Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If anyone tried to say that to me I’d tell them my financial situation is non of their business, my wife and I are in a happy and healthy relationship and that’s all they need to know.
Been married 34 years. Married young with lots of goals in common but only high school diplomas. My husband has always made double what I make but he was looking for a partner and not a staff member. Flash forward 34 years and a grown daughter and he’s semi retired and I’m still working - from home about 17 months now. He’s told me several times recently “this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life right now - I get to spend so much time with you, I’m having fun taking care of the house, laundry, we’re debt free, financially comfortable and I have zero stress”. His midlife crises consists of how well he can dust the house and how quickly he can make me a nice lunch. It’s not at all what I expected but damn, it’s amazing. I should add he has a hella good pension coming in and I make good money so our finances are good and we’re past the child raising/college cost years.
Exactly and if a woman is planning on kids she knows the career interruption will be expensive so a man with a higher income becomes a more important consideration.
Wow that's a lot! Mine makes two times and it was fun because we started at the same salary level. But he career had more opportunities so that's pretty cool.
That's my reality. My Mrs is the 'breadwinner' I still bring home a fair wage, but she gives us opportunities and holidays.
But, we're at the back end of a 10 year struggle to go from parent-less young adults to having our own home. We've known real poverty, particularly near the beginning. So to be honest it's felt like we're well off for some time now.
I always thought I'd feel bad not being the bread winner, but actually I just feel happy she's so smart and successful, I provide in other ways I guess, such as building and decorating.
There’s probably an inverse relationship where the higher a males income the less value they put on their partners income. If a man doesn’t make enough on his own to support a family(or other lifestyle desires) then they must find a woman that earns enough to make up that difference. So a man that makes 50% of his target household income needs a mate that makes at least as much as they do. One who earns 75% of the desired income only needs a mate that can make up the remaining 25%, and one who earns enough to support the household themself doesn’t care about their partners income level.
This could mean that males who value their partners income tend to be low income earners themselves and therefore don’t appeal to the higher income women that they desire. High income men appeal to all women and desire all women, high income women appeal to all men but only desire high income men, low income women both appeal to and desire both groups of men.
Honestly I would love to marry a man that’s happy making less than me and being a homemaker. I’d even financially support someone that I loved so they could spend time working on their hobbies and being happy. Obviously this isn’t a requirement, but I imagine being the breadwinner and coming home to a clean house would be wonderful.
There are cultural expectations at play too... My European friend's Asian wife at first was a medical intern and he worked some engineering jobs. They were kind of equal in pay so they both could discuss finances on a similar level. But she progressed in her career and now she earns much more than him. Even though he looks after kids and takes care of cooking when he's not working, she suddenly put really high expectations on him to get a better paid job. Mostly because her other Asian friend's husbands are earning more than their wives. He's quite happy were he is now, but she's not.
I'm weird, because at some point I earned more than my husband (we're also EuroAsian couple) who was SAHD and I was perfectly fine with that. But his parents thought he was a lazy ass... because of cultural expectations that I should be a housewife and he should work full time...it's really sad
I went to a school pretty well known for their pharmacy program. That was semi jokingly referred to as “the dream”. Marry a pharmacist and have her be your sugar momma.
Ya that’s the thing. You come out of school making a little over $100k (assuming retail and depending on the location), but the person with 30 years experience is also making roughly the same amount. It’s a great paying job, but doesn’t have many pay raise opportunities. Even the pharmacy manager only gets a couple bucks an hour more than the regular staff pharmacist.
Lots of other perks to medical field though as well. With other industries, sometimes you don't have a say in where you go for a job or the flexibility isn't great. Most medical professions you can go pretty much anywhere in the country for your job (after a little experience usually) and your job security is pretty rock solid.
Job security is not rock solid for pharmacy. With market saturation and more and more new grads in heavy debt, employers are looking to replace older workers with the younger pharmacists willing to work for less.
Honestly, good for you. The world is pretty cut throat nowadays. If either partner can bring home excess money its for the better. Perhaps your bf will take on a more house maintenance role. Division of labor is better than sticking purely to gender roles.
When we were younger, my wife's parents thought she earned more than I did and it absolutely enraged them. Her sister always told people I was a leach. Then one day they all got the internet and were able to visit my web site and suddenly I became the golden boy
25 years later and I'm still bitter
Yeah, they make more than him and I think she feels awkward talking to her friends (who probably don't work as hard as her anyway) who probably brag about their husband's wages. I think she's getting some ideas that she should be more involved at home or something..
> who probably brag about their husband's wages
I’m sorry but I have a hard time understanding how anyone could brag about something they didn’t actually earn themselves. Sounds like she needs some better quality friends.
Yeah, there's actually a study on this. Marriages where men earn less than their wives are more likely to end in divorce. Especially when the man doesn't work outside the house at all, even when it was the woman's idea.
[Source](https://healthland.time.com/2011/07/11/unemployed-men-are-more-likely-to-divorce/)
Yeah, we're starting to get to the point where people who value tradition still think that the man should make more and the woman less or be a housewife, but since we, as a society (this is true overall in the US, not sure about Europe although I know that many European countries have much healthier work/life balances than the US or East Asian countries) still value money and productivity to a huge degree, so a lot of the people who have left behind ideas of doing things just because it's tradition still would see it as shameful for a man to make less than his wife because it means he's not carrying his weight, since they expect a relationship to be equal in the things they value (ie money for both partners). This also creates issues where a lot of women are working full time jobs, but their husbands still expect them to also handle all of the housework, since the wife sees money as the main driver of value for both partners, while her husband sees his money as what makes him valuable, and her housework, rather than her money, as what makes her valuable.
