TODAY women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor's degreesand more than half of master's and Ph.D.'s. Many people believethat, while this may be good for women as income earners, it bodesill for their marital prospects。
As Kate Bolick wrote in a much-discussed article in TheAtlantic last fall, American women face "a radically shrinking poolof what are traditionally considered to be 'marriageable' men —those who are better educated and earn more than they do." Educatedwomen worry that they are scaring away potential partners, andpundits claim that those who do marry will end up withunsatisfactory matches. They point to outdated studies suggestingthat women with higher earnings than their husbands do morehousework to compensate for the threat to their mates' egos, andthat men who earn less than their wives are more likely toexperience erectile dysfunction。
Is this really the fate facing educated heterosexual women:either no marriage at all or a marriage with more housework andless sex? Nonsense. That may have been the case in the past, but nolonger. For a woman seeking a satisfying relationship as well as asecure economic future, there has never been a better time to be orbecome highly educated。
For more than a century, women often were forced to choosebetween an education and a husband. Of women who graduated fromcollege before 1900, more than three-quarters remained single. Aslate as 1950, one-third of white female college graduates ages 55to 59 had never married, compared with only 7 percent of theircounterparts without college degrees。
Some of these women chose to stay single, of course, and thatchoice has always been easier and more rewarding for educatedwomen. But the low marriage rates of educated women in the pastwere also because of the romantic and sexual prejudices of men. Onephysician explained the problem in Popular Science Monthly in 1905:An educated woman developed a "self-assertive, independentcharacter" that made it "impossible to love, honor and obey" as areal wife should. He warned that as more middle-class womenattended college, middle-class men would look to the lower classesto find uneducated wives。
That is exactly what happened in the mid-20th century. From1940 to the mid-1970s, the tendency for men to marry downeducationally became more pronounced and the cultural ideal ofhypergamy — that women must marry up — became more insistent。
Postwar dating manuals advised women to "play dumb" to catch aman — and 40 percent of college women in one survey said theyactually did so. As one guidebook put it: "Warning! ... Be carefulnot to seem smarter than your man." If you hide your intelligence,another promised, "you'll soon become the little woman to bepooh-poohed, patronized and wed."
Insulting as it may have been, such advice was largely sound.Studying national surveys on mate preferences, David M. Buss, apsychologist at the University of Texas, and his colleagues foundthat in 1956, education and intelligence were together ranked 11thamong the things men sought in a mate. Much more important to themwas finding a good cook and housekeeper who was refined, neat andhad a pleasing disposition. By 1967, education and intelligence hadmoved up only one place, to No. 10, on men's wish lists。
Men in the postwar period were threatened by the thought of awoman with more or even as much education as they had. One man whotaught at a women's college in the 1950s told me his colleaguesused to joke that once they knew a woman had earned a Ph.D., theydidn't even need to ask what she had specialized in: clearly, itwas in "Putting Hubby Down."
But over the past 30 years, these prejudices have largelydisappeared. By 1996, intelligence and education had moved up toNo. 5 on men's ranking of desirable qualities in a mate. The desirefor a good cook and housekeeper had dropped to 14th place, near thebottom of the 18-point scale. The sociologist Christine B. Whelanreports that by 2008, men's interest in a woman's education andintelligence had risen to No. 4, just after mutual attraction,dependable character and emotional stability。
The result has been a historic reversal of what the economistElaina Rose calls the "success" penalty for educated women. By2008, the percentage of college-educated white women ages 55 to 59who had never been married was down to 9 percent, just 3 pointshigher than their counterparts without college degrees. And amongwomen 35 to 39, there was no longer any difference in thepercentage who were married。
African-American women are less likely to marry than whitewomen overall, but educated black women are considerably morelikely to marry than their less-educated counterparts. As of 2008,70 percent of African-American female college graduates hadmarried, compared with 60 percent of high school graduates and just53 percent of high school dropouts。
One reason educated heterosexual women may worry about theirmarriage prospects today is that overall marriage rates have beenslipping since 1980. But they have slipped less for educated womenthan for anyone else. Furthermore, college-educated women, oncethey do marry, are much less likely to divorce. As a result, by age30, and especially at ages 35 and 40, college-educated women aresignificantly more likely to be married than any other group. Andaccording to calculations by the economist Betsey Stevenson, aneducated woman still single at age 40 is much more likely to marryin the next decade than her less educated counterparts。
Even for women who don't marry, it's better to be educated; a2002 study found that never-married white women with more educationthan average lived "the longest, healthiest lives of allgroups."
ONE of the dire predictions about educated women is true:today, more of them are "marrying down." Almost 30 percent of wivestoday have more education than their husbands, while less than 20percent of husbands have more education than their wives, almostthe exact reverse of the percentages in 1970.
But there is not a shred of evidence that such marriages areany less satisfying than marriages in which men have equal orhigher education than their wives. Indeed, they have many benefitsfor women。
In a forthcoming paper from the Council on ContemporaryFamilies, Oriel Sullivan, a researcher at Oxford University,reports that the higher a woman's human capital in relation to herhusband — measured by her educational resources and earningspotential — the more help with housework she actually gets from hermate. The degree to which housework is shared is now one of the twomost important predictors of a woman's marital satisfaction. Andhusbands benefit too, since studies show that women feel moresexually attracted to partners who pitch in。
Speaking of which, educated wives also get better sex,whatever their partner's educational level, according to thesexuality researchers Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter. They aremore likely to receive as well as give oral sex, to use a greatervariety of sexual positions and to experience orgasmregularly。
Certainly, some guys are still threatened by a woman'sachievements. But scaring these types off might be a good thing.The men most likely to feel emotional and physical distress whentheir wives have a higher status or income tend to be those who aremore invested in their identity as breadwinners than as partnersand who define success in materialistic ways. Both these traits areassociated with lower marital quality. Few women really want tomarry a man whose penis rises and falls in tandem with the size ofhis paycheck or the prestige of his diploma。
Yet when the journalist Liza Mundy interviewed young women forher forthcoming book on female breadwinners, she found that mostwanted a mate they could "look up to" or "admire" — and didn'tthink they could admire a man who was less educated than they were.During a talk I recently gave to a women's group in San Francisco,an audience member said, "I want him to respect what I know, but Ialso want him to know just a little more than me." One of mystudents once told me, "it's exciting to be a bit in awe of aguy."
For a century, women have binged on romance novels thatencouraged them to associate intimidation with infatuation; it's nowonder that this emotional hangover still lingers. Valentine's Dayis a perfect time to reject the idea that the ideal man is taller,richer, more knowledgeable, more renowned or more powerful. Themost important predictor of marital happiness for a woman is nothow much she looks up to her husband but how sensitive he is to heremotional cues and how willing he is to share the housework andchild-care. And those traits are often easier to find in a low-keyguy than a powerhouse。
I am not arguing that women ought to "settle." I am arguingthat we can now expect more of a mate than we could when wedepended on men for our financial security, social status and senseof accomplishment. But that requires ditching the Lois Lanesyndrome, where we ignore the attractions and attention of ClarkKent because we're so eager for the occasional fly-by fromSuperman。
