More precisely… why don’t I know any single men who could be fixed up with a well-educated woman in her late 30s? This seems to be a common situation among our friends. We know single women whom we believe would be wonderful companions and mothers, but none of the single men whom they are seeking as partners.
A friend in D.C. says “Single women nearing 40 have spent decades perfecting their adult selves. Men of the same age are still stuck in their teenage personality.”
What is the explanation for this phenomenon? Hillary Clinton and the New York Times keep reminding us how men have grabbed up all of the good stuff (education, high-paying jobs, prestigious positions, etc.) in the U.S., but finding an unpartnered adult male who is in possession of said good stuff seems to be impossible.
[Separately, I’m wondering if the large quantity of involuntarily single-and-childless women shows poor life-planning strategies. These women have advanced education, great job skills, and good careers compared to the American average. Yet they say that they are sad about not having children and also that their primary reason for working is to earn money. Evaluating against those stated objectives, we must observe that their after-tax income is in nearly every case lower than if they’d had sex with a dermatologist or dentist in Massachusetts and collected child support. (Most of these women want two children, which, if properly planned, could easily offer a tax-free cash yield of $200,000/year via child support (multiply by 23 years in Massachusetts).) See this from the Practical Tips chapter:
In most states, the potential child support profits from a one-night encounter are roughly the same as the profits from a short-term marriage. … “Women who want to make money from the system aren’t getting married anymore,” said one lawyer. “The key is recognizing that it is a lot easier to rent a rich guy for one night, especially if he has had a few drinks, than it is to get a rich guy to agree to marriage.” Another disadvantage of marriage, from a plaintiff’s perspective, is that it prevents what attorneys call “forum shopping.” A plaintiff who is married in Texas is stuck with Texas law and $20,000 per year in child support for a single child. A plaintiff who isn’t married and who has a good understanding of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA) may be able to sue a Texas defendant under California, Massachusetts, New York, or Wisconsin law and collect millions of dollars.
From the point of view of having the children that they want prior to the exhaustion of their fertility and from the point of view of financial security, these women would have been better off spending their 18-22-year-old years having sex with married men rather than attending college. That’s not to suggest that 18-year-old child support profiteer is the optimum lifestyle for every American woman, but the fact that it would yield a better outcome measured against their own goals than what the women we know have accomplished suggests that they pursued a pretty bad life strategy. Is it the case that the vast majority of women who set out on the high-education, high-achievement path end up with a desirable (to them) partner and children? So we’re just seeing a handful of outliers and therefore the strategy actually has a good expected outcome but with some risk?]
Readers: Looking at the 35-45 age group, and restricting to people who have a college degree, above-median earnings, agreeable personality, and responsible habits, what’s the ratio of single women to single men?
[There is a bug in this installation of WordPress (I’m not the server admin!). Thus the comments displayed below are only the most recent. Here are direct links to the comment pages:
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Related:
- article on Laura Wasser, a successful California divorce litigator, that ends by explaining that Wasser herself has chosen to have children out of wedlock with multiple fathers and says “I don’t want to get married. I don’t like the idea of entering into that contract.” (Note that a successful divorce litigator in a high-stakes winner-take-all (all = house, kids, cash) jurisdiction such as California or Massachusetts can expect to earn over $1 million per year.)
Men select for beauty and fertility; both of which are on the decline in the women you mention. They also select for low-conflict behavior, kindness, etc., which may or may not be found among the women you mention.
Reality is, that any guy who is 40 and has his act together, is going to date younger; especially with the horrible economy -there are lots of 28yo women without a clear path to career at this point.
A 37yo with possibly 2 years of fertility left should be looking not for 40 or 42, but for someone about 50 to 54 who is in good shape and still wants to have 1 or 2 kids.
All the good ones are taken. Men in their age range are either spoken for (actually or just economically), or failures.
We know single women whom we believe would be wonderful companions and mothers…
In all the professional workplaces that I’m familiar with, all the professional woman are 30 to 55 y/o, twice or three times divorced, with multiple kids from multiple men. Many of them have several cats to keep them company
these women would have been better off spending their 18-22-year-old years having sex with married men rather than attending college.
Then their kids would be grown before these women are 40, and then what would they do?
agreeable personality
Yes; this is key!
Phil, I don’t understand how someone as intelligent as you are on so many issues can make statements like this. A late 30s woman is a miserable choice for a man who wants to have a family.
http://www.babycentre.co.uk/a6155/your-age-and-fertility
A quick glance at that graph reveals that a woman in her late 30s simply doesn’t have the biological juice required. In average case it will take her three years to conceive, followed by 9 months of pregnancy, 2 years of breastfeeding, and menopause. In the worst case, she is already infertile (20% chance). In the absolute worst case, her child has Downs syndrome (1/100 chance at 40 vs 1/1000 chance at 20).
I do feel a certain amount of sympathy for women in their late 30s who bought into the feminist propaganda, but their life choices have doomed them to a succession of cats.
You’re so funny, Phil.
Half of your blog posts explain how and why men get screwed over by the women they marry.
Then you wonder aloud why more men don’t sign up for the ride.
Hahahahahahaha.
fd you are spot on ;->)
That’s an amusing contrast between Boston & silicon valley. Suspect most Boston jobs are in healthcare & education. The ratio is still 5 single men for every single woman in silicon valley, from age 35-45. The desirable characteristics in men were earnings & status with personality definitely not a factor.
why don’t I know any single men who could be fixed up with a well-educated woman in her late 30s?
Jon Birger’s book Date-onomics discusses precisely this topic.
The numbers are skewed by geography. Subtract out the FEMA detetention campers, lone wolves (a lot of these types in aerospace), and the guys who live in their mom’s basement and smoke week all day, so we’re only talking about put-together people, who don’t have substance abuse or personal baggage issues or they had baggage, but they dealt with it earlier. The majority of the put-together late 30’s early 40’s never married single people in the Eastern Seaboard cities are going to be women. Probably 7:3. In Silicon Valley (especially South Bay), in the suburbs, the numbers are reversed. I know an Asian guy who graduated Berkeley for undergrad and Stanford (EE) for grad school, co-founded a startup, made 8 figures, and he was driving up to Hayward for dates just like everyone else. He’s married now, and I met my wife in Germany, but I know several single engineers late 30’s-50, who as far as I can tell, are pretty decent guys.
As noted by other commenters, any man who passes the 463 bullet points of requirements a late 30s single woman will inevitably have, will be able to select from a much wider & more desirable pool than late 30s single women.
It’s true. We single men are all in the San Francisco Bay Area, wondering where the single women are.
But if I were on the east coast, I wouldn’t be marrying the 35+ professional women; I’d be stringing them along until they get tired of me not marrying them or until I find a 25-year-old I would consider marrying, whichever comes first.
Smart, successful, rich men think they want smart, successful women (Harvard PhD’s, hot lawyers, MSc Enggs). Then after they’ve had their ass kicked a few times, they realize there is only room for 1 successful career in a relationship. Humbled men realize a harmonious relationship has a yin/yang balance: smart/beautiful, ambitious/giving, older/younger, rich/altruistic.
source: me!
@jseliger: The review on Dat-onomics mentions the 60:40 female:male ratio at UNC undergrad. Undergrad is a good place for young men to meet their future spouse. Plenty has been written recently about this imbalance and how it has contributed to the “hook-up” culture.
Though, on the other hand, my undergrad and graduate Computer Science classes were less than 90% male, and my MBA program was 70% male.
