Plum Crazy

Why is it when men marry women who are less educated and with lower-paid jobs, this is generally considered normal (in the non-statistical sense), but when women do the same thing, it's "marrying down"?

I would submit that there are some universal qualities that men and women look for in their partners. I would also submit that there are gender specific biases at work also.

If you look at why women grow dissatisfied with their relationships you often see 'lack of communication' somewhere on the list. When you look at why men grow dissatisfied the 'lack of communication' factor is seen far less frequently.

Now, we probably agree that education is more than just a degree and the job that the degree makes possible. During the process of higher education the person receiving the education grows intellectually and is in an environment where ideas are important, discourse in encouraged and the skills of discourse and analysis are sharpened. What we see is that generally those who go on to higher education have better communications skills and are more engaged with the world. The upshot is that educated women want partners that can at least match them in terms of intellectual sophistication and the chances for finding that kind of man improve when the guy has gone onto college, rather than working as a logger or janitor, or what have you. Certainly not a 1:1 relationship, but there is a pretty healthy correlation.

So, it's not just a matter of how has the biggest paycheck - that's probably making a mountain out of a molehill. Certainly, it's an issue, but not the issue. With University campuses now approaching a 60:40 split in favor of women, there are a lot of guys whose worlds become intellectually smaller and for the women, whose horizons have expanded after higher education, these men are not as appealing.

Can women retrain themselves to not be so affected by 'lack of communication' within their relationships? My guess is that they can't. What's yours?

Let's just assume for now that everything you've said is true. You've stated a reason for a preference. If you marry someone who doesn't fit your preference, you haven't "married down". Someone might legitimately prefer to marry a person with a similar religious background. However, if they wind up marrying someone with a different religious background, there's no implication of inferiority or having "married down". So what you're positing does not address the basic issue I raised in my post.

To state it perhaps more blatantly, there's a stereotype still prevalent in our country that if a black marries a white, the black has "married up", whereas the white has "married down". Now, again, given the society we live in, there may be reasons to prefer to marry someone with a similar background. But if you don't, there's nothing behind the notion that you married either "up" or "down" other than racism. So if women marry men with lower levels of education or lower paying jobs, what is behind the notion that the women "married down"? If it were simple classism, you'd expect a similar value judgment of men who marry women with lower levels of education or lower paying jobs. But it's not there in the latter case. What's at play?

I'd go further into the notion of communications skills taught in higher education vs. the type valued in relationships, but that would be a separate issue from the purpose of this post, which is not to address reasons for people's preferences.

If it were simple classism, you'd expect a similar value judgment of men who marry women with lower levels of education or lower paying jobs. But it's not there in the latter case. What's at play?

What's at play? I think that there are different standards at work. Now a double standard is usually bad if there is no reason for it to exist other than to reinforce prejudice, but a double standard can also make sense if there is a reason to perpetuate it. Do you agree or disagree?

Do men seek the same things as women from relationships, and prioritize them in the same order? I contend that they don't. Men who marry women with lower levels of education aren't bucking the perception that they're placing a high value on their partner's education. There are plenty of men who will marry a woman because she feeds their ego by looking up to them, deferring to them, etc. Something about that dynamic is important to those men, and the women too, and it satisfies them in their romantic life.

Do we see the same dynamic in women's desires? I don't really see it. I would think that an educated woman would soon grow bored with a husband that she couldn't engage with intellectually - not that they're going to have world class debates, but just that they see the world from two different perspectives.

Your point about similarity of religious values is a good one. The draw of similar values could be stronger than the distance that disparate levels of education would create. However, education has a very high correlation to other personal attributes. So, if a person is the sum of their parts, then how many of those parts are orbiting around religion rather than education. With religion you'd have a spiritual and moral alignment on how you see the world and live within it but religion doesn't influence too many factors outside of its restricted sphere. Education, on the other hand, gets you into the realm of career, income, communication, sophistication of thought, health (yes there is a significant correlation between IQ and health outcomes), smoking, marriage success (again I can point you to IQ and marriage correlations) and I'm sure there are others. We could even include issues like social networks being influened by education, except that very religious people tend to focus their social networks on the religious community. I guess what I'm saying is that if an educated woman marries a less educated man primarily for the similarity in their religious values, then their social network, which puts primacy on religious values, probably won't see her as marrying down, whereas the outside community will probably judge the couple on a scale that is highly correlated to education.

Lastly, all we need do is actually look at the real world of dating. Women seem to place a lot of importance on the man's education related factors. Certainly there are exceptions, and good for them, but the reason we see the "marrying down" phrase not being used uniformly is because it doesn't make sense to use it uniformly.

To be really crass about it, let's model a world where men placed extraordinary emphasis on the woman's appearance. I'd say that in such a world, most people would say a man married down if he married an exceptionally unattractive woman, even though she was a perfect match with respect to religion, family values, personal interests, etc. People would say that he could have done better. They'd say that because in this world the men value the woman's beauty very highly and much of married life equated beauty to personal worth and to satisfaction in marriage.

