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Advice to Single Women: Marry Your Plumber
There are, according to all demographic surveys, not enough single men. From Vice:
There simply aren’t enough college-educated men to go around. For every four college-educated women in my generation, there are three college-educated men. The result? What Birger calls a “musical chairs” of the heart: As the men pair off with partners, unpartnered straight women are left with fewer and fewer options—and millions of them are eventually left with no options at all.
Wait. Let me rephrase that. There are not enough single college-educated men. Almost 35 percent more women than men graduated from college last year. Women outnumber men in law school and medical school. In the college class of 2023, women will outnumber men by 47 percent!
So where are all the men? They’re around. Just not, you know, in college. From Vice:
Among non-college-educated singles ages 22 to 29, there are 9.4 million men and 7.1 million women. And if you look at the women in that age group who are non-college-educated, something like 30 percent of the women are married but only 22 percent of the men are married.
The solution, obviously, is for more women to pair off with more non-college-educated men — for, in other words, college women to marry working class guys.
But class lines in America can be both unspoken and difficult to surmount. The number of single women in large cities who would not dream of marrying a working class man (who, perhaps, earns less) is probably large but also probably beside the point. Where, for instance, do those two classes of people mingle and meet in the supposedly “classless” America?
Have we created such an exalted position in this society for the college degree that a “mixed marriage” is unthinkable? And isn’t it possible (maybe even probable) that such a marriage might be stronger and more lasting than the two-degree kind?
Published in Education, Marriage
Weird. My wife has a college degree and I never went, we make approximately the same amount of money. The difference in education makes zero difference to either of us. I certainly wouldn’t object if she made twice as much money as me. I’m certain she wouldn’t have been interested in me if I were willfully unemployed, though.
Another thing single people should consider when choosing a mate is not just whether they have a decent income, but how they handle their money. There are people who have never made $40K a year but live a comfortable lifestyle because they live within their means and save. And we’ve all heard of superstar athletes or entertainers who make millions of dollars a year and go bankrupt because they’ve spent it even faster.
Women without a college education do not for the most part make much income. So out of high school does she hit the local greasy spoon serving up hamburgers? Or go to work as a typist, providing she has learned to type? She has no idea whether anyone will ask her to marry him. I had one date in high school, in the 10th grade, arranged by my foster mother. So women go to college knowing they may have to earn their bread for the rest of their life, and they’d just as soon it be enough to live on. Once they commit to getting a degree be it teaching or accounting or law, or medicine they hang in there. Falling in love and getting married is a bonus not a given.
Randy- I’ve been told on many occasions that the difference in income or education made them feel inferior and insecure. I’m sure it’s not that way with every guy, but that has been my experience.
Why do college educated women fear to marry working class tradesmen?
They probably do know that these men are well-paid. They know that they can probably fix most things around the house. They know that they don’t have student debt.
So what is the problem? I’m going to guess that for some of these women it is the fear that they will have nothing to talk about. She won’t want to talk about “his day” at work. He won’t want to hear about her book club where they are reading the latest book by Jonathan Franzen. She fears that they won’t be able to make friends with couples where both he will like watching football with the guy and she will like shopping with the girl.
Are these legitimate fears?
Not if Obama and the Democrats have anything to say about it.
Kay of MT: the issues you bring up are very real. First, we should apply social pressure to companies to try to persuade them to stop requiring a college degree for jobs that don’t actually require one. This would benefit both men and women, and it would benefit women who put off a career in order to care for a family. Second, parents should stop kicking 18 year olds out of the house. Among most of my working class family and friends, it is customary for adult children to work full time but live with the parents until they either get married or buy their own house. It works for both young men and young women.
It has been a while now were getting a degree probable means you learn almost nothing useful. College is overrated although the hypothetical with no real life contrasts are fun to theorize about basically its what people do you can’t get paid to be a pundit. Real learning happens in the workplace and reading well written informative media, not in the classroom. Heck I learned more in High-school than the 190 college credits and three degrees I got, but that might be because I was home-schooled.
