4 ms·

More Men Marrying Wealthier Women

17 points by fiaz 17y ago

lionhearted 17y ago
> “We’ve known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being,” said Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy group. My first thought was that's a pretty huge [citation needed], but then I checked out the CCF website. http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/ http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/ Actually, the rotating graphic they had that said "CCF is dedicated to..." struck me as interesting and compelling, it's worth watching for a few seconds if you have the time. It's a mix of very traditional family scenes and very modern scenes in the same graphic. Interestingly composed and put together, I feel a little more informed just having looked at it for a bit.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  The idea that men "need" marriage more than women is sketchy, IMO. My suspicion: whoever came up with that conclusion picked a few metrics which women value more than men (e.g., house cleanliness, frequency of doctor visits). They determined that men score higher on these metrics when they are married and concluded men need marriage more. Considering how many men are avoiding marriage these days, and how much effort women spend on trying to get men to marry them, I suspect that this conclusion is false.
  - bayleo 17y ago
    The usual argument is evolutionary; i.e. men have a biological incentive to embrace monogamy to help prevent the chances of being cuckolded while women do not. I'm not supporting it, as it is an equally untestable hypothesis, just mentioning it for the sake of the discussion.
    - andreyf 17y ago
      That's not an argument, it's a say-so explanation. Similarly, men have biological incentive to impregnate anything that moves without commitment, while women have biological incentive to find resource-committed males, as they have a biological 9-month commitment they're allotted by nature.
    - mattm 17y ago
      Strictly in terms of different cultures, more cultures have polygamy than strict monogamy. If the advantage was evolutionary, you would not find so many cultures that have a degree on polygamy. Polyandry on the other hand, is extremely rare which makes complete sense when factoring in the effort required for a woman to raise her children. http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoAtlas.pdf http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoA... # of cultures - Maritial Composition: 36 - Missing Data 186 - Independent nuclear, monogamous 453 - Independent nuclear, occasional polygyny 69 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in same dwelling 18 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in separate dwellings 344 - Non-sororal, cowives in separate dwellings 157 - Non-sororal, cowives in same dwelling 4 - Independent polyandrous families
      - bayleo 17y ago
        I should have used the word "marriage" instead of "monogamy".
      - Steve_Baker 17y ago
        I don't think it follows that polyandry is less advantageous for a woman than polygamy -- more men equals more resources. I think the reason is that most societies are patriarchal rather than matriarchal and this has traditionally led to men being the greater holder of wealth, and the disparity between the rich and poor being what it is, 1/100th of a rich man is worth more than even 100 poor men. That still doesn't mean that a woman wouldn't choose to have 100 men if she cannot have a portion of a rich man, but in a patriarchal society, those women would likely become prostitutes -- the (to men perhaps) more socially acceptable form of polyandry? This might even be preferable to the woman, since I could see multiple men in the same household potentially being much more rife with conflict. I wouldn't be surprised if societies tend to try to suppress polygamy at equal or even greater rates than they do prostition. Basically I don't think polyandry is rare at all, it's just in the form of uncounted prostitution. I'd lay odds that you'd see more (monogamous) polyandry in societies that are more (very) matriarchal and/or the distribution of wealth is flat, both being rather uncommon.
kingkawn 17y ago
Now to tap into this trend successfully...
jacquesm 17y ago
Did I land on 'Cosmo' by accident ?
yardie 17y ago
To take it to its logical conclusion: Wealthy men are putting off marriage because of the current divorce laws or are marrying women who are equal or wealthier than them. Wealthy women don't face such problems. Ex husbands generally don't file alimony.
tjic 17y ago
This all boils down to one things: in a knowledge economy, women can earn more than they can in a brute-force-and-muscle economy. There are two bell curves: income of men, and income of women. At one point, the men's income bellcurve was way to the right of the women's: it was a rare woman who earned more than ANY man. Thus, marriages of lower earning men to higher earning women were very rare. Now, the women's bellcurve has moved to the right, so that it 85% overlaps men's. There are a lot more possible pairings of men and women where the woman earns more. This NYT article isn't really news - it's the inevitable outcome of the industrial and information revolutions.
lmkg 17y ago
Is the trend really "More men marrying wealthier women," or is it simply "More women are wealthy?" A skim of the article would seem to imply the latter at least as much as the former, possibly more.

