Via Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, I came across this NYT article by Stephanie Coontz which posits that, inter alia, men are coming to increasingly prefer educated women and are less inclined to value more traditional qualities such as character, pleasantness, virginity and chastity, and traditional homemaking skills. In short, more “alpha” women. In support of this position, Ms. Coontz samples research performed by Dr. Christine Whelen, which suggests a significant shift in mate-selection preferences for both men and women. I say “samples” because Ms. Coontz’ article only discussed the shift in young adult male mating preferences over the last 75 years, omitting the readily available data for women. While I find this omission curious and regrettable (I have no insight into why Ms. Whelen’s results were selectivity harvested for Ms. Coontz’ article), the full male-female mating preferences picture makes for some interesting brain food.
First, the shift in young adult male preferences:
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| Image souce: NYT. Click here to enlarge. |
Next, the shift in adult female preferences:
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| Image source: Personal analysis of Whelen (2009) |
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| Image souce: Personal analysis of Whelen (2009) |
As with any piece of scholarly research, one must always note the limitations of the data. First, the survey respondents are all undergrads at the Universities of Iowa, Washington, Virginia, and Penn State. Without doing the demographic spade-work, I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that the populations of those colleges are likely more white, middle class to UMC, female, and feminized (by virtue of their success in a feminized education system) than is your average 18-22 year old American.
Second, one must also acknowledge that the dating preferences of young adult men in college (who are not yet at their peak of SMP value) probably don’t perfectly reflect the preferences of the population of men as a whole. Ditto for for the college-age women, although their preferences are likely more reliably applicable to women as a whole than that of teh young menz, as they (the young women) are much closer to the peak of their SMP value. Furthermore, it is they, as sexual gatekeepers, who set (or who will soon set) the climate and conditions for male-female relationships in their age cohort. Put another way, 22-25 yo females–women a scant one to three years older than the ones sampled in Ms. Whelen’s research–are the women in most demand for relationships-cum-marriage; moreover, those same 22-25 year old women are looking up to late 20s men for their mates. Thus I suspect the preferences of undergrad men, while interesting and illustrative and somewhat predictive of their preferences five years on, is not as immediately relevant to the conversation as that of undergrad women, whose preferences are more acute.
Third, the hothouse social clime of the modern secular university is more an extension of high school than it is reflective of the real world at large. I suspect that the preferences of both young men and women shift markedly with the passage of time (i.e., both sexes completing their physical/mental maturation processes, men’s SMP value steadily increasing, women’s SMP value peaking), upon graduation, and upon transition to the real world of adult relationships and behaviors.
With all that said, what patterns may we deduce from the data? First, that young adult men report that they select for eros, character, emotional stability, education, and personality in the young adult women (those aged 17 – 22) they meet. Sociability, health, attractiveness, desire for children, and neatness round out the top 10. Noteworthy in this laundry list is the preference for eros (#4 -> #1), education (#11 -> #4), and significantly decreased weight given to a desire for home/children (#6 -> #11) in the list of traits men find desirable in women. The young adult male’s data also suggests an acceptance of brassyness, or, dare I say it, bitchiness, than was present in previous generations. I also wonder if there isn’t a chicken-egg dynamic at play here…in that young adult men may be adapting what they report they find attractive in women to their environment…thus placing less weight on traits they’re likely to find, such as a pleasant personality, ability to cook a meal, keep a home, or–ahem–chastity, and more weight to what they are more likely to see.
Second, it appears that young women have become even more hypergamous than they were 75 years ago. Education and intelligence, sociability, and good financial prospects all climbed several spots on the list, as did (unsurprisingly) eros. Interestingly, and somewhat contradictorily given what we know about the tension, even mutex relationship, between family and career, the desire for home and children also climbed several notches, even as “ambition/industriousness” fell. The data also suggests that women are more willing to accept jerky/dark triad behaviors (chicken/egg, again?) in exchange for traits they do value more, such as higher social dominance and the tingle.
Third, the data suggests that the traditional, Christian-based wisdom of our forebears is sorely needed. The declining weight that men and women both give to religious compatibility and chastity, both significant predictors of marital success and overall lifetime happiness, and the primacy both sexes place on mere chemical attraction and genital tingle, hints that the present trends toward family dissolution (or failures of families to form in the first place), and low birth rates are not likely to change for the better any time soon. Furthermore, in this data, there is also disappointment for complementarians. Young men appear to value a woman’s ability to earn income, perhaps to help pay off her or even his student loan debt, or alternatively, in recognition that women’s entry in the job market had made the row for single-earner households that much harder to hoe, far more than her willingness to settle and have children. This even as women’s reported preferences suggest an even stronger inclination toward family/children than was the case for their great-grandparents.