“any man who passes the 463 bullet points of requirements a late 30s single woman ”
LOL. My wife had a friend in NY who was “picky” . As she got older, the men she dated got further and further away from meeting all 463 requirements on her list. Last I heard she was still living with her cats.
There is something seriously wrong with modern Western culture where women (especially educated and intelligent women who should be contributing to the gene pool) put off marriage until their window of fertility is gone or almost gone. I read an article today about how the Zika virus is about to sweep Puerto Rico and one of the things that they are doing is putting window screens in high schools (to keep mosquitoes out) because 20% of Puerto Rican high school girls are pregnant. Maybe high school is a little early to be having kids (though not by historic standards) but waiting until you are 38 ain’t right either.
Western women seem to think they have all the time in the world so they spend their 20s and 30s pursuing education and career and avoiding long term committed relationships. But they don’t – life is short and the window of fertility (not to mention the age of peak attractiveness to mates) even shorter. Feminist ideology has convinced women that they can do everything that men can do (and if they can’t it’s only due to sexism) but biology doesn’t care about feminism.
One of the biggest lies being told is that the mass immigration going on in Western countries is due to the warm hearts of the governments involved. Nothing could be further from the truth and the real truth can’t be spoken due to the NAZI PC establishment’s retribution tactics.
The real truth is that Western countries are now outsourcing birth. Marriage rates and birth rates have already/are tanking in nearly every single Western country. The only reason any Western countries are near the replacement birth rate is that first generation immigrants are the majority of those having babies.
Men are learning that the courts are setup to privilege women over men. Women get half the sentences of men for the same crimes, women have preferred status in employment and education through affirmative action and Title IX, the majority of state and federal spending on health and welfare goes to women, women live longer than men and if a women accuses you of harassment, sexual assault, rape or in some cases bumping into them (see Souad Faress), your life may very well be over. Most men would never have seen the inside of a prison if men were given equal sentences to women for the same crimes.
What I’ve personally learned from all this is to NEVER EVER give a woman the ring of power. No fault divorce was written by the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) way back when to guarantee that women were given legal rights to their husbands current and future assets and income in the event of divorce.
The marriage contract is a misandric contract that gives women the power to destroy men’s lives. Leveraged with laws like VAWA and the new and upcoming “Affirmative Consent”, you have to be either very brave or very ignorant to give women any legal or financial power over your life.
Signing the marriage contract is the most foolish thing a man can do. It’s right up there with driving drunk, shooting heroin and gambling away your life savings in Las Vegas. Yet every year, around a million men in the US alone sign up for the life destruction marriage often brings men.
Hi Philip
this can be simply explained throught market economics (as described in the Rational Male blog http://therationalmale.com/2012/06/04/final-exam-navigating-the-smp/ ), but also through the understanding that men and women aren’t attracted to the same things i.e. that the attributes that you describe those women as having aren’t what the men they are attracted to are looking for. Women mistakenly project, that because they are attracted to “strong, independent etc” men, that men must also be attracted to these attributes. Big mistake.
And you’re absolutely correct, these women show poor life-planning strategies. But in fairness to them, they were just following the pre-ordained feminist narrative they are told to follow. The next generation (current 20-somethings) is going to be absolutely devastated by the time they reach their late 30s. The logical conclusion for all of this is a complete breakdown number of marriages, a society fillled with state-sponsorsed single mothers, a batchelor tax on single men to get them to pay for these single mothers, and a lot of very sexually frustrated beta and omega males. It won’t be pretty.
One reason for the lack of balance – college educated women almost always look for college educated men. A college educated man might be satisfied with a wife without a college degree – especially if they both are OK with more traditional gender roles.
Not talking about the woman being pregnant in the kitchen, but she may be less career driven and allow him to be the primary breadwinner. I’m sure that thought is anathema to most of the women Phil is talking about. They would never take back seat to a man. But, why won’t they consider dating a successful tradesman? Could it be that they really want the man to be their parachute?
It is a myth that there is an excess of desirable women over 30. Of those supposedly desirable women, about 50% are fat. About 25% are on anti-depressant drugs. About 80% are emotionally damaged. About 90% have feminist attitudes that are not conducive to a happy marriage. About 50% have cats. Many are frigid and infertile.
I am in Silicon Valley, were women are particularly scarce, as noted above. But even elsewhere, all the good women get married in their 20s.
Women is this age bracket want marriage. And you know better than anybody that marriage for a man is a potential death sentence.
Better to cycle through different 25 yr olds who appreciate the education and assets of a 45 yr old male.
30 something yr old women have run their race…
The way I understand George’s math, 300% of women over 30 are undesirable.
Jack D-
George’s categories are not mutually exclusive, so the percentages might very well be accurate.
M G T O W
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May be if the women stopped divorce raping good men there will be more around. I’m in your age group that you mentioned,once divorce raped, do you think I will ever marry again?
I would give birth through my cock thousands of time rather than getting married again. Tell your friends to ask those feminists for answers rather than asking you.
As an Indian, I have to laugh at Americans who do not understand the value of arranged marriages.
The whole idea is that women need guidance of men in certain matters like life planning no matter what the feminists say. On the other hand, women are more skilled than men in certain other areas. One area where women have no clue what they want is whom to marry. Since they are emotion driven, they cannot analyze for the long term and can easily get swayed by emotions and get confused.
The second important point about arranged marriage is that sex comes after marriage and is saved for one man. This is very important as a woman who has had sex with other men can never respect the man she marries. The man in turn takes care of her for life.
I find it so stupid that my white friends look for women with a low number of partners. That is, they look for women with a SlutScore of less than 5. This is stupid. Even 1 is too high for the reason I listed above.
Anything other than arranged marriage (that is an analytical matchmaking) is nothing but something driven by lust and will not last. The woman will most likely cheat. This is of course rampant among women in USA. Every married white woman has cheated or will cheat within 15 years of getting married.
The only reason arranged marriage gets flak is that Communists and feminists carry out propaganda against it claiming it is forced marriage which is of course nonsense.
If American society has to recover, you folks need arranged marriage and discipline among your girls and women so they don’t sleep around.
I have to add that in the context of this blog, women in late 30s are not marriageable for the reason in my previous post.
Jack D wrote: “The way I understand George’s math, 300% of women over 30 are undesirable.”
I think that estimate might be low.
Oh, and re: Philip’s friend in DC who said this: “Single women nearing 40 have spent decades perfecting their adult selves.”
If she – and we know it’s a she – is so wonderful, why is she still single? If there was a market for what she was selling, i.e. for a disagreeable shrike well past her ‘sell-by’ date who wants a live-in paycheck, er, cat butler, who she can emotionally abuse, then she wouldn’t be.
And by “perfecting” she means “Aging out of the game”. Why? “That law degree looks so sexy on you!”, said no man, ever. That is not to say that women should not ‘pursue their dreams’ however, if those dreams include “marriage and children” then they might – just might – want to ‘adjust’ their dreams to include the wants/needs/desires of the other person in the relationship that they so desire. Because in the World of Men, what men want matters, too.
And, “Men of the same age are still stuck in their teenage personality [sic],”? Please. Those grapes are mighty sour. Here she is using “shaming” language directed at those men who will not give her what she wants, and instead pursue their own biological imperative with younger, fertile, more attractive women, while she (and her cats) are relegated to the “discard pile” of the dating world.
As Colin Suttie correctly notes, any man who registers as “suitable” for late 30s professional, entitled, er, refined women is going to have many more options that he regards as superior, thus creating the surplus of spinsters, er, women.
