Marriage Suits Educated Women
February 25, 2012 7:14 PM   Subscribe

Stephanie Coontz: The M.R.S. and the Ph.D. "Is this really the fate facing educated heterosexual women: either no marriage at all or a marriage with more housework and less sex? Nonsense. That may have been the case in the past, but no longer. For a woman seeking a satisfying relationship as well as a secure economic future, there has never been a better time to be or become highly educated... The most important predictor of marital happiness for a woman is not how much she looks up to her husband but how sensitive he is to her emotional cues and how willing he is to share the housework and child-care. And those traits are often easier to find in a low-key guy than a powerhouse."

"As Kate Bolick wrote in a much-discussed article in The Atlantic last fall, American women face “a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be ‘marriageable’ men — those who are better educated and earn more than they do.”..." (previously)

"Postwar dating manuals advised women to “play dumb” to catch a man — and 40 percent of college women in one survey said they actually did so. As one guidebook put it: “Warning! ... Be careful not to seem smarter than your man.” If you hide your intelligence, another promised, “you’ll soon become the little woman to be pooh-poohed, patronized and wed.”..." (previously, also previously, even more previously, tangentially previously)

"African-American women are less likely to marry than white women overall, but educated black women are considerably more likely to marry than their less-educated counterparts. As of 2008, 70 percent of African-American female college graduates had married, compared with 60 percent of high school graduates and just 53 percent of high school dropouts." (previously, also previously)

"One reason educated heterosexual women may worry about their marriage prospects today is that overall marriage rates have been slipping since 1980." (previously)

"I am not arguing that women ought to “settle.”..." (previously)

"How Times Have Changed For Educated Women" (two letters responding to the piece)
posted by flex (50 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
The most important predictor of marital happiness for a woman is not how much she looks up to her husband but how sensitive he is to her emotional cues and how willing he is to share the housework and child-care.

It's almost as if a partnership were being formed and required maintenance from both sides!

Eureka!
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:20 PM on February 25, 2012 [19 favorites]


One reason educated heterosexual women may worry about their marriage prospects today is that overall marriage rates have been slipping since 1980

Unless, of course, a reason for the declining marriage rate is that people just don't see marriage as the ultimate goal any more, but that wouldn't be any fun to write a hand-wringing article about.
posted by LionIndex at 7:24 PM on February 25, 2012 [8 favorites]


The idea of educated heterosexual women worrying about their marriage prospects gives me a nice little glow of schadenfreude.
posted by planet at 7:28 PM on February 25, 2012 [3 favorites]


either no marriage at all or a marriage with more housework and less sex?

Or, you can take door number three, which has marriage, reduced housework because you choose a smaller house and fewer kids, and all the kinky sex you can handle.

Fucking idiots and their first world complaints. Look, if you're going to carefully and deliberately hit your thumb with a hammer, don't be surprised when, you know, it hurts.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:42 PM on February 25, 2012 [9 favorites]


Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage and The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap. More pieces she's written.

Marriage: Saying "I Don't" -

"Fifty years ago, getting married was a step young people took on the road to becoming economically secure, emotionally responsible and socially respectable. Today, it is more often the reward couples give themselves when they have achieved those goals. The vast majority of new marriages are between couples who have already cohabited. But many cohabiting couples refuse to marry until they are convinced that each partner has demonstrated his or her economic and emotional reliability. There are many positive aspects to people's more deliberative approach to marriage. Every year that a woman postpones marriage, up until her early 30s lowers her chance of divorce. Largely because individuals no longer feel forced to enter or stay in a bad marriage, domestic violence rates within marriage have fallen by more than 30% over the last three decades. But the transformation of marriage has posed particular challenges for individuals from low-income communities and with low educational levels...

So the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots has been paralleled by a widening gap between the "I do's" and the "I do not's." Unfortunately, not being married further exacerbates social inequality because the majority of marriages now involve two wage earners, multiplying the advantage of those who can form stable, committed partnerships and avoid divorce. Marriage isn't disappearing. Most unmarried Americans say they want to eventually marry, and the vast majority will do so. But even in the best of times — which these are not — we're unlikely to see people returning to early and lifelong marriage. That bus left the station a long time ago, and it's been going in the opposite direction ever since."
(related, previously)
posted by flex at 8:04 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


Or, you can take door number three, which has marriage, reduced housework because you choose a smaller house and fewer kids, and all the kinky sex you can handle.

