As a result, young men don't really have a dating pool. Once they hit 30, as long as they're not total wasters, women will take more interest.
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28109-study-reveals-average-ag...
the average age that humans had children throughout the past 250,000 years is 26.9. Furthermore, fathers were consistently older, at 30.7 years on average, than mothers, at 23.2 years on average, but the age gap has shrunk in the past 5,000 years, with the study’s most recent estimates of maternal age averaging 26.4 years. The shrinking gap seems to largely be due to mothers having children at older ages.Also, men will date down, women typically don’t. So these higher earning, ambitious women are unable to find a partner that meets their expectations. Men are happy to (or if not happy to, can make do) exit the dating marketplace when this expectation mismatch occurs. There just aren’t enough women who want a low status low earning male partner.
(edit: corrected below)
Less handwaving, more cites[1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/b.htm#agefb
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/15/for-most-hi....
Similar breakdown in red states vs blue states. Blue states have much older age of first child, on average (because of correlation with educational attainment).
In fact the gap we should talk about is the gap between college-educated women and the rest (which stands at ~8 years)
the original cdc numbers cited are perhaps not best way to look at the matter, because they include women who were giving birth in 80s and 90s.
Women and men have completely different attractiveness trajectories and „what's at risk” when having sex.
The article correctly argues that societal changes made it a lot more difficult for young men to find a romantic partner:
- No pressure to marry early in your twenties as a woman. Instead, it's even expected to „have some fun“ and marry later.
- Dating apps and a more individualistic society make it easy for women to find a mate outside of their social cirle.
Unless they've been doing exceptionally well (e.g. are physically fit, have a good status in their peer group, a well-rounded personality and make some money), men in their early twenties don't have a lot to offer to women of their age. On the other hand, women are usually in their peak attractiveness in early/mid twenties and can easily select an older partner.
Anecdotal experience also confirms that. I'm in my late 20s, my GF in her early twenties. She had no serious interest in anyone from her school year. We met on a dating app. Quite a few of my similar-aged friends who had very litte luck with women found a romantic partner once they've finished their degree and earned some money.
It's been shown long ago that most men rate most women as above average (in attractiveness), whereas most women rate most men as below average.
Is that's from the OkCupid data? While interesting you definitely can't claim that 'it has been shown' if that data is the foundation.
The best we're going to get is data from dating apps. And even that's now hard to find, since Match.com removed that blog post after purchasing OKCupid.
So the ideal same-age relationship is between two adolescents of 14, and a successful 40 year old male would, all things considered, prefer pairing with a 27 year old female.
This matches my observations.
What's the next headline ? "Tide comes in twice a day" ?
This seems mathematically impossible to me. The average age gap in a relationship with a woman for a given man should be the same as the average age gap in a relationship with a man for a given woman.
Very few 22 year old men will go for a 40 year old women, but the reverse isn't true.