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Young Prudes: Are sex norms mostly a manifestation of sex ratios?
Aria Shrecker of Works in Progress puts forward an interesting hypothesis. What if the sexual revolution of the 1960s was driven not (primarily) by the pill, but by a growing population?
The thesis rests on a few key points:
1 is fairly uncontroversial, 2 is a mathematical derivative of 1. The only part of contention is whether 3 is true, and if so, how strong the effect is.
There is definitely a correlation between the ratio of men to women at US colleges and its sexual culture. And the mechanism is pretty intuitive. This would also explain the current sex-negative turn among young people. There are fewer 21 year-old zoomettes than there are 23 year-old zoomer boys, and so with the 'upper hand', the young ladies are turning the sexual culture towards their preferences.
The greatest weakness in the hypothesis is that it predicts that a higher male:female ratio should increase commitment (marriages, having children, buying houses together) and all those things are declining. Of course, its possible that atomisation caused by smartphones is simply too strong of an effect and swamps the influence of sex ratios. Peter Foreshaw Brooks points this out in his review of her article.
If Aria is right, then we're soon in line for a marriage boom. Watch this space, folks!
Is this strictly a byproduct of age or down to the material advantages males get from those extra years? Obviously impractical to conduct an experiment but I'd be skeptical it's purely just age and I'd argue there's now a raft of financial, educational and professional reasons why there's now a shortage of 'guys who are doing slightly better than their female peers'
The Haredi are an interesting example. Haredi women complain about the lack of young men to marry in their fast-growing population, even though the men are just going to study the Torah while she earns the money. The Haredi women have no instrumental reason to prefer slightly older men, he's not going to be the main breadwinner regardless of whether he's 19 or 22.
I mean, I do think the deep evolutionary reasons women prefer older men and men prefer younger women are the obvious breadwinning ability/fertility thing, and obviously women do express a strong, explicit preference for men who earn more money than they do. At the same time, I think in an AI utopia where we all live on UBI you'd still see the familiar age pattern. Men and women do seem to have preferences for relative youth/age qua themselves.
For Haredim specifically, that mandatory stupid haircut/beard combo they all have probably looks awful on someone who can't quite grow a beard yet.
Jewish people are one of the most unattractive populations I’ve ever looked at. I don’t blame their people for wanting to culturally defect and intermarry into other groups. I would too. Personally I love me some of my own people, but I find a lot of ethnic women attractive.
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It's because boys are stupid and men are awesome. It's a byproduct of maturity, which is the better assessor of long term financial and emotional stability than their current discretionary money. A 32 year old who might not have a great job still can demonstrate that they will not quit in a huff when they face some pushback from their boss. A 23 year old with a small inheritance is less proven.
Once upon a time people became adults much earlier (see other top level thread). I think a 25 year old could be old enough to marry if they have had responsibility thrust upon them from their teenage years. But most people aren't forced to be responsible until later and later.
Relatedly, did you know that in times of economic downturn in America, the teenager labor force participation rate goes down? It's because they have to compete in the job market with underemployed adults. The teenage laborforce participation rate never really recovered from the 2008 crash.
Teenage labor force participation rate never really recovered from the 1934 crash. There was a brief respite in the '50s and '60s, which is why they were golden years by comparison, and why the generation in charge now, who came of age during that time, still act as if that is reality.
Nah, bro. Men are lame, boring, decrepit, and dead inside. Boys might be annoying, but at least they actually bother to live... until men teach them they shouldn't, commonly around the late teens. (Women haven't figured out they need to encourage men yet; it might be as incomprehensible to women as "women can be abusers too" clearly is for men.)
I remember observing this viewpoint emerge gradually among late-teen male peers and not necessarily because they were told, which leads me to believe the willingness to actually live properly for once ends in one's teens.
The complex use of "bro" aside, your interlocutor in this case is a woman. (The person you were responding to.)
I even changed my flair to pink.
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All the more for me, I guess? I dunno.
I guess appreciating those aspects really is rocket science or something. And in their defense it's biologically contraindicated for them to do that, but then again it's also biologically contraindicated for me to do that.
I dunno, it seems to me that marrying far older kind of removes any reason for them to bother to actually adapt, and if you have a sufficient frame of reference you can pretty clearly see where they're headed (occasionally in such measure that you'd want it now). Compared to 'known quantity, take it or leave it, for better or worse'. Which is ironically probably more attractive a quality in women than it is in men, or at least it is from my point of view, when it comes to something that predicts they'll get along with me better.
As a man married for quite some time, I'd suggest that the idea that women retain their pre-marriage characteristics post nuptials (or post childbearing) is certainly pretty to think, but may be at odds with reality. Put another way: It may be expedient to be deeply in love with or profoundly committed to the girl to whom you propose marriage. Because she will change.
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On the other hand the older you go the more that the population has necessarily been picked over by other women and that's going to have selection effects. Stability isn't a good thing if you've already proven that you're in the 80th percentile for earnings/desirability and that's unlikely to change going forward.
I'd also imagine the teenaged laborforce also has many-pronged issues such as unskilled manufacturing ceasing to exist in much of the West, large legal/illegal immigration waves competing for their jobs and Academic entry being a lot more competitive than it was historically.
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