Listen, buddy. I'm looking through my 1955 edition of the Married Couple's Guide To Acceptable Social Behavior, and that isn't even in there once. Where are you getting this information?
posted by mhoye at 8:04 PM on February 25, 2012 [3 favorites]


And those traits are often easier to find in a low-key guy than a powerhouse.

[citation required]
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:07 PM on February 25, 2012 [3 favorites]


I have an MA (thesis, academic, originally intended to go on for the PhD in history and decided against). My ex had a professional MA (computer science) that he got through an executive program; my husband is getting a professional MA (computer engineering) that he's getting through an executive program.

I feel like I got a keeper even if he was technically "less educated" when we married, and one of the reasons is that he's not insecure about his education level compared to mine. His further education is for his own career reasons; it's not a competitive thing. For my ex, it was an issue, in part because there was academic snobbery in his family and probably in part as an age thing (he's a late boomer). Throwing the illusion that I had to "marry up" in every way to be successful was one of my smarter life decisions. Marrying a man who was all right with me having a better acedemic credential was another.

(Also, anything by Coontz gets my love because of her book on the fifties.)
posted by immlass at 8:08 PM on February 25, 2012 [1 favorite]


Speaking of "previously," I remember my (psychiatrist) father saying, fifty years ago, that men are, in general, loathe to marry a woman smarter than they are. Wherever you source your ideas on this trope - on the spectrum from evolutionary psychology to cultural (patriarchal) values - this idea has been around for quite a while. Perhaps thousands of years, I don't know. A notion that gets propounded again and again in the media becomes pernicious through its tiresome repetition, if nothing else.
posted by kozad at 8:12 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


Does smarter really mean "more educated"?
posted by ashbury at 8:18 PM on February 25, 2012 [5 favorites]


Girls Gone Hyper
posted by BobbyVan at 8:29 PM on February 25, 2012 [1 favorite]


"Does smarter really mean 'more educated?'"

Statistically, yes.
posted by bardic at 8:30 PM on February 25, 2012


Hmm, this seems like a good place to post this fascinating interview with a woman who's formed a faithful polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman and all seem quite happy with it. They share a house, chores, childcare, and nookie. Even though I've never been tempted to have such a setup, the thought of another adult around to help with childcare did give me a stab of envy.
posted by emjaybee at 8:36 PM on February 25, 2012 [4 favorites]


BobbyVan's link is particularly relevant, I think, if depressing, in the attitude it displays - the attitude Coontz's analysis is seeking to counter.

"...Coontz marshals only anecdotal evidence of a male aversion to educated women, such as this:
One man who taught at a women's college in the 1950s told me his colleagues used to joke that once they knew a woman had earned a Ph.D., they didn't even need to ask what she had specialized in: clearly, it was in "Putting Hubby Down."
To the extent that joke was funny because it was true, it probably reflects the same selection bias we noted earlier. Women who defied social norms to pursue advanced degrees probably tended to have astringent personalities. Today, to pursue an education is to comply with social norms. Hence an agreeable woman is vastly more likely now than then to get a Ph.D.

Most important, the problem that female education poses to marriage is a product of female, not male, mate preference--of what Coontz calls "the cultural ideal of hypergamy--that women must marry up."

That is where Coontz goes badly wrong. Any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that female hypergamy--more broadly defined as the drive to mate with dominant males--is an animal instinct, not a product of human culture, which can only restrain or direct it...

Coontz has just advised young ladies to marry short, poor, ignorant, obscure, ineffectual men who will help with household chores. If that's not settling, the word has no meaning."

posted by flex at 9:06 PM on February 25, 2012


WTF is a "powerhouse"? Is this NYTimes lingo or do actual women speak like this?
posted by benzenedream at 9:21 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


TV sitcoms have been telling women to "settle" since Homer Simpson replaced Bill Cosby at the top of the ratings in '83.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:27 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


in general, loathe to marry a woman smarter than they are. Wherever you source your ideas on this trope - on the spectrum from evolutionary psychology to cultural (patriarchal) values - this idea has been around for quite a while. Perhaps thousands of years, I don't know.

