Commenter astrapto asks in response to Percentage of U.S. women never married, by age, 1980 & 2015
3. Instead of showing men on a marriage “strike”, it is clear that there are plenty of thirsty men quite happy to wife up nearly all of the 30 something carouselers looking to marry.
Dalrock, doesn’t this undermine your conclusion that women delaying marriage won’t be able to find anyone?
Just for the record, I’ve been consistent on this point for the last 7 years, and the data has yet to change my mind. Nearly all women are still able to marry. If we could break this data out for just White women the percentage who marry by 45 would be even higher, around 90%! Moreover, the change we are seeing is almost entirely a delay in the age of marriage. If men were driving this change, it would mean that men were refusing to marry young hot women, and insisting on marrying clapped out party girls instead. Even if you stipulated that this was indeed what was happening, insisting on an older, less hot, less chaste, more demanding wife doesn’t count as a “strike” in my book.
What we are seeing instead is women continuing to push out the age of marriage. As they are doing this, they are changing the signal young men receive regarding how to be sexually successful. Beta Bucks (BB) used to be a very effective strategy for an 18 year old young man. He might have to wait a few years, but he could see the plan working for his 3-5 year older bother and his friend’s older brother. Now a young man would have to look to men 10-15 years older to see examples of the BB model finally paying off. Meanwhile, they see the Alpha F**** (AF) model working all around them. AF gets rewarded, and BB is not only not rewarded for a decade or more, but our whole society (especially Christians) despises husbands and fathers, the epitome of the BB model. This is a very powerful message, and an unmistakable one.
Not surprisingly, we are starting to see fewer men working hard to signal BB status in their late teens and early 20s. When the party girls suddenly decide they aren’t that kind of girl, they still find nearly all of the would be BB men are willing to marry, but many of these men haven’t done the preparation needed to really fulfill the role. They can no more go back and spend their teens and 20s on education and career advancement than the 30 ish career gal can go back and dedicate her most attractive and fertile years to her husband. Many of the men they find have instead been working like women. Also, the men who did well in the AF paradigm and are eventually inclined (and prepared) to marry aren’t going to prefer aging career gals. They are the ones with options, and the prettiest marriage seekers have the best shot with them. This means the women who waited too long to marry are stuck with terrible prospects. Choosing last always sucks, but men’s rational response to women’s anti-BB signal means it sucks much more now than it did in the past.
Leave a Reply