I really don’t know why it should matter. Actual intelligence has almost nothing to do with a degree.
There is truth here. Handling of money can be a major point of contention in a marriage.
That made me think of an old statistic I remember that might even be true: The most common cause of divorce is money. The second is mothers-in-law.
And that put me in mind of the family aspect of marriage. It could be a stumbling block for some more educated women that they prefer not to marry into a family that is so different from the sort of people she is used to.
My wife told me, and she wasn’t joking, that she had real second thoughts about marrying me after she met my mother.
This applies both ways. One of the first things I consider when I’m interested in someone is: is she going to get along with my family? It’s not that my family are awful, but that we’re tight-knit. I won’t introduce anyone into that setting that might disrupt it.
Obligatory Russian film reference:
It was the premise behind the Russian movie that Ronald Reagan (a former movie guy) watched before meeting with Gorbachev. Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears. You used to be able to get it from Netflix; maybe you still can.
Single mother becomes the manager of the factory where she worked, and then can’t find a manly man, despite the availability of state-run match-making agencies to help deal with this all-too-common problem. (A lot of the men are drunks. What else is there for a guy to do in socialist paradise?) But she finally meets a nice guy with a decent job, and all seems well until he finds out that she makes a lot more money than he does. Then he goes off on a bender.
All ends well, but western feminists are said not to have liked it.
It’s not just an American problem.
I used to know a lady about my age (49) who married a lawyer and all of her friends were so happy for her. I’ll call her D. My mother actually suggested to D that she may be rushing into the marriage because it didn’t sound like D really liked the guy’s personality too much. But her friends were so enthusiastic about the boyfriend’s profession that D figured it must be the smart thing to do. She found that she was happy when her husband was out of town, but miserable when he was home so they divorced after maybe a year.
Her second time around she married a plumber and all of her friends thought she was crazy. Why would she want to marry someone in such a yucky occupation, when she had been capable of landing a lawyer? But the plumber made her happy. Well, I hear they eventually got divorced, too, but it lasted much longer than the lawyer marriage.
Yup. Men who earn less might like to consider assets they might have that can’t be quantified: can you fix stuff around the house or the car? will you help with the domestic chores? Can you ward-off any security threats? Can you be entertaining without needing to splurge extravagent amounts of money?
I’d bet that’s some of it, but not all of it. Women are very much interested in the status of their men, socially, economically, even politically. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but I’d bet more often than not the sentiment is “I didn’t become a Tri-Delt to marry a plumber”.
I’m glad you mentioned this. I’ve wondered about it for some time. I’ve worked at a large rural university for 19 years. African Americans make up a very small portion of the population here, but I’ve had the pleasure of working with several smart, attractive, educated, and accomplished black women over the years. A majority of them were single. I haven’t made a rigorous study of the matter, but my perception is that white women with similar qualities in my area are considerably more likely to be married. As a group, the black women struck me as being more focused and ambitious than their white counterparts, and I suspected that there may be a causal relationship between their drive and their family situation. That said, I had no idea if they were single because they focused on their careers at the expense of family life, or if they focused so much energy on their careers because they didn’t have that family life. It occurred to me that I’ve met few black men in my area that I would consider the equal of these women, and suspected that may be the key. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know any of these women well enough to ask that potentially uncomfortable question. Based on your comment, my suspicions may have merit.
This story was an inspiration…/sarc
My sister has a law degree and is married to a pipe fitter. He works in the oil industry so he makes a good income, but I don’t think that their relative income is any issue either way. I don’t think she married down in anyway.
I think most women look to marry someone of a similar background. While I have no problems marrying someone with less education or a lower income, I as a surgical nurse practitioner probably wouldn’t have much to talk about with, let’s say, a welder with a GED. I think men are generally more tolerant of their wives being significantly less educated than they, especially if they marry young, since appearance plays a big role in who men select to marry. As men get older their tolerance for vapidness diminishes.
