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> women are attracted to money and status! Not men!!! Professionals I know in the 20-35 cohort only want to date other professionals. The ones that don’t want

> women are attracted to money and status! Not men!!! Professionals I know in the 20-35 cohort only want to date other professionals. The ones that don’t want some weird stay at home trophy wife dynamic. There’s nothing provably innate about some men preferring trophy wives. There is a lot of availability due to cultural baggage. The phenomenon that you’re talking about is culturally bound. Anecdotally my wife makes ~150k more per year than me. She’s made more than me for like 80% of our relationship. I’ve stayed at home with our son. We’re still top 1%. Neither of us care.

itchyouch 5y ago
My limited observation is that women use HEHI as signal and as a filtering mechanism, otherwise non-HEHI men that could otherwise be candidates end up providing signal circumstantially through introductions, or a common environment that provides opportunities for serendipitous bonding to occur.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Men use it as a filter too, in my cohort (mid 30s, coastal US cities). A second six figure income in the partnership provides a lot of ease of mind, and is almost required if your goal is to live in certain neighborhoods. I would say it is probably true that a smaller proportion of men use it as strong of a signal as women do, but that makes sense to me considering women have a decent risk of not being able to earn income due to childbirth and child rearing.
xwdv 5y ago
It’s not a weird dynamic. There is a threshold where if your partner isn’t making some meaningful amount of money relative to you, it’s better for them to just not work at all than spend 40 hours a week toiling away for a pittance of a paycheck. What is there to gain from having a wife work as a cashier when you make 10x as much as her? You either want to be a power couple or just get the best partner you can and offer them a comfortable life. The relationships that are an exception to this are usually ones where both people started off equally and then one of them suddenly became massively successful but they still remain in love.
- watwut 5y ago
  Trophy wife is not just about being stay at home. The term expresses lack of respect toward that wife, whose role is to look pretty and is not expected to contribute, to be knowledgeable nor have skills. Second, men who earn a lot don't marry cashiers all that often. They want to marry within the same social class. They marry educated women whose earning potential is better then minimum wage. Third, being stay at home partner comes with price and nowdays people really do it overwhelmingly because of children. The childless stay at home woman is mostly a rarity. Partly because being dependent and fully paid by him comes with resentment and expectations on his side. The "I am working and you are just spending my money" feeling is one argument away. And partly because being bored, lonely and feeling useless most of time causes issues with her. Their interests and needs become different, so they diverge.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    Unfortunately there is no guarantee that a woman with desirable genetic traits is also a high income earner, so in practice men must choose to concede some qualities if they are to have a good chance of finding a wife. Usually, this means choosing beauty over earning potential, as beauty is much harder to find and then the value of money decreases as you earn more of it.
    - bumby 5y ago
      >beauty is much harder to find This thread seems to use a lot of colloquial wisdom without citing where it came from. How are your arriving at this conclusion?
- distances 5y ago
  Seen from another culture: here in divorce assets are split, but not pensions, and there's no alimony. Stay-at-home divorced spouse could easily face financial hardships later in life. Stay-at-home is not really a concept here beyond maybe a couple of years with a small child, otherwise it's just unemployment.
dash2 5y ago
I don’t know whether it is innate, but it is cross-cultural: see Buss, D.M., 1989. Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and brain sciences, 12(1), pp.1-14.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
A wife who stays at home, manages the household and takes care of children is a "trophy wife" now? What has happened to society? Since when have traditionally feminine contributions been so devalued? There's nothing wrong with earning money but there's nothing wrong with staying at home either. Some things money just can't buy.
- nostrebored 5y ago
  These are not traditionally feminine attributes. Having a stay at home parent is a recent historical event starting post ww2 in the U.S.
  - bumby 5y ago
    What is the second claimed drawing from? It would seem like a stay at home parent was more common in the past, considering there were historically more single income families with children. “The percentage of dual-income households with children under age 18 has been on the rise since the 1960s” https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characteristics-and-selected-expenditures-of-dual-and-single-income-households-with-children.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characte...

itchyouch 5y ago

My limited observation is that women use HEHI as signal and as a filtering mechanism, otherwise non-HEHI men that could otherwise be candidates end up providing signal circumstantially through introductions, or a common environment that provides opportunities for serendipitous bonding to occur.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Men use it as a filter too, in my cohort (mid 30s, coastal US cities). A second six figure income in the partnership provides a lot of ease of mind, and is almost required if your goal is to live in certain neighborhoods. I would say it is probably true that a smaller proportion of men use it as strong of a signal as women do, but that makes sense to me considering women have a decent risk of not being able to earn income due to childbirth and child rearing.

xwdv 5y ago

It’s not a weird dynamic. There is a threshold where if your partner isn’t making some meaningful amount of money relative to you, it’s better for them to just not work at all than spend 40 hours a week toiling away for a pittance of a paycheck. What is there to gain from having a wife work as a cashier when you make 10x as much as her? You either want to be a power couple or just get the best partner you can and offer them a comfortable life. The relationships that are an exception to this are usually ones where both people started off equally and then one of them suddenly became massively successful but they still remain in love.

watwut 5y ago
Trophy wife is not just about being stay at home. The term expresses lack of respect toward that wife, whose role is to look pretty and is not expected to contribute, to be knowledgeable nor have skills. Second, men who earn a lot don't marry cashiers all that often. They want to marry within the same social class. They marry educated women whose earning potential is better then minimum wage. Third, being stay at home partner comes with price and nowdays people really do it overwhelmingly because of children. The childless stay at home woman is mostly a rarity. Partly because being dependent and fully paid by him comes with resentment and expectations on his side. The "I am working and you are just spending my money" feeling is one argument away. And partly because being bored, lonely and feeling useless most of time causes issues with her. Their interests and needs become different, so they diverge.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Unfortunately there is no guarantee that a woman with desirable genetic traits is also a high income earner, so in practice men must choose to concede some qualities if they are to have a good chance of finding a wife. Usually, this means choosing beauty over earning potential, as beauty is much harder to find and then the value of money decreases as you earn more of it.
  - bumby 5y ago
    >beauty is much harder to find This thread seems to use a lot of colloquial wisdom without citing where it came from. How are your arriving at this conclusion?
distances 5y ago
Seen from another culture: here in divorce assets are split, but not pensions, and there's no alimony. Stay-at-home divorced spouse could easily face financial hardships later in life. Stay-at-home is not really a concept here beyond maybe a couple of years with a small child, otherwise it's just unemployment.

dash2 5y ago

I don’t know whether it is innate, but it is cross-cultural: see Buss, D.M., 1989. Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and brain sciences, 12(1), pp.1-14.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

A wife who stays at home, manages the household and takes care of children is a "trophy wife" now? What has happened to society? Since when have traditionally feminine contributions been so devalued? There's nothing wrong with earning money but there's nothing wrong with staying at home either. Some things money just can't buy.

nostrebored 5y ago
These are not traditionally feminine attributes. Having a stay at home parent is a recent historical event starting post ww2 in the U.S.
- bumby 5y ago
  What is the second claimed drawing from? It would seem like a stay at home parent was more common in the past, considering there were historically more single income families with children. “The percentage of dual-income households with children under age 18 has been on the rise since the 1960s” https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characteristics-and-selected-expenditures-of-dual-and-single-income-households-with-children.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characte...