In any given marketplace, if your product isn’t selling, then either you have misjudged its appeal or you are right and it’s “everybody else” who is wrong. Of course, we know it’s the former. Have any of these women who (allegedly) would be “wonderful companions and mothers,” considered other options? Besides cats, I mean? Such as dating a man older than those in their cohort (to which they are ‘entitled’, evidently) or one of the vast majority of men, previously invisible to them, who is under 6′ tall?
If not, then I’m afraid I’ll have say, “Yes, Alex, I’ll take ‘Rivers in Egypt’ for $400….” I understand of course that they “shouldn’t have to settle”, yet they fully expect the men they find suitable to, um, well, settle. For them.
I’m a divorced guy in his early 50’s. I managed to slip out of the marriage without costing anything, as all of my assets were acquired pre-marriage. I take care of my son and directly pay his costs, so no child care.
I honestly had no idea what to expect of dating after 15 years of marriage. The objective used to be to find a fine woman with potential, demonstrate your potential, get married, have kids, achieve your potential, grow older and retire together.
Now I’m already retired, have little interest in more kids, have achieved my potential and the last thing on earth I want is to get married again.
Here’s the fishing pond I’ve been presented with over the last few years.
– 29 year old pretty woman, a little overweight, three very small kids and a very actively pain in the ass ex husband. Huge financial problems.
– 38 year old very pretty woman in decent shape, two ~10 year old kids, very up front in wanting to get married and have two more before the clock runs out.
-Vast array of 40-50-somethings I used to date or were acquainted with, most on their second or third divorce, strings of kids, own the divorce house but can’t take care of it, wanting marriage and security
– Couple of women in their late 40’s/early 50’s who never got married or had kids and are more or less wondering what the heck to do with themselves or what’s next
– A wealthy woman who siphoned off a very expensive house, alimony and big child support from her ex. Isn’t interested in remarriage. Kids are about to go to college. Likes to burn through money, but the child support is going to run out soon.
My situation seems typical. On my little 1 mile long street there are at least 5 other guys like me. Retired early, plenty of money, no major problems or addictions, some older or grown kids. But if you don’t want to get married and have more kids or take on someone else’s brood and/or financial problems the pickings are slim.
Plus its kinda nice to be able to do whatever you want to do every day, exactly the way you want to do it.
So i never had much romantic success when i was in my teens and twenties. I’m not ugly, but i’m solidly average looking, average height (5’10”). Women simply weren’t interested in my. When my career started to take off as an accounting manager then controller, women started showing interest. But i figured out it wasn’t me they wanted, but my stability. All of a sudden the bad boys these women were dating just weren’t cutting it when their biological clocks were ringing and they needed a stable father who could provide a steady paycheck and wouldn’t leave them.
Sorry, but i’m not going to be a sucker. 8 years ago, while traveling in south america, i met a very nice colombian girl and we ended up getting married. It helps that she’s very family oriented (she’s a devout catholic) and she’s a great mother. American women are just too spoiled and untrustworthy for marriage.
/high earning, high achieving (completing a advanced degree and building a career takes a lot of time…at least 10/15+ years) women are typical older. Older women are less desirable. Women have to realise that they can’t catch the same (or higher) qualtiy men at 40 as they did at 22. As you age your marriage market value depreciates.
I was thinking perhaps we should look at dating between men & women as a multidimensional function with a saddle point – the more successful a man is, the bigger dating pool he has (young attractive women in their prime); the more successful a woman is, the lower dating pool is accessible to her (as she expects to gain status from the relationship). So we can look at humans dating as an optimization problem with both genders using the opposite duality (traversing through sub-optimal feasible vs optimal unfeasible states meeting together in a global optimum when “stars historically align”). Hence eternal bachelors and older ladies with cats.
Similar thing comes in regard to sexual experience – the more women a man had, the more attractive he is to women. The less (especially 0 as a “singularity” of massive value) men a woman had, the more attractive she is to men. Again, duality. Captured by the old saying – the key that can open many locks is a valuable key, the lock that can be opened by many keys is a worthless lock.
Single man March 19, 2016 @ 8:14 pm
“It’s true. We single men are all in the San Francisco Bay Area, wondering where the single women are.”
That’s because it’s a sausage fest.
L March 20, 2016 @ 12:45 pm
“I have to add that in the context of this blog, women in late 30s are not marriageable for the reason in my previous post.”
I would even go further and say women in the West and especially the Anglosphere fall under this category i.e. unmarriageable. They’re narcissistic feminist outlook on life simply doesn’t go well with a stable union. Marriage is a traditional institute that requires a traditional view on life and gender roles. This is the reason modern marriages rarely pan out.
“Single women nearing 40 have spent decades perfecting their adult selves. Men of the same age are still stuck in their teenage personality.”
Before going on to explain the phenomenon, you should explain the quote. What exactly is considered perfecting vs teenage? It sounds a bit far fetched on the surface.
perfecting self = am never wrong, have never been wrong, will never be wrong
teenage personality = not doing what I tell them to do; not obedient enough
We’re here. We’re just not interested anymore. Those women are obnoxious and the alternatives have never been that sweet.
So, we’ll pass. Enjoy your feminism, ladies, I mean: GRRRRLLLS.
LOL
It’s better to ask the question: what do women have to offer besides sex?
Nothing!!!
Wow, a lot of reaction here. Not sure I can add much to what has already been said.
Regarding philg’s question, this website is interesting (you can even toggle for college education or not): http://labs.time.com/story/see-the-ratio-of-single-men-to-women-where-you-live/.
Let’s be brutally honest, women at 35-45 looking for the criteria “college degree, above-median earnings, agreeable personality, and responsible habits” would have really low odds of finding a mate.
Women rarely, if ever, marry beneath them (unless of course they go for the Hail-Mary pass and find a tile grouting sperm donor – but at the cost of losing face to their peers) so this eliminates a lot of men. Second, as has been said before, men in that age range and success level can easily find a woman 5-10 years younger.
If the woman is overweight and/or not making an effort to look attractive, a difficult personality, etc. then the odds are even smaller unless she is will to make big concessions.
Also, why would a man need a women these days? Consider the risk of permanent serfdom via alimony/child support as already covered by philg. Even if she is highly educated and employable (ie an equal partner), most of the time she will drop out of the work force and become a liability for the man and his retirement prospects (women consume more than men and require more than men for the comforts of life). And these days, even if the wife stays home, current expectations dictate it is not enough for a man to simply be a provider from 9-to-5 but to be a good husband he must also take on the parenting shift from 5-to-9 (not to mention clean the house and cook the food in his free time as well).
So why would a man get married in this day an age? Or have kids with a woman? And a woman at 35-45? Why? What is the benefit? We already have dishwashers, washing machines, roombas, restaurants (or Blue Apron), unlimited porn beyond our wildest dreams, and in some countries legal brothels (women will be in big trouble in the USA if this becomes widespread legal). All that without the nagging, I might add. And women are already offering sex before marriage, so what’s the point? What can women offer beyond a physical act that lasts for 10-30 minutes? And in less than ten years she will look less interesting to the man anyway.
And frankly I don’t need a woman to keep the home running. Who are these men who cannot put their socks in the hamper or do their own laundry? What man these days cannot cook for himself at least a few dishes?
Listen, I feel for the ladies. Men in general have unrealistic expectations on looks (they all want a 8 or 9 or 10) and don’t value women’s educational/economic status (why? because she herself chucks it away at the first chance she gets, and also because we usually do no benefit from this in a divorce).
I know it is unfair, but biology is not fair – not for women and not for men (ever heard of happy widows? yeah, women will command trillions of dollars in the coming years from their dead husbands). Them’s the breaks as they say.