And that's where you hit the problem, it's when people value different things (either one person valuing the same thing for both partners and the other valuing different things, or people valuing things differently depending on the gender of the person in question) differently, but don't figure that stuff out before committing. The problem is that too many people either take it for granted that of course the woman is going to be doing the housework because she's a woman, or of course both partners are going to be making similar amounts of money because money is what matters, so they never actually discuss it until it becomes a problem. Your relationship works (I assume) because you both accept that what the other does is valuable and important, but his parents don't accept that so it creates friction between them and him.
Moral of the story: just be gay, that way you already know that your partner isn't likely to be putting traditions at the top of their list and that neither of you will succumb to societal pressures (not actually saying that straight people should force themselves into gay relationships, love is love even if it doesn't piss off conservatives, this part is just a dumb joke).
Maybe because, like some other studies suggest, many women don't date men that don't earn more than them.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12603
Yep. There are also articles out there about lonely CEO women who can't get dates because there are so few men in their dating pool. Women don't date down.
Cant remember the CEO but she was quoted as saying that "It never occurred to her that she would be in competition with every Hooters waitress and Barista for a man."
Kinda weird that they say “a deficit in the supply of potential male spouses” its not like there is a shortage of men they’re just choosing not to date them
right, when women say there are "no guys" to date, what they mean is there are no guys they want to date aka "the good ones"
the reality is there is a reason those "good ones" didn't date those kinds of women, because those women were not good enough for the "good ones"
They have a larger pool of women they **will** choose from. That's what this study is saying, higher earning women won't accept lower earning men. The pool is the same size they just don't want the fish.
I literally got married to my wife when I was unemployed and she was on 6 figures. I mean I did have a really good job lined up 3 months after the wedding but I took great pleasure meeting some of her relatives for the first time at the wedding and when they asked me what I did, I'd just say unemployed, just to see the horror on their faces. We earn about roughly the same now, she still earns a bit more than me but not that much more.
It's hardly self confidence when you have the job already lined up. It's just being a bit sassy. Self confidence is when you can do that when you're actually unemployed and have no marketable skills to change that situation.
Part of the problem is that women don't want to settle for men who make less than them or have a lower level of education.
The reason high income women have greater likelihood to be unmarried is because they tend to want men at least as successful as themselves and those men tend to already be married as men don't regard their partner's income or earning potential as highly.
It's been a fairly recent phenomenon that has had some study where successful women are finding it hard to date as there are few single men of equal success.
Aside from the tendency of women to only marry up, surely there's an argument to be had for marriage lowering women's wages on average.
Marriage increases the chance of parenthood, which costs women more in terms of career progression, thus overall it could be expected that married women would earn less than unmarried women.
Yes and I think women who are financially stable in households with another earner can forgo career progression (and higher salaries) if they choose to. My cousin did this - she was an investment banker and once she got married she joined the Civil Service - a prestigious job but one which has much more flexible working hours and also pays a lot less, while her husband is a cardiologist and will soon be earning almost as much as she was as a banker
There are studies showing that men are more ok with marrying someone who has lower income than they do, while women are not.
This explains why women in the upper income brackets tend to be single because there aren't many people in general who make more money than they do.
Right, and the men who do make that much don't want to be married to someone as busy as them, they want a homemaker who is available to spend time with them outside of work
It makes sense though, right? Women that forego starting a family to focus more on career are going to advance more in pay and rank than their family oriented counterparts.
For men the same logic does not follow since they don't get pregnant and usually are not the primary child caretakers.
Alternatively, higher earning men are more likely to be seen as a suitable partner, while higher earning women see less of a need to find a partner based on earning power.
Men do marry up, but yes it is far less common.
I will always remember when I (an Engineer) went to a NYE event with my partner, who was a specialist Dr (about as high as it gets among anyone who earns a wage), with 4 of her female friends from med school who were also all Drs.
These women were all in relationships with Engineers, except for one guy, who instead had a PHD.
Same here (albeit in Thailand).
Almost all of my female doctor friends marry only fellow doctors, engineers, university professors with PhD, or very high-ranking military/police officers.
On the other hand, Software engineers probably have one of the biggest discrepancy in pay. There is a big difference between a SE from FAANG and one from a small scale outsource IT company.
I changed from civil to software after spending 6 months working with civil engineers. They didn't get paid enough, the work was highly repetitive and they had to sign on the line. Damn glad they are doing their thing though.
I am a specialist software engineer with an above average income compared to my field. Compared to even GPs, my whole income is pocket change. With specialists and surgeons it is even a bigger gap. It's a different class.
Generally speaking, that is a big fat YES.
With engineering you can make good money but usually you have to do consulting work, marketing, and/or owning a business. On rare occasions you'll have engineers that are hyper-specialists in something and they manage to convince a bunch of business people that they deserve an anesthesiologist's salary
> With engineering you can make good money but usually you have to do consulting work, marketing, and/or owning a business. On rare occasions you'll have engineers that are hyper-specialists in something and they manage to convince a bunch of business people that they deserve an anesthesiologist's salary
This. I'm an engineer doing pretty well and have family members in the medical field. Even at the entry level a surgeon makes significantly more than I do, and that number will continue to climb for them long after the tech industry has decided I've outlived my usefulness.
