Do men actually want a wife? Or is marriage mostly for women?

[Anonymous]

Pointless unless you plan to procreate, and when kids are grown and out of the house, divorce is preferable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think men wanted a wife when a wife meant regular sex, cooked meals, cleaned clothes, etc. etc. Now? What can a wife give you that you can't get elsewhere?
And really women should use the same, logical thought process too.
Maybe the difference is women are more likely to want babies and want a committed partner for that. And/or the additional income/option to be a SAHM. I think there are fewer men now who are on board with that/make that a priority.

How many men have the income needed to sustain a SAHM? What income level is that in the DC area (and I doubt many DCUM women want to live in a townhouse in a shabby neighborhood)? If your potential husband pool is that small, good luck with finding one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wouldn't want a wife? She will literally do anything!

This is the answer right here. I have no doubt that men benefit far more in marriage than women do and they know it. Marriage is a bad deal for women now.

Uh except for the fact that 90 percent of women get to live a substantially better economic lifestyle via marriage than they would if they had to pay their own way. I think women do way better in marriage than men. It’s only once they’ve been married for five years and have the kids and financial circumstances they wanted through marriage, that suddenly they claim marriage is a bad deal for them. It’s only a bad deal at that point because they got what they needed out of it already, and there’s nothing more to squeeze out of it.

Do you even hear yourself? I cover my husband's expenses. I am the breadwinner. As are most women I know. Loser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of the trappings of "getting married" are aimed more at women than men, so I think men are generally less excited than women about engagement and weddings. And actually a lot of what men are told about engagement and weddings is burdensome (it's a lot of "you have to do this or your cheap" or "you have to do that or her parents won't respect you" or whatever) so it shouldn't come as a surprise that a lot of men are like OP's ex or BF and just not enthusiastic.

Meanwhile women get sold on the fairy tale of getting married from a young age. They are told that engagement and the wedding itself are really significant milestones for women, specifically, and both are made extra desirable with the bribe of the ring, the dress, the photos and attention. And social media has amped that up for a lot of women.

But that doesn't have a lot to do with marriage. I think marriage tends to benefit men more than women, especially if there are children. Women tend to make more sacrifices within marriage and offer more of value to the the family unit (on average, on average, of course this is not true of every marriage).

This is why women are more likely to file for divorce.

So to answer OP: men do want a wife but they want one without the burdens of proposing and a wedding, which is understandable because those things tend to be pretty shallow and not really geared towards men at all. But once married, men tend to get quite a bit out of it, whereas women are more likely to question the value of the actual marriage even though the proposal/engagement/wedding is more geared towards them.

Why do lesbians divorce at the highest rate and gay men the lowest? Women are the problem, not men.

Doesn’t this just prove the point above that women are more independent and can function on their own, but men very much need a partner?

No. Lesbians not getting married in the first place would (and possibly do - I have no idea what their marriage rates are) prove that point. Getting married and then divorced indicates something else; probably a greater propensity to be dissatisfied with marriage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wouldn't want a wife? She will literally do anything!

This is the answer right here. I have no doubt that men benefit far more in marriage than women do and they know it. Marriage is a bad deal for women now.

Uh except for the fact that 90 percent of women get to live a substantially better economic lifestyle via marriage than they would if they had to pay their own way. I think women do way better in marriage than men. It’s only once they’ve been married for five years and have the kids and financial circumstances they wanted through marriage, that suddenly they claim marriage is a bad deal for them. It’s only a bad deal at that point because they got what they needed out of it already, and there’s nothing more to squeeze out of it.

Do you even hear yourself? I cover my husband's expenses. I am the breadwinner. As are most women I know. Loser.

If you look at people in marriages, the vast, vast majority have men outearning the women. Yes of course around ten percent of women in marriages outearn men. And there’s a brief period after college and for the first couple years of marriage where it’s around 50/50 on income, or women on average earn slightly more. But within a couple years, women miraculously all find themselves on the low earning track - by choice or otherwise. Hence all of these women making less than their husbands end up in a better financial position via marriage than they’d have on their own. This is not rocket science. It is an obvious takeaway of women making less than men or women choosing not to work. Yeah, your husbands are increasing your economic status. Obvious stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wouldn't want a wife? She will literally do anything!

This is the answer right here. I have no doubt that men benefit far more in marriage than women do and they know it. Marriage is a bad deal for women now.