Human nature dictates that women are pickier than men. When a man finds a good woman, he does his best to keep her. When a woman finds a good man, she looks for someone better. These single women in their 30s are always looking for someone better, and have grossly unrealistic expectations. They have had the fling with the alpha man, and they look down on the beta man. That is my experience, anyway.
“You’re so funny, Phil. Half of your blog posts explain how and why men get screwed over by the women they marry. Then you wonder aloud why more men don’t sign up for the ride.”
I’m pretty sure Phil’s question was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, as many of his posts are.
Whatever the case, I agree with what several of the other commenters wrote: having a lot of professional success makes women feel entitled to a man with the same or greater success, but those men usually have a lot of dating options, and they prefer younger/poorer/hotter babes.
There is a definite sign that men as a collective are wising up to the raw deal marriage represents. This sign is like a wave that’s traveling beneath the surface and is thus easy to ignore or underestimate; once it reaches the shore, it will decimate everything the feminist hivemind has been carefully building for decades. I’m looking forward to it.
I spent my twenties being a poor research nerd just to have old ladies enslave me through family and marital law once I got a decent job.
We are too busy dating the hot 21-26 year old who has less baggage, high fertility, has less dicks in her. They say the more dicks she has taken, the less any dick will satisy her.
“They have had the fling with the alpha man, and they look down on the beta man.”
George is bang on the money. I’m from India but here’s my take on the situation in the West. What I’m about to say is slowly happening in urban India too.
‘Modern’ women today are taking the career route (not saying it’s wrong – it’s your life, your choices) in their 20s. During this stage, they will typically chase high status men and have a series of flings sans long term commitment (because a high status man always has options and will therefore not commit to one particular woman).
Due to this, these women have seen what a high value man looks like. Their vanity will not allow them to settle for anything less. They want MOAR and MOAR, despite being depreciating assets themselves.
Now fast forward to when they’re 30-35. They suddenly want the white picket fence and all. By this point though, they simply aren’t good marriage prospects. They’ve gone from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market.
Nobody’s buying, ladies. Except maybe a man who has absolutely no self-respect and is willingly signing up to get cucked.
if a man gets married, he deserves whatever happens to him. caveat emptor.
math_everywhere wrote: “the key that can open many locks is a valuable key, the lock that can be opened by many keys is a worthless lock.”
But there are some locks that can be opened by _literally_ any key and men willingly pay for those locks.
Hilarious- men who are single at this age “are failures” or “don’t have their acts together.”
LOL…but the women who are single at this age are…what? A phenomenal catch?
If anyone wanted to marry them, they’d have ALREADY BEEN MARRIED. The problem with these women is that nobody wants them for reasons they should look into the mirror about. I’m sure the men who are still single and “can’t find anyone decent” are deluding themselves in the same way as all these women.
Decades “perfecting their adult personality”…lol. Becoming ever-more insufferable. The amount of mental contortions necessary to avoid reality…
I provide young women with an alternative to this sad fate here :
Girls! The Work-Life Balance Plan the Feminists Don’t Want You to Know
http://wp.me/p6QFjS-3B
The punchline is that you can always get a damn job but the window for childbirth is narrow and final.
Do you and your friends understand that men do not exist to serve women? Because it sounds like you all think that we do.
I am not your shining knight. I am not your work horse. My life does not exist to bring you and yours pleasure. Women are not owed husbands, they are not owed boyfriends, and if they cannot find them, then they should blame themselves and engage in a little self-reflection, rather than acting like bigots and blaming all men for not giving them sex and attention. They do not deserve either of those things if they cannot earn them on their own, by convincing a man that they are worthy of it. That’s how all relationships work between all people.
If anyone spoke of women this way, you and your friends would rightfully throw a fit over it. So why do you indulge this childish, bigoted nonsense just because it comes out of a woman’s mouth?
About your question.. Are you kidding me! A single in a man in prime of life, higher income, well educated. Unless he hates having kids and or beautiful younger woman, forget about the old stewing hen with her PhD. Most men would no more date an older woman, than that older woman would date a man of her age. who is working in a low paid manual labor job. But if she is willing to not look at a man’s social prestige and income, just lose weight and work on your personality. There are a lot of poor men available for you.
If you are a woman of that age, childless and single. You are the bottom of the barrel (same as an unemployed sewer worker). And that is every bit as fair as the fact that a woman would not marry a poor man. Few men care what a woman’s income is, her job title, level of prestige, what car she owns. We want good company and good looks. And not all men care about looks
In what world would I ever want to start a relationship with any woman over the age of 30?
You fool. Why should a man commit to a middle-aged woman who has spent her best years having sex with men other than him? You talk about middle aged women as these evolved, sophisticated intellectuals who are on a higher level because they are further along professionally than a 22 year-old hottie. But everyone knows that the real difference is that they are bitter, less attractive, and less fertile. And spending your 20’s and early 30’s having sex with many different exciting guys before trying to get a poor sap to pick up the tab for your retarded, promiscuous behavior is hardly “spending years perfecting your adult life.”
I’m telling my daughters to marry young, as soon they can find a good man. I’m telling them to stay away from careers that might interfere with that.
I’m telling my son to get established in his career, then find a younger woman to give him children. If he’s smart, in his mid 20s he’ll be looking for a woman at least 5 years younger. I’m also telling him that taking out a marriage license is a bad idea.
Why would any man, of any age, want a late 30s female careerist?
Real Peterman,
In fairness, he was quoting Clinton. She has form on feminist whining.
“A friend in D.C. says “Single women nearing 40 have spent decades perfecting their adult selves. Men of the same age are still stuck in their teenage personality.”
Well your friend is living inside her won head if she thinks that these single women have been perfecting themselves all this time. They are clearly not perfect enough to get any men interested in them, and they probably are not that suitable as marriage partners. I know it’s terribly unfair that men will not put up with the same level of shit that women will in order to live the trophy wife lifestyle, but why should they be blamed for not wanting to be prostitutes?
Or more to the point if they want children and a lot of men want children why would you pick a 30 year old or older woman? Their fertility is dropping like a stone at those ages.
I had a conversation with a friend a few years ago and we made fun of how the tables of dating will turn as we get older and how women our age that didn’t pair up will come begging. Frankly, I don’t plan on marrying, if I ever do it, until around 40. There’s little reason to do so because the cost associated with learning how to marry someone 15 years your junior(good luck convincing pretty girls who aren’t low class and/or stupid to marry earlier than 25) is way smaller than the opportunity cost of being married from 25 to 40. I’ll probably have my sperm frozen around 30 to deal with this issues that the child might have due to my age so there’s this extra cost too, but they’re all trivial in comparison.
Once one sheds the soulmates who love each other unconditionally myth, there’s little reason for a man to marry except stability for his children. Older women might have careers, which will only make them more stressed and less pleasant to be around with, combined with sexual and emotional baggage and a higher propensity to birth children with disabilities. I hardly see how an additional income that will become irrelevant when she will have children makes up for the downsides, especially since older women have a higher number of sexual partners, which increases divorce risk. It’s a no brainer and I’m surprised any man prefers to marry these women to solitude, let alone playing the single life with younger ‘friends’.
What’s farcical is that for all the self touting as better matches, if you’d ask these women what did they learn in the last half a year about pleasing men, you’ll get blank stares. So not only they’re incompetent lovers, they’re unwilling to learn too and their entitlement prevents them from even assessing their own situation properly.
