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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to see this get coverage. One of the factors that makes for this phenomenon is simple math. Say there is a 55-45 ratio (with more women) among 30-something college-educated folks. Say, moreover, that by then 80% of the people are in relationships. That makes for 40 women paired up with 40 men, leaving 15 single women and just 5 single men.

I think a lot of this is self-inflicted, though. Professional women often still carry with them some of this 1960's mentality and refuse to "date down." As the demographics change and women being overrepresented among the college-educated, this puts them at the wrong end of a supply/demand imbalance.

On the other hand, some of the voluntary decisions are due to unfair social pressures. I think women wouldn't wait so long to get married if doing so didn't start a timer on their downshifting their career. My wife and I got married at 26/27 and had a baby shortly thereafter. My wife is a corporate lawyer and gets a lot of flak for working long hours, especially from family. Nobody ever gives me flak for working long hours. Painting in broad brush strokes, men tend to find that when they get married, society reinforces their career ambitions. Women tend to find that when they get married, society chips away at their career ambitions. Other women, particularly other moms, are the worst about it.

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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.

This is how evolution made it happen.

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.

> 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.

>>A professional, educated guy will marry the receptionist if she's funny and hot.

Try to sleep with maybe, but marry? I doubt it.

edit: This wasn't clear in my post, but I was speaking for myself. To each his own of course. :)

Seriously? Yes, of course.

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?

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.

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?

Then spend a lot of time together.

Then you marry them.

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.

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.

Why not?

Larry Ellison did it.

but it only lasted three years...

Well I don't think anybody here is saying that he is a relationship role-model... only that he did do it.

>edit: This wasn't clear in my post, but I was speaking for myself. To each his own of course. :)

It doesn't make you sound like a very nice person.

Whereas marrying someone simply because they are hot does?

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.

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.

Marissa Mayer is confused.

Marissa Mayer, or her virtually uncredited ghost writer?

Saying this reinforces the double standard. Why can't he stay home while she wins the bread?

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?

>clearly the answer should be b

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.

Ugh, I mistook 'clearly is B' to mean the complete opposite based on rest of the comment. Sorry.

Living and working in Sweden, I can say that men do take lots of parental leave, but not nearly as much as women.

I think about this a lot, but have not formed any convincing theoryas to why this is.

Unless the maintenance guy wins American Idol or the lottery or something.

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?

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.

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.

Unfortunately that does not mean that those who are not college educated are better educated.

> "Professional women often still carry with them some of this 1960's mentality and refuse to "date down.""

Which is the crux of it. Though I wouldn't say it's fair to consider it self-inflicted.

Even if a woman decided she was comfortable with the idea of dating a less-successful/educated man quite a few years younger than herself, few social circles would accept it without friction (far fewer than see any problem with the arrangement were genders reversed) and fewer (desirable) men are themselves comfortable with it.

So, sure, every 20-year-old woman is fairly well aware of these factors and ought to plan accordingly. But even if they shake the mentality at 30, while they can improve their pool, erasing the disadvantage entirely is simply not something that's under their control.

I think this is a very important point. I know a woman who is around 40, attractive, successful, intelligent. Her fiance is a 28 year old man. He's attractive as well, but hes obviously less intelligent than her. As far as I can tell, they make each other extremely happy. They get very strange looks when they're together, much stranger than if the genders were reversed.

It seems like this is something that will self-correct over time; it's just a lag associated with the fact that our expectations are set during childhood but play out 20 years later as adults.

One thing that would help is if TV and other mass media stopped enforcing this stereotype so much - they always have the high-powered woman married to the high-powered man, and the high-powered man may be married to either a career woman or non-career woman, but you don't see the reverse. A few shows (Parenthood comes to mind) have gone against this trend.

A little bit, but the biological clock is still an inherent imbalance for those people looking for biological children.

A man in his 30s, dating women in their 20s will find more of them amenable to reproducing right away, and it's not much of a big deal to the man, if a prospective partner wants to delay that another 5-10 years.

