I didn't read all of the responses, but as the mother of a devastatingly handsome 20-year-old son who takes community college classes, but likely will not get a 4-year degree, I'm encouraging him to embrace fitness. Trying to get him to become a firefighter, too, because I think a handsome, fit firefighter is a catch for a professional woman.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an interesting conversation because many (not all) women want men who are equal or higher than them in some way. Financially, intellectually, socially, and/or physically.

If a woman is a white collar professional, is she automatically going to want the same in a mate? Or, will the blue collar business owner be enough? The unfortunate side effect is that we’ll have more women looking at a smaller pool of men.

Lawyer here. I did end up marrying another lawyer. I would have been happy with anyone equally successful—so blue collar business owner would have been great. Being with another lawyer who understands the unique demands of the job has been good though.

A friend who is a doctor has resented her teacher DH because she has carried virtually all of the financial weight. She was glad when he was available to care for the kids in summers though (if being in the house with the kids while he spends the day gaming counts as “care”).

Men traditionally have had to carry “virtually all of the financial weight.” Why is it so awful for the roles to switch and women take on breadwinner role?

Women are worse than men when they have financial control.

DH and I make joint big ticket financial decisions, but I'm the frugal one. If I left it up to him, we would not have close to $4mil saved and be able to retire early, which he also talked about doing since forever.

He is several years older than I am, had been making way more than me for many years, yet I had more saved than he did. He kept talking about retiring early then would think nothing about plunking down $$$$ for frivolous things. We had a talk about finances and saving for retirement when we got serious.

I know a couple where the man makes more than the wife, and he grumbles when she buys herself $50 bags, while he spends $$ on his hobbies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an interesting conversation because many (not all) women want men who are equal or higher than them in some way. Financially, intellectually, socially, and/or physically.

If a woman is a white collar professional, is she automatically going to want the same in a mate? Or, will the blue collar business owner be enough? The unfortunate side effect is that we’ll have more women looking at a smaller pool of men.

Lawyer here. I did end up marrying another lawyer. I would have been happy with anyone equally successful—so blue collar business owner would have been great. Being with another lawyer who understands the unique demands of the job has been good though.

A friend who is a doctor has resented her teacher DH because she has carried virtually all of the financial weight. She was glad when he was available to care for the kids in summers though (if being in the house with the kids while he spends the day gaming counts as “care”).

Men traditionally have had to carry “virtually all of the financial weight.” Why is it so awful for the roles to switch and women take on breadwinner role?

Women are worse than men when they have financial control.

You need to stop making ridiculous statements with zero info to back them up.

Well, a lot of young women are lesbians so this isn’t an issue for them. When you subtract out the lesbians, it probebly starts to equal out a little bit.

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Anonymous wrote:In my community, men and women both get STEM degrees and get high salaries. Older generation support young families in material and emotional ways. I am not seeing a decline in marriages or births. Though more than 2 children is not common in our community.

Just say your "community" – we know you're not talking about a neighborhood.

They’re talking about communities that work hard, value education, and take tough stem majors. Like math, engineering, premed/med.

Other communities see woman taking more “pink” majors like marketing, nursing, education, communication, studies. Those have less high paying career tracks than stem majors or law/med/mba graduate programs.

The so-called “pink” majors have less high paying career tracks BECAUSE they are dominated by women. There is nothing inherently tougher about computer programming than nursing, for example. If a bunch of men decided to take over nursing schools en masse, watch those salaries skyrocket.

Not true. As everything in capitalism it’s about the money. How much money does a degree generate for the corporate world? Nursing vs programming for example

Bullshit. Healthcare in the United States is a for profit system. Plenty of middle men (and I do mean men) have found ways to generate substantial profit off of the sick and dying. But the women who actually do the work and provide the care make peanuts.

The PBMs are evil and contribute nothing to society. But you need to be a lot smarter to do that job than you need to be to wipe @$$es.

Exactly no one here is talking about CNAs or patent care techs, who make a bit more than minimum wage. That’s who cleans accidents in a hospital (fun fact: most patient care text these day are men, often immigrant men)

A hospital-based RN has as much higher education as Raj who works in IT for a PBM. And he or she is just as intelligent. But instead of playing with computer machines, he or she is playing with dialysis machines. Or ventilator machines. Or ECMO machines.

