Being college educated doesn't mean much these days in america. read the statistics about college grads and how little they know. Of course there are exceptions, but most US college grads are about as well educated as typical Finnish high school grad.

Another way to put it - will a man be seen as (a) more or (b) less desirable to most women if he makes the following statement: “I’d like to marry a successful career woman, and when we have kids, I’d like to stay home and be the primary caretaker for the kids”?

What I'm really trying to get at is that no one should be staying home full time while the other is at work all day.

Careers are a very personal thing. Having a child shouldn't be thought of as something you do for yourself. You are doing it for the child and the world. It is important to raise them right, but not at the cost of your future. With two parents, it shouldn't be that difficult to split the time across both.

That may sound wrong, but in reality, it takes a village to raise a child. Why should one person sacrifice the rest of their life?

It may quite well take a village to raise a child, but in practice for most people there won't ba a village to do so; One person shouldn't have to sacrifice the rest of their life, but more likely than not one you will have to do that; and while I can agree that 'no one should be staying home full time while the other is at work all day' and Scandinavian countries have very nice results with such policies for both parents, in USA most people will be forced to choose between either that or poverty.

So, to answer the question, you're stating "clearly the answer should be b" ... but is the answer b in reality?

I didn't say that it should be B, I'm saying that unfortunately it is B. I can guarantee few women in the US want to support a man. However, I think the inverse is making more ground. Meaning I think less men are interested in highly dependent women.

The leveling of the double standard is happening not by women accepting dependent men, but by men expecting an independent woman.

I think about this a lot, but have not formed any convincing theoryas to why this is.

Try to sleep with maybe, but marry? I doubt it.

edit: This wasn't clear in my post, but I was speaking for myself. To each his own of course. :)

That said, this was a really bad algorithm. My divorce sucked.

Since then, I've selected on a maxmin of a quirky combination of intelligence plus subjective cuteness combined with financial stability. So far, so good. I had to rule out several otherwise promising contenders on the way using the second criterion though.

I would not consider marrying the receptionist, no matter how hot, unless I noticed that she was reading O'Reilly books and/or managing her multiple rental properties between visitors to the front desk. You do not want to marry a boat anchor and make beautiful concrete galoshes with her.

Finally, while looks are a mediocre measure of long-term compatibility when one is young, as one approaches and passes 40, one's looks become less a matter of genetics and more a matter of the consequences of conscious choices along the way and so I got pickier on that axis as my pool of potential partners aged.

Women who are selecting for financial stability early on are way ahead of you if you truly consider a financially competent woman emasculating. Get over it.

Wow. What if you enjoy each others company immensely?

So yes, if I found out the receptionist was falling ever deeper into debt and/or wasn't doing something on her own to rise above the seemingly unstoppable ongoing wealth redistribution to the top 5%, I would not marry her. OTOH if I found out she was a diamond in the rough like I alluded to above, I wouldn't let her out of my sight.

Fights over money are marriage-killers. And to quote Faye Valentine: "Beautiful skin can only be maintained by tireless efforts which are ultimately totally futile." So what's in it for me in this case other than transient enjoyment followed by a lifetime of sorrow?

And get divorced a few years later once both of you realize that "enjoying each others company immensely" is not sufficient to have a successful marriage.

You may as well ask why he would not marry somebody he is not physically attracted to.

It doesn't make you sound like a very nice person.

In modern life and in the US, we're much less aware of social class at all (or actively dislike the concept), and it's gotten (somewhat) decoupled from economic class. Someone who has become a lawyer or otherwise economically successful could be from any class and it's not unlikely they might choose to marry someone from a similar social class (with similar background) rather than someone with similar economic class.

Many do indirectly. They get together with someone for that, then something else develops (or nothing else develops but the only way to keep the fucks and giggles is to keep her happy by marrying her!).

No all marriages are built on both parties pleasing/challenging each other intellectually.

Which is the crux of it. Though I wouldn't say it's fair to consider it self-inflicted.

