[eloff]

I'm going to talk about some gender differences that are true in general, and I could back up with citations if I had the time. But remember everybody is their own special case - things that are true in general for a population don't necessarily describe individuals of that population.

1) Women tend to marry up. An accomplished woman with a great job wants a man with a better job. That shrinks the pool a lot for her! A beautiful woman wants a beautiful man, or is willing to trade some beauty for other qualities like status, money, personality, etc. This shrinks the small pool even further.

2) An accomplished woman is likely in her mid thirties, she's got just a couple years to find someone and start having kids to have that family. A small pool with a tight time-frame.

3) Many of the "good men" in 35-45 age group are already married. That pool just keeps getting smaller.

I mean really she wants a 35-45 year-old hyper-successful man who's still single. Those kinds of men are probably not looking to marry 35 year old women. They're super desirable men and they can date from the pool of more desirable twenty year old women. Seems like a very tough situation to be in.

[jfk13]

While I recognise a lot of truth in this, I don't think there's ever been a time when I'd have wanted to date or marry a woman 20 years my junior. I have some lovely friends in that range, but they're socio-culturally so different from me (as a reasonably successful, well-off middle-aged man) that it's hard to see them as partner material.

[lazerpants]

I think what eloff hits on is a gating problem in the choices that each sex typically makes in eloff's construction of their interactions.

Successful women want to marry someone as or more successful, making their pool smaller. Men don't tend to worry as much about marrying someone as or more successful as them, so as you move up the "success" distribution, women have ever fewer choices, and men even more, causing a lot of mismatching problems for women above [x] percentile.

[eloff]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm getting at. Successful women in their mid thirties find themselves with nearly no options (because of their own preferences which are deeply rooted in culture and genetics), while the kind of men they are interested in have all the options in the world. It's really unfair - and I think it's not discussed enough that women who focus on their career first often do it at the expense of having a family. It's very hard to get both as woman - and you choose in your early twenties and find yourself locked into that decision. Men don't have the same problem.

I'm not sure what advice I would give to my future daughters, other than make it clear to them that it's a very important choice they'll have to make.

[eloff]

Agreed, it's a bit ridiculous. Twenty years is probably too much (especially for a long term relationship) although I do know men who do that.

I went 9 years my junior and it has mostly been a good thing. Especially where starting a family is concerned it has made it so we're not rushed on that decision and can get our finances in order first.

[MoBattah]

How would this change if the women were set on being childfree?