Uh except for the fact that 90 percent of women get to live a substantially better economic lifestyle via marriage than they would if they had to pay their own way. I think women do way better in marriage than men. It’s only once they’ve been married for five years and have the kids and financial circumstances they wanted through marriage, that suddenly they claim marriage is a bad deal for them. It’s only a bad deal at that point because they got what they needed out of it already, and there’s nothing more to squeeze out of it.

Do you even hear yourself? I cover my husband's expenses. I am the breadwinner. As are most women I know. Loser.

I am 53 and it seems to me that a long men younger than me are married to women who earn more than them and sometimes significantly more. I have been at my company for 20 years and the number of women in executive and high level leadership jas skyrocketed. I think this idea that men are still breadwinner is honestly a thing of the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wouldn't want a wife? She will literally do anything!

This is the answer right here. I have no doubt that men benefit far more in marriage than women do and they know it. Marriage is a bad deal for women now.

Uh except for the fact that 90 percent of women get to live a substantially better economic lifestyle via marriage than they would if they had to pay their own way. I think women do way better in marriage than men. It’s only once they’ve been married for five years and have the kids and financial circumstances they wanted through marriage, that suddenly they claim marriage is a bad deal for them. It’s only a bad deal at that point because they got what they needed out of it already, and there’s nothing more to squeeze out of it.

Do you even hear yourself? I cover my husband's expenses. I am the breadwinner. As are most women I know. Loser.

I am 53 and it seems to me that a long men younger than me are married to women who earn more than them and sometimes significantly more. I have been at my company for 20 years and the number of women in executive and high level leadership jas skyrocketed. I think this idea that men are still breadwinner is honestly a thing of the past.

No.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/gender-pay-gap-in-us-has-narrowed-slightly-over-2-decades/

The gender gap in pay has slightly narrowed in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2024, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. In 2003, women earned 81% as much as men.

As has long been the case, the wage gap is smaller for workers ages 25 to 34 than for all workers 16 and older. In 2024, women 25 to 34 earned an average of 95 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group – a 5-cent gap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wouldn't want a wife? She will literally do anything!

This is the answer right here. I have no doubt that men benefit far more in marriage than women do and they know it. Marriage is a bad deal for women now.

Uh except for the fact that 90 percent of women get to live a substantially better economic lifestyle via marriage than they would if they had to pay their own way. I think women do way better in marriage than men. It’s only once they’ve been married for five years and have the kids and financial circumstances they wanted through marriage, that suddenly they claim marriage is a bad deal for them. It’s only a bad deal at that point because they got what they needed out of it already, and there’s nothing more to squeeze out of it.

90%!!?

lol
Cite your data bud

50% of children don’t even have a father in the picture so there’s no “economic gain” for their women or children

60% of college grads are female, for the last 10 years.

there’s 70%+ female labor force participation, even higher here in Washington DC.

What's your source for that number?

DP, but any social worker or teacher can cite that. Way too many children live only with a mother or maternal grandmother.

https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/2545,1095,2048,1729,37,871,870,573,869,36/8223,4040,4039,2638,2597,4758,1353/432,431

https://fathers.com/the-extent-of-fatherlessness/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wouldn't want a wife? She will literally do anything!

This is the answer right here. I have no doubt that men benefit far more in marriage than women do and they know it. Marriage is a bad deal for women now.

Uh except for the fact that 90 percent of women get to live a substantially better economic lifestyle via marriage than they would if they had to pay their own way. I think women do way better in marriage than men. It’s only once they’ve been married for five years and have the kids and financial circumstances they wanted through marriage, that suddenly they claim marriage is a bad deal for them. It’s only a bad deal at that point because they got what they needed out of it already, and there’s nothing more to squeeze out of it.

90%!!?

lol
Cite your data bud

50% of children don’t even have a father in the picture so there’s no “economic gain” for their women or children

60% of college grads are female, for the last 10 years.

there’s 70%+ female labor force participation, even higher here in Washington DC.

What's your source for that number?

DP, but any social worker or teacher can cite that. Way too many children live only with a mother or maternal grandmother.

https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/2545,1095,2048,1729,37,871,870,573,869,36/8223,4040,4039,2638,2597,4758,1353/432,431

https://fathers.com/the-extent-of-fatherlessness/

Neither of those links say 50% have no father in the picture, even if you assume every father who lives apart from their children is totally out of the picture. They give that number as around 1/3.

[Anonymous]

Data is by demographic. AA and Hispanics have 40-60% no father. Then whites blends it down, Asians as well. Blended it looks like 30-40% given those studies. Yikes.