Fourth, an examination of the source data
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| Mate preferences across 7 decades. Note shift between 1967 and 1977. |
| Click here to enlarge. Source: Whelen (2009) |
…lends even more reinforcement to the conclusion that the social upheaval of the 60s and early 70s significantly altered the culture, in many ways not for the better.
The claimed preferences of college-aged young men and women have certainly shifted, and unfortunately appear to be more about looks and materialism and fleeting brain chemistry, and less about finding a compatible mate who can be reasonably expected to stick around, about producing and rearing the next generation, and much less about living a good life. But in the midst of all this change, one consoling constant remains, and that is Spengler’s Law of Universal Gender Parity: ”In every corner of the world and in every epoch of history, the men and women of every culture deserve each other”.
About the author: EW is a well-trained monkey operating heavier-than-air machinery. His interests outside of being an opinionated rabble-rouser are hunting, working out, motorcycling, spending time with his family, and flying. He is a father to three, a husband to one, and is a sometime contributor here at Spearhead. More of his intolerable drivel is available at the blog The Elusive Wapiti.
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
What modern day western society considers Alpha is mostly bunk, but if any females over thirty who want an “Alpha” man can find one here and relive your college days.
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http://prisonpenpals.com/
So pussy whipped homos prefer lesbian freaks & homos
Colour me not giving a crap
Stats from a college aren’t worth the ink let alone newsworthy…
Colleges are a travesty anyway, of course theyre going to reflect the LATEST round of indoctrination & shock therapy
This survey also shows college students are in general gullible idiots fresh from imbibing years of watching television & convincing themselves they don’t have a goddamn penis …
Fact college students are idiots
This survey proves college students are idiots …
EW needs to stop reading that idiot Walshes sites for retarded sluts & go do some REAL research for a REAL article
Ms. Coontz is projecting her desirous hallucinations. She has eaten of the false fruit of wisdom and having been rejected for it, wants to make all other women eat it in, order to improve her own market chances.
She is a charlatan.
Truth is there are no longer any credible blue prints for either gender, thanks in no small measure to the Ms. Coonties of this world. Its a dog eat dog world and everyone must adjust their expectations accordingly.
Speaking for myself, I headed in the exact opposite direction. My ex of 7 years (live-in, never married) was a high-earner and a publishing executive with a degree from a top school, almost my age, and in every way the modern, “you can have it all” Yuppie Princess. Her major outstanding trait was that she was stunningly good-looking.
After 7 years of power struggles I left her for my wife, who is much younger, works part-time for low income, didn’t finish college, and comes from a traditional background. (Her tales of being shoe-whipped for impertinence by her grandfather never cease to amuse me). In education, income and racial background her status is lower than mine across the board. Her demeanour is humble, complaisant and meek-her character loyal and calm.
We are both very happy with the way things are, and after years of marriage the sexing is still hot as hell.
Could there be an element of social construction to these choices, that men’s preferences have been affected by decades of blaming and shaming? If a man marries an Eastern European, she might be very cultured and well-educated, but he is sometimes criticised for ‘not being able to cope with American/British women’.
Affirmative action for women and minorities is almost singlehandedly responsible for the student loan crisis. One of the main reasons that women ‘were not educated’ as opposed to ‘could not be educated’ is that they would less likely to exploit education to its full economic potential. I work for a collection agency that collects on defaulted loans and I dont believe that we would have achieved our level of prosperity had our ancestors handed out “assistance” to adults irrespective of their ability to repay it back in such a haphazard fashion as our current government does with no accountability. The idea that adults may be better off keeping their own money in the own pocket and investing a home rather than education never enters the minds of such social reformers because in Alinsky’s terms they werent against ‘the man’ they wanted to be ‘the man’.
So young guys know what to say to get into college girls’ pants.
Man, EW at it again.
The thing I love about the data is that these women most likely fail to see a simple correlation!
Those “evil” menz of the late thirties valued all the things they decry men now don’t desire (dependable, good character, ambitious; all top ten); simultaneously in spite of that which we see: men and women going after the opposite.
How they can look at this data and think this is good is indicative of their blind leading the blind strategy in the sexual marketplace. Men back then were far mo0re committed, strayed siginificantly less (at least that we know of), worked very hard for their families; and essentially pursued women of the time with vigour, sincerity, and desire to have someone they felt is worthy.