I agree with women that they should be selective and it's their right to get the best possible man out there. That's just common sense. However, I am not convinced a lot of educated women are aware at the ratio of educated women vs educated men. A lot of educated women end up hoping for the same kid of men namely kind, smart, educated career driven etc. Unfortunately these men are less and less common. And if you find these men, you need to filter out the ones who are not alcoholic, depressed or drug abuser. But women operate as if these high caliber men are all over the place. If the trends continue in 20 years or so it will be more common for highly educated and well compared to be paired with less educated and lower compensated men. But of course at that point they can just choose to remain single..and I think the latter is the more likely scenario because women are being more and more vocal about the fact that they don't need a man and they are just fine being single. 20 years from we will most likely be a nation of mostly single people. I mean we are already there. Hookup culture is now almost normalized. It's totally okay to talk about the guy or gal you had sex with last weekend and will probably look for a different one next week.

Anonymous wrote:I have a grad degree and married a blue collar guy. I love him to pieces and I like that our kids see that there is only one way to succeed.

That there *isn't* only one way. We support all paths (college, trade school, community college, FT employment, etc.).

Anonymous wrote:So you guys are saying that having a college degree isn't common so what jobs do these people do that are average paying with just a high school diploma?

🙄

I have a grad degree and married a blue collar guy. I love him to pieces and I like that our kids see that there is only one way to succeed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an interesting conversation because many (not all) women want men who are equal or higher than them in some way. Financially, intellectually, socially, and/or physically.

If a woman is a white collar professional, is she automatically going to want the same in a mate? Or, will the blue collar business owner be enough? The unfortunate side effect is that we’ll have more women looking at a smaller pool of men.

Lawyer here. I did end up marrying another lawyer. I would have been happy with anyone equally successful—so blue collar business owner would have been great. Being with another lawyer who understands the unique demands of the job has been good though.

A friend who is a doctor has resented her teacher DH because she has carried virtually all of the financial weight. She was glad when he was available to care for the kids in summers though (if being in the house with the kids while he spends the day gaming counts as “care”).

Men traditionally have had to carry “virtually all of the financial weight.” Why is it so awful for the roles to switch and women take on breadwinner role?

Women are worse than men when they have financial control.

That is absolutely wrong. Research into small businesses grants given to men vs women via aide groups shows that women actually on avg spend the money better- building up business, feeding their family, educating their kids.

Citations? How many people even get small business grants? Might look into that for a side hustle.

Agree

Honestly, why would a woman with a college degree and a career want to marry someone who makes less and will still expect her to do all the domestic work of raising kids, keeping house, etc? That sounds burdensome and we setting up for a life of regret and resentment.

There are policy and social changes that could help but the current administration isn't really interested in solving problems. Paid parental leave for BOTH parents, childcare assistance, universal PK, financial assistance for retraining, trade unions that help negotiate higher salaries for tradespeople, basic financial training in elementary/middle/highschool, social security, incentives to increase number of mental healthcare providers, health insurance for all with full coverage for mental health, etc. Socially parents and teachers should help kids normalize things like everyone pitches in at home, consent is important, polite/respectful discussion, normalize that men can be SAHD/nurses/teachers and women can be doctors/engineers/plumbers/electricians.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an interesting conversation because many (not all) women want men who are equal or higher than them in some way. Financially, intellectually, socially, and/or physically.

If a woman is a white collar professional, is she automatically going to want the same in a mate? Or, will the blue collar business owner be enough? The unfortunate side effect is that we’ll have more women looking at a smaller pool of men.

Lawyer here. I did end up marrying another lawyer. I would have been happy with anyone equally successful—so blue collar business owner would have been great. Being with another lawyer who understands the unique demands of the job has been good though.

A friend who is a doctor has resented her teacher DH because she has carried virtually all of the financial weight. She was glad when he was available to care for the kids in summers though (if being in the house with the kids while he spends the day gaming counts as “care”).

Men traditionally have had to carry “virtually all of the financial weight.” Why is it so awful for the roles to switch and women take on breadwinner role?

Women are worse than men when they have financial control.

That is absolutely wrong. Research into small businesses grants given to men vs women via aide groups shows that women actually on avg spend the money better- building up business, feeding their family, educating their kids.

Americans (men and women) have wealth of American citizenship. So many around the world want to come and live here. If you can't find good partners here, move to other countries for few years, date and find compatible partners and move back home. If you feel life is better there, stay. Even if you don't find a partner, you'll be more enriched in many ways and men and employers back home would find you more interesting.

Anonymous wrote:Investment in boys in school and programs targeted at them—much like we did with girls over the past two decades who now are in stem in much greater numbers.

This^.