First, I was taught and have been told repeatedly throughout my life that “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. Which I gather that was womyn tell me that they not only do not need men, but that men were useless. So what is the problem?
Second, since the modern day womyn can’t find a man that measures up to her standards, then with SSM legal they can just marry each other for companionship. Are we not told that the sexes / genders are interchangeable? That SSM marriage is every bit as valid, good as traditional marriage? I believe there is even some “science” out that proves SSM to be superior to the old way for participants satisfaction and child rearing purposes? These womyn just need to embrace the future and each other and write the guys off as the losers they have become.
To a great extent, the distinctions about college, professional work as a class and trades and crafts as a class are rooted in our media. The stereotypes are baked into skulls from the first sit com and are reinforced constantly.
What is the difference between being a law partner and owning a plumbing business? Both can be very lucrative, but I cannot name one single TV hero or heroine who ran a plumbing business.
Our media today tells us women lawyers are heroes, federal agents and agencies are heroes, business owners are evil and blue collar workers are stupid. Constant propaganda takes a toll on your perceptions.
Uh, no.
Lil’ Princesses dream of growing up marrying Prince Charming; spending Their childhoods pretending to do so. It’s innate.
They don’t dream of marrying a guy bent over unclogging Her toilet with His butt crack exposed.
They’re “stereotypes” for a reason.
They also portray men as being stupid and incompetent, especially in comedies, while women are the smart and competent ones. Adam is a bumbling fool, and long-suffering Eve has to clean up his messes. A complete reversal of the Hollywood image of men as good, wise, and admirable up the early 60’s.
Darwin will solve this problem, in the long run.
I was musing on this trend as I was grocery shopping last week and one of the things I realized that I tend to price shop while my wife tends to brand shop. I have no particular brand loyalty when it comes to soap or paper towels or ketchup as most of these kinds of household items seem pretty similar. I feel no sense that a particular brand I purchase is going to say anything much about me as a person.
Since most of the brand advertising seems to be placed where women will see it, maybe one of the outcomes advertisers are seeking is to set an unconscious expectation that if the men in their life too stupid to be left alone with the kids, they probably are not competent to select toilet paper either
Ladies, I’m available. I don’t care how much more you make than I do, or how much better educated. Just FYI, I installed a hot water heater this Spring. Just saying. If you want me for a holiday trip, I can golf (7 handicap index), ski (black diamonds), ride a horse and scuba.
It’s not weird, nor surprising.
Men tend to be attracted to women who are young and pretty, while women tend to be attracted to powerful men of high social status. It’s genetic, it’s human nature.
If a woman doesn’t think her boyfriend/husband finds her attractive, she will feel insecure: will he leave me for a younger beauty? By the same logic, a man will feel insecure if he’s dating a woman of higher social status — he will find it hard to believe she really finds him attractive, and isn’t just settling until the doctor/lawyer of her dreams comes along.
True story: Years ago I went with my now-wife to watch the movie Beowolf. It featured a digitally enhanced Angelina Jolie plus filler. I figured since my now-wife had a degree in English literarature she’d be able to answer my questions about the source material.
Nope. Beowolf wasn’t covered in her college adventure, and she knew just about what I knew, which was close to zilch.
Hilarious. I make about 2.5x what she makes, yet I only have a lowly degree from a community college, nothing like her glorious paper from credentialstan.
Fortunately our kids don’t care about that, and neither do we.
Oh, give me a break. Old Hollywood had not just noirs, but screwball comedies where the males are usually bumbling fools no match for the wife or in some cases fate; it also had Westerns, where most men were either evil or cowards. There has been a change, but it’s not exactly what you would call moral or intellectual; it’s more to do with society & democracy & equality. It is especially men who are greater than democracy that have disappeared from movies. Also true of women, actually…
A second remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? along these lines might be worth watching.