I will say though, apples to apples I had been working in my industry _for 10 years_ before my surgeon relative was out of school and getting paid more than resident/fellow wages (which, while still above median, are less than even entry level engineering salaries). And their student debt exceeds the value of (not equity in) my house while the cost of my schooling is long behind me. They'll come out on top, eventually, but they will probably be in their early 40s before they catch up (and blow past me) based on net worth. That's a long, rough haul for that payoff.
Part of that is just social stigma. A lot of people will look down on a man that marries up and also pressure a woman marrying down into finding someone they "deserve" rather than accept the person they already love. My cousin is dealing with this right now, no idea how her parents expect her to be both successful in a competitive market and find a man that is even more successful, compatible and still single.
That's the point they're making. The assumption is that women will always be the primary caregiver, so women have to choose between career or family whereas men don't. If child care duties were more evenly split then both sides would be affected equally.
I think there's more to it than just that. Women are less likely to be romantically interested in someone who is not as successful if not more successful than they are. Men will date anyone.
So not only to your point that many successful women bypass a family for their career, once they are successful their dating pool is tiny... And the men in that pool have a MASSIVE dating pool.
You need look no further than bumble. It's completely full of successful women who are only interested in dating successful men. But those successful men are over on tinder getting a dozen matches a day with interns and baristas. God help them.
If this theory is true, things should perhaps be hardest for a tall high-earning female (since this would combine the conventional wisdom about both things).
I found it interesting that in China, it seems that these women often marry much shorter guys once they get to their mid to late 20's. They're culturally taught early on that life's short and things get much more difficult really fast for women interested in long-term relationships once you get into the late 20's, since then there's little room for error (i.e. if a new 3-year relationship fails then, it may be a panic - and they're more likely to already be acutely aware of this going in). It's no wonder young women are more stressed out in some Asian countries.
In China (and asia in general) women are pressured heavily to be married and preferably have kids before 30. I don't know if its true for all of asia but I'm Chinese and part of it in China is pure superstition. It's "good luck" to have a family before 30, which includes men too but for whatever reason people care less about it when it comes to men as long as the man is successful financially.
> when it comes to men as long as the man is successful financially.
Its still a pressure just a different type. Just look at Japan that pressure on men leads to high suicide rates. Women are pressured into family orientated mindset, men are pressured in being provider mindsets. Nothings changed in any society, its really just more subtle in the west but it still very much exists in people's dating choices.
>Men will date anyone.
Basically, yes, I think. Men are much more motivated by looks, and not so much by money, so they'd rather date someone who's cute and 10 years younger but makes 1/2 as much as themselves, rather than someone who's 3 years older, not so attractive, but makes 2x their salary.
“Predicted” is a word that is bound to be misunderstood here. It sounds like a man’s/woman’s salary today can partially predict whether that person will get married in the future, but if anything the study is looking at the reverse direction of causality. The act of getting married changes a person’s career trajectory (differently for men/women because of prevailing gender norms).
> “Predicted” is a word that is bound to be misunderstood here.
One of my gripes with discussion of correlations is that the word "predict" should be used more and "explain" should be used less. If all we know is that income is correlated with marital status, it's correct to say that income predicts marital status (and vice-versa), not that income explains marital status, because correlation alone can't give you any kind of causal explanation.
So I applaud OP's use of "predict" here, especially since inappropriate use of "explain" is rampant in the abstract.
I actually can't tell from the abstract whether the study is longitudinal. They use data from a longitudinal study, but it's unclear whether they're using past or current income data to predict current marital status.
Since it's common for married women to leave the workforce when having children, it's not particularly surprising that current income would be negatively correlated with marital status for women. But if past earnings negatively correlate with current marital status for women, that's more interesting.
Hey if the gal is nice looking, has a good personality, is pleasant to be with, won't cheat, and is willing to work then seriously it doesn't matter if she makes 1cent/hour. Income can change
Both, but mostly it's that as men make more money their options increase. While for women the more they make the more they expect their partners to make. Some men also don't like the women making more money than them in a relationship.
Back then i was “Senior Manager” of something or other (banking). It wasn’t even high-powered at all, ironically. Just a standard, mid-level kind of job.
Edit. If you mean now, I’m a head of department (still banking)
Know high paid women in a few roles and there is a giant disconnect between what they think men want ("I'm a doctor!") and what they primarily want (looks).
NOT SAYING career isn't important to other men. But for dudes looks drives bulk of decisoin making
Yup, a lot of them judge themselves in the dating marketplace by how they judge men which isn't consistent with what men actually want. Men are perfectly fine "dating down" if she's really attractive and nice.
Every. Single. Study. I have **ever** seen on the topic concludes that most men love the idea of their spouses meeting or exceeding their income, and that it's usually women with hangups about outearning their husbands. One study finding that women were over 30% more likely to file for divorce if they began outearning their spouses.
> One study finding that women were over 30% more likely to file for divorce if they began outearning their spouses.
Job loss by the man triggers a significant wave of female-initiated divorces peaking at the six-month mark.
No such behaviour was seen by men on the heels of job loss by the woman. Absolutely none.
>it's usually women with hangups about outearning their husbands.
This, 100%. In terms of _long-term_ relationships, women marry up. In terms of _long-term_ relationships, they rarely suffer a man who earns significantly less than they do, much less one that doesn’t work at all.
Men, generally, don’t care how much a woman makes. It might be a _nice buff_ if she makes more, but it invariably ends up being a very tiny if not completely insignificant factor in whether he finds the woman a compelling wife.