Now, we have two people are looking for the bread winning trophy spouse. That’s it. Example of future conversation, meet Dumb Ass and their friend:
Friend: “Your GF/BF is a blood sucking loser from which marriage will allow you no escape!”
DA: “But do they make good money, and have hot friends?”
Friend: “Welllll…..yes, I guess?”
DA: “Oh, no matter then. We’re going to get hitched and get our sex on! Whoooooooohoooooo!”
Friend: “Oh boy, we may, or may not, be friends before the two of you divorce? I am not sure you are the friend I thought you were, and I don’t want your craziness at mine and my future spouse’s place crying about how dumb you are right now.”
That is, even if “Friend” is dumb enough to marry in the first place?
Our society is getting more, and more heavily narcissistic by the hour. How much longer can we last with our current attitudes towards one another?
Great article. One statistic that doesn’t seem to be measured and that might shed some light on the issue is WHY more men want a woman who works and how this differs across demographics. Certainly increasing the household income, and decreasing the financial burden on him might be factors, but there are also plenty of men who see no attraction in competing with their wives to see who has to come home early to cook or pick up the kids, and who recognize that returning to the comfort of a loving wife and a welcoming home, has far more impact on their happiness than the family being able to buy more “things” they don’t need. But now we are at a point where combined with no-fault frivolous divorce the lifetime alimony that long-time stay at home mothers are awarded in some jurisdictions makes marrying a stay-at-home mom statistically about as dangerous in terms of financially maiming a man as playing with nitroglycerine. Has feminism socially engineered men’s decisions away from stay at home mothers? If so this is feminist mind control at it’s finest.
“As with any piece of scholarly research, one must always note the limitations of the data. First, the survey respondents are all undergrads at the Universities of Iowa, Washington, Virginia, and Penn State.”
I would describe this as severely limited data indeed.
1) All four universities are in the same country.
2) While they are geographically scattered, four universities does not suffice.
3) No allowance is made for late-blooming romance.
4) No allowance is made for people (male or female) who do not want to fall in love with anyone, or any of the four types of same-sex attraction (male homosexual, female homosexual, male bisexual, or female bisexual).
5) All four universities are state schools, so a substantial number of the undergrads are from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Washington state.
6) What are the ratios of female undergrads to male undergrads at these schools? It could very easily be three female undergrads to every two male undergrads.
7) People lie on surveys all the time. Was the survey administered over the Internet, over the telephone, or on a written questionnaire?
8) No allowance is made for financial destitution.
9) To sum up my post, this reinforces the intellectual laziness of feminism. Do American feminists even bother to account for foreign preferences, preferences at non-state schools, people who fall in love late in life, people who fall in love with someone of the same gender, the fact that half the population is male, people who are living in abject poverty, or any other variable that would require substantial amounts of money or time to research?
I went on a date with a school teacher fembot, she said she was alpha, I chuckled. She had two dogs, as did I. She had to walk them with muzzles, as they dragged her down the street. She had an elaborate system in her home of alternately locking them in cages or the bathroom or the basement so they wouldn’t destroy her home, it was a mess.
I bought the Monks of New Skeet seeing eye dog book, and trained my huskies to sit, stay, stay down, heel in soft but authoritative male voice. I was a dog sledder in my teens.
As far as choosing a mate, fuhgetabout it.
I have two male grown sons heading toward medical school, I am a physician, I secured custody when they were about 13, divorced, female initiated, of course. For me now, it is you have your place , I have mine, marriage and co-habitation are out of the question with VAWA, family court male discrimination, etc. I guess this is what the wimminz wanted, and I am quite happy to give it to them. I remain, sane, happy, single and free. I have advised my sons to do the same.
As non-native english speaker, I swear I read “The Shit In” before reading ” The Shift In”. Dislexia is indeed funny, sometimes.
EW, As a former ‘trained monkey” in the art of keep bankrupt mangers’ heavier-than-air play toys afloat, I always reference the source first, figure out their angle, and save time by not reading 90% of the tripe that comes out of most studies, and “cutting edge” research. It has served me well and saved a get deal of time.
“Third, the data suggests that the traditional, Christian-based wisdom of our forebears is sorely needed. ”
NO. Their “wisdom” is the same as that of the feminists. Man is only useful as cannon fodder or plowhorse.
It’s too late for that – men won’t stand for that.
Honestly, this the same crap that so many corporations use to change employee behavior. Sight poor researched study, draw false conclusions to bend behavior toward your ideals. This gets so old.
“In every corner of the world and in every epoch of history, the men and women of every culture deserve each other.”
