmative action quotas used previously to get more women into colleges. It’s just flipping the gender narrative, nothing more.

Of course that final comment caused a stir, it’s because its’ a valid policy to adopt – affirmation action for men to restore the gender balance in higher education. What’s wrong with that?

I strongly suspect that college admissions officers are having a conniption of this gender imbalance so there is likely an ad hoc form of affirmative action going on behind closed doors during the application review process.

A couple of comments:

As for women dating older men, I’ve given OkCupid a shot (granted, over a year ago), and almost all the women there are “looking for” men who START at their age but go up to 8-9 years older than they are. As in it’s very common to see “looking for” 24-32, 24-31, etc. I don’t think that women not marrying older men is as big a problem as it’s made out to be. Although I do know one 23 year-old girl who is dating a 38 year-old man, and it’s honestly pretty creepy. He’s balding, divorced already, and every time he shows up while we’re going to bars people start asking “who invited their uncle?”. However, I know quite a few girls dating guys 5-6 years older, and it’s not an issue or a problem.

Another thing I see all the time, especially at nice restaurants, is gorgeous 20-something women with average, but loaded, 40-something men. The problem is that this dynamic leads most successful older men (30+) to have grave reservations about the motivations of any younger girl he is dating. How does he know she’s not just after his money? Gold digging is not uncommon and most older guys who have money are worried about it. So while older men will date younger women, this reservation will make them think 4 or 5 times before marrying (and potentially losing half their assets) to them.

Lastly, marriage and kids are expensive! I have lived in NYC my whole life, and want to live here for the rest of my life (or another major city, maybe SF or Chicago). However, doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, to live with 2 kids in private school in Manhattan, and live comfortably, you’re looking at $350,000 pre-tax income minimum, more likely $400,000. Not many (in fact none outside of finance, and these days not even there necessarily) 25-28 year olds are going to be pulling down that kind of money. Even if you work in management consulting/law/medicine, the three highest paying professions outside of finance, by 35 you’re doing very well making $300,000+ a year (for lawyers and consultants, making partner happens around then, but is not guaranteed). Even if you plan on relying on 2 incomes, that’s still $175,000/spouse, not chump change, especially given that many highly-educated women still go into fields like fashion, PR and marketing that don’t pay all that much. So the financial reasons are very strong (at least for men, who are still expected to be the primary provider) to wait until you’re nearer peak earning power to marry and have kids. The (rough) plan in my case is to marry at 33-35 to a woman 27-30, and have the first kid at 34-37, when my financial situation will likely be strong enough to support it.

Good to see you.

You too.

Let me clarify. When I said “have it all” I meant family and career.
This blog isn’t a new career for you? I see it as a small business as well as a service. You have advertisers, so I assume there’s some income.

In fact, I left the workforce in 1989, never to return. I did so because my son was not thriving or happy in child care. So I went with family. My husband and I made the decision together and I have no regrets.

I’m feeling you there. As you may recall, I quit work becasue the thought of leavng my kid with a sitter was breaking my heart. I went to too much hell to have him to leave him with soomeone who obviously wasn’t love him like do. No real regrets on my part, just some admiration for other’s achievements.

That Wharton MBA was an unwise investment as it turns out.

Really? I suppose that you could have gone on to be a CEO somewhere had you wanted it, but I think we all have the choice of doing what we want with our educations. I’ve worked out of my original field and taken a lot of time off, but I don’t feel my education was a poor investment. Also, I would have thought that yourbusiness background plays a big part in the success of this blog. Not a criticism BTW as I anticipate some of your readers might interpret it. I’ve always admired how you’ve applied your business acumen to this blog.

As it happens, I broke with the feminists when I made that choice….

You know, I’m never really even sure what the word means anymore. When we were young, feminism was about equality and choices; things have changed. But I think you’ll agree that our educational path when we took it was perceived as feminist and that we benefitted from it. There are some who would argue that leaving the workplace was also a feminist choice, but I don’t care to get bogged down in that. The F word shuts down more honest discussion than it promotes.
it’s very clear that women in our generation who tried to have big careers and raise children wound up forfeiting one thing or the other. They either stepped off the track, as I did, or hired someone else to raise their kids.

A few, as I said, mananged to “have it all.” Most of us indeed needed to make choices. I’m happy to have had choices to make. I think my life, including what I have in terms of personal strengths, is better because of that. I bet you can say the same.

The female grads with families were all doing interesting things, but of their own design, like I do here.

Exactly. Me too. That’s why I’m grateful that I had the opportunities to develop myself that I did.

Do the women lawyers and doctors you know work full time?

It varies with their age, age of children, husband’s occupation and other factors.