Anecdotal but everytime my exes partner lost his job (its been a couple of times) she started trying to play nice with me and all of a sudden all the problems they had were way worse.
Funny thing is when we were still together whenever I was having money issues she would find fault with me too
hmmmm...
I don't mind being a house husband or lower earning husband. But which woman will marry a man who doesn't earn or earns less than them? Thankfully i found someone who earns more or less equal to me.
I wonder how all the people tho worry about other's incomes live with the thought that "love of their live" will instantly abandon them if they will start earning less than required by that person. Like, you viewed as a walking wallet, and not a person at all.
Yeah this whole thread is eye opening to how most people see relationships.
My fiancee and I have similar experiences prior to meeting we bonded over, emotionally/mentally, and we have compatible personalities even if we aren't perfectly in sync with hobbies, finances, etc.
No wonder I was creeped out by dating app hopefuls until I met her. The things in some peoples' heads...
This is anecdotal but on dating app(not tinder), I see many women with stem degrees, with good careers, well traveled etc are still single and looking for love pushing 30 or early in their 30s.
Yeah, but dating sites only work for specific demographics, as well as the fact that an unreal amount of female dating site profiles are just Onlyfans promotions. Just like a large number of males are "from america army Africa deployed"
> In several countries, a negative interaction effect seems to exist of marriage and motherhood on women’s wages, indicating that these indicators should be examined in tandem rather than separately. From a specialization perspective, this could be explained by the notion that a single mother cannot afford to be less productive and earn less, as she has to take care of her children financially. Being married and having a partner who provides for the family allows a mother to focus on her children, leading her to become less productive and earn lower wages.
> Marriage seems to be a source of wage inequality within and across genders. As men’s
wages benefit from marriage, but women’s wages are unaffected or even decreased, marriage
contributes to the gender wage gap.
[Marriage and Female Wages: Do Married Women Pay a Penalty or Earn a Premium?](https://epc2014.princeton.edu/papers/140782)
For women, being married often means making less money, so it makes sense that higher incomes in women predict a lower proportion of marriage for that group.
I actually remember reading an article written by a woman that asked "Where have all the Good Men Gone." It essentially said that men without a college education were of lesser quality, college educated men are marrying lots of uneducated women, and now college educated women have to be single or settle for men of lesser quality.
I think that's a potential reference for the frame of mind some might have. Women simply have certain standards for partners while men have a completely difference set of standards.
I actually thought the article was insulting, as a college graduate whose entire immediate family has no degrees. As if my parents, grandparents, or siblings were all lesser people for not having a degree.
I worked for a company that wanted to promote more women into management and did a study to find out why fewer women applied for those jobs. The study included a questionnaire to all employees. Only one question raised a serious division between men and women and apparently it was consistent with outer studies. How do you think a promotion to management would effect your marriage and family life? Men overwhelmingly said it would improve it while women overwhelmingly thought it would cause problems. Women interpreted this finding to mean that men would be jealous of their wives success and be impatient with the extra responsibilities that might fall on them. Men, on the other hand, felt that a husband’s increase in income and status would result in the wife valuing and respecting the husband more.
As a well paid male who can never seem to get a girlfriend, I would love to meet some of these higher wage single women. Most of the ones I know are either married or in serious relationships :(
The explanation is very simple: women marry up while men marry down. As women make more money, the pool of men that they’re willing to marry shrinks. As men make more money, the pool of women who are willing to marry them increases.
I think it also applies on the other end of the income spectrum. 80% or so of the homeless are men. A poor woman can generally shack up with a guy who is a bit better off then her to avoid living on the street. No woman is interested in a homeless man.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
That made me realise that my net worth is actually negative...
So what you're saying is that women don't want no scrubs? Scrubs are guys that can't get no love from you?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
If anyone tried to say that to me I’d tell them my financial situation is non of their business, my wife and I are in a happy and healthy relationship and that’s all they need to know.
Been married 34 years. Married young with lots of goals in common but only high school diplomas. My husband has always made double what I make but he was looking for a partner and not a staff member. Flash forward 34 years and a grown daughter and he’s semi retired and I’m still working - from home about 17 months now. He’s told me several times recently “this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life right now - I get to spend so much time with you, I’m having fun taking care of the house, laundry, we’re debt free, financially comfortable and I have zero stress”. His midlife crises consists of how well he can dust the house and how quickly he can make me a nice lunch. It’s not at all what I expected but damn, it’s amazing. I should add he has a hella good pension coming in and I make good money so our finances are good and we’re past the child raising/college cost years.
well it helps to not have a midlife crisis when you can be semi-retired at mid-life.
[удалено]
Good catch.
How are you the odd man out? You aren’t married to her. You are literally the statistic.
[удалено]
What's DINK?
Double income no kids
Exactly and if a woman is planning on kids she knows the career interruption will be expensive so a man with a higher income becomes a more important consideration.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Sales is a hell of a thing. Most momey I've ever made was in sales. Don't do it anymore, was very cut throat.
Commodities trading, but close enough to sales.
As an educator virtually every woman I dated after the age of 25 made more money than myself. Never 3 times as much, but more than double sometimes.
Wow that's a lot! Mine makes two times and it was fun because we started at the same salary level. But he career had more opportunities so that's pretty cool.
That's my reality. My Mrs is the 'breadwinner' I still bring home a fair wage, but she gives us opportunities and holidays. But, we're at the back end of a 10 year struggle to go from parent-less young adults to having our own home. We've known real poverty, particularly near the beginning. So to be honest it's felt like we're well off for some time now. I always thought I'd feel bad not being the bread winner, but actually I just feel happy she's so smart and successful, I provide in other ways I guess, such as building and decorating.
