Why American men are getting less marriageable
Looking at this from another perspective:<p>As a modern woman who makes good money, I&#x27;d be comfortable in theory with marrying a man who makes far less than I do.<p>The problem with that in practice is gender roles in marriage. It&#x27;s still the norm for women to be responsible for the lion&#x27;s share of cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. Even in the marriages with the most &quot;woke&quot; husbands I see among my friends, the wife almost always ends up both doing more and spending more mental energy on the home.<p>That means that for men, marriage lightens the burden of (for lack of a better term) managing life, leaving more time and energy for career. For women it&#x27;s the opposite. This is the primary reason IMO why marriage is a good deal for both parties if the breadwinner makes more than the homemaker. It&#x27;s just that men who are willing to be the homemaker are vanishingly rare. And if both are breadwinners, almost invariably the homemaking burden falls more heavily on the wife.<p>That means that from a practical (as opposed to a romantic) perspective, marrying a man who makes significantly less than me is liable to be an enormous burden. Why would I want to support a man both economically and practically?<p>Yes, there are some men out there who would make the fair trade and do more of the homemaking if I were the primary breadwinner. There are also a bunch who say they&#x27;d be willing to do it, but aren&#x27;t aware of what that fully entails and aren&#x27;t willing to put in the emotional investment. (See [1] and [2]). There are also more of those men in younger generations in general; and the ones who exist in my generation are likely to be already married - and happily so. So I&#x27;ll stay single - and happily so.<p>The solution, in my opinion, would be to continue to erase traditional gender roles. If most of the men out there were ready to take on the homemaker role enthusiastically, I would be far more willing to consider them as partners even if they make a fraction of what I do.