market value
I had a conversation with a female friend about a friend of hers who is getting divorced.
This woman is 42 and has two kids.
“Ouch!”, I said, upon hearing it.
… because the market value of a divorced 42 year old woman with children is as darned close to INT_MIN as you’re going to get.
“Au, contraire,” I was told, “lots of divorced women find love again”.
“Bull !@#$%”, I responded pithily.
“Well, most divorced women in their 40s don’t even want a man” it was rejoinded.
“A nice cover story after discovering the cold equations” I replied (well, actually I didn’t – there are places and times to make references to Golden Age science fiction classics, and then there are other places and times).
One of the most shocking things that I’ve learned in the last few years is how rapidly the dating market changes in one’s mid 30s.
To drink deep from the cup of sociobiological truth (oh, I’m sorry – “right wing social Darwinist fascist nonsense”), both men and women are, encoded into their instincts, looking for reproductive fitness in a mate.
Women are looking for resources, social status, physical fitness, etc.
…and men are looking for fecundity.
(this is a bit complicated by the sexy son hypothesis, the fact that most traits are heritable into children of either sex, etc., but there’s enough residual truth that I’ll stick to the simplified version)
Just as with Wall Street, you can either buy the real thing, or you can buy an out-of-the-money call.
Well, women can, because a man at age 24 may or may not command resources, but he may look like he’s got a shot of doing so some day. Or he may look like he’s going to develop into someone who’s got a shot of doing so some day. etc.
Young men can’t much buy calls, because young women are at the peak of their fecundity, and the the curve is grim, grim, grim:
http://www.advancedfertility.com/age.htm
Grabbing a woman because you think she’s going to be more fecund