Prior to the U.S. economy collapsing, there were news reports that women were shunning men without college degrees (example). They didn’t want to bother marrying a man who might become a financial burden and preferred to raise children by themselves rather than settle for a soon-to-be-unemployed blue collar worker. I wonder if the Depression will accelerate this trend. For a single mom, it will be tougher to earn a sufficient wage to pay for child care and living expenses. The blue collar guys are being destroyed. Rich guys are becoming comparatively much richer. A Wall Street executive might only get 80 percent of his former bonus from the TARP funds, but with the rest of the nation destitute, he stands even taller than before. A university dermatologist earning $4.4M per year looked good before industry failed, but he looks great now. A guy who can spend a record-setting $41 million on a Matisse while the rest of the world queues up for bread is going to look like a god.
If a woman’s primary concern is the ability of a mate to support her children, wouldn’t she be better off as the junior wife of that dermatologist than as the only wife of a soon-to-be-laid-off autoworker? Especially since government aid flows only to select industries, the current Depression seems likely to greatly exacerbate income inequality in the U.S., pushing wages of 30-50 percent of guys below what is necessary to support a family. The remaining men, employed in the favored sectors of government, health care, banking, and government contracting, will consequently become far more sought-after. Could we soon see de facto if not de jure polygamy?
Polygamy, when taken without any other context, has always been the “best choice” for women and for men in the upper tier of desirable mates. But polygamy results in a population of poor, disgruntled, unmarried men. Men who see the haves as taking their women and, lacking a wife, kids, and family responsibilities, have nothing to lose in resorting to violence, threats, or other forms of social ills to try to fulfill their biological drives.
Monogamy is part of the social contract. Women and the upper crust of men give up their best interests with regards to marriage and progeny in order to live in a more peaceful and prosperous society.
I know your comment was tongue in cheek, but I think it’s preposterous to expect that there will be a reversion to polygamy. I think you’d need society to disintegrate in order to see a return to polygamy.
Scott: The point of the news article that I referenced was that we already had a lot of “poor disgruntled unmarried men” back in the pre-Depression years. Among people of child-bearing age, we’re presumably going to have double or triple that number if the Depression lasts 5-10 years. Assuming womens’ preference for having children remains constant, we either have a big spike in single mothers or an increase in polygamous arrangements. You may be right that this will lead to a less peaceful society, but perhaps that is an inevitable consequence of economic collapse.
philg… You described “reality” in my part of the world. The town of Newport Coast CA (“Kobe Bryant-ville”) is the (my quote) “epicenter of beautiful, rich, divorced women”. My observation (2 years of dating “within the community”) is the #1 divorce-cause is “failure to move-up-the-ladder fast enough”. I could get really callous here (don’t want to get this post dis-approved) but *honest* I have compiled seriously “hard data” on your bux-matter hypothesis.
The result of the hyper-divorce scenario is alimony-supported women, generally “desperate” as the $ is running out. Proof: the man/woman availability-ratio *inverted* here, women outnumbering men 4:3 where “everywhere else” is a (normalized data) 3:4 (men higher) ratio. This is *staggering*.
Scott Michel is very naive (sorry). Polygamy is HERE (in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach etc). Maybe not “formal contract” (e.g. marriage) but the number of very-wealthy-men who “control, as if married, multiple women who know of each others existence” is a real eye-opener.
A major part of this issue is the women themselves, who *will not* do any sort of research into traditional “good man” virtues.
SoCal upscale/educated woman’s motto: “Money talks, bulls**t walks”. No research required 🙁
Paul P.
philg… Part-II here…
You-yourself nailed this issue years-back in your “early retirement” essay. You said (paraphrase) “…retire to a place where you are fundamentally richer than the general population”.
Guess what? *Men” re-locate. Women do-not. So, when (relatively) rich guys show up in female-abundant “financially lesser communities” (Reno NV & Bend OR come to mind) they tend to “vacuum-up” significant portions of the female population, who remain “in orbit” for a significant time.
