A professional, educated guy will marry the receptionist if she's funny and hot. But a professional, educated woman will rarely marry the maintenance guy. Brutal but that's how it is.
Maybe the receptionist is also going to school and this is how she's paying for it.
Being college educated doesn't mean much these days in america. read the statistics about college grads and how little they know. Of course there are exceptions, but most US college grads are about as well educated as typical Finnish high school grad.
Professional and educated guy will still be able to earn his money when he'll become a father, but it's not true for that professional and educated woman.
This is happening more and more nowadays, but a man in that position still has to defend himself against accusations of being a “girly man” and so forth.
Another way to put it - will a man be seen as (a) more or (b) less desirable to most women if he makes the following statement: “I’d like to marry a successful career woman, and when we have kids, I’d like to stay home and be the primary caretaker for the kids”?
To answer your question, clearly the answer is b. That is exactly the double standard as stated.
What I'm really trying to get at is that no one should be staying home full time while the other is at work all day.
Careers are a very personal thing. Having a child shouldn't be thought of as something you do for yourself. You are doing it for the child and the world. It is important to raise them right, but not at the cost of your future. With two parents, it shouldn't be that difficult to split the time across both.
That may sound wrong, but in reality, it takes a village to raise a child. Why should one person sacrifice the rest of their life?
I see your argument why shouldn't be that way, but I don't see there an argument that it in reality is this way, at least not for most women.
It may quite well take a village to raise a child, but in practice for most people there won't ba a village to do so; One person shouldn't have to sacrifice the rest of their life, but more likely than not one you will have to do that; and while I can agree that 'no one should be staying home full time while the other is at work all day' and Scandinavian countries have very nice results with such policies for both parents, in USA most people will be forced to choose between either that or poverty.
So, to answer the question, you're stating "clearly the answer should be b" ... but is the answer b in reality?
I didn't say that it should be B, I'm saying that unfortunately it is B. I can guarantee few women in the US want to support a man. However, I think the inverse is making more ground. Meaning I think less men are interested in highly dependent women.
The leveling of the double standard is happening not by women accepting dependent men, but by men expecting an independent woman.
It is not my experience that most men are even willing to consider how well a woman will be able to support them financially, since that is considered emasculating.
From the age of 18 onward, I selected on a quirky combination of intelligence plus subjective cuteness. I did not consider financial stability but I wouldn't have been emasculated by it either. I was by no means an alpha, but I was a straight A student and that did help with attracting the smarter ones (which the alphas, frat boys and jocks mostly ignored anyway).
That said, this was a really bad algorithm. My divorce sucked.
Since then, I've selected on a maxmin of a quirky combination of intelligence plus subjective cuteness combined with financial stability. So far, so good. I had to rule out several otherwise promising contenders on the way using the second criterion though.
I would not consider marrying the receptionist, no matter how hot, unless I noticed that she was reading O'Reilly books and/or managing her multiple rental properties between visitors to the front desk. You do not want to marry a boat anchor and make beautiful concrete galoshes with her.
Finally, while looks are a mediocre measure of long-term compatibility when one is young, as one approaches and passes 40, one's looks become less a matter of genetics and more a matter of the consequences of conscious choices along the way and so I got pickier on that axis as my pool of potential partners aged.
Women who are selecting for financial stability early on are way ahead of you if you truly consider a financially competent woman emasculating. Get over it.
>> I would not consider marrying the receptionist, no matter how hot, unless I noticed that she was reading O'Reilly books and/or managing her multiple rental properties between visitors to the front desk. You do not want to marry a boat anchor and make beautiful concrete galoshes with her.
Wow. What if you enjoy each others company immensely?
Turned down two potential partners whose company I enjoyed immensely because the first one (ivy league degrees, spoke 4 languages, virtuoso musician) could not hold a job for more than a couple months and had zero life-savings and the second one (beautiful, charming, popular) turned out to be a narcissist that was over $1M in the hole due to the housing crash. Both had expensive tastes despite this.
So yes, if I found out the receptionist was falling ever deeper into debt and/or wasn't doing something on her own to rise above the seemingly unstoppable ongoing wealth redistribution to the top 5%, I would not marry her. OTOH if I found out she was a diamond in the rough like I alluded to above, I wouldn't let her out of my sight.
Fights over money are marriage-killers. And to quote Faye Valentine: "Beautiful skin can only be maintained by tireless efforts which are ultimately totally futile." So what's in it for me in this case other than transient enjoyment followed by a lifetime of sorrow?
And get divorced a few years later once both of you realize that "enjoying each others company immensely" is not sufficient to have a successful marriage.
He seems to be implying that, from his past experiences, a certain degree of mesh between their relative financial security and personal aspirations is a prerequisite for lasting "enjoys each other's company".
You may as well ask why he would not marry somebody he is not physically attracted to.
In most areas, owning a home & having children requires two middle-class incomes. So unless you're in a top income bracket, this is an important factor for people.
People in general are far more likely to marry within their socioeconomic layer than outside that (partly because of biases, partly because they simply spend most of their time socializing among 'their own') - but yes, looking at statistics, men are more eager to 'marry down' than women, there is an asymmetry there.
Any ideas when this became the norm? It used to be seen as scandalous in both directions: upper-class men and women were not supposed to marry into the working or lower classes.
because traditionally the male was the wage earner. so whoever he married, his standard of living doesn't change. in contrast, in traditional (ie my parent's generation, uk) roles, who the woman marries fixes her standard of living.
That's the usual hypothesis for why, but I was wondering when this became the norm, since traditionally there was quite a bit of social opposition to that direction as well. A man from "respectable society" wasn't supposed to marry someone from a poor family, or he'd be disowned, or at least cause a minor scandal. Particularly true among more prominent families with a family name to uphold.
You're conflating "social class" with "economic class". The old marriage thing was more about social class than economic - a man could marry a girl with no money if she came from a "good" family but marrying some rich girl with no lineage would be frowned on. (see: All of Downton Abbey) Also, one could be from "respectable society" but not be rich, if you had "good blood" or "good school", etc.
In modern life and in the US, we're much less aware of social class at all (or actively dislike the concept), and it's gotten (somewhat) decoupled from economic class. Someone who has become a lawyer or otherwise economically successful could be from any class and it's not unlikely they might choose to marry someone from a similar social class (with similar background) rather than someone with similar economic class.
I think this is a bit misleading. You hear tons of scandalous stories one way, but no stories, scandalous or otherwise, the other way. Which is truly less socially acceptable?
Hear about where? Is information about the attitudes that people in previous eras held towards marriage between different classes something you commonly run across just in daily life?
eh, some guys maybe. went the funny/hot receptionist route once and was mostly bored at how uncultured/uneducated she was. you don't just marry for fucks and giggles.
Many do indirectly. They get together with someone for that, then something else develops (or nothing else develops but the only way to keep the fucks and giggles is to keep her happy by marrying her!).
No all marriages are built on both parties pleasing/challenging each other intellectually.
Unsubstantiated claim, but that is how it is. I have never met a receptionist married to a professional. Executive assistant maybe, but that is wink/nudge-heavy industry.
I've met lots and lots of this. During my dating years, I went on a single date with a hairdresser whose ex-husband was one of the founders of Cisco. Dumped her and levelled up right before he made his money. It's not at all uncommon. I've even seen it happen at one ex-employer.