Even if a woman decided she was comfortable with the idea of dating a less-successful/educated man quite a few years younger than herself, few social circles would accept it without friction (far fewer than see any problem with the arrangement were genders reversed) and fewer (desirable) men are themselves comfortable with it.

So, sure, every 20-year-old woman is fairly well aware of these factors and ought to plan accordingly. But even if they shake the mentality at 30, while they can improve their pool, erasing the disadvantage entirely is simply not something that's under their control.

One thing that would help is if TV and other mass media stopped enforcing this stereotype so much - they always have the high-powered woman married to the high-powered man, and the high-powered man may be married to either a career woman or non-career woman, but you don't see the reverse. A few shows (Parenthood comes to mind) have gone against this trend.

A man in his 30s, dating women in their 20s will find more of them amenable to reproducing right away, and it's not much of a big deal to the man, if a prospective partner wants to delay that another 5-10 years.

A woman in her 30s, dating men in their 20s will find fewer of them amenable to reproducing right away, and there are significant, potentially deal-breaking costs to the woman associated with delaying another 5-10 years.

There are alternatives (adoption, surrogates, etc) and perhaps through some social normalization they'll further close the gap. But the social/financial/identity[1] costs of such arrangements are going to remain substantial for some time.

[1] that is, a person's (potentially strong) preference for traditional, biological children, due only their own pre-conceived notions of how they'd start their family. Women have definitely been known to 'settle' for a lesser mate to avoid challenging that preconception. And that willingness to settle is a profound disadvantage.

Should it be the role of software engineers to fix social injustice as well? Perhaps our designs should be subject to review by some committee to ensure they meet certain criteria, as would likely be the case with The television industry if you wanted to ensure compliance.

Notice this article is bemoaning the sad state of those unpaired women at the top, but makes no mention of the unpaired men at the bottom who are suffering just as much, if not more so.

> My wife is a corporate lawyer and gets a lot of flak for working long hours, especially from family. Nobody ever gives me flak for working long hours. Painting in broad brush strokes, men tend to find that when they get married, society reinforces their career ambitions. Women tend to find that when they get married, society chips away at their career ambitions. Other women, particularly other moms, are the worst about it.

The aforementioned author argues, more or less cogently, that popular feminism seems to have been all about erasing this imbalance by grading successful women by the same rubric as successful men. But this is the wrong idea, and it seems to establish this extremely misguided notion that the men had it right all along: fulfillment and happiness are only accomplished by working long hours for worse pay under terrible management. The men, the popular feminists seem to be arguing, really understood what life was about the whole time and only through truly egalitarian "feminism by the numbers", where men and women work the same number of hours and for the same salaries and in the same proportions in every industry can women be happy.

But, that author argues, is that it's a ruse. There's no reason to assume the men had it right, that being willing to sell your soul for the corporate machine is envious or desirable or worthwhile.

> "Other women ... are the worst about it."

Why is that bad? Why is it that women are the worst when espousing the idea that life isn't about career ambition? It's worth thinking about. Why is the unfair social pressure that your wife is urged to spend more time with her family, and not that you're urged to spend more time at work?

Maybe, the author argues, society and popular feminism is profoundly mistaken. Perhaps the real thing we should all be fighting for is a society in which people aren't asked to work long hours ever again. Where the balance between the home and the workplace is more equitable such that we don't have to make necessarily gender-biasing decisions like having to decide which family member will work longer and which one will stay home longer.

[1]: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

* - SLOW DOWN THERE. I'm a feminist.

Within this context, "opting out" means depending on a man for security, and telling women that "motherhood is more fulfilling than work" is encouraging them to be dependent. My wife sees it as rationalization--women trying to convince themselves that people do respect parenting because they should respect it.

Anecdote: when my wife had trouble finding a job initially in law school, a career counselor tried to comfort her by pointing out that at least I had a good job. To a person who yearns to be self-sufficient it wasn't comforting--it was devastating.

Yes, those are extremely different. There are very few ways in which an employment relationship is anything like a spousal relationship.

