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Notes -
One point that bears noting is that this is a particular subset of women — if you’re hearing from them they are likely college educated — that are running out of time and are rather noisy about it. Three out of every five men in their 30s with college degrees are married.
My wife and I and our social circle are college educated, in shape, economically secure, and living in a large metro area (and not in the burbs of it). Assortative mating still has major pull. And, I and my wife are now in those respective age ranges you mentioned.
Our mid-to-late twenties were full of our peers’ weddings. So much so, that as custom now dictates bridesmaids buy whatever dress is chosen for them and women spend more on bachelorette activities than men do for bachelor parties, toward the end of that roughly five-to-six year run of constant weddings (we had to split up one weekend to attend different out of town nuptials), my wife’s response to receiving a save-the-date was mixed, to put it politely.
My wife has one chaotic mess of a friend who is unmarried, and, she missed the boat. Wedding season is over. All her/our friends have spouses and careers. Most of them have children. And, our social circle hardly includes any singles.
In the top-two-quintiles-of-income assortative mating market she’s shopping in, it’s not that a majority of guys in their late thirties are looking for twenty-somethings. It’s that a significant majority of those college educated late-30s guys are already married. The music has all but stopped and most of the chairs are taken.
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