This might be true if culture was monolithic, but it’s not. There are different sectors of society. Virtuous men (comparatively) with more traditional values don’t deserve the type of women that are on offer in America. I definitely think that PUA’s who pick up girls in nightclubs for one night stands are the perfect match for bitchy, masculine American women – because real feminine women are shy and chaste. Scummy PUA’s don’t deserve virtuous women.
I suppose that there are virtuous women (comparatively) in America to match the more virtuous men. But then these types are also preferred by the so-called alpha types, so the alphas hog everything – both in terms of short term and long term relationships. And it’s just easier to find these types of chaste women in other cultures, so it’s not worth bothering finding them in America.
Spengler was from a time when culture was more monolithic. Nowadays with globalization, there is much more movement between the strata of society. His analysis is oversimplified, fails to account for different levels of society, and is therefore nothing like the Law that it purports to be.
I already deconstructed that NYT nonsense a year ago in A Man Wants a Wife, Not a “Co-Worker”
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/02/20/a-man-wants-a-wife-not-a-co-worker
Recent big media essays have admonished men to choose “brainy” women over less-educated ones. While an intelligent, talented spouse is certainly desirable, efforts to push women into the career-force have created generations of females incapable of rudimentary home-making skills. It is no small wonder that the growing obesity epidemic has swollen along with the rise in women’s employment as millions of families make do with convenient preassembled synthi-food and hamburger franchise takeout…
“Alpha women”
Oh… you mean whorish women.
No thanks.
The claimed preferences of college-aged young men and women have certainly shifted, and unfortunately appear to be more about looks and materialism and fleeting brain chemistry, and less about finding a compatible mate who can be reasonably expected to stick around, about producing and rearing the next generation, and much less about living a good life.
Social scientists have to perform studies to prove what many already know to be true. Just wait until these college age men enter the workforce and find themselves competing with who they once assumed to be their future wives…or even working under these women as subordinates. The higher women rise the more intense the hypergamy becomes; she wants a man superior to her, not an “equal”. And these men are less and less as she ascends higher and higher.
Women will not lower their standards, like men often do. All the cows want the same bull, or none at all. In Egalitarian Utopia hypergamy is ignored because it makes women look selfish. The “co-equal partners” dynamic is a feminist fantasy because women will always want the higher status male.
This is completely off-topic, but I’ve never seen a sexist fortune cookie before:
“The value of a man resides in what he gives, not in what he is capable of receiving.”
Sample error. Coontz’s article should be entitled “SWPL blue-pill male mate preferences”.
No surprise that Susie Giggles likes the article. It has just enough pseudo science to impress her, and surely makes the carousel riding sluts she attempts to retread into “good girls” feel good. And making carousel riders feel good is what Western civilization is all about, to feminists like Susie.
One of the things I noticed about the data, is that the women who were being questioned now were 22 to 25 years old. In 1939 a 25 yo woman would be an old maid. In 1939 they valued maturity and ambition because they were expecting to marry very young. Maturity isn’t a given in an 18 yo man like it should be in a 30 to 40 something man, which is the age men marry now. A women would value ambition in 1939 because the man she would have been marrying would have been too young to be a success yet, so she can only judge him by his ambition. It is not surprising that children and family would rate higher now than it would in 1939, because in 1939 it wasn’t an option it was a given, so no one would even bother to mention it.
Rmaxd
So pussy whipped homos prefer lesbian freaks & homos
Colour me not giving a crap
That’s to funny but, The bottom line is these people are going to choose them self’s right out of the Gene O Pool .
3 maybe 4 generation and There the way of the dinosaur ..
I can’t speak to the “marriage” thing — but I’ve *dated* women who were PhD’s and high-school dropouts and everything in between.
The “educated” ones were no more of a pain in the ass than the dropouts..
Just my $0.02.
Bitchy, brainy, great-looking women can be fun to fuck, but why in God’s name would you marry one? Marriage is a lifetime responsibility for both husband and wife, and you’d better choose accordingly.
Jeez.
If the former midshipman and former Naval Academy intructor were drunk and playing strip poker, why is the forme instructor being court-martialed. Link:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-naval-academy-sexual-assault-20130131,0,6931898.story
Quote;
According to Military.com, Stadler said she and the alleged victim drank alcohol at the croquet match, at a Mexican restaurant in Annapolis and at Thompson’s apartment. She described the alleged victim and herself as “drunk.”
Another quote:
Stadler, now a gunnery officer aboard the destroyer USS Howard, testified she had had sex with Thompson before April 30, according to the news website. On the night of the alleged attack, Stadler said, she, the alleged victim and Thompson played strip poker in his apartment
Oh yeah, I know I’ve always wanted a whore that can’t cook or take care of a home. What a crock.