Because I know a bunch too and they’ve all gone independent…

All? Really? I know a wider variety: full time lawyers with older kids, a divorcee with little kids, lawyers who’ve never practiced to lawyers changed careers but still use law in their careers, a doctor with a house husband, one with a limitied practice, a lawyer who shares a practice with her husband, etc.

Young women don’t know the facts. We have sex ed programs that introduce fisting, but we don’t tell women what their reproductive cycle is.

It’s a problem, but one that predates special interest groups. I could have been diagnosed with incipient endometriosis as a teenager, but a (male) doctor told my mother I just wanted to get out of gym class. You know how girls are? At any rate, I DO agree–as I said in my original post–that women have to be informed, but the cat lady talk from the commentariat is counterproductive. It causes young women to turn off and gives women with current issues bad information that may not apply to them.

My sister married a man one year older than she. He has an associate’s degree, later apprenticed and became a journeyman in a trade. She has a master’s degree and worked for a while, but then when her first child was born she started working part time as a substitute teacher.

But I remember she specifically wanted him to finish a bachelor’s degree before they married. He told her he didn’t want to. She married him anyway. I guess it did not matter all that much for them; as they’ve been married 14 years and are doing quite well. I don’t think this is the norm, and they live in the midwest. Moreover, let’s just say this wasn’t her “ideal” situation.

Hi Escoffier–

it’s just a fact that, in a 24 hour day, you are going to sleep for roughly 8. That leaves 16. If you work…

Are we cross-posting? I thought it was clear that I have been a SAHM. You are preaching to the choir here, though I do respect the women I know who have accomplished great things.

BTW, I used to be a regular commenter here and elsewhere in the manosphere. I tend to drift in and out based on what else is happening in my life and how perturbed I am by the general tone of discussion. I followed you over to Dalrock’s to see the dust-up and thought you did a fine job of defending a reasonable position that was guaranteed to rile up his commenters who are even more rilable (if that’s not a word, I want credit for coining it) than I remembered them. As Ali G might say, RESPECT!

#135 olive

“I’d argue that most 23-24 year old American girls are not mature enough for a guy in his 30s.”

olive, this is an excellent comment, because it is a comment i can work off of.

like i was telling isabel, let me tell you what men TRULY want — and yeah, it’s similar to the dave chapelle joke.

a man wants a girl who is:

1. pretty and sexy
2. kind, caring, feminine and delicate
3. fun to be around
4. with many shared values
5. and some shared interests

the phrase, and the concept “not mature enough” — what does that exactly mean? what are we talking about here? i know that other men have been commenting about not liking girls who reading cosmo, or who watch jersey shore, etc — but don’t misunderstand what they are really saying.

a man does not want a girl who is ANNOYING, VAPID and BORING. but a girl can watch the real housewives, read us weekly, and listen to celine dion — as long as she loves to cook, loves to fuck, and isn’t annoying and vapid — then who cares what she reads?

some guys might say that reading us weekly MAKES her vapid, but that’s not true. us weekly is like sports illustrated for girls. all of us have a slightly frivolous, shallow side. and plus, nobody wants to be around someone who only thinks about very heavy stuff all day long, like nixon, kissinger, jfk — that kind of stuff can get really depressing.

i guess my point is that maturity is just another one of those vague words that often doesn’t have much meaning. if a girl is 24 but wants to fall in love, and wants to live for real, and not just pretend, then that is 80% of it right there. if she still hasn’t read war and peace, i forgive her. i haven’t read it either.

PLUS — and this is my last point — a girl at 24 will more often be fresh, lively, vulnerable and trusting — and that is something that a man really loves and values. this falls under her being “delicate” and “feminine”, and is second in importance only to her being pretty and sexy.

a girl in her 30s is often much more jaded, and bitter, and sour.

hard to fall in love with a sour girl.

really hard.

#136 zach

“The (rough) plan in my case is to marry at 33-35 to a woman 27-30, and have the first kid at 34-37, when my financial situation will likely be strong enough to support it.”

what’s your story? you sound like you kinda overthink things, especially when it comes to dating. how much yohami have you read. i recommend you read as much as you can find.
Rivelino´s last [type] ..What a goddam fool I was

Susan:

That Wharton MBA was an unwise investment as it turns out

My reply:

But was it, really? You were in a social environment tailored for you to meet men who were going to be of a socio-economic background to support a family whether or not you became a stay-at-home mom. It was your insurance policy, so to speak. You got the degree which enabled you to become high-earning yourself and meet men who were going to be high-earning. It seems like a win-win.

@Zach on cost of living and having kids. We live in Utah where the cost of living is not high. It also has the highest birth rate in the nation, though not most number of births. It’s really a good idea to start trying to have kids at mid-20s. They are only as expensive as you make them.

It’s been very depressing for me to talk about fertility and babies though. I may have to remove myself from this topic for a while.