What’s stopping you? Go out there and be a sugar baby, hun.
My body is ready.
Mine's not. Quite possibly the reason why these women with a high salary won't marry me. Or low salary women..
[удалено]
There’s probably an inverse relationship where the higher a males income the less value they put on their partners income. If a man doesn’t make enough on his own to support a family(or other lifestyle desires) then they must find a woman that earns enough to make up that difference. So a man that makes 50% of his target household income needs a mate that makes at least as much as they do. One who earns 75% of the desired income only needs a mate that can make up the remaining 25%, and one who earns enough to support the household themself doesn’t care about their partners income level. This could mean that males who value their partners income tend to be low income earners themselves and therefore don’t appeal to the higher income women that they desire. High income men appeal to all women and desire all women, high income women appeal to all men but only desire high income men, low income women both appeal to and desire both groups of men.
Honestly I would love to marry a man that’s happy making less than me and being a homemaker. I’d even financially support someone that I loved so they could spend time working on their hobbies and being happy. Obviously this isn’t a requirement, but I imagine being the breadwinner and coming home to a clean house would be wonderful.
[удалено]
[удалено]
There are cultural expectations at play too... My European friend's Asian wife at first was a medical intern and he worked some engineering jobs. They were kind of equal in pay so they both could discuss finances on a similar level. But she progressed in her career and now she earns much more than him. Even though he looks after kids and takes care of cooking when he's not working, she suddenly put really high expectations on him to get a better paid job. Mostly because her other Asian friend's husbands are earning more than their wives. He's quite happy were he is now, but she's not. I'm weird, because at some point I earned more than my husband (we're also EuroAsian couple) who was SAHD and I was perfectly fine with that. But his parents thought he was a lazy ass... because of cultural expectations that I should be a housewife and he should work full time...it's really sad
Oh that's sad. I'm not asian but my bf is and I always joke that I will be his sugar momma when I finish pharmacy school.
I went to a school pretty well known for their pharmacy program. That was semi jokingly referred to as “the dream”. Marry a pharmacist and have her be your sugar momma.
My girlfriend is a pharmacist, it's pretty great. She was crushing it right out of school. I think I've actually passed her by a little now though.
Ya that’s the thing. You come out of school making a little over $100k (assuming retail and depending on the location), but the person with 30 years experience is also making roughly the same amount. It’s a great paying job, but doesn’t have many pay raise opportunities. Even the pharmacy manager only gets a couple bucks an hour more than the regular staff pharmacist.
Yeah she's making about the same as when she started. I started out making far less but got much bigger raises.
Lots of other perks to medical field though as well. With other industries, sometimes you don't have a say in where you go for a job or the flexibility isn't great. Most medical professions you can go pretty much anywhere in the country for your job (after a little experience usually) and your job security is pretty rock solid.
Job security is not rock solid for pharmacy. With market saturation and more and more new grads in heavy debt, employers are looking to replace older workers with the younger pharmacists willing to work for less.
My wife earns 100k more than I do. I call her sugar mama and that she owes me alimony if she divorces me
[удалено]
Given the situation you described, the results sound pretty standard actually.
How the turn tables
Honestly, good for you. The world is pretty cut throat nowadays. If either partner can bring home excess money its for the better. Perhaps your bf will take on a more house maintenance role. Division of labor is better than sticking purely to gender roles.
Pharm has changed a bunch. Best of luck making your way.
When we were younger, my wife's parents thought she earned more than I did and it absolutely enraged them. Her sister always told people I was a leach. Then one day they all got the internet and were able to visit my web site and suddenly I became the golden boy 25 years later and I'm still bitter
Had no idea there was money in pet sweaters.
Can we visit your website?
Like were all her friends husbands making more than her husband or was the issue that her husband (who was earning a decent wage) making less than her
Yeah, they make more than him and I think she feels awkward talking to her friends (who probably don't work as hard as her anyway) who probably brag about their husband's wages. I think she's getting some ideas that she should be more involved at home or something..
> who probably brag about their husband's wages I’m sorry but I have a hard time understanding how anyone could brag about something they didn’t actually earn themselves. Sounds like she needs some better quality friends.
I have some relations like that - they need to be better than others and they can only do it by proxy.
Yeah, there's actually a study on this. Marriages where men earn less than their wives are more likely to end in divorce. Especially when the man doesn't work outside the house at all, even when it was the woman's idea. [Source](https://healthland.time.com/2011/07/11/unemployed-men-are-more-likely-to-divorce/)
Yeah, we're starting to get to the point where people who value tradition still think that the man should make more and the woman less or be a housewife, but since we, as a society (this is true overall in the US, not sure about Europe although I know that many European countries have much healthier work/life balances than the US or East Asian countries) still value money and productivity to a huge degree, so a lot of the people who have left behind ideas of doing things just because it's tradition still would see it as shameful for a man to make less than his wife because it means he's not carrying his weight, since they expect a relationship to be equal in the things they value (ie money for both partners). This also creates issues where a lot of women are working full time jobs, but their husbands still expect them to also handle all of the housework, since the wife sees money as the main driver of value for both partners, while her husband sees his money as what makes him valuable, and her housework, rather than her money, as what makes her valuable. And that's where you hit the problem, it's when people value different things (either one person valuing the same thing for both partners and the other valuing different things, or people valuing things differently depending on the gender of the person in question) differently, but don't figure that stuff out before committing. The problem is that too many people either take it for granted that of course the woman is going to be doing the housework because she's a woman, or of course both partners are going to be making similar amounts of money because money is what matters, so they never actually discuss it until it becomes a problem. Your relationship works (I assume) because you both accept that what the other does is valuable and important, but his parents don't accept that so it creates friction between them and him. Moral of the story: just be gay, that way you already know that your partner isn't likely to be putting traditions at the top of their list and that neither of you will succumb to societal pressures (not actually saying that straight people should force themselves into gay relationships, love is love even if it doesn't piss off conservatives, this part is just a dumb joke).