Funny that. I never remember by father telling me that I should be loathe to marry any woman whose family was unable to provide at least seven cows and three goats as dowry and that idea has been around even longer.

This article is nonsense. It's like the 1970s are still fighting the 1950s and no one in academia has noticed that it's 2012. I guess that what happens when the library doesn't have the money to buy new magazines.
posted by three blind mice at 9:48 PM on February 25, 2012 [12 favorites]


It's funny, even though I come from a family of academics, I distinctly remember my dad telling me not to act so smart all the time, because it would be intimidating to the boys. I mean, there's certainly a lesson to be taught to a precocious smart-ass that she should keep her mouth shut once in a while, but not by appealing to her non-existent desire for a future spouse, surely?

I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes and told him that boys who were scared by me weren't interesting boys anyway. 10-year-old me was a pretty cool kid.
posted by Phire at 9:59 PM on February 25, 2012 [10 favorites]


I am completely insane. So I married a wonderful guy that's completely sane. He's well educated and gainfully employed and totally stable. I'm smarter and faster and stronger than he is. He's more fit and younger. Since I'm smarter, he works, I keep house. No, wait. He's stable so he works and I keep house. Yea, like that. I don't do so good at the grist mill thing, he's an MBA. So he earns the bread and I bake it. At home, bwahahaha, I make the home, I rule the home. Works for us, very well. But it helps that we're both guys, and "headaches" are never a problem. ;-)
posted by Goofyy at 9:59 PM on February 25, 2012 [14 favorites]


And those traits are often easier to find in a low-key guy than a powerhouse.

Echoing those who asked what does powerhouse mean? Sure, an over the top Jack Welch type won't notice who's eating his dust, but you can definitely be a powerhouse and observant/sensitive to cues/nuance.

My mom would tell me not to be so smart. But I feel like that's a different era. It is true that there are men who are [intimidated/threatened/whatnot] by a woman's smarts but there are also those who find taht extremely attractive. They are few adn far between but out there.

The articles here seem more referential to my adolescence adn early adulthood than what I perceive things to be now but am also acknowledging that I don't know what its like to be in my twenties now (in 2012) and greater age/experience also makes a big difference to the way you perceive the gender gap/roles etc. I know if a man tried to pull some bs on me simply due his gender he'd be out on his ear within a week (as I just did to one of my local team on this project). We have shit to deliver and deadlines to meet not sit around nursing your delicate manhood.
posted by infini at 10:28 PM on February 25, 2012 [1 favorite]


either no marriage at all or a marriage with more housework and less sex?

Or, you can take door number three, which has marriage, reduced housework because you choose a smaller house and fewer kids, and all the kinky sex you can handle.

Fucking idiots and their first world complaints


Actually, it is a first world problem since most of the third world usually tends to have extended family ties and networks i.e. the clan bringing up baby or in urban areas you can get lots of affordable household help.
posted by infini at 10:30 PM on February 25, 2012


A lot of my female friends told me not to be so smart. "Dumb yourself down. Guys don't like smart women." I've never done that because I have zero interest in dating guys who don't like smart women. I also have no clue how to dumb myself down. I don't know how other people do it. It would drive me bonkers anyway.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 10:39 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


Well, let's see the former significant other LIKED that I am sort of smart. The future Mr. Roquette ( Yes I have been keeping secrets!) values my intelligence. Mostly this is of course because I am smart enough to know that he is actually pretty smart. If he gives me good advice, I let him know it worked. Men don't mind intelligent women who are kind to them.
The former significant other and I didn't work out, but he wasn't too awful.
My ex-husband was however abusive. Abusive people of either gender tend to be more fond of being right than being happy!
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:54 PM on February 25, 2012 [4 favorites]


Any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that female hypergamy--more broadly defined as the drive to mate with dominant males--is an animal instinct, not a product of human culture, which can only restrain or direct it...

I am LULZing here. Maybe the people I know are evolutionary outliers (thought they mostly have kids, so evolutionarily they are doing fine), but they are coupling up and reproducing even though the guys are not uniformly "dominant," whatever that means.

From the article:

For a woman seeking a satisfying relationship as well as a secure economic future, there has never been a better time to be or become highly educated.

