One question for my readers,
Is there a "shortage of eligible men"? Or is it more a case of a "shortage of men that women find acceptable"?
If there is, is it mostly among an age group, or generalized?
(Yes, that's three questions, and yes, I've been reading Porretto, as always)
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Labels: manly men, men and women, relationships
posted by Fausta @ 7:44 AM
9 Comments:
That depends on what you consider "eligible", how old a man is wanted, and where you ask the question. Here is a map showing where the genders are out of balance:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/a_singles_map_of_the_united_states_of_america/#
So on the east coast, there is a surplus of single women, and out west, a surplus of single men. Go west young woman! Go east young man! Please!!
Now that map just looks at gender surplus, not age or preferences. If you look by age cohort, the ratio slowly skews towards more women than men as we age, because men die earlier. Then there's age-bias and income-bias and looks-bias, and that affects the "eligible pool". There's a smaller pool available to folk who are trying to marry up in terms of age, looks, or wealth; the stereotypical biases of each gender tend to make the pool larger for men and smaller for women as they age. Then there's sexual preference; I suspect that the dating scene in some places (San Francisco, perhaps?) is rather more complicated than the map would indicate.
All of this is before we get into personalities and the whole gender wars aspect. Frankly, some of the folk complaining about there not being any "eligible" persons are either too picky or not "eligible" themselves because from the perspective of the pool they're hunting in, they're just too toxic to be around.
Well, from my point of view it's a shortage of eligible women.
shortage of men that women find eligible.... while women have decreased the income parity gap with men, they still try to marry up. fewer and fewer.
Anthony - what makes a woman eligible?
Anthony - what makes a woman eligible?
Being a) unmarried and b) not otherwise in a relationship. All the good ones always seem to be taken. :/
I think first question is "eligible for what?" If it's a serious, committed relationship, I believe men and women in roughly equal numbers want that. If it's marriage the numbers start to skew a bit depending on the culture of the area you live in.
If you live in one of the large urban areas, LA, NYC, etc, the local culture is geared towards unmarrieds/childless/career - and it is harder for both men and women who are looking to find someone willing to marry and raise a family. Not so much in smaller areas where socializing tends to be about families.
IMHO I think the kind of "hooking up" culture that is promoted in urban areas leaves a lot of people a little gun shy (they don't find eligibles and shrink, rather than expand, their arenas to search), and that is why services like eHarmony, where one goes in with motivation of finding a marriage partner, is so successful.
that is why services like eHarmony, where one goes in with motivation of finding a marriage partner, is so successful.
You know you're the Charlie Brown of romance when even eHarmony turns you down. :/
You know you're the Charlie Brown of romance when even eHarmony turns you down. :/
No, actually that just means you are part of the 20% of the population that eHarmony doesn't understand. EHarmony is like a department store before petite and plus sizes: there's a goodly number of people that don't fit their measurements. For the record, I'm also one of them.
You know you're the Charlie Brown of romance when even eHarmony turns you down. :/
Call me Chuck.
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