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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
This is another one in a long series of crushing disappointments. The more I get to know America… I was for sure this problem was solved circa 1987, which was, as the poet says, just too late for me. Are you sure this is not easily taken care of with a boat & a few well-timed plunges?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RndG23-Vu-k
It’s getting so I can anticipate your youtube clips… scary.
When the figures are broken down what does it show? What do we actually know about plumbers, electricians, carpenters, et al? Are they single? Who do they marry? The few I’ve had working on my houses, were a lot smarter and sharper than most college graduates I know around here. They have big families and good incomes. Is actually knowing how to do something valuable a disqualification for professional women? We know that a B.A. means little, doesn’t necessarily mean person is educated. Are we saying that women, like business, use college degrees as a screen? How have feminism and faux independence and attitudes toward sex changed women’s bargaining power?
One of the smartest and best read people I know is a retired iron worker. The man is brilliant and always fun and interesting to talk to. College doesn’t make the man.
Oh, boy! Stalky-scary? Quick, something unpredictable.
Here’s a thought. Conservatives had better beware what their hearts desire–if they desire that family be restored unto America, if they desire, to be brief, that people marry far more & stay married far more, that would be a revolution or require a revolution. That world would be far less friendly to political conservatism or conservatism as it is today than the world you do have-
Disagree with the final sentence. A world with more people married longer would be a world with a lot less welfare. When people leave welfare they become taxpayers. The latter are far more likely to be conservative than the former.
For what it’s worth, my college educated daughter just married a flooring contractor. Currently earns what my husband did before his recent retirement. Can do auto and home repair. He is motivated, careful with the cash and patiently waited while my daughter sorted out what was actually important to her. And the fact that his grandma has horses didn’t hurt.
I’m somewhat reluctant to completely hijack the thread. Your point may be good, but what does welfare really mean? To be specific, my suspicion is, you add lots of families to America, you will do nothing to decrease Medicare & Social Security spending–increase them rather. Big Government abides, like the dude-
I so want to blow up this thread!
Maybe the toilet isn’t in the dream, but the exposed butt crack might be in there.
Titus Techera:
True, but you probably won’t see today the sort of screwball comedy also popular in the “golden era” in which the women were extremely ditzy, like the gangster’s moll type.
Who needs that when you have Republicans?
Not suitable for more sensitive etc:
1. Unless both parties are very mature, the “educated” one will pull rank as being the more sophisticated, the more worldly. And that’s a form of contempt, the beginning of the end.
2. Working men have not studied submissiveness and deference in college and are apt to not show enough to gratify most modern college women. It’s a castaway fantasy and won’t last.
What was the movie–Swept Away. The chauffeur is expected to remember his place eventually.
That’s true. Today, you’d have to have them kill the gangsters & turn into super-assassins.
I’ll say this much, while Mr. Bogdanovich draws breath, the screwball comedy lives. Last year, he made She’s funny that way, which is hilarious. Talk about ditzy-
To be fair, there aren’t many of anybody earning $500k per year.
For most people, college probably isn’t some great indicator of intelligence or skill. I remember my college days thinking that at least half of the people around me had no real business being there. It was just a credential – easily if not cheaply acquired. In my office today, they want a college degree for someone to answer the phones and do odd jobs! Yikes. It’s only a matter of time before people more generally stop viewing college as a meaningful indicator. The cost simply does not match the benefit.
I think there’s a disparity in preferences that’s driving this. A black woman pursuing college and then a profession at this point knows that she’s going down a path where she’ll see few black men. She now lives in two “worlds,” one that includes colleagues and another her family and other friends. It’s akin to what happens in an immigrant community, where 1st-generation Americans are constantly moving back and forth between two different cultures.
Sadly, that makes sense.
Most of the actual cases I had in mind don’t make $500k per year either; but if you are into six figures this factor is a part of your life. And the men don’t all date models either. Waitresses and cashiers work too.
But if you meet a woman who has that sort of success… if she is married, her husband almost certainly makes more.
So what if you’re a woman that makes six figures and isn’t married? I think a lot of men making $40k/year would not be comfortable marrying a woman that made more than twice what he makes. I know, I’ve dated these guys. They aren’t ok with it.
I don’t really disagree, but it doesn’t change my basic point. The more career success a woman has, the fewer ‘appropriate’ matches she will have.
Oh, absolutely. I’m blaming my singleness on this.
I’m just thinking out loud, so to speak, but I wonder if a lot of these income issues couldn’t be anticipated by computer dating, where they could ask you how you feel about these issues when arriving at your “perfect match.”
I think you may be right. My wife earned 15% to 20% more than I for quite a few years. This never caused me any concern, but if the discrepancy were that large I would probably feel like I wasn’t pulling my weight.
On the other hand, if my wife earned 10 times my income I would probably quit my job and learn to live with the shame.
I always earned at least a bit more than my wife, and in some years a lot more. But I always had the sense that if she earned more than me she was going to use that as a hammer to try to have a lot more say in how our money was spent.
Don’t get me wrong. It was all spent on things she wanted to spend it on, but as the one who earned a bit more I got to say “no” once in a while.
We don’t have titles of nobility in the US, but in some ways college degrees have taken on that function. Wherever possible, we need to resist that tendency.
I can assure you the degree is not sufficient. If you want good status, you also need a good publication record – one with lots of citations from the right places – and a good history of grant funding.
So have political offices-
Much of the dialog in this thread reminds me of a hypothesis I developed a long time ago regarding an essential ingredient of a successful marriage. We all know that passion wanes over time, and living in close proximity to anybody for a long time is going to breed some amount of resentment. What allowed me to remain both happy and unflaggingly committed to my wife is my admiration for her. This is not to say that I think she is superior to me (though I haven’t ruled it out), but I don’t feel superior to her and she has several qualities I genuinely admire.
I spoke to my wife and other friends and family about this, and it seemed there was a significant element of mutual admiration in all of the happy relationships I knew of. My theory is that if you admire someone you’re far less resentful of life’s inequities, because there’s a part of you that counters the petty jealousies with the realization that they deserve to be treated well. I don’t think I could be resentful of anybody I admire earning more than me. Resentment tends to follow when people I don’t respect earn more than me.
Many of the comments in which men and women say that they’re undisturbed by the wife’s higher income or better education also comment on their spouse’s good qualities. In contrast, several of the comments that expressed concern with these differences commented on a spouse’s flaw. Am I right that admiration is the difference, or am I reading too much into it?
I think you hit in something important there, Chuck. However, if the other person is insecure in themself, it won’t matter how great they think their spouse is.
It’s an interesting theory, and I think you’re on the right track, but there’s one part I disagree with: I don’t think the crux of the issue is that men resent women who earn more than they do. Some might, but I think the more common issue is that men fear that their girlfriends/wives will not admire, respect, and love them for earning less, being less educated, or occupying a lower status.
So I think perhaps the key is for women to find men they genuinely admire for reasons other than their education or career: courage, honesty, strength, fortitude, leadership, integrity, and so forth. And then they need to express this admiration and respect clearly enough (remembering that men don’t do “subtle” well) to overcome his instinctive insecurities.