If true (which, purely anecdotally, rings true with what I see), this is great news, and says that our society is moving in a positive direction. I hope this is true, and think it is great if our concept of a "good relationship" can expand beyond some 1950s model that wasn't even very relevant back then.
posted by Forktine at 10:57 PM on February 25, 2012 [3 favorites]


The important thing isn't about looking smart or dumb. It's about being a team player. Smart is great, when it's smart on my side. But if it's always a contest, than forget about it. I have an ex who was intimidated by my mind, rather than accepting it as a mutual advantage to the partnership.
posted by Goofyy at 11:03 PM on February 25, 2012 [3 favorites]


Men play dumb too. Nobody explicitly tells us to but people learn quick that, at least at first, intelligence is intimidating.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:29 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


My ex-husband was however abusive. Abusive people of either gender tend to be more fond of being right than being happy!

This. And this,

The important thing isn't about looking smart or dumb. It's about being a team player. Smart is great, when it's smart on my side. But if it's always a contest, than forget about it. I have an ex who was intimidated by my mind, rather than accepting it as a mutual advantage to the partnership.
posted by infini at 11:32 PM on February 25, 2012


"how willing he is to share the housework and child-care"

IOW, split the cost of a maid and a nanny. Next.
posted by Ardiril at 11:47 PM on February 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


That is where Coontz goes badly wrong. Any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that female hypergamy--more broadly defined as the drive to mate with dominant males--is an animal instinct, not a product of human culture, which can only restrain or direct it...

Serious question: is "evolutionary psychology" taken seriously as an academic discipline or is it generally regarded as pseudoscience?

Does it ever generate actual knowledge or insight? Because all the examples I see of "evolutionary psychology," like this, seem to be chauvinistic guys projecting their sexual neuroses onto women, trying to shoehorn reality into their neurotic, rigid worldviews, and then proclaiming those inane worldviews to be "immutable feature of humanity's animal nature" And on that basis, of course, they seem to see themselves as experts on women and what women think, want, should do, and should have done to them.

Is this tosh really taken seriously by anyone well-respected?
posted by cairdeas at 12:31 AM on February 26, 2012 [25 favorites]


You know, the older and more educated and secure I become in my own life and career, the less anxious I am to get married, so a lot of this article resonated with me. This is a good thing: I have slowly realized over the past year or so that I have a partner. An equal partner--in terms of sharing the same levels of education and job stability-- who wants the same things, and is eager to share in household duties (and future childcare duties) because he recognizes that we have the same roles in our partnership. It's surprising how comforting this realization is compared to the neuroses involved in worrying about "making it official". I'm gradually getting to the point where I couldn't care less if we actually got married, which is a position I couldn't imagine a couple years ago, and I'm very happy about this change.

That's my one sticking point with the article: the statistics about dropping marriage rates is framed in relation to educated women's ability to find appreciative partners. Instead, as a couple commenters have pointed out, women may simply be choosing not to get married, willing partner or no. We're still thinking in terms of our (women's) marriage "prospects" instead of our choices.
posted by sundaydriver at 1:12 AM on February 26, 2012 [4 favorites]


Also, about this "female hypergamy" thing, the idea that women seek mates who are wealthier and more powerful keeps being trotted out as evidence that this is just a natural trait of women.

What about all the men who seek out mates with fathers who are wealthier and more powerful, in all the cultures of the past and present where marriage is a contract between a man and a woman's father? (Dowry cultures, even Mr. Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility.)

In circumstances where the most significant (or only) way for men to access power and money, or even survive, is through marriage with a rich father, they overwhelmingly seek out the richest fathers they can for marriages.

For much of human history, women were not permitted accumulate power and money on their own and could only do it through a husband. So why is it different? Why is it just cultural when men do it, but when women do it it's suddenly "an animal instinct, not a product of human culture." Has Taranto studied a culture where women have historically had equal access to power and money to find out if this is true?
posted by cairdeas at 2:05 AM on February 26, 2012 [14 favorites]


This business about men valuing less intelligent women is some weird piece of ahistorical nonsense.

You have to look long and hard to find cultures in which it was anything like a norm to treat a wife as a mere ornament, rather than as a core contributor to the economic unit of a family, whose lack of intelligence, competence or thrift would be a disaster.

That kind of thing was an eccentricity of wealth so great and secure that the family not only no longer had to produce anything economically, but didn't event have to concern itself much with preserving that wealth. (We wouldn't draw many lessons about the role of women in 2012 from what Bill Gates' daughters are planning to major in when they go to college.)