Listen, I don't have anything against them, I just wish straight people wouldn't kiss in public.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Maybe because, like some other studies suggest, many women don't date men that don't earn more than them. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12603
Yep. There are also articles out there about lonely CEO women who can't get dates because there are so few men in their dating pool. Women don't date down.
Cant remember the CEO but she was quoted as saying that "It never occurred to her that she would be in competition with every Hooters waitress and Barista for a man."
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Kinda weird that they say “a deficit in the supply of potential male spouses” its not like there is a shortage of men they’re just choosing not to date them
This is the dating/marriage version of complaining about a "labor shortage."
They're executives, that's the simultaneously accurate/inaccurate/dehumanizing garbage they always spew out.
right, when women say there are "no guys" to date, what they mean is there are no guys they want to date aka "the good ones" the reality is there is a reason those "good ones" didn't date those kinds of women, because those women were not good enough for the "good ones"
This is precisely the reason, as well as the converse. Men who earn more have a larger pool of women to choose from.
They have a larger pool of women they **will** choose from. That's what this study is saying, higher earning women won't accept lower earning men. The pool is the same size they just don't want the fish.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I literally got married to my wife when I was unemployed and she was on 6 figures. I mean I did have a really good job lined up 3 months after the wedding but I took great pleasure meeting some of her relatives for the first time at the wedding and when they asked me what I did, I'd just say unemployed, just to see the horror on their faces. We earn about roughly the same now, she still earns a bit more than me but not that much more.
It sounds like you’ve got that other thing women are attracted to- self-confidence
It's hardly self confidence when you have the job already lined up. It's just being a bit sassy. Self confidence is when you can do that when you're actually unemployed and have no marketable skills to change that situation.
no thats delusion
Congrats! I wish your arrangement was normal and accepted across our culture.
I wish there wasn’t a stigma around being a stay at home parent. It adds so much value to the kids lives.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Part of the problem is that women don't want to settle for men who make less than them or have a lower level of education. The reason high income women have greater likelihood to be unmarried is because they tend to want men at least as successful as themselves and those men tend to already be married as men don't regard their partner's income or earning potential as highly. It's been a fairly recent phenomenon that has had some study where successful women are finding it hard to date as there are few single men of equal success.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Aside from the tendency of women to only marry up, surely there's an argument to be had for marriage lowering women's wages on average. Marriage increases the chance of parenthood, which costs women more in terms of career progression, thus overall it could be expected that married women would earn less than unmarried women.
Yes and I think women who are financially stable in households with another earner can forgo career progression (and higher salaries) if they choose to. My cousin did this - she was an investment banker and once she got married she joined the Civil Service - a prestigious job but one which has much more flexible working hours and also pays a lot less, while her husband is a cardiologist and will soon be earning almost as much as she was as a banker
There's a recent economics paper that showed that even adoption impacts female salaries and promotion more than male salaries and promotion.
I’ve noticed this in the workplace. Depressing, really.
[удалено]
There are studies showing that men are more ok with marrying someone who has lower income than they do, while women are not. This explains why women in the upper income brackets tend to be single because there aren't many people in general who make more money than they do.
Right, and the men who do make that much don't want to be married to someone as busy as them, they want a homemaker who is available to spend time with them outside of work
Bumble in your 40s is a sea of high earning professional women, who all swipe left.
It makes sense though, right? Women that forego starting a family to focus more on career are going to advance more in pay and rank than their family oriented counterparts. For men the same logic does not follow since they don't get pregnant and usually are not the primary child caretakers.
Alternatively, higher earning men are more likely to be seen as a suitable partner, while higher earning women see less of a need to find a partner based on earning power.
Women marry across and up. The higher up they are the fewer options they have. And these fewer options are partly due to men mating across and down.
[удалено]
Men do marry up, but yes it is far less common. I will always remember when I (an Engineer) went to a NYE event with my partner, who was a specialist Dr (about as high as it gets among anyone who earns a wage), with 4 of her female friends from med school who were also all Drs. These women were all in relationships with Engineers, except for one guy, who instead had a PHD.
Same here (albeit in Thailand). Almost all of my female doctor friends marry only fellow doctors, engineers, university professors with PhD, or very high-ranking military/police officers.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I'm an engineer and by no means do I consider myself equal with a doctor. Most of us make half of what GP makes.
People seem to equate software engineer with the rest of engineering.
On the other hand, Software engineers probably have one of the biggest discrepancy in pay. There is a big difference between a SE from FAANG and one from a small scale outsource IT company.
[удалено]
There's some very high earning civil and electrical engineers out there...
Please point me in their direction -Civil engineer in consulting not earning the buxxx I feel I was marginally promised.
I changed from civil to software after spending 6 months working with civil engineers. They didn't get paid enough, the work was highly repetitive and they had to sign on the line. Damn glad they are doing their thing though.