Conducting a relationship survey in a college environment is about as logical as conducting an anthropology study in a prison.
Even in my own life I’ve noticed a change.
For instance, when I was younger, I wanted a woman with a shaved pussy. Now that I’m older and they all have shaved pussies, its no longer a criteria I even think about.
I put less weight on cooking, cleaning, and that kind of thing because I’ve learned to do those things myself and am unwilling to pursue a wife who will do those things while sponging off me until she eventually divorces me.
I much prefer a woman with a good job and I expect her to pay her way. If I were to marry or more likely co-habitate I expect my partner to pay half for everything. If she’s going to take half of everything then I’m going to make sure she earned it.
As for kids: I’d like them and if I have them I’ll do at least half of the child care. I’m not going to have some judge take my kids away on the excuse that I didn’t provide enough child care.
Prefer a “womyn” who’ll get bored, cheat on me and then divorce me and take my house, half my income and my children (who may not even be mine but I’ll pay out the *ss for in child support anyway) to shack up with an anti-social toyboy? No.
…men are coming to increasingly prefer educated women and are less inclined to value more traditional qualities such as character, pleasantness, virginity and chastity, and traditional homemaking skills. In short, more “alpha” women.
I’m sorry, but I call total bullshit!
Oh yes, the whole “older men, younger women” thing crops up here. That used to get to me when I was still a teenager.
Now I’m 26 and is my life any better? No, I’d say my life is a whole lot worse than it was when I was 19.
Jean, it doesn’t matter how much you take care of your kids. Judges have a series of questions they ask.
1. Who was primary care parent?
2. It the woman, end investigation. If not the woman, let us look further.
3. Which one has the vagina?
And, no, I am not joking. Many a stay-at-home dad loses his kids for some complex logic by a misandrist judge.
The investigation process itself is designed to force the guy to give up by exhausting his resources or stamina. Most stay at home dads are unemployed, so of course they’ll usually be vanquished in short order. Provided the children are in school, a father’s best chance is if both parents are working, and even then I’d guess he’s got at best a 15-20% chance of getting physical custody, and in most cases it’s because the kid demands it or the mother doesn’t really want it. If the children are beneath school age, he might as well give up.
The pretense of “equality” is nothing more than a bad joke at the expense of naïve fathers.
We Scots have an expression for the people who were surveyed. “Educated eejits”
In Yorkshire they say “You can’t educate pork”
It all boils down to the same thing, learning and wisdom are two very different things.
Well I’m in school and they’re not my answers. Alpha woman means a woman at the top of the mating potential so she has the personality of a saint, the body of a stripper and her eye on you. For me and the guys I know the status as used here means she is transgender, but what else can you expect from the feminist eye? Any young alpha male won’t be interested in the same as him no matter how much women can’t see that. This semester, for the first time in my life I had to turn down a woman/girl who asked me on a date. She was disappointed and I felt bad about that, but she was a big fan of Star Trek Voyager and I refuse to watch it, so that explains where it would have gone, doesn’t it?
“Alpha” women? I’m sorry, there exists no such creature outside of sci-fi/fantasy or Hollywood’s latest re-casting of a woman into a male role.
If there was an “alpha” woman it’d be the type of woman who typifies femininity, not a lame half-assed attempt at aping a man’s life.
UK Fred says : We Scots have an expression for the people who were surveyed. “Educated eejits”
In Yorkshire they say “You can’t educate pork”
Further down south we call such dim women’s brash talk … “High Cockalorum”
cock·a·lo·rum
1. A little man [or woman] with an unduly high opinion of himself.
2. Boastful talk; braggadocio
Education hardly confers intelligence. Getting a degree just means you’re educated; not necessarily intelligent.
In the part of the south I lived in for many years they called this being educated way beyond your intelligence.
Feminists have been trying to peddle this crap to women for at least a decade. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote a book on “why smart men marry smart women” circa 2002.
About this same time, another feminist book on having it all (for women) – I think it was “Creating a Life” – and some opinion pieces on the general topic widely trumpeted the fact that women were no longer being oppressed by men for getting an education; it had always been a thorn in their side that they were “penalized” by men not wanting them as much the more educated they were. (Nevermind there were very good reasons for this repulsion.) This was likely scaring some of ‘em away from the femiversity, which of course is just not allowed. Propaganda like this now makes it safe again for them to go for all of Dalrock’s feminist merit badges, so they can still count on doing their whoring on the side by gradiating into a prefered job where most princess enabling men are.