Reduced to its simplest level, women want to marry a man with wealth/power . . .

How Earnings Influence a Woman’s Decision to Wed

. . . men want to have sex with attractive women.

These ideas have been long in the can, only a scientist could be so lonely as to need to dredge them up and reconstitute them.

What Women Want--What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently by John Marshall Townsend

To understand the motivations underlying the sexes, this book is a must-read. Young people just entering the dating world need to read this book. Without it they are likely to make fundamental mistakes by misunderstanding the motivations of the opposite sex. Men and women fundamentally want different things in dating, mating, and marrying. 

At its most fundamental level, men want sex with attractive women, the most important criteria here are youth, and beauty. This does not mean they do not want marriage, they do, but it is a second step. In dating, and in marriage the attractiveness of the mate is of high importance. While men have secondarily important criteria, they are far less important than the primary. 

Women primarily want to marry men who have wealth or power. Secondarily women want a large number of thing like superior intelligence, height, attractiveness, education, strength, etc. The secondary criteria for women tend to be driven by the primary, meaning that the secondary criteria like education are leading indicators for wealth, and power.. 

Today, feminism has failed many women by misinforming them that men will want to marry even after they have taken the time to become educated, and built a career. But men, will mostly want to marry women who are young and beautiful. Women who wait until their mid 30s or later will have mostly missed the boat with the successful "good catch" men their own age. Many of these men will have married, and the remaining will be looking for a younger, even more beautiful woman. Men can easily shop down in age, because young women tend to be highly attracted to men who are within 10 years of their age, and who have cracked the wealth and/or power nut. 


The 36 year old women on the other hand will likely need to find a man between 10-15 years older than her, or about 50. 

The fundamental axiom is a woman's sexual value is greatest when she is between 18-28, while a man's slowly increases with age, as he becomes more wealthy and powerful, generally plateauing at about 50-55.

The following so badly misunderstands what is going on it should be criminal.

"In a recent paper, Na’ama Shenhav, a Ph.D. candidate at U.C. Davis, estimates that as much as 20 percent of the decline in the marriage rate over the past 30 years is attributable to women’s growing wages. More specifically, it’s the increase of women’s wages relative to their potential mates and the growing importance of women’s wages to overall household income that have contributed to women’s decisions to delay or forgo marriage. The idea is that for many women, especially those on the lower end of the economic ladder, higher earnings allow them to be less financially reliant on others for things such as rent, groceries, utilities, or other basic necessities. That means that the choice to marry becomes less about financial need and more about other things, like love, social norms, religion, or the desire to start a family."

The problem here is that women want a man who makes more money than they do. The single men who do, are much older than they are and likely don't want to have children, or don't want to marry. The single men their age are uninterested in them, as they are dating women younger, and more attractive. This is especially a problem for women who are not very attractive. This means these women have a very small pool of attractive men. This makes it far less likely they will have an opportunity to marry.

"Why are more women opting out of marrying? Now, they have less of a financial incentive . . ." There are also no barriers to these women having children outside of marriage. While this is a terrible idea, society couldn't give a rip. 

The only remaining peer pressure is among the upper middle class and the wealthy. "Does this all mean that women who earn more, in general, are less likely to get married? Not quite. Shenhav’s findings are all about relative wages, and earnings convergence between men and women remains elusive in some of the highest-paying fields. In fact, marriage is the province of the wealthy: Upper-income Americans are more likely to be married than their lower-income peers, and the rise of assortative mating means that more than ever, educated well-off people are intermarrying and staying rich, while poor people are intermarrying, and pretty much staying poor."

Parents in the upper middle class and upper class understand and reinforce in their children the importance of marriage as a mechanism to make, and retain wealth. 

Parents need to read John Townsend's book, and provide it to their children. Optimistically, the parent will discuss these issues with the child, because so much of their future depends on getting this correct.