Letters to the Editor
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It sounds as though you are thinking about trying to claim
that a rich young woman is as likely to marry a poor man as a rich young man is to marry a poor women. Good luck.
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Change 'money' to 'status'...
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I'd love to read the original article, but
it seems you have to be a Times subscriber. How about sharing a bit more of the gist?
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Tierney's lament
The worst part about John Tierney's column is this little gem tucked into its last paragraph:
"Advocates for women have been so effective politically that high schools and colleges are still focusing on supposed discrimination against women: the shortage of women in science classes and on sports teams rather than the shortage of men, period."
It's that "supposed" in there that really galls me. Tierney's underlying agenda in all this is not the red herring of an educated woman's alleged struggle to "marry up," but an attempt to cast aspersion on the fact that there IS still discrimination on campus, and in the rest of the world too. The fact that there are more women on campus these days doesn't necessarily translate into more opportunity for women generally. Women still face a campus that is hostile to their advancement -- there is still that pernicious assumption that women can't do math or science, that men's sports are somehow more worthy of financial resources and investment and attention than women's sports, and an alcohol-based social life that encourages predatory behavior.
Tierney's cobbling together of a handful of separate studies into a misguided conclusion about why women and men marry each other and what makes marriage successful is bad enough. But it's the unspoken agenda in all this that is the real travesty.
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Love? money?
Of my close friends and family, in half the married couples the wife makes more, and in half the husband does. My youngest sister got a good head start on estabishing her career before her husband; my sister-in-law's husband has the twin problems of a career in a highly competitive entertainment field and OCD; my friend's husband is a doctoral student, and my own husband is doing a midlife career shift. Of the three remaining couples, two of the women have been stay-at-home moms for some time. In the other two cases, the women are in grad school and nearly finished, and both of them work full-time as well, but need the degree to increase their earning power.
I think you could say we all married for love. I certainly did.
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Marrying for love or money?
Yes, women are more likely to marry for 'money.' Not money in pure dollars, but prefer mates that are of equal or better status, which usually means more money. It is more likely for a man to marry a woman for her youth, beauty, or other attributes separate from social or financial status than women. That is the fact despite all the protestations from Ms. Leibovich. The solution is not easy, and more complex than this letter or the simple blog postings can address.
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The Marrying Kind...
While I do not necessarily agree with Mr. Tierney's premise that women are hung up on status/money/power of potential mates, thus lessening the pool of available potential mates, I must admit that, after more than a year of Maureen Dowd's various rantings in her column that successful/powerful/well-to-do women are single because men insist on "dating down," I was glad to see a perspective that, at the very least, gave women credit for making the decision as to whether they remain single or not (even if the hypothesis is that women are "too picky").
I don't think the situation is either as dire or as black-and-white as either Tierney or Dowd make it out to be. Rather, I think that this is a brave (and wonderful) new world where women have choices as to exactly what they want to do with their lives and when, and, having never seen such a situation before, the pundits are left scratching their heads and staking out positions that are based on flimsy and localized anecdotal evidence at best.
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Resources or Character?
As a man without too many "resources", I have given this topic a lot of thought. I have come to the conclusion that actual resources are only part of the picture. My wife's last husband had resources, but never worked. He had money from mom and dad. When I found out that when she married him, he had never worked for a living, I was shocked. But it certainly made sense, given that he skipped as soon as has kids became toddlers, and has behaved like a big spoiled baby ever since.
The desire for some financial independence, the commitment to a workplace or to a group of people, all of which are evidenced by holding down a job, these, I think, count (or ought to count) for as much as fatness of wallet.
So, extreme statements like "resources don't count at all", or "resources are everything", are off the mark. Resources, a job, a career, are all ties to society and its norms, and all may be important to a spouse.
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Collecting Anecdotes - OK, here's one
My husband and I were just applying for apartments this last weekend. One litte tidbit I learned while filling them out that surprised me:
My gross monthly salary = ~ $10K
His gross monthly salary - ~ $4K
Our reaction? Delighted that we could afford a really nice place.
Here's to being happy as a clam marrying "down" to the most wonderful man on the planet. :)
Happy New Year!