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.
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.
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”?
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?
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.
I think about this a lot, but have not formed any convincing theoryas to why this is.
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. :)
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.
Wow. What if you enjoy each others company immensely?
You may as well ask why he would not marry somebody he is not physically attracted to.
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.
It doesn't make you sound like a very nice person.
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.
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.