It’s so simple, yet the truth has been obscured by all of this equality nonsense. Younger women are tighter, hotter, less tainted by tons of guys and partying, and less bitter and damaged. All of the older single women spent years chasing the hot mysterious alluring guy and doing the eat pray love thing. They they look for a compliant schlub to marry up, have 1.5 kids and provide the nice house with the picket fence only to daydream about that hot, tattooed, aloof biker guy from 20 years ago. Finally, guys are waking up to the scam and realizing that marriage is a dead end, especially as you get older. I’m recently divorced and my girlfriend is 15 years younger. And no, she’s not a gold digger. She wants an older guy that knows what it’s like to be a man and has his shit together. Do you also wonder why we live in the most medicated country in the world?
Men that have achieved some level of success that are also in the 30-50 range can easily date young 20 somethings. These girls are typically better looking, which is a mans primary driver, regardless of what women want to believe. They have less baggage, better attitudes, high sex drives and are more interested in experiencing the world than nesting.
I raised my son after his mom left. Got custody at 1 year old. Right now, I really don’t want to start over with kids, but I would in the right circumstance. My LTR is 23. I am 45. We have been together for 4 years. Like Wes said, if I were looking to start a family, it wouldn’t be with a post 30 something.
This is yet another fine example of an academic noticing major social problems and completely failing to come to the obvious (but politically uncomfortable) conclusions.
These wilted ovaries are obviously the harvest of feminism. These women got what they wanted: they got “careers,” the Sex in the City dating game, and they got to spend lots of their credit card money at department stores. The women that opted to be mothers are now bringing their own girls to soccer games and signing up for a master’s degree.
Amazing how Greenspun assumes there is something wrong with THE MEN when he observes bitter and aging careerists. Perhaps academics should take a field trip to reality where they will find that a 40 year old woman who has spent 20 years in an office and now spends her time complaining that she can’t marry a doctor is not a very appealing lifetime mate. Such a person is so obviously malformed that any man with average intelligence can tell you a younger (non-career-oriented) woman is a better mate in every way that matters: romantically, reproductively, aesthetically, psychologically, etc.
Men with a “college degree, above-median earnings, agreeable personality, and responsible habits” were available to these wilted ovaries 10-20 years ago when they were still worthy of such a man’s attention. Now they may as well stock up on Fancy Feast, Zoloft, and boxed wine cause the jig is up. Most women in their 30s are already functionally infertile or would face challenges getting pregnant. At least 1/4th of American women in that age group are on psychiatric meds. Another large contingent of them have likely slept around so much that they are no longer desired as a wife. Many more have no social skills because they’ve spent decades in a stale office environment, or they never had very attractive personalities to begin with. Even more are physically unattractive due to nonstop sitting. So, not very good prospects for these women. Hopefully their little “career” was well worth it cause life is short.
Only a man 55 or older would consider a late-30s woman “a catch.”
how can you overlook the science that shows fertility drops with age.
besides, the obvious answer to the question “where are all the good men?” is: right where you left them, in your 20s.
Why are these single 35-45 women single, what is the issue? This has nothing to do with men at all, but a woman’s personal taste.
“Single women nearing 40 have spent decades perfecting their adult selves. Men of the same age are still stuck in their teenage personality.” – this shows part of why they are single. This is a purely subjective comment, what they see as a teenage personality some one will see as full of life, energy and adventure. Your friend is limiting herself, perhaps her standards are to high. She is limiting her self and reducing the pool of available guys. Similar thing with my sister in law, she only wants to date Christian men who are involved with their church…she has a very small dating local dating pool of available men.
There are a tonne of great guys who make a good living who do not have a degree. In fact many men make more without a degree than some one with a degree. A tradesman in the prime of their career can easily make $150k year plus in the Oil and Gas sector(Save for right now).
I am a 35 yr old married man. I act like a kid a lot, makes me a great father! My wife sees my “childish” personality as a major bonus. It was part of what attracted my wife to me. It was a quality she was looking for in a man.
Just because I act like a kid or have some teenage-ish like/hobbies does not mean I do not have my adult personality and life together. This is my adult personality that I have been polishing for my entire life. Your friend comes across as very condescending with her comment that men after 40 years still act like teenagers.
Surely the author must have normal male heterosexual feelings and emotions? Surely he must know from his own visceral experience that younger women are sexier and better looking than older women? Surely he must know that a man does not care whether a woman is educated or informed or has a good job and qualifications; there are for a man immaterial, if not a downright negative. She just needs to be slim and attractive, pleasant, feminine and fertile. (Admittedly thick would be a turn off.) A man of 40 with his act together should find a wife ten or fifteen years younger than he. A woman in her late thirties needs to consider men who are in their late forties or early fifties.
Your Friend sounds like a Gold Digger who will not date a man below her social class.
Lots of great men out there who are just regular guys. She might find a guy in trades, or a retail manager, etc.
If she wants to find someone to spend her life with tell her to grow up and change her priorities in life. Yes tell her 40 something but to grow up and get over herself, she is not perfect and is far from prime dating material. This is not even taking into account her looks.
She need find some one who makes her laugh! Which would probably mean some one who in her opinion still has a bit of teenage personality. Tell her to look at the quality that make a man attractive to her, bet education and money have nothing to do with it.
I will not date a career minded woman again. I am university educated and divorced. My wife spent to much time on her career, I don’t want to feel like a client when with my partner. Latest GF also university educated and makes more than I do, but I get to spend time with her. I get to play Dad!
No one dies wishing they spent more time at the office.
Getting an established man that is not obese to be attracted to a late 30s woman is about as unlikely as a 20yo blonde haired blue eyed petite cheerful bubbly girl being attracted to a 30year old unemployed fat balding man that lives in his parents basement. Just as women have preferences, SO DO MEN! Men want a girls youth and if he doesn’t get it he will not bother “settling down”. He might pump and dump her but he isn’t interested in taking care of her into old age. She gave her best years to other guys, why should he put her interests above his if she cared this little about him? No thanks. I will not settle down with any woman that is past mid-twenties. Stop pushing your double standards that it is sexist for men to have dating standards. People like you say it is not ok for a man to say he won’t date a fat girl but that same girl can say she won’t date a short guy… women have far more standards then men have. Men simply want 1. cheerful + loyal + agreeable 2. not fat 3. begin relationship while the girl is young… Thats it, all these old hags are pushing lies on young women. I am beginning to think feminism is a movement unconciously pushed by older single women to harm the younger girls dating options so as to improve their own prospects.
If I wanted to commit genocide against a population the first thing I would do would be to encourage their women to pursue high debt college degrees in their fertile years while handicapping the men in employment via an affirmative action type program. Then I would push for laws to make birth control free and push TV shows that show how “happy” single 40 year old women are while they purse imaginary careers in manhattan for women’s fashion magazines all while being pursued by high income tall attractive men… just like sex and the city come to think of it….. I would then pass laws that make it insane for any man to marry. I would also encourage the women to be masculine and bossy and fat and the men to be feminine and soft so neither is attracted to each other any longer.
I would also then push for open borders of higher fertility populations to finish them off….. This is how I would commit genocide against a group i didn’t like…
Hi philg, I also agree with ianf – something is strange with the comments section. I last read at 41 comments, but now after 50 the comment ticker has restarted. Two interesting things now observed: 1) this has to be a record breaking post with regards to the number of comments 2) how can it be that our very own philg has picked a blog that cannot handle more than 50 comments?? say it isn’t so philg! Are you sure the code for this blog wasn’t written by the the Obamacare guys? Or maybe if it were at MIT instead of Harvard… j/k!