17 points by fiaz 17y ago

> “We’ve known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being,” said Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy group. My first thought was that's a pretty huge [citation needed], but then I checked out the CCF website. http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/ http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/ Actually, the rotating graphic they had that said "CCF is dedicated to..." struck me as interesting and compelling, it's worth watching for a few seconds if you have the time. It's a mix of very traditional family scenes and very modern scenes in the same graphic. Interestingly composed and put together, I feel a little more informed just having looked at it for a bit.

yummyfajitas 17y ago
The idea that men "need" marriage more than women is sketchy, IMO. My suspicion: whoever came up with that conclusion picked a few metrics which women value more than men (e.g., house cleanliness, frequency of doctor visits). They determined that men score higher on these metrics when they are married and concluded men need marriage more. Considering how many men are avoiding marriage these days, and how much effort women spend on trying to get men to marry them, I suspect that this conclusion is false.
- bayleo 17y ago
  The usual argument is evolutionary; i.e. men have a biological incentive to embrace monogamy to help prevent the chances of being cuckolded while women do not. I'm not supporting it, as it is an equally untestable hypothesis, just mentioning it for the sake of the discussion.
  - andreyf 17y ago
    That's not an argument, it's a say-so explanation. Similarly, men have biological incentive to impregnate anything that moves without commitment, while women have biological incentive to find resource-committed males, as they have a biological 9-month commitment they're allotted by nature.
  - mattm 17y ago
    Strictly in terms of different cultures, more cultures have polygamy than strict monogamy. If the advantage was evolutionary, you would not find so many cultures that have a degree on polygamy. Polyandry on the other hand, is extremely rare which makes complete sense when factoring in the effort required for a woman to raise her children. http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoAtlas.pdf http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoA... # of cultures - Maritial Composition: 36 - Missing Data 186 - Independent nuclear, monogamous 453 - Independent nuclear, occasional polygyny 69 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in same dwelling 18 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in separate dwellings 344 - Non-sororal, cowives in separate dwellings 157 - Non-sororal, cowives in same dwelling 4 - Independent polyandrous families
    - bayleo 17y ago
      I should have used the word "marriage" instead of "monogamy".
    - Steve_Baker 17y ago
      I don't think it follows that polyandry is less advantageous for a woman than polygamy -- more men equals more resources. I think the reason is that most societies are patriarchal rather than matriarchal and this has traditionally led to men being the greater holder of wealth, and the disparity between the rich and poor being what it is, 1/100th of a rich man is worth more than even 100 poor men. That still doesn't mean that a woman wouldn't choose to have 100 men if she cannot have a portion of a rich man, but in a patriarchal society, those women would likely become prostitutes -- the (to men perhaps) more socially acceptable form of polyandry? This might even be preferable to the woman, since I could see multiple men in the same household potentially being much more rife with conflict. I wouldn't be surprised if societies tend to try to suppress polygamy at equal or even greater rates than they do prostition. Basically I don't think polyandry is rare at all, it's just in the form of uncounted prostitution. I'd lay odds that you'd see more (monogamous) polyandry in societies that are more (very) matriarchal and/or the distribution of wealth is flat, both being rather uncommon.

kingkawn 17y ago

Now to tap into this trend successfully...

jacquesm 17y ago

Did I land on 'Cosmo' by accident ?

yardie 17y ago

To take it to its logical conclusion: Wealthy men are putting off marriage because of the current divorce laws or are marrying women who are equal or wealthier than them. Wealthy women don't face such problems. Ex husbands generally don't file alimony.

tjic 17y ago

This all boils down to one things: in a knowledge economy, women can earn more than they can in a brute-force-and-muscle economy. There are two bell curves: income of men, and income of women. At one point, the men's income bellcurve was way to the right of the women's: it was a rare woman who earned more than ANY man. Thus, marriages of lower earning men to higher earning women were very rare. Now, the women's bellcurve has moved to the right, so that it 85% overlaps men's. There are a lot more possible pairings of men and women where the woman earns more. This NYT article isn't really news - it's the inevitable outcome of the industrial and information revolutions.

lmkg 17y ago

Is the trend really "More men marrying wealthier women," or is it simply "More women are wealthy?" A skim of the article would seem to imply the latter at least as much as the former, possibly more.