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Sex and the Single (Working Class) Guy
In recent years, we’ve been treated to plenty of articles regarding the romantic and sexual habits of the young and college-educated. In general, the observation is that the ladies are finding it difficult to find men who are interested in committed relationships or marriage, while the guys are blithely bouncing from bed to bed. While no stereotype is true of the whole — as my early-20s self of a decade ago would have bitterly pointed out to you — this one seems to reflect at least a part of reality.
Though there’s no shortage of likely causes — including the ongoing effects of the Sexual Revolution — two factors that have rightly attracted attention of late are the power of scarcity within different dating markets and how those markets are largely demarcated by education (e.g., college graduates generally limit their dating pools to other college grads). Among college-aged Millennials, for instance, there are four women for every three men. In that demographic, this means that men’s preferences dominate, not in spite of their low numbers, but because of them. Consequently sexual mores tend to be loose and committed relationships relatively rare. (“Won’t sleep with me? Sorry, baby, there’s plenty who will.”) When you factor in youthful hormones, it’s little wonder that sex tends to happen relatively early and requires less commitment.
(The outcome is deeply ironic, given that most feminists seemed to assume that, as college become more dominated by women, their preferences would become ascendant. Chalk this up as yet another example of the dangers of political thinking divorced from economic understanding).
Of course, if women are over-represented among college graduates, then that also means that they’re underrepresented among those without a degree. Indeed, according to Jon Birger in this Cato Daily Podcast interview, there are about 9.5 million single, working-class men in their 20s and only 7 million comparable women. And while this demographic’s romantic life has fewer think pieces and Hollywood screenplays devoted to it, the dating market here is apparently much more commitment-friendly. As such, we’re in the weird position where even Pajama Boy types can wrack up notches on their headboards, while middlingly-attractive working-class guys either marry relatively young or go to bed alone (I’m not wholly sure how to reconcile this with Coming Apart, though I sense part of the answer is that Belmont and Fishtown are extremes, and that Birger’s research focuses more closely on the young).
Birger predicts that something is going to break, and that the most likely point is our hang-ups about inter-class dating; specifically, that college-aged women are going to start dating (and marrying) firemen, plumbers, soldiers, and technicians who are skilled and gainfully employed, but lack a college degree.
Given that many of these careers now offer impressive salaries based on a few years’ training and education, going to technical school just became that much more attractive.
Published in Culture, Marriage
I believe that there are a variety feast and famine issues also at play.
Yep; hence comment #8.
My husband at work:
Trust me, I married up. And our med student daughter would be happy to find a fellow like her father.
Umm… yeah.
I do, because right now, they’re winning their fight to destroy civilization and rebuild it in their image.
“As such, we’re in the weird position where even Pajama Boy types can wrack up notches on their headboards, while middlingly-attractive working-class guys either marry relatively young or go to bed alone.”
Pajama Boys is most decidedly NOT “wrack[ing] up notches. Even feminists and highly “adventurous” women find his ilk repulsive.
“In that demographic, this means that men’s preferences dominate, not in spite of their low numbers, but because of them. Consequently sexual mores tend to be loose and committed relationships relatively rare. (‘Won’t sleep with me? Sorry, baby, there’s plenty who will.’) When you factor in youthful hormones, it’s little wonder that sex tends to happen relatively early and requires less commitment.”
Correction: certain “men’s preferences dominate.” Modern college age women go after the top tier men almost exclusively. The young and pretty are taught not to “settle,” and they don’t.
Nevertheless, women still have far more control over the youthful dating market than we give them credit for. Indeed, some men “rack up notches,” but for only two reasons.
First, they’re allowed to. If young women were as “commitment-oriented” as we make them out to be, men would have to spend night after night proving his love for a girl before he’d get anything more than a kiss. That’s not what’s happening.
Second, college-aged women aren’t particularly focused on finding a husband like they used to be. She’s been trained to focus on her career, not “tie herself down,” and “find herself” for a decade or so until she meets that perfect guy someday down the road.
We assume too often that men only sleep with a guy after she’s been tricked into thinking he loves her.
Maybe true in the past. Not today.
I recently got a male friend to get on the no-sex-before-marriage bandwagon, and he said that even the women he’s met at church have responded negatively when he says he wants to wait until engagement or marriage before having sex- “Yeah…I’m not ok waiting that long.” The whole “you have to test drive the car before you buy it” paradigm has completely taken over our society. Not only is premarital sex tolerated, it’s now expected and even lauded as “making sure you’re making the right decision.”
Exactamundo. Even mainstream Christianity has largely bought into the notion that pre-marital sex is no biggie.
Very few will come out and directly say it’s not sinful, but non-judgementalism is still the order for the day, especially for the girls.
You see, when a man and woman have extra-marital sex, he probably tricked her into it. Sure, she sinned, but it’s probably his fault.
From a risk management perspective, before making a commitment like marriage, a test drive of a limited sort is not the craziest idea. Testing every car on the lot is crazy.
I say that just because you aren’t going to test drive it doesn’t mean you can’t sit in the driver’s seat and rev the engine…
I see how this seems to make sense, and I’m glad you recognize the futility of “testing every car.” That said, a lot of women aren’t even “testing” guys to see if they’re sexually compatible; they’ve no intention of “buying” until seven years later.