GermanL., in the meantime I’ve figured it out… the server apparently does a rollover at 50 comments, starts /comment-page-2/ of, etc (presumably). Except it doesn’t add any explicit link back to the first 50, which now are accessible at this winged URL (for this thread):
philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/03/19/why-dont-i-know-any-single-men/comment-page-1/.
Piece ‘a cake! And I never went to Harvard!
“martin_2: Surely the author must have normal male heterosexual feelings and emotions? Surely he must know from his own visceral experience that younger women are sexier and better looking than older women?”
I might disagree there, just a little. Many women continue to improve in their twenties [particularly the ones who were especially baby-faced in college], and hit absolute peak hawtness circa their early thirties. The problem is the viciousness of The Wall – within a few years [circa 35 to 37] they’re gonna hit The Wall at 200 MPH and become utterly worthless on the mating market.
I’m convinced that the completely unexpected sudden-ness [& finality] of the collision with The Wall contributes greatly to the perniciousness of the Sex & the City lifestyle – many chicks keep getting hawter and more sophisticated and more alluring throughout their 20s, allowing them to believe that it’s gonna last forever, and the Anti-Culture leaves them completely unaware of the fact that The Wall is lurking right around the corner, and that it’s all about to disappear once & for all.
PS: Dollars to donuts says that Baby-Faced-ness & Hawtness correlate very strongly with fertility. Chicks who can still bring it in their late 30s probably have excellent fertility [on average], unlike the chicks who are badly leather-faced & crows-footed & varicose-veined & saggy-tittied [on average].
PPS: Fathers who care must combat [and defeat] the Anti-Culture with relentless Truth Speak to their daughters about the reality of The Wall.
More precisely… why don’t I know any single men who could be fixed up with a well-educated woman in her late 30s?
Maybe because such men have better places to socialize, and your social circle is full of rejects who have nothing a man wants?
Never buy what she gave away for free when she was younger, tighter, and a hundred pounds lighter.
A woman really gains nothing by delaying marriage past age 22, and having fewer than 2-3 kids…
Truly nothing to gain….
@ianf, thanks a lot! your suggestion works.
Last comments: On the flip side, it’s not all bad. Put aside the tilted odds in the divorce racket, one can say things in general are better for both men and women than in the past. Women no longer *have* to marry men in order to have a roof over their heads. The social pressure to marry and have kids is less, so women have the freedom to really control their life now. The question is, now that they are given the freedom of choice, are they willing to accept the consequences of their choices? Or are they going to continue thinking, like teenagers, that they can have it all?
I can give you a few reasons:
1. I had a lovely long term gf who gave great sex for 10 years, from the age of 23 to 33. Then bed death syndrome. This is more common than the divorce rate. Math is your friend.
2. Over the years, I’ve had three friends suicide after horrible divorces. They weren’t women.
3. The marriage contract was invented to keep women as property to enforce chivalry under feudal systems. We now have a plutocracy who loves watching foolish men be divorce raped of their balls, power, and wealth.
4. The sexual revolution made everyone sexual free agents. No one owns anyone, therefore marriage is obsolete. Women have the right to fuck whoever they want, what is the point of owning pussy?
5. As a result, non-white populations will eventually out-breed and conquer the silly white people. Enjoy the decline.
Except that, GermanL. #34, “are [women] going to continue thinking, like teenagers, that they can have it all?” we are shown time and time again that in specific cases (to which elevated plateau presumably all women aspire) A WOMAN CAN HAVE IT ALL, even healthy twins at 53 alongside entrancing Russian accent, managerial skills, AND a sizable inherited fortune (beat that, yo… also the lady in question’s relative Julia Louis-Dreyfus, mere Veep on telly, must have a REALLY BAD HAIR day today).
@ Z0mbie Sh@ne #35 – who/ what are edumakated women?
I am really stunned by the level of vitriol against modern women here and how virtually unanimous the comments have been. I think this post has had the most comments ever on this blog, enough to break the comment counter. I think what is going on is that saying the things that are being said here in public constitutes wrongthink that may no longer be uttered in public. By putting a lid on public discourse, feminists have not really changed everyone’s thinking – all they have done is created a plugged up volcano where these thoughts are bubbling just beneath the surface and are ready to explode.
You are being made fun of at Château Heartiste.
Why all the complaints from the guys?
Lots of horny 30-50 y.o. women out there who don’t want to get married.
Anal is the New Third Base.
Pubic hair is no longer.
Soft Oligogynamy is the New Marriage.
I’d wager that the comment counter isn’t broken… it’s only counting posts that are still in moderation or have been deleted.
And I’d be wrong on account of an oversight in limiting comments to 50 per page and not having a reference to the previous comments. Embarrassing really
On the topic at hand: Culture and the legal landscape favor open relationships over contracts that disparately expose men to lifelong financial liability. If a man can accept the prospect of getting to know his children after age 18, he’s better off on average.
It is always a man’s fault right? No man wants them so men are immature. Given the circumstances of today men are making rational choices to avoid long term commitments, marriage and women who have made it to their 40s and now want to settle down. Rational choices are associated with adults, not teenagers. How rational was it to wait way past your prime when you risk yourself and the child’s well-being if you can even have one?
What reasonable man would rather choose a un-fertile, ageing, careerist tank-grrrrl with a jaw more masculine than Schwarzeneggers, over a sweet feminine fertile 18-28 year old that isn’t destroyed by feminism and the cock-carousel?
The fact that this thread was picked up at Heartiste must account for both the # of comments and the uniform notions displayed in the comments, basically that women are desirable up until the age 25 and after that they go bad fast like strawberries that you have kept in your fridge a day too long. If you read that blog, that is one of its main premises.
For a 40 year old man, a woman of 25 is practically from another generation. They will have little in common.
Well, it’s not an unfounded premise. Female fertility declines after 25, and after 30 especially so. When I used to read my Mom’s nursing textbooks when I was in high school, they called a pregnancy over 32 a “geriatric pregnancy”, an odd phrase that has always stuck in my head. The textbook was printed in the 1980s so there was no sugar-coating it, or feminist editors on staff to correct it.
A 40 year old man can have plenty in common with a 25 year old woman. They love life, they love children, they want a family together. It’s not like living a suburban lifestyle means you have to keep up with the trendiest restaurant recommendations from The New Yorker. Moreover the last 10-20 years have done a lot to erase the generation gap of the 1960s-70s. And let’s be honest here, the man is going to die first, leaving the woman his wealth at likely age 60 or so, leaving her to enjoy her widowhood and grandchildren free of any care.
These comments are cogent, well-written, accurate, and hurt like a shiv carved from a toothbrush going in right between the ribs. They quite succinctly answer the question asked in the title, “Why don’t I know any single men who could be fixed up with a well-educated woman in her late 30s?”
My parents were both over 40 when I was born and I was my mother’s first child. This was due to war, not because she was pursuing a career, but giving birth after 30, even after 40, is not impossible the way you and the Heartiste crowd make it sound. And this was back in the dark ages.
Medical science has advanced a lot since the ’80s. And more women (especially educated ones) take better care of themselves – they don’t smoke, they work out at the gym, they eat healthy foods, etc. You have ultrasound and prenatal genetic testing, you have fertility drugs, you have IVF, you can freeze your eggs, you can have a surrogate carry your embryo, etc. so plenty of women in their 30’s and beyond are having healthy babies (if perhaps only 1 or 2).