But that's not necessarily true; it's possible to imagine a scenario where you net out ahead by buying improved median productivity at the expense of reduced maximum individual productivity.

Think of it game-theoretically, assume a coordination problem that penalizes defectors (here, people who don't sacrifice their personal lives for improved productivity), and then bear in mind that some workers might be required to defect no matter what the rules of the game are.

The strategy you want obviously depends on your mix of natural cooperators vs. natural defectors.

Because this is not their life that they are talking about.

The efforts were largely successful (albeit not completely) but in the third wave* there has been a severe backlash against the ideology and the social pressures that it raised. That's what your are talking about in your comment. There's was a movement to say -- it's okay to want to be a homemaker, it's okay to wear clothes that make you feel sexy, it's okay to want men to hold the door for you.

I think it's swung too far the other direction. While it was originally "okay" there's a lot of voices out there saying, implicitly or explicitly, that it's "natural" to want to play all those traditional gender roles. That women who run companies, or nations, or work 80 hours a week are unnatural, ruining it for everyone else, or lying to themselves. That if you are a successful single women you nonetheless have a duty to the sisterhood to fight for mothers' issues because of your gender.

In other words, I think it's time for a backlash to the backlash.

*ignoring for the movement the race/class/international/gay aspects of third wave feminism

Some people want career success. Some people want to take care of a family. There are both genders in each group, but society only supports one gender in each. A feminist point is people of both genders should be supported in whichever endeavor fulfills them.

ps You are not a feminist.

It is surely an imbalance that needs correcting, but there is legitimate question as to how that imbalance is best corrected.

this may be how it looks on paper, but in reality the 'right wing' (hah) of feminism hijacks the agenda.

modern feminism is like the republican party of gender relations.

This means, when women are in their early twenties, they're use to being in relationships or hooking up with the most attractive men. Although I hate ratings, let's say men 8-10, are getting together with all the women 5-10. This can't work in the long run, because people partner up 1-1, so those 8-10 men end up married to 8-10 women. What happens with all these women 5-7? They spent their twenties with men 8-10, and now they're left with their equals, men 5-7, so they feel like they're settling, or stepping down. At the same time, men feel like they're dating up, because they never received attention from these women before. Meanwhile, they're equal, but prior history leaves this skewed perspective.

In short, average women in their twenties get attention from great guys. As people begin to settle down, average women are only left with average men, and they're left wondering where all the good men have gone.

This kind of societal screwed-up-ness is exactly what's predicted by those who say that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage. People get in the habit of hooking up, which sets up unrealistic expectations on both sides. We're losing the ability to have real relationships. Remember that article about how people in Japan "aren't having sex anymore"? The HN comment consensus was, they are, they just don't have lasting relationships, because that's too hard.

People take the easy way out, even if it makes them unhappy later. If you can have sex without being married, that's easier than taking the time to develop a deep relationship, even if you're never really happy.

Of course, nothing will work if people don't have good character, which is really the problem. If people are getting married just to have sex, not because they're prepared to make the sacrifices required by living and working together, then things only get worse. We've instilled an entitlement mentality in lots of people, and we're reaping the results.

Anyway, if you wanted to know why premarital sex is considered immoral in most major religions (the big 3 monotheistic ones, anyway), you're watching it, live.

Young women generally will only date men her age or older. So for example a 22 yo woman would date men in the large pool between 22 and 30. Meanwhile the 22 yo man doesn't have much opportunity to date older or younger. However, when the woman hits 30, the situation has reversed and the 'marriageable' men in her pool are dating younger women.

Whether someone is a '5' or an '8' isn't necessarily an inherit characteristic and has a lot to do with their life circumstances.

And that population is mis-matched to anyone who is looking for a pair-bond, so they're irrelevant to an analysis of the problems of pair-bonding.

You mean as well say "not everyone is heterosexual/monogamous/etc". And of course they aren't.

But it's hardly useful to suggest successful women can just find happiness if they would simply "choose" to never marry, or pair with another successful woman, or enter a companionate relationship with a homosexual man, or join an already-married couple, or whatever else.