That women typically produced in the domestic sphere, as opposed to trade or politics, may parse as discriminatory to us but really says more about how we don't get the magnitude of what "domestic" meant to mostly-agrarian cultures (which is what all cultures were until extremely recently) with very little technology, lots of infant and child mortality, which meant that healthy women simply for population replacement, to say the least of family expansion, spent much of their twenties and thirties (and sometimes teens) pregnant or caring for very young children.
posted by MattD at 5:07 AM on February 26, 2012 [11 favorites]


Coontz has just advised young ladies to marry short, poor, ignorant, obscure, ineffectual men who will help with household chores. If that's not settling, the word has no meaning."

Sorry, ladies, I'm already taken.
posted by briank at 6:05 AM on February 26, 2012 [13 favorites]


It has never occurred to me to compare myself to my wife, or any other previous girlfriend/etc. in terms of intelligence. I can't even relate to the impulse. Come to think of it, I don't even compare myself to strangers in this regard, except for maybe that guy in the picture holding up the "morans" sign, and stuff like that. Is this really something people are anxious about?
posted by werkzeuger at 6:23 AM on February 26, 2012 [4 favorites]


"how willing he is to share the housework and child-care"
IOW, split the cost of a maid and a nanny. Next.
posted by Ardiril


OK, here's the next issue. "What is this family going to contribute to society that is so far above average that the working lives of two other people are spent doing things for us that most people do for themselves?"
posted by 445supermag at 6:50 AM on February 26, 2012


Hey look, while we're using logic, I have a plan-- every person who gets higher education and brings home the bacon, or the veggie bacon, whatever marries a defective partner who has limited earning potential (that fits into their other measures of mutual compatibility other than earning potential)--- Hot sex with a power imbalance (what not your kink? Fine I have failed you) for everyone and also

WORLD POVERTY SOLVED.,

I'm so smart on Saturday morning.
posted by xarnop at 7:06 AM on February 26, 2012


I'm I guess some kind of intelligent woman and in fact have never had an issue with finding romantic male partners. In fact, I have kind of the opposite issue, as so many women who work in science, math, or technology. There are SO many single men in my work environment and so many that express interest that it can seem kind of overwhelming. They are all really excited that I hack video games and talk incessantly about science. I could definitely have been married several times at this point, but chose not to because my parents had a terrible marriage and I wanted to wait until I was older.
posted by melissam at 7:31 AM on February 26, 2012


Serious question: is "evolutionary psychology" taken seriously as an academic discipline or is it generally regarded as pseudoscience?

Does it ever generate actual knowledge or insight? Because all the examples I see of "evolutionary psychology," like this, seem to be chauvinistic guys projecting their sexual neuroses onto women


The article you're referring to isn't an example of evolutionary psychology, it's an example of a writer with a political axe to grind using an evolutionary psychology buzzword to further his own goals. Many parts of social science would seem like pseudoscience if you judged them by the half-digested pieces of information that float to the top of the op-ed septic tank.
posted by escabeche at 8:17 AM on February 26, 2012 [4 favorites]


It has never occurred to me to compare myself to my wife, or any other previous girlfriend/etc. in terms of intelligence. I can't even relate to the impulse. Come to think of it, I don't even compare myself to strangers in this regard, except for maybe that guy in the picture holding up the "morans" sign, and stuff like that. Is this really something people are anxious about?

Sure, people like that really exist-- it's a problem for me, anyway. I likewise can't relate to the fact that you've *never* compared yourself to others this way, which is pretty impressive and awesome. Just last month I told a woman I didn't feel smart enough to keep up with her. She was peeved, and told me not to devalue the other things I bring to the table. Problem is, for most of my life I've considered my intelligence, such as it is, to be the only really valuable thing about me. If I feel redundant or eclipsed in that area, my other qualities just don't seem like enough to make me relationship-worthy.
posted by Dixon Ticonderoga at 9:49 AM on February 26, 2012 [3 favorites]


> Postwar dating manuals advised women to “play dumb” to catch a man — and 40 percent of
> college women in one survey said they actually did so

Well, that was dumb, wasn't it? So maybe they weren't just playing.
posted by jfuller at 9:55 AM on February 26, 2012


Problem is, for most of my life I've considered my intelligence, such as it is, to be the only really valuable thing about me.