A woman in her 30s, dating men in their 20s will find fewer of them amenable to reproducing right away, and there are significant, potentially deal-breaking costs to the woman associated with delaying another 5-10 years.

There are alternatives (adoption, surrogates, etc) and perhaps through some social normalization they'll further close the gap. But the social/financial/identity[1] costs of such arrangements are going to remain substantial for some time.

[1] that is, a person's (potentially strong) preference for traditional, biological children, due only their own pre-conceived notions of how they'd start their family. Women have definitely been known to 'settle' for a lesser mate to avoid challenging that preconception. And that willingness to settle is a profound disadvantage.

It's not a stereotype though, it's reality.

That's like saying TV should always make software engineers men, because most of us are. Simply perpetuating the existing bias limits our worldviews.

I suppose it depends on one's views on whether that is an injustice in the first place, and then if one thinks it is the responsibility of TV producers and writers to fix it.

Should it be the role of software engineers to fix social injustice as well? Perhaps our designs should be subject to review by some committee to ensure they meet certain criteria, as would likely be the case with The television industry if you wanted to ensure compliance.

Mass media usually trails, rather than leads, on these kinds of things. There were tons of gay parents before you saw any on tv shows as recurring characters, and they still insist on the stereotype of the nerdy male engineer. Unless you think those are good things, it seems like they should work to stay at least current.

I think there's more to it than just the ratios. It's also that women are the selectors, and are more picky than men. If you line up ten men and ten woman along two parallel number lines, each numbered 1-10, and then perform simulations where they randomly pair off, with men willing to pair with anyone -2 of their level and above, and women willing to pair off with anyone equal to their level and above, you end up with one or two unpaired women at the top and one or two unpaired men at the bottom.

Notice this article is bemoaning the sad state of those unpaired women at the top, but makes no mention of the unpaired men at the bottom who are suffering just as much, if not more so.

Interesting to hear you say that. My views on feminism changed* after reading a piece titled "Don't Hate Her Because She's Successful" [1]. It's a bit wordy, so I'll condense it as much as I can in the context of your reply.

> My wife is a corporate lawyer and gets a lot of flak for working long hours, especially from family. Nobody ever gives me flak for working long hours. Painting in broad brush strokes, men tend to find that when they get married, society reinforces their career ambitions. Women tend to find that when they get married, society chips away at their career ambitions. Other women, particularly other moms, are the worst about it.

The aforementioned author argues, more or less cogently, that popular feminism seems to have been all about erasing this imbalance by grading successful women by the same rubric as successful men. But this is the wrong idea, and it seems to establish this extremely misguided notion that the men had it right all along: fulfillment and happiness are only accomplished by working long hours for worse pay under terrible management. The men, the popular feminists seem to be arguing, really understood what life was about the whole time and only through truly egalitarian "feminism by the numbers", where men and women work the same number of hours and for the same salaries and in the same proportions in every industry can women be happy.

But, that author argues, is that it's a ruse. There's no reason to assume the men had it right, that being willing to sell your soul for the corporate machine is envious or desirable or worthwhile.

> "Other women ... are the worst about it."

Why is that bad? Why is it that women are the worst when espousing the idea that life isn't about career ambition? It's worth thinking about. Why is the unfair social pressure that your wife is urged to spend more time with her family, and not that you're urged to spend more time at work?

Maybe, the author argues, society and popular feminism is profoundly mistaken. Perhaps the real thing we should all be fighting for is a society in which people aren't asked to work long hours ever again. Where the balance between the home and the workplace is more equitable such that we don't have to make necessarily gender-biasing decisions like having to decide which family member will work longer and which one will stay home longer.

[1]: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

* - SLOW DOWN THERE. I'm a feminist.

> erasing this imbalance by grading successful women by the same rubric as successful men. But this is the wrong idea, and it seems to establish this extremely misguided notion that the men had it right all along

Some people want career success. Some people want to take care of a family. There are both genders in each group, but society only supports one gender in each. A feminist point is people of both genders should be supported in whichever endeavor fulfills them.

ps You are not a feminist.