One, because only very few people can consciously change what type of relationship they desire. And, two, because the population amenable to such arrangements is so much smaller than the population at large, that it doesn't effectively increase their odds, even if they are open to such arrangements.

That is, from what I can tell, rayiner's point. As the world goes from one in which there were many college-educated men for every college-educated woman to an oversupply of college-educated women per college-educated man, that preference will become a self-inflicted (due to preference) disadvantage when it comes to dating. That seems to be rayiner's premise, and it seems to be true, unless preferences and habits evolve as the landscape evolves (which I think will be true).

While I agree, I would say that this mentality predates the 1960s in many ways. A woman's status has always been more strongly evaluated based on who she married than a man's. A man is often judged first by what he does, and secondly by his spouse, family, background, etc. A woman will usually be judged first by her relationships, especially her closest ones.

The reason the term "alpha female" isn't in the popular lexicon the same way as "alpha male" is probably because men will judge a woman based more on her attractiveness than on her place in some social hierarchy.

I'd be interested to know if these tendencies held more strongly for cultures where monogamy was not the nominal relationship form. They seem to me to be an evolutionary vestige in a lot of ways.

Just curious, do you end up hiring baby-sitters for the baby? My friends at this moment are going through this situation, and I see what happens very often is that baby-sitters are too expensive, not good enough, or a number of other things and eventually the woman ends up deciding it's time to put a halt on the career and accept herself as a 'housewife' of sorts. I'm curious to know how you and your wife managed through this.

That being said, I think it's penny-wise and pound-foolish to downshift your career merely because of the cost of childcare. Staying at home to take care of kids is a career death sentence. When your child is mostly independent in 11-12 years, you'll still have most of your career ahead of you, and your earning power will be greatly diminished. I think the stigma against people who choose to stay at home for a few years to take care of kids is ridiculous, but it almost guarantees that you'll be relegated to a second-tier type of position forever after.

In real life, often achieving 'ambitious career sucess goal Omega' happens at the cost of your family and other non-working life.

Maybe it shouldn't be so, but life isn't fair, and often your job/research/band/political career/book/whatever will be better off (at least until burnout) if in your actions you put it above your family/social life/hobbies/friends/happiness. And if it in the end kills you by a heart attack, suicide or drug abuse, well, it doesn't affect the achievement as long as it happens after that.

My observation is that there are X% women who would (in practice) choose an ambitious goal at abovementioned cost and intentionally stick with that decision, and Y% of men who would do so; and that the Y% rate is much bigger than X%. It corelates well with a variety of facts, like the gender differences in profession choice, known gender differences in risk-taking (and risk-misevaluation), gender differences in crime rates (again, being ambitious while fscking up your life), etc.

My hypothesis (with no idea on how to verify or reject it) is that the observed difference is not purely social, but built-in - it's clear how it (if it exists) could be caused by gene regulation, and there are evolutionary psychology arguments on why such a difference could be useful for early homo sapiens. I'd like to see if it's true or not.

55 men, 45 women 80% of the men are in stable relationships 80% x 55 men = 44 men 44 men with 44 out of 45 women leaves 1 woman remaining, 11 men remaining, for an even worse ratio of 11 free men to 1 woman.

Or did I follow you wrong?

55 women & 45 men graduate. 15 of those women lasso 15 of those men within 5 years. That leaves 40 women to 30 men. 5 years later another 10 pair off. Now you have 30/20. The more pairs you make, the worse the ratio.

Credentials are an imperfect, but reasonable, proxy for career trajectory; if you have two big groups of people, and one has a lot more degrees than the other, you'd expect that group to be more successful over the course of their careers.

If I was to make a ball-park guess, fewer people sue each other here, so there are fewer lawyers and the career path stays prestigious.

Graduating from a top 5 law program, clerking for a Supreme Court justice, being a partner or on partner-track in a top firm, teaching at a top university - this represents the 1% among the legal profession, and very high status.

Being an "average" lawyer from an "average" tier law program means average status, unless you break out from that and do something exceptional or entrepreneurial.