I think this is a reasonably common view among nerds of both (traditional) sexes, particularly those of a certain age. When nerds were not chic, the knowledge that you were smarter than your peers was a consolation. That's a hard consolation to lose even if you're losing it to someone you really care about.
posted by immlass at 9:55 AM on February 26, 2012


Dixon Ticonderoga, thanks for sharing that. It's really helpful to hear where somebody else is coming from.
posted by werkzeuger at 10:04 AM on February 26, 2012


Shopworn popsci psychology doesn't accurately model individual realities?

This is my shocked face.
posted by docgonzo at 10:24 AM on February 26, 2012


The important thing to understand about this article is that it's in the New York Times.
posted by effugas at 12:20 PM on February 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


Serious question: is "evolutionary psychology" taken seriously as an academic discipline or is it generally regarded as pseudoscience?

I believe it is generally taken seriously, but - like many smaller academic disciplines - the stuff you tend to see in the paper is generally the kookiest, most self-promoting and typically academically exiled personalities.

See Kanazawa, Satoishi.
posted by smoke at 2:11 PM on February 26, 2012


Serious question: is "evolutionary psychology" taken seriously as an academic discipline or is it generally regarded as pseudoscience?

Does it ever generate actual knowledge or insight?


Yes, it's taken seriously and yes it does. For example, it's a much better basis for a sensible psychology than, say, Freudianism, with its evolutionarily impossible ideas of people who want to have sex with their parents and women who spend their lives upset by not having a penis. It's a good Occam's razor for psychological nonsense— like the idea that you can't be emotionally healthy until you don't rely on other people (insane for social species). Yes, there are people who make ungrounded claims, but it's a rich source of testable hypotheses and really the only sane place to start a human psychology, unless you want to believe that evolution stopped affecting us at the neck.
posted by Maias at 3:43 PM on February 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


Also, as a woman who definitely has had lots of experience with men being threatened by my intelligence, I find it very odd to hear people talking about how this is some kind of myth. I hope that feminism has triumphed enough that this is truly a rare experience in the younger generations, but cliches become that way because they represent at least some real sample of experience.
posted by Maias at 3:47 PM on February 26, 2012


Serious question: is "evolutionary psychology" taken seriously as an academic discipline or is it generally regarded as pseudoscience?


If by discipline you mean the opposite then yes, nothing is ever more successful than confirming peoples prejudices. Survival of the dim-wittest is alive and well in academia.
posted by srboisvert at 12:57 AM on February 27, 2012


it's a rich source of testable hypotheses and really the only sane place to start a human psychology, unless you want to believe that evolution stopped affecting us at the neck.

The problem of course is that it is used as much more than 'a source of testable hypothesis' and even there it is no more useful than an acid trip or reading romance novels or watching the wind blow leaves around the yard. Anything from the sublime to the completely idiotic can be a source of testable hypothesis. Hitler could be a source! Peanut buttered toast can be a source. It is the testing that makes it science not the creative well-spring of hypothesis.

Evolutionary psychology is the creation an entire tautological sub-discipline out of just-so story logical fallacies and as such it completely and utterly undermines the value it could have as a possibly higher hit ratio hypothesis generator. Until then it is just going to used as a scientist version of an internet meme with endless updates of "Bitches are like XX" and "Men are all like XY" and anytime they get called out on their banality they will respond with "Because Evolution!".

Basically, Evolutionary Psychology is to real Science what NY Times' Trend Pieces are to reality. Link Bait for the credulous.
posted by srboisvert at 1:47 AM on February 27, 2012 [1 favorite]




Bizarre. So, first we have to assume that men who are not MBAs lack drive. Then we have to pretend that men who were not born with any particular advantages are never defensive and insecure about their lot in life and therefore would never embrace a macho stereotype to compensate.

And we also have to imagine a world where all men who are financially successful are selfish jerks.

Doesn't marriage suit all women who want to be married and are able to participate in a partnership?

In all seriousness, I am utterly confused by this piece. Why didn't the NYT fill the space with something about shoes or Lima beans or something that might be relevant to real lives?


posted by Lesser Shrew at 12:54 PM on February 27, 2012


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