The problem with your reasoning is that people tend to fall just short of what’s “normal.” When “no sex until marriage” was the standard, it was common to have sex while engaged. Hence the tradition of the engagement ring: in exchange for her premarital “virtue,” he gave her anti-abandonment insurance through a ring.
But if “sex when engaged” becomes the professed standard, women will have sex with their boyfriends (and when you don’t get married until 28, that might mean a lot of sex). If “sex only with boyfriends” is the standard, that easily morphs into “only with guys I feel ‘connected to.'” If “connection” becomes the standard, it’s not much of a leap to “the timing was right” or “it just happened.”
Before you know it, there’s no standard other than her whim at the moment, which isn’t a whole lot different than driving every car on the lot.
I understand that we’ll break the rules, but we still need rules.
It was?
The problem with this is engagements can be easily broken. I know, I’ve had two.
Agreed.
Double agree.
Perhaps just the word “common” was an overstatement, but it was more common than many of us conservatives like to believe was happening back in the good ol’ days.
Engagement used to be a much bigger deal, and the ring tradition started in that context. It varied with time, place, and social class, but engagement was less a decision made solely by just the betrothed themselves and more a negotiated agreement between families. Men could be disinherited by their fathers for betrothing themselves to the wrong woman, and the woman’s father had to willingly give his daughter’s hand.
Things didn’t always play out quite this way, but marriage was considered to be the cornerstone of an adult’s existence (not the capstone we consider it to be today). Thus, the decision to betroth oneself to somebody was taken very, very seriously.
Hence women being able to sue for breach of promise of marriage.
The issue (nobody ever came out and crassly said it but) was a broken hymen, not a broken heart.
I think you’ll find if you look at the records, a surprising number of “premature” first babies. (I know my Grandparents were married in June 1925 and my Dad was born in February 1926).
I’ve also heard it said that a lot of proposals went something along the lines of “Well I guess we better get married then”.
As an automotive enthusiast, I’ve put considerable thought into this analogy. I can picture buying a new car without a test drive, because there are lots of sources for car reviews. Between that and reading the owners manual beforehand, you can have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting. As to sex, well if your boyfriend or girlfriend has so many ex-lovers that there are multiple online reviews of their performance . . . they may not be the one.
I got married at 21, my husband at 19. Neither of us had any previous relationships and we waited until the wedding night for action. It’s really nice not having any baggage, tho I will admit that it may be harder to judge that by saying “I’m glad I didn’t do that” vs “I wish I hadn’t done that.”
High five girl! Woo!
He would be mortified if he knew I posted his picture shirtless or otherwise. He is very dignified and couth, though blue-collar -or no collar. Don’t tell him. But I posted the picture to try to express that I don’t admire him in spite of his working with his hands, I admire him because of it (among other reasons of course.) Watching him framing, run equipment, or anything he does is like watching Nureyev dance.
My blue-collar husband has a college degree which he regards as a waste of his time and money, though I can’t be sorry it gave me the chance to meet him. It has occurred to me that I would have assumed we had nothing in common had I met him, say, in high school, when he was hot rodding Grandpa’s truck and my friends were going to be doctors and lawyers. I would have been the dumb one though.
I love Mark Steyn’s take on college in general today, that he’d vote for a candidate who promised to cut college attendance 90%. A little extreme, maybe, but less ridiculous than promising to send everyone to college.
Guru, re Jane Russell video: Eeeeegads. I’m sure those were hardworking men, but it’s not appealing when a man seems to be showing his physique just to show off. When a shirt comes off incidental to hard, skilled work is different.
My father danced with Jane Russell when she visited Fort Benning in 1942. He wrote about it to his girl at home, not yet his wife or fiancée. My mother wrote back “Who’s Jane Russell?”
Outside of choreography, the plot is that she is flirting with and interrupting the Olympic team during training. The rest is song and dance.
Oh, okay, as long as it’s not a thin plot device to show a lot of nearly naked men :)
Of course its a thin plot device to show off a lot of nearly naked men. Chicks like attractive men and their primary sex traits as much as guys do (like women’s primary sex traits), they just appear to need something to act as a fig leaf to hide their gawking.
Its also setting up Jane Russells character as a cynical libertine who has a preference for muscular men, as a balance to Marilyn Monroe’s quest to marry a rich man.
It always is, but some are better singing & some, well, dancing…
It’s a Howard Hawks musical!
Charlie Coburn was still acting back then, putting on the old man charm.
I agree that chicks like attractive men. But, generalizing, I don’t think they put as much priority on appearance in a mate as men do. I think men just standing around hunkily look a bit silly, and I have the impression other women more or less agree. We might enjoy looking at a hunk but it’s not as big a part of a man’s desirability status as it is for a woman. I was kind of kidding with my picture; it’s not really his figure that makes him high-status to me. The muscle man/ rich man quests are both extremes that are rare in real life. What’s really, really sexy is competence and confidence, whatever the career.
You’re totally right, Jojo. Women are not nearly concerned with physical attractiveness as men. Give me a guy in a tweed sports coat, a satchel full of books, and receding hairline any day. I like ’em nerdy.