Before the man kicks off, the woman (if she sticks around) will have many years of having to care for an old geezer, which is no fun. I know a couple that is currently in this situation and it is sad. I believe the wife has taken to screwing around since the husband is in no shape to fulfill his marital duties.
This is the chart of attractiveness by age :
https://dalrock.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/smv_curve1.jpg
Jackie will keep telling herself why, at 35, she is still a ‘catch’.
Impossible? It’s not impossible. It is merely improbable. Please do not exaggerate your opponent’s arguments to deliberately make them sound ridiculous, you do yourself no credit. Any woman who wants to have children, or many children, needs to have them before 25, and definitely before 30. This isn’t some kind of shrieking misogynist hysteria, it’s biological fact. Not just in humans but in any mammal. At my Mom’s hospital, the 15-17 year old mothers (black and Latina mostly) pop out the babies easily and go home soon. The older mothers (white mostly) even if they have had fertility treatments, are frequently beset by complications and sometimes have a long recovery.
My own mother was born to parents aged 44 and 42, who had long since given up on having a child of their own and adopted. Nobody’s saying it can’t happen, it’s just that it’s not a super-smart plan. And these well-educated women who can’t find men are nothing if not intelligent. Yaknow, if they *were* actually intelligent, they’d be aware of what women’s fertility was really like, what men want, and would make appropriate life plans. Somehow that didn’t happen, and I think that should be the topic of the next post here.
“Having to care for an old geezer”?? What kind of way is that to talk about *her husband who she loves*? The wife has taken to screwing around? With whom? She’s an elderly woman, the number of men she can attract is minuscule, to say nothing of the moral reprehensibility of the act. At any rate, I believe the question posed by this post has been thoroughly answered to everyone’s satisfaction at this point.
Oh, wow, I just scrolled up to the top to double-check the title before I clicked post and I noticed that this site is harvard.edu. Really! I’m talking to real elites! Sorry for the prole invasion. We smelly people usually keep to ourselves and would like to apologize for shivving our intellectual betters with these unsettling truths.
Reading this thread makes me feel like the only happily-married man on the Internet! (46, married at 30, kids aged 12 and 13.)
Philip isn’t a Harvard person, his weblog happens to be hosted there. He also likes to ask contrarian questions.
Harland: “It is merely improbable.”
For women with a master’s degree, median age at birth of first child is 30. For women with a bachelor’s degree, median age is 28. Pew Research. Doctors still talk about geriatric pregnancies, but the cutoff is more like 35 years old these days.
Responding to Philip’s original question — do you not know any single men who might be good companions and homemakers, even if they don’t have above-median incomes? Teachers? Adjunct lecturers?
“And more women (especially educated ones) take better care of themselves – they don’t smoke, they work out at the gym, they eat healthy foods, etc. ”
Come off it! What about all the obesity?! In my town (in England) it is the men who like to look after themselves, the women are stuffing their faces with doughnuts.
Realistically, how many of these 40+ professional male/18-29 female couples do we really know? Are those numbers overwhelming? All 40-something men I know who are in a relationship are not with 20-somethings, but a woman their age.
The OP asked: “what’s the female-to-male ratio of professional 35-45 singles?” The answers mostly have been: “Men of that age & requirements prefer 20yo’s!”
Maybe the original question should’ve been, “How many 40+ professional men do you know in a relationship with an 18-29yo woman?”
A man says he knows well-educated, late-30s single women who “would be wonderful companions and mothers,” and WWIII breaks out!
Marriage involves a sexual relationship between a man and a woman.
Pudgy, rumpled, demanding, entitled, self-indulgent old women aren’t sexually attractive, sorry.
A hot young waitress is just as attractive to men as a hot young lawyer. We truly couldn’t care less about your jobs. Or the fact that your achievements are so awesome. They don’t make you physically attractive, or fertile, or a good mother to children.
Sorry, ladies. Go hug your cubicle. Complain to all your sisters in HR about how men don’t want you.
You all ruined marriages by insisting on having every possible legal advantage. You demanded the courts ruin men’s lives. You demanded all these special privileges and extra help, at the expense of the other half of humanity.
Now you’re old and alone.
Your niece is just out of undergrad, though. Maybe she’ll skip grad school and keep her figure – and marry someone she loves. Maybe you should tell her honestly about your own life choices, and whether or not you made the right ones. (If you’re old and alone, you made bad life choices, or were sold a bill of goods.)
“Single women nearing 40 have spent decades perfecting their adult selves.”
Good God, who wants to marry a woman who thinks that way? Might as well say they’ve spent decades filling their vagina with razor blades.
I’m a 46 year old with two advanced degrees, but only a middling (though wonderfully safe and stable) career. Your “perfected” women are probably all a couple notches higher than me on the career ladder, and look down on guys like me. On the other hand, the 31-year-old college dropout I’m dating looks at me with respect and admiration. Plus, no wrinkles and better fertility.
Women are like cars. Most their value is lost on the first ride. That new car smell doesn’t last long. At 30, its like their odometer hit 100,000. At forty, you cannot give it away. Women get propositioned constantly in their teens and early twenties. At thirty, men look past them at the younger models. At forty, they’re invisible. If you’re a woman and someone threatens to call the cops if you’re naked, you’re OLD.
Having kids in your 30s is exhausting and stressful even if you have lots of money. It’s even more so in your 40s.
Male fertility declines with age too. Men in their 40s aren’t as able to sire children either. And marrying too young ages the woman prematurely and is also connected with smaller family size. The 45yo man marrying the 25 year old doesn’t mean the 25yo gets four kids. She gets maybe one or two and then he’s old and doesn’t want any more. And that’s assuming such a man can get a 25yo, usually they get 35 or 40yos because when it comes to marriage, everyone wants someone within a few years of them, no matter how old they get.
This thread has been hilarious reading.
It is necessary for the survival of western civilization for women to be re-domesticated and feminism destroyed.
why pay for the cow when you get the milk and filet mignon for free?
Women think they can trump biology until their hamster spins and goes into coma at 40. You cannot win biology. So yes you can use all lab egg freezes but men dont care. Men are waking up and wifing up the hotties.
So spinster in their 30s or 40s piece out !!
It takes a tremendous amount of money and effort for a late 30s woman to have her first child. If family is the goal that is a pretty stupid way to go about it.
Also what value does a woman’s income give to a man? The man is ostensibly as well or better off than she is. So she would have to contribute something other than money. Alternatively, SHE could contribute the money to a man and free him up from working, but very few women are interested in that.
So what makes more sense is for a man to make the money and a woman to be young and pretty. Usually this means the man will be older. Both sides win out.
Unless these older women are willing to pay a lot of money for fertility, and also subsidize a younger, poorer man, I just don’t see it working out. And honestly most likely the younger, poorer men will take their chances anyway. Especially since the attitude you see with high educational attainment and higher ages females is, frankly, utterly obnoxious.
Who wants to be with an adult that thinks she is perfect and is busy mocking the man for not being as good as her? In what world does that indicate maturity in the least? All this blog entry seems to show is that women’s mental age in their late 30s is exactly the same as in their mid-teens. Most men as they age tend to put less and less emphasis on materialism and looks, and instead start to put a heavy premium on personality and compatibility.
These modern toxic women are an absolute disaster. I know we’re not going to change policy, but as a man in his early 30s I run into friendly and bubbly 18 and 19 year olds constantly, so it looks like the next generation of young women did figure it out themselves. But this 25+ year old age group of women, what a mess.
These contrarian posts get more interesting comments than any other kind.
Since when is sexual nature something that can be manipulated? Men prefer younger women, women prefer high status, successful men.