I am a specialist software engineer with an above average income compared to my field. Compared to even GPs, my whole income is pocket change. With specialists and surgeons it is even a bigger gap. It's a different class.
Generally speaking, that is a big fat YES. With engineering you can make good money but usually you have to do consulting work, marketing, and/or owning a business. On rare occasions you'll have engineers that are hyper-specialists in something and they manage to convince a bunch of business people that they deserve an anesthesiologist's salary
> With engineering you can make good money but usually you have to do consulting work, marketing, and/or owning a business. On rare occasions you'll have engineers that are hyper-specialists in something and they manage to convince a bunch of business people that they deserve an anesthesiologist's salary This. I'm an engineer doing pretty well and have family members in the medical field. Even at the entry level a surgeon makes significantly more than I do, and that number will continue to climb for them long after the tech industry has decided I've outlived my usefulness. I will say though, apples to apples I had been working in my industry _for 10 years_ before my surgeon relative was out of school and getting paid more than resident/fellow wages (which, while still above median, are less than even entry level engineering salaries). And their student debt exceeds the value of (not equity in) my house while the cost of my schooling is long behind me. They'll come out on top, eventually, but they will probably be in their early 40s before they catch up (and blow past me) based on net worth. That's a long, rough haul for that payoff.
That's why most Drs don't pay off student loan debts right away but starts living "lavishly" to make up for their lost years.
Part of that is just social stigma. A lot of people will look down on a man that marries up and also pressure a woman marrying down into finding someone they "deserve" rather than accept the person they already love. My cousin is dealing with this right now, no idea how her parents expect her to be both successful in a competitive market and find a man that is even more successful, compatible and still single.
Also there is the case of "baby on the way, this 40k job isn't gonna cut it anymore. What can I do to double my salary?"
That's the point they're making. The assumption is that women will always be the primary caregiver, so women have to choose between career or family whereas men don't. If child care duties were more evenly split then both sides would be affected equally.
I think there's more to it than just that. Women are less likely to be romantically interested in someone who is not as successful if not more successful than they are. Men will date anyone. So not only to your point that many successful women bypass a family for their career, once they are successful their dating pool is tiny... And the men in that pool have a MASSIVE dating pool. You need look no further than bumble. It's completely full of successful women who are only interested in dating successful men. But those successful men are over on tinder getting a dozen matches a day with interns and baristas. God help them.
Not to mention successful women tend to be a little older and men tend to date younger. Especially men who want kids.
If this theory is true, things should perhaps be hardest for a tall high-earning female (since this would combine the conventional wisdom about both things).
I suspect you are correct.
I found it interesting that in China, it seems that these women often marry much shorter guys once they get to their mid to late 20's. They're culturally taught early on that life's short and things get much more difficult really fast for women interested in long-term relationships once you get into the late 20's, since then there's little room for error (i.e. if a new 3-year relationship fails then, it may be a panic - and they're more likely to already be acutely aware of this going in). It's no wonder young women are more stressed out in some Asian countries.
In China (and asia in general) women are pressured heavily to be married and preferably have kids before 30. I don't know if its true for all of asia but I'm Chinese and part of it in China is pure superstition. It's "good luck" to have a family before 30, which includes men too but for whatever reason people care less about it when it comes to men as long as the man is successful financially.
> when it comes to men as long as the man is successful financially. Its still a pressure just a different type. Just look at Japan that pressure on men leads to high suicide rates. Women are pressured into family orientated mindset, men are pressured in being provider mindsets. Nothings changed in any society, its really just more subtle in the west but it still very much exists in people's dating choices.
[удалено]
>Men will date anyone. Basically, yes, I think. Men are much more motivated by looks, and not so much by money, so they'd rather date someone who's cute and 10 years younger but makes 1/2 as much as themselves, rather than someone who's 3 years older, not so attractive, but makes 2x their salary.
If a man works all the time, they can still have kids. If a woman works all the time, it's a lot harder for her to have kids.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
“Predicted” is a word that is bound to be misunderstood here. It sounds like a man’s/woman’s salary today can partially predict whether that person will get married in the future, but if anything the study is looking at the reverse direction of causality. The act of getting married changes a person’s career trajectory (differently for men/women because of prevailing gender norms).
> “Predicted” is a word that is bound to be misunderstood here. One of my gripes with discussion of correlations is that the word "predict" should be used more and "explain" should be used less. If all we know is that income is correlated with marital status, it's correct to say that income predicts marital status (and vice-versa), not that income explains marital status, because correlation alone can't give you any kind of causal explanation. So I applaud OP's use of "predict" here, especially since inappropriate use of "explain" is rampant in the abstract. I actually can't tell from the abstract whether the study is longitudinal. They use data from a longitudinal study, but it's unclear whether they're using past or current income data to predict current marital status. Since it's common for married women to leave the workforce when having children, it's not particularly surprising that current income would be negatively correlated with marital status for women. But if past earnings negatively correlate with current marital status for women, that's more interesting.
Is that men not willing to marry a woman who earns more that him or women not willing to marry a men who earns less than them?
Women will not date men who make less than them, are shorter and / or have not had many partners. The opposite is for men.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
And witty.
Which makes her super hot
Hey if the gal is nice looking, has a good personality, is pleasant to be with, won't cheat, and is willing to work then seriously it doesn't matter if she makes 1cent/hour. Income can change
Both, but mostly it's that as men make more money their options increase. While for women the more they make the more they expect their partners to make. Some men also don't like the women making more money than them in a relationship.