I do have a response to your comment, but I will try to get to it tomorrow morning. It's been a loooong work week, and I kind of feeling like zoning out tonight.

Okay, here's the issue I have with what you are positing - namely that it doesn't address my point at all. "Marrying down" has a clear implication of superiority vs. inferiority. It's a value judgment that suggests, clearly, that men who are less educated are not only inferior to men who are more highly educated, but also to women who are more highly educated. It is relative to both.

If a common preference is judged to have implications relative to inferiority, then it is only because most people consider that value judgment to be reflective of reality. There are plenty of common preferences that do not have those implications. It is quite common for people to wish to marry someone in close geographic proximity. However, if a New Yorker marries a Nebraskan, how many people would suggest the New Yorker or Nebraskan had married down? And wouldn't anyone who did be considered to be a horrible snob? Of course, because society at large does not consider New Yorkers or Nebraskans to be inferior to the other.

Women may have a preference for men who are at least as highly educated, or they may not. It's really a little hard to judge at this point in time how common that preference will be, since throughout most of our country's history, men have, on whole, been more highly educated than women. It really wasn't so much a preference as the way things were. As that's changing, we are seeing that, perhaps, that preference is not as strong as we might have assumed. This may not, in fact, act against men's chances of finding a partner, even though we seem to broadly assume it will. Hence part of the hysteria about the changing college demographics.

As for the attractiveness thing, we already live in the world where conventional attractiveness is considered a mark of superiority. And that double standard isn't quite as strong as people think it is in terms of partnership value judgments. If you've never heard "Why did he/she marry her/him" in response to a couple where one partner is considered far more conventionally attractive than the other, you and I live in very different worlds. I've heard it rather often. And it's a fairly shallow value judgment too. We live in a world where we expect people of similar levels of conventional attractiveness to wind up with each other.

There's also a lot of privilege that goes along with being considered conventionally attractive. I'm not going to lie. I've certainly benefited from it. Sometimes unwittingly, and sometimes not.

All of my coworkers are highly educated women and have married men who are construction workers and salesmen. From what I can see, they picked their husbands because of common interests(the outdoors, camping, religion, etc.) Perhaps that is why men marry less educated women, their common interests. I also agree with the post that said a man marries a woman because she looks up to him and takes care of him. I have a problem with this though. I'm a highly educated female and would like to be with a similarly educated man. However, most educated men aren't looking for a similarly educated woman. I guess it's too much to ask for on my part. Why can't two educated people get together that also have similar interests? I'm tired of men and women "marrying down". I'll probably be single forever because I won't "marry down" and I won't get pregnant to trap a man into marriage.

With a graduate level education and successful career, I have found that I intimidate men with an equivalent background. I agree with previous comments that men today do not wish to date someone that would be on par with them economically, socially or intellectually. I have been dating a man for the past six months who does not have a college degree nor a job which would be considered noteworthy. I make significantly more money than he does and while we seem to connect on a romantic level and on other values, I have noticed that I have severe doubts about the relationship because of patterns of behavior and lifestyle choices that seem to correlate to your level of education. For instance, he is a smoker and frequently uses expletives in communication (although he's working on this because he knows it bothers me). He is content to just "get-by" and I have a drive within me to continue to excel. Does this come from years within a competitive academic environment? I have enjoyed the affection and attention he is able to dedicate to me because he is not a workaholic but then I also resent his lack of ambition at times. I sense that he in turn is jealous of my success and feels emasculated. In traditional roles, the man has been the provider and the woman the caregiver and each are respected for their roles. Suddenly I'm finding that I question if he is a "gold-digger" which is usually a term reserved for women who pursue successful men. In today's society in which women are turning the tables, it's a new phenomenon to witness this from the other side. While he has paid for the majority of our dates or we go "dutch", I have had to readjust my lifestyle to accommodate his budget restraints. This has been a positive experience as I tend to frequently overspend yet it also has brought to light the classicism that exists on his part against the finer things in life. As we have grown more emotionally involved, I have daily doubts about our suitability in the long-term. There is a 75% difference in our salaries and associated discrepancies in our tastes. I'm learning a great deal about society and my values and presupposed judgments by dating him and would like to be open-minded enough to disregard how others may judge me for my decisions. It's been interesting and problematic however to experience how my own doubts and incongruities with him have to be dealt with on a continual basis. I think what may come of this experience is that a woman can date a man who makes less money and may not have a "traditional" education but that in order for it to work best, it needs to be within a certain threshold. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society with classes. It is not impossible to overcome these variations in order to find a mate yet as someone attempting to broaden my dating pool and give a man with a very different background from me the benefit of the doubt, it is much more difficult than I would have anticipated.