> A feminist point is people of both genders should be supported in whichever endeavor fulfills them.

this may be how it looks on paper, but in reality the 'right wing' (hah) of feminism hijacks the agenda.

modern feminism is like the republican party of gender relations.

Society is more accepting of men who join street gangs (rather than corporations). However, I think correcting that imbalance by focusing on how society treats women in gangs, rather than how society treats men in gangs, would be a mistake. Don't you?

It is surely an imbalance that needs correcting, but there is legitimate question as to how that imbalance is best corrected.

Great link, thank you.

I have seen this point of view and understand where it's coming from, but I think it puts the cart before the horse. Maybe it should be the case that society should define success not by the status of your profession and the size of your bank account, but by your other contributions. However, at the current time, it does not. In the United States, money is everything. It decides whether your kids go to a decent school, whether you get medical care, whether you can live in a place without intolerable crime. We live in this society: http://blog.figuringshitout.com/the-parable-of-the-fisherman.

Within this context, "opting out" means depending on a man for security, and telling women that "motherhood is more fulfilling than work" is encouraging them to be dependent. My wife sees it as rationalization--women trying to convince themselves that people do respect parenting because they should respect it.

Anecdote: when my wife had trouble finding a job initially in law school, a career counselor tried to comfort her by pointing out that at least I had a good job. To a person who yearns to be self-sufficient it wasn't comforting--it was devastating.

Unless you're independently wealthy, you can't be self-sufficient. Is depending on your spouse really any different than depending on your boss/corporation for money? I'd argue that if your spouse "pays the bills" you actually have more independence because you're free all day to pursue entrepreneurial options and/or family and hobbies. You can take risks and be independent in a way that an employee cannot.

It's easier to change bosses if the current one happens to be a jerk than change spouses. Independent career helps in both cases.

> Is depending on your spouse really any different than depending on your boss/corporation for money?

Yes, those are extremely different. There are very few ways in which an employment relationship is anything like a spousal relationship.

Ha, you know, I started reading this reply and thought "This really reminds me of TLP's writing." Then I saw the link at the bottom. Cheers.

> Why is that bad? Why is it that women are the worst when espousing the idea that life isn't about career ambition?

Because this is not their life that they are talking about.

The irony of these observations is that the obvious strategy for fixing this addresses both problems, of women being dragged down in their careers by the baggage associated with expectations of women parents, and of men being chained to pointlessly demanding jobs: we need to rewire the terms of full-time jobs to be more compatible with family life.

I don't think that's a realistic solution. No matter what terms you write there will always be someone willing to work crazy hard and ignore their life in return for financial reward. That person is always going to get ahead of someone that wants more balance.

It's not clear to me whether companies that clear the path for "overperformers" like that are going to outperform companies that do their best to shield their team from this stag hunt problem.

Maaaaybe. But this line of thinking sometimes strikes me as have your cake and eat it too thinking. It would be really nice if the world worked that way for sure, but the idea that harder work leads to greater returns seems pretty robust to me.

The premise of your comment is that the productivity-maximizing strategy for managing a company is to allow everyone to work at their maximum personal tolerance.

But that's not necessarily true; it's possible to imagine a scenario where you net out ahead by buying improved median productivity at the expense of reduced maximum individual productivity.

Think of it game-theoretically, assume a coordination problem that penalizes defectors (here, people who don't sacrifice their personal lives for improved productivity), and then bear in mind that some workers might be required to defect no matter what the rules of the game are.

The strategy you want obviously depends on your mix of natural cooperators vs. natural defectors.

It's certainly possible that you are correct. But isn't the over performance of the US economy compared to Western Europe (where they have made the kind of tradeoff you propose) evidence to the contrary?

It's evidence that the dial settings Europe uses aren't productivity-maximizing, but not evidence that "optimize for maximum individual productivity" is the productivity-maximizing strategy.

There has been something of a pendulum swing in feminist thought. The second wave was all about reducing barriers to women from being full participants in society. Along with that came an ideology that essentially said that gender was social constructed, and that if only we didn't impose them on children men and women could be essentially interchangeable.