One sex dictates what the other will compete in. Women compete in the appearance department. Sorry feminists and harvard theoriticians: men prefer younger and beautiful women. Career, money… we don’t give a single f***.
unfortunately, out here, most women in their mid 30s and up are fat. every year after 30 adds pounds, bitterness, and disappointment. none of those are attractive qualities. you can’t expect a single male in their 40s to choose them over younger, slimmer, less angry 20somethings.
This question has been asked for decades, beginning with a tongue-in-cheek piece in the 1980s claiming that a single woman in her late 30s had a better chance of being struck by a car than being asked for her hand in marriage by a man she deemed adequate, which meant he had to be about 35-40 yo. As other commenters have noted, women seek higher-earning men in order to marry “up”, and are often quite picky as to height and some other features. These demands doubtlessly increase with the woman’s education level & physical attractiveness. I have enjoyed the men’s comments on this blog posting tremendously, and their observations have been borne out by my experience. Tiny Fey did an incredibly funny monologue about “If I were a man,” and I am reminded every time I’m in my gym’s locker room that a winsome 25 yo female is a different commodity than a winsome 35 yo female, even if they both have endearing personalities.
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-dating-power-flip-at-age-30/
was a Newsweek article from the 1980s, and it was being the victim of a terrorist attack versus chance of getting hitched at age 40 for a college-educated female. Turns out NBER’s study was flawed. But doesn’t change the fact that a woman’s marriage prospects at age 40 are simply diminished vis-a-vis her late twenties due to the men in their age cohort having more choices. Here is discussion of the Newsweek article, which apparently was used as material in “Sleepless in Seattle”: http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/terrorist.asp
I’m a relatively successful man in my mid-30s. Top college, lots of travel, cool life experiences, respectable job, six-pack still intact.
I do not date women older than 26. Every now and then I may make an exception for a 27-28 year old, but they have to be especially cool to be around and awesome in bed. I do not date single moms. Ever. I’m here to care for my own offspring, not someone else’s. I do not date women my age because they’re in a rush (they’ve finally realized the clock is ticking) and their expectations are too high.
Funny how hard things were for me when I was 19-20, yet every time I ask a woman my age about that time, they’ll go on and on about how awesome it was.
Women have a golden decade from 15-25. If they waste it and the years after it somewhere on the slut-career spectrum, that’s on them. I’m not here to pick up the tab for their shitty life decisions.
Of my close friends who are my age, half that have gotten married are now divorced. One was on the verge of suicide afterwards. Several are on their second marriage because they’re gluttons for punishment. Not one of them wouldn’t trade places with me if they were given the chance.
Men are expendable, women are perishable. You can’t argue with biology. You cannot dictate sexual/romantic attraction. More and more men are waking up; the evidence is all around them, right in front of their eyes. Single men who have their shit together do not want a career woman in her 30s or 40s. Those women had their chance, and squandered their most valuable asset. I’ll take the 23 year old cutie who’s only slept with one or two guys in her life over the 38 year old career grrrrrl with the Masters and the high-powered office job. Every. Single. Time.
Seriously, you’re advocating for them to trap a high earning male for child support? And you make no inclination that it is wrong, or whether the father will be in the kid’s life. Do you have no shame? What a solipsistic trash article. You, and your self perfected friends, can all die spinsters. You all are not worth children, as the gene pool is better off without you.
Wrong for women to spread their legs for child support? Have children for profit? Raise children without a father? You can hold these Bible Thumper ideas but don’t bring them to family law and family courts. At least here in California, working on her back is most likely the best job a woman can get and family court is where she goes to pick up her paycheck. Don’t think it is accidental that the lawyers, judges, psychologists, and accountants also get paid.
Child support plaintiffs say they care about their kids like fat guys say they want to hit the gym and lose weight. It may actually be in the back of their mind but first another dozen donuts from the drive-thru…
Most women aren’t this way, granted. They actually value having a man to play the role of father, companion, sexual partner, amateur plumber & handyman (I really don’t mind doing laundry or dishes, but you would not want me trying to change a flapper on a leaking toilet as I would fail, and have to hire someone). However, if you were to look at the reality with NBA players on down to average gainfully employed men, sadly many women seem to treat the guy as a baby-maker, then don’t like all aspects of his personality or whatever, and decide they’re better off on their own. Narcissistic on the part of the women, and the ones I know who’ve been divorced for 10+ years by-and-large have fared all right, but rarely have found another long-term male partner. Their ex-husbands, should they so desire, have little problem finding another wife, almost always significantly younger than their first wives. An endocrinologist I know told me she was divorcing her charming, handsome pediatric oncologist husband (they’re about the same age as they met in medical school; have one child) — this is the guy you want if your child is diagnosed with cancer — witty, compassionate, Mensa-type smart as is his 14 yo. M.D. Mother offered this explanation as to why she was divorcing him, even though she admitted she truly loved him as a person: He was cheating on her constantly (mostly with young nurses at the hospital). “Why?” I asked. “Because he can.” (Her words.) I will just put it out there. When has the world ever been fair?
My neighbor used to be a family court judge. She said “Child support is the government’s way of seeing how many women will work as whores if you give them a paycheck and a job title of single mom.”
Sure men like young women. Duh. Women like young men too. A 55 year old man wants to get young women but he can’t unless he’s rich. So young women may have sex with him but secretly hate him. All these men who think that they are sexually attractive to females forever are delusional. Men have an expiration date as well. No 25 year old woman will willingly have sex with an 80 year old. Not gonna happen dude. Sorry. Young women are attracted to young, virile males because they produce healthy offspring. All these women who have children with older men compromise the health of their offsrping. In the wild, healthy young males get to have all the females. Old bucks are driven out. That’s life.
but ageism remains, in the sense the typical 50 yo divorcee in my ‘hood finds herself dating men 10-15 yrs older than herself, whereas the 50 yo widowers and divorced guys (assuming they have any financial means) seem to attract significantly younger women without issue. I didn’t think fertility became that huge an issue (although some autism studies might suggest otherwise) with men until they’re in their 60s. Fortunately, the last time Mick Jagger sired a child (now about 15 yo), he was in his mid-50s. And the 28 yo ballerina of 2015 did not wind up preggers.
When I was in my 40s and whining to our family physician that I felt my YMCA friends from the locker room were aging more rapidly in terms of outward appearance than our spouses, his reply was interesting. (This was former radio show host Dr. Gabe Mirkin, an astute & highly intelligent internist). Mirkin said, “I know both you and your husband. You’re both aging at the same normal rate. Your feelings emanate from constant bombardment by the media of images of older men & younger women.” So when watching “Up in the Air” a few weeks later which pairs a much older George Clooney with a much younger love interest (Mira Sorvino), as well as with an even younger whippersnapper assistant (Anna Kendrick). Dr. Mirkin’s explanation was validated.
I feel for women in their late 30s & older, as the odds aren’t in their favor when competing against women in their late 20s, early 30s and their own age cohort. But as an economist, the concept of opportunity cost is pretty salient here. When I was in my twenties & early thirties, I had 3 children, rather than climbing the corporate ladder or attending B-school. One of the commenters mentioned the “Oops” baby — guilty as charged, as also got pregnant with a baby at age 39 who’s now a healthy young teenager. In my well-educated, affluent area, a middle school substitute math teacher once asked the classroom of my oldest son, who was born when I was 25, to put their mother’s ages on the blackboard in order to learn mean/median/mode. My then 12 yo son said I was a total out-lier by about 10 years below the median.
re: mother’s age — maybe more like 15 yrs below the median