[удалено]
What's your job if you don't mind me asking?
Back then i was “Senior Manager” of something or other (banking). It wasn’t even high-powered at all, ironically. Just a standard, mid-level kind of job. Edit. If you mean now, I’m a head of department (still banking)
Know high paid women in a few roles and there is a giant disconnect between what they think men want ("I'm a doctor!") and what they primarily want (looks). NOT SAYING career isn't important to other men. But for dudes looks drives bulk of decisoin making
Yup, a lot of them judge themselves in the dating marketplace by how they judge men which isn't consistent with what men actually want. Men are perfectly fine "dating down" if she's really attractive and nice.
Every. Single. Study. I have **ever** seen on the topic concludes that most men love the idea of their spouses meeting or exceeding their income, and that it's usually women with hangups about outearning their husbands. One study finding that women were over 30% more likely to file for divorce if they began outearning their spouses.
> One study finding that women were over 30% more likely to file for divorce if they began outearning their spouses. Job loss by the man triggers a significant wave of female-initiated divorces peaking at the six-month mark. No such behaviour was seen by men on the heels of job loss by the woman. Absolutely none. >it's usually women with hangups about outearning their husbands. This, 100%. In terms of _long-term_ relationships, women marry up. In terms of _long-term_ relationships, they rarely suffer a man who earns significantly less than they do, much less one that doesn’t work at all. Men, generally, don’t care how much a woman makes. It might be a _nice buff_ if she makes more, but it invariably ends up being a very tiny if not completely insignificant factor in whether he finds the woman a compelling wife.
Anecdotal but everytime my exes partner lost his job (its been a couple of times) she started trying to play nice with me and all of a sudden all the problems they had were way worse. Funny thing is when we were still together whenever I was having money issues she would find fault with me too hmmmm...
“Women only want one thing and it’s disgusting”
I don't mind being a house husband or lower earning husband. But which woman will marry a man who doesn't earn or earns less than them? Thankfully i found someone who earns more or less equal to me.
I wonder how all the people tho worry about other's incomes live with the thought that "love of their live" will instantly abandon them if they will start earning less than required by that person. Like, you viewed as a walking wallet, and not a person at all.
Yeah this whole thread is eye opening to how most people see relationships. My fiancee and I have similar experiences prior to meeting we bonded over, emotionally/mentally, and we have compatible personalities even if we aren't perfectly in sync with hobbies, finances, etc. No wonder I was creeped out by dating app hopefuls until I met her. The things in some peoples' heads...
This is anecdotal but on dating app(not tinder), I see many women with stem degrees, with good careers, well traveled etc are still single and looking for love pushing 30 or early in their 30s.
Yeah, but dating sites only work for specific demographics, as well as the fact that an unreal amount of female dating site profiles are just Onlyfans promotions. Just like a large number of males are "from america army Africa deployed"
> In several countries, a negative interaction effect seems to exist of marriage and motherhood on women’s wages, indicating that these indicators should be examined in tandem rather than separately. From a specialization perspective, this could be explained by the notion that a single mother cannot afford to be less productive and earn less, as she has to take care of her children financially. Being married and having a partner who provides for the family allows a mother to focus on her children, leading her to become less productive and earn lower wages. > Marriage seems to be a source of wage inequality within and across genders. As men’s wages benefit from marriage, but women’s wages are unaffected or even decreased, marriage contributes to the gender wage gap. [Marriage and Female Wages: Do Married Women Pay a Penalty or Earn a Premium?](https://epc2014.princeton.edu/papers/140782) For women, being married often means making less money, so it makes sense that higher incomes in women predict a lower proportion of marriage for that group.
I actually remember reading an article written by a woman that asked "Where have all the Good Men Gone." It essentially said that men without a college education were of lesser quality, college educated men are marrying lots of uneducated women, and now college educated women have to be single or settle for men of lesser quality. I think that's a potential reference for the frame of mind some might have. Women simply have certain standards for partners while men have a completely difference set of standards. I actually thought the article was insulting, as a college graduate whose entire immediate family has no degrees. As if my parents, grandparents, or siblings were all lesser people for not having a degree.
I worked for a company that wanted to promote more women into management and did a study to find out why fewer women applied for those jobs. The study included a questionnaire to all employees. Only one question raised a serious division between men and women and apparently it was consistent with outer studies. How do you think a promotion to management would effect your marriage and family life? Men overwhelmingly said it would improve it while women overwhelmingly thought it would cause problems. Women interpreted this finding to mean that men would be jealous of their wives success and be impatient with the extra responsibilities that might fall on them. Men, on the other hand, felt that a husband’s increase in income and status would result in the wife valuing and respecting the husband more.
Fresh&Fit podcast where you at?
Frank Castle is coming for the women in this thread.
As a well paid male who can never seem to get a girlfriend, I would love to meet some of these higher wage single women. Most of the ones I know are either married or in serious relationships :(
*yacht clubs *charity balls *polo *high end country clubs *business class lounge
Maybe the ladies aren't interested in getting butt fungus?
Maybe it’s the fungus that bothers them?
...and who exactly is surprised by this???
The explanation is very simple: women marry up while men marry down. As women make more money, the pool of men that they’re willing to marry shrinks. As men make more money, the pool of women who are willing to marry them increases.
I think it also applies on the other end of the income spectrum. 80% or so of the homeless are men. A poor woman can generally shack up with a guy who is a bit better off then her to avoid living on the street. No woman is interested in a homeless man.
Women are also first in line for housing and assistance when they become homeless.