The efforts were largely successful (albeit not completely) but in the third wave* there has been a severe backlash against the ideology and the social pressures that it raised. That's what your are talking about in your comment. There's was a movement to say -- it's okay to want to be a homemaker, it's okay to wear clothes that make you feel sexy, it's okay to want men to hold the door for you.

I think it's swung too far the other direction. While it was originally "okay" there's a lot of voices out there saying, implicitly or explicitly, that it's "natural" to want to play all those traditional gender roles. That women who run companies, or nations, or work 80 hours a week are unnatural, ruining it for everyone else, or lying to themselves. That if you are a successful single women you nonetheless have a duty to the sisterhood to fight for mothers' issues because of your gender.

In other words, I think it's time for a backlash to the backlash.

*ignoring for the movement the race/class/international/gay aspects of third wave feminism

Not to be a pedant, but not everybody pairs up 1-1. A lot of these "MRAs" or "Game-advocates" folks are so quick to disparage, have more than one woman at a time in their effectively-exclusive orbit. Granted women can have multiple men too, but in my cohort (hooray anecdata!) it's far more common for there to be 'clusters' (clutches?) of one man to many women than the reverse.

I think this is a huge part of the problem. As the article mentions, 'Data from American colleges show 20 per cent of males - the most attractive ones - get 80 per cent of the sex'.

This means, when women are in their early twenties, they're use to being in relationships or hooking up with the most attractive men. Although I hate ratings, let's say men 8-10, are getting together with all the women 5-10. This can't work in the long run, because people partner up 1-1, so those 8-10 men end up married to 8-10 women. What happens with all these women 5-7? They spent their twenties with men 8-10, and now they're left with their equals, men 5-7, so they feel like they're settling, or stepping down. At the same time, men feel like they're dating up, because they never received attention from these women before. Meanwhile, they're equal, but prior history leaves this skewed perspective.

In short, average women in their twenties get attention from great guys. As people begin to settle down, average women are only left with average men, and they're left wondering where all the good men have gone.

I mostly agree with you, but I think you missed one step. The 5-7 women wont just immediately start dating their own "tier". They will swarm the 7-men. Those were the once we read about in the article: Men who used to be ignored, but now gets attention from loads of women. Eventuelly it will balance out, but not before the "slightly more attrative than average" men take advantage of the situation.

Very well said. This post almost makes me wonder if some sociologist or psychologist somewhere has developed a model of this kind of behavior.

I think there's a fundamental asymmetry in the dating 'market' which doesn't require the depressing exercise of assigning everyone a number.

Young women generally will only date men her age or older. So for example a 22 yo woman would date men in the large pool between 22 and 30. Meanwhile the 22 yo man doesn't have much opportunity to date older or younger. However, when the woman hits 30, the situation has reversed and the 'marriageable' men in her pool are dating younger women.

Whether someone is a '5' or an '8' isn't necessarily an inherit characteristic and has a lot to do with their life circumstances.

Hang on while I put on my puritan hat.

This kind of societal screwed-up-ness is exactly what's predicted by those who say that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage. People get in the habit of hooking up, which sets up unrealistic expectations on both sides. We're losing the ability to have real relationships. Remember that article about how people in Japan "aren't having sex anymore"? The HN comment consensus was, they are, they just don't have lasting relationships, because that's too hard.

People take the easy way out, even if it makes them unhappy later. If you can have sex without being married, that's easier than taking the time to develop a deep relationship, even if you're never really happy.

Of course, nothing will work if people don't have good character, which is really the problem. If people are getting married just to have sex, not because they're prepared to make the sacrifices required by living and working together, then things only get worse. We've instilled an entitlement mentality in lots of people, and we're reaping the results.

Anyway, if you wanted to know why premarital sex is considered immoral in most major religions (the big 3 monotheistic ones, anyway), you're watching it, live.

> "Not to be a pedant, but not everybody pairs up 1-1."

And that population is mis-matched to anyone who is looking for a pair-bond, so they're irrelevant to an analysis of the problems of pair-bonding.