You said it “de facto polygamy”.
P.
PS>> Being ex-Navy (aviator), I was in a circle of Navy nurses. Don’t get me started on “How many g/f’s can one MD have?”.
Phil and Paul P.: As I stated, monogamy is part of the social contract, just like laws against theft. When there are hard economic times such crimes rise, but to see an uptick in thefts and then to ask, “Could we soon see de facto if not de jure thievery?” is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion.
So will there be a minor uptick in polygamy-like behavior during an economic downturn. It wouldn’t surprise me. But will there be de facto polygamy, with societies rewriting the law to allow such relationships, and men and women openly engaging in such behaviors? I sincerely doubt so, just like I doubt that this economic downturn will lead to such an explosion in crime that people fear to leave their homes.
Finally, a comment about Paul P.’s observations. You are citing your experiences in a small area that is best known for its opulence. It’s no surprise that polygamous-like behaviors would be more common there, just like it would be no surprise if I noted that theft was higher in high-density urban areas with extreme poverty.
It is well understood that human species are slightly polygamous, as evidenced by male species generally being larger than females. Evolutionary logic explanation is that the larger men can successfully defend a slightly larger harem and have a better chance of passing down the genes. The natural inclination is obviously to increase to size of a harem as evidenced by the cultures where number of women in ones harem is an indication of a social standing, Genghis-khan comes to mind as an extreme example.
Our cousins chimpanzees generally run polygamy in their troops and the ratio are 1:5 to 1
I think the assumption by some women that their blue-collar mate is more likely to get fired during a Depression is somewhat debatable. Often times, it’s the execs who get laid-off first. The only difference is: usually they can handle it better, (at least financially, not necessarily pscyhologically).
I don’t see any polygamist issue, and are we really in Depression?
My expectation is this. The USA will become like Japan, more and more women holding off marriage and having a family, in favor of secure their courier However, unlike Japan, we won’t have a growing aging population because, unlike Japan, we still accept immigrant. But, what this can lead to is the USA will evenly be much more mixed then ever before, not only at a socially level, but at the government level too (just look at our current president, or the republican favor, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal) — no body expected such diversity 20 or even 10 years ago. So what’s wrong with this? My concern is,and this is my view, our government will have much easier chance to pass laws and policy focus on social programs then foster business enterprise.
Polygamy was on it’s way towards acceptance anyway. In today’s society, it’s all about personal preferences, and that goes for marriage as much as anything else. This isn’t 1850, and marriage is an expression of love rather than a sacrament to a large and growing segment of society, which is why more and more people favor gay marriage. So what justification do people who think like that have to deny polygamists the recently discovered “right” to marry whomever you love?
This guy Scott who thinks monogamy is part of the social contract may be right about that, but what does the social contract mean today? We 21st century Americans increasingly wipe our butts with the social contract. He probably would have also thought that people would attempt to pay their mortgages if they were underwater, just because they signed on a dotted line, because that used to be part of the social contract too.
Also, I would take issue with the idea that blue-collar guys are a net drag on a family unit. If the value of your labor (including pay, childcare, and any duties around the house – which is probably a net negative for lots of guys) is less than the marginal cost of adding one person to the household, you are a net asset. That’s not hard to do, even if you make $7/hour at Burger King, because the marginal cost is probably about $500/month worth of food and sundries if you live within your means – roughly one biweekly paycheck. Certainly less than 2. Even an unemployed man is probably cheaper to support than day care for even one child, if he’s frugal.
If women are spurning loser males, it’s because they don’t like loser males, and the deal that losers offer is no longer good enough to overcome that. The article you linked actually says that college-educated women don’t want non-college-educated men, which rings more true to me – they think they’re too good for those guys. They would probably prefer an office worker to a plumber even if the plumber made more money. They will hold out for Mr Right until their biological clock starts ticking too loudly, after which they will settle, become single mothers, or become childless spinsters.
Like you said, polygamy might not look so bad to some women compared to those options.