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Notes -
Boys don't like girls, boys like postgrad housewives
What does the man with a lot of romantic options want?
Does he want a beautiful young trophy wife? Does he want a high-earning girlboss?
The answer, according to Lyman Stone, is neither. What he wants (according to the data) is a woman around his age, with the same academic qualifications. Men with younger (and indeed, older) wives are the ones earning less money. What rich men want, it seems, is a (cultural, educational) peer.
With earnings is becomes a bit more complicated. As a man's income goes up, so does the income of his wife. But richer men earn a larger proportion of household income, and the women married to these men are the most likely to not work at all.
So what's going on here? The Red Pill explanation of men preferring younger women doesn't seem to fit, since the men with the most options (high earning ones) are more like to choose women the same age. However, these couples also choose housewifery at the highest rate. My interpretation of this is that the more money a man earns, the more secure in their class position the couple can be. Therefore, they can afford to have the wife give up work without losing their place in the class hierarchy.
The bitter professional woman explanation (men are intimidated by my qualifications and high salary) doesn't seem to work either. Sure, wives of rich men are the least likely to work, but those that do work are also the highest earners among women. A more parsimonious explanation seems to be that high earning women want higher earning men, and they (mostly) get them.
High earning men seem to want class peers. A woman's qualifications are a marker for class, and a woman's high salary is a manifestation of her class. Of course, once married, they can afford for her to stay home more easily than poorer families.
The thing that surprises me most is that you don't see richer men marrying younger women, as all of the older-younger pairings I've seen in real life have involved high-earning men. It might be that richer men marry younger, and therefore there is simply less scope for large age gaps. Or it might be that richer men are more sensitive to judgement from their peers, who would disapprove of larger age gaps.
They want peers who can fit in with their social and work circle and who will advance alongside them. Younger wives might not be as clued-in, so unless it's a second marriage it's not going to work as well. Her career is in the home supporting his career; making sure the dinner parties are hosted, the right people invited, remembering when to send cards and gifts for special occasions to business contacts, helping him navigate the web of relationships, turning up at the right events looking suitable on his arm, and so forth. His suits are pressed and ready for him, the home looks as it should, the exact balance of good taste and understated wealth on display to help him get promotions and move on up in the world. Everything running smoothly in the support system to his career so he can concentrate on work and not on "are the kids going to piano lessons or horse riding after school today? who is going to pick them up? mom is in the hospital, is everything okay on that end?"
OK, horse riding codes rural in America more than upper class. At least in Texas. And upper class housewives do not iron their husband's suit, they take it to the dry cleaners.
Upper class housewives pay(as in enter the credit card number) for private school, they manage IRA contributions, they maximize tax exemptions, they pay the contractors. They host dinner parties. What they don't do is, uh, housework. There's Mexicans for that, as in the Georgian era there were the lower classes for it. It has always been thus.
Definitely depends on the location, but it makes sense to me that Texas would see it as more rural than wealthy in comparison with say, the North East.
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