You mean as well say "not everyone is heterosexual/monogamous/etc". And of course they aren't.

But it's hardly useful to suggest successful women can just find happiness if they would simply "choose" to never marry, or pair with another successful woman, or enter a companionate relationship with a homosexual man, or join an already-married couple, or whatever else.

One, because only very few people can consciously change what type of relationship they desire. And, two, because the population amenable to such arrangements is so much smaller than the population at large, that it doesn't effectively increase their odds, even if they are open to such arrangements.

Let me offer some perspective of NYC: most single women I know in NYC are pretty successful career-wise, and seem to prefer a man who's at least their equal or higher. Just my humble perspective.

> most single women I know in NYC are pretty successful career-wise, and seem to prefer a man who's at least their equal or higher

That is, from what I can tell, rayiner's point. As the world goes from one in which there were many college-educated men for every college-educated woman to an oversupply of college-educated women per college-educated man, that preference will become a self-inflicted (due to preference) disadvantage when it comes to dating. That seems to be rayiner's premise, and it seems to be true, unless preferences and habits evolve as the landscape evolves (which I think will be true).

Which is why there is an absurd single women:single men ratio in this city.

> "Professional women often still carry with them some of this 1960's mentality and refuse to "date down." As the demographics change and women being overrepresented among the college-educated, this puts them at the wrong end of a supply/demand imbalance."

While I agree, I would say that this mentality predates the 1960s in many ways. A woman's status has always been more strongly evaluated based on who she married than a man's. A man is often judged first by what he does, and secondly by his spouse, family, background, etc. A woman will usually be judged first by her relationships, especially her closest ones.

The reason the term "alpha female" isn't in the popular lexicon the same way as "alpha male" is probably because men will judge a woman based more on her attractiveness than on her place in some social hierarchy.

I'd be interested to know if these tendencies held more strongly for cultures where monogamy was not the nominal relationship form. They seem to me to be an evolutionary vestige in a lot of ways.

> My wife is a corporate lawyer and gets a lot of flak for working long hours, especially from family. Nobody ever gives me flak for working long hours.

Just curious, do you end up hiring baby-sitters for the baby? My friends at this moment are going through this situation, and I see what happens very often is that baby-sitters are too expensive, not good enough, or a number of other things and eventually the woman ends up deciding it's time to put a halt on the career and accept herself as a 'housewife' of sorts. I'm curious to know how you and your wife managed through this.

It's exceedingly difficult and expensive to have two spouses with busy jobs and a small child. My daughter doesn't tolerate daycare for more than 9-3, so my mom lives with us during the week. If my mom didn't live with us, we'd be looking at daycare ($1,300 per month) plus a nanny (maybe $2,000 per month). But I'm very fortunate to have Asian parents who think their role at this age is to help us with our kids and we're not too proud to accept the help...

That being said, I think it's penny-wise and pound-foolish to downshift your career merely because of the cost of childcare. Staying at home to take care of kids is a career death sentence. When your child is mostly independent in 11-12 years, you'll still have most of your career ahead of you, and your earning power will be greatly diminished. I think the stigma against people who choose to stay at home for a few years to take care of kids is ridiculous, but it almost guarantees that you'll be relegated to a second-tier type of position forever after.

I believe that it's not only social pressure, but also behavioral genetic differences between genders.

In real life, often achieving 'ambitious career sucess goal Omega' happens at the cost of your family and other non-working life.

Maybe it shouldn't be so, but life isn't fair, and often your job/research/band/political career/book/whatever will be better off (at least until burnout) if in your actions you put it above your family/social life/hobbies/friends/happiness. And if it in the end kills you by a heart attack, suicide or drug abuse, well, it doesn't affect the achievement as long as it happens after that.

My observation is that there are X% women who would (in practice) choose an ambitious goal at abovementioned cost and intentionally stick with that decision, and Y% of men who would do so; and that the Y% rate is much bigger than X%. It corelates well with a variety of facts, like the gender differences in profession choice, known gender differences in risk-taking (and risk-misevaluation), gender differences in crime rates (again, being ambitious while fscking up your life), etc.

My hypothesis (with no idea on how to verify or reject it) is that the observed difference is not purely social, but built-in - it's clear how it (if it exists) could be caused by gene regulation, and there are evolutionary psychology arguments on why such a difference could be useful for early homo sapiens. I'd like to see if it's true or not.

I don't want to misunderstand your math but I might be doing so.

55 men, 45 women 80% of the men are in stable relationships 80% x 55 men = 44 men 44 men with 44 out of 45 women leaves 1 woman remaining, 11 men remaining, for an even worse ratio of 11 free men to 1 woman.

Or did I follow you wrong?

It's 55 women and 45 men. Women now get more college degrees than men.

Got it, thank you. Missed that critical caveat.

:) Easy to get these things backwards when you're just glancing over things.

Think about it this way:

55 women & 45 men graduate. 15 of those women lasso 15 of those men within 5 years. That leaves 40 women to 30 men. 5 years later another 10 pair off. Now you have 30/20. The more pairs you make, the worse the ratio.

These articles are always oddly delusional about the number of high achieving women. They seem to think having the job title "lawyer" means high status. I'm not convinced this trope of lonely "high achieving" women is a phenomenon with any numerical significance.

I think they are referring to how they perceive themselves. While you are likely correct that many "lawyers" are not "high status" by objective measures (Australia may be different than the US in this regard, as well), there is substantial cultural status associated with completing law school (may be changing now). However, most people who complete law school consider themselves higher status than if they did not complete it.

Lawyers are on the higher end of status things. In line with commerce peeps and engineers.

If I was to make a ball-park guess, fewer people sue each other here, so there are fewer lawyers and the career path stays prestigious.

Assuming you are talking about the relative prestige of lawyers in Australia? In the US, they are still generally considered high status by the culture, although those of us who have been in the world are much more aware of the fact that just going to law school often reduces your status by objective measures like buying power and employment options (I am a law school dropout). But, most JD earners consider themselves higher status than they would be without their JD.

Yes on prestige. Last I checked lawyers make an excellent living here too. University fees are less crippling because you aren't forced to make repayments unless you are earning over a certain amount.

People who actually practice as corporate lawyers make a good living in the US. That's a tiny fraction of people who actually go to law school.

I, too, would love to see some actual data around this.

"High-achieving" is used loosely here. If you define "high achieving" as CEO's and hedge fund managers, there are way more men in that group, but if you define it as "college educated desk-job professional" then at least within the 22-35 cohort, there are more women or it is rapidly becoming the case that there are more women. The graduation ratio for college is almost 60 women for every 40 men these days.

My understanding is that men in that age cohort earn more at all income brackets. The apparent measure of status used by the writers seems delusionally fixated on credentials. It's just interesting this is never remarked upon in the many, many articles alleging large numbers of "accomplished" women out there with no male peers. Accomplished at what? Third tier graduate education and a $70K office job?

An individual man may earn more than an individual woman, but in broad strokes, with more women graduating college than men, you're going to see more of them in "professional" jobs, especially in younger cohorts.

Credentials are an imperfect, but reasonable, proxy for career trajectory; if you have two big groups of people, and one has a lot more degrees than the other, you'd expect that group to be more successful over the course of their careers.

One thing to consider is that it appears that we already have more graduates than professional careers. If we assume that all college graduate men and women are perfectly equal in the workplace, then the larger group of women will be more likely to find themselves without a professional career due to lack of opportunity, and thus will have a lower average income.

A lot of people are extremely touchy about their third-tier M.A.s, including probably a lot of the people who write these kinds of articles.

It means "rich".

As in any profession, there is a spectrum.

Graduating from a top 5 law program, clerking for a Supreme Court justice, being a partner or on partner-track in a top firm, teaching at a top university - this represents the 1% among the legal profession, and very high status.

Being an "average" lawyer from an "average" tier law program means average status, unless you break out from that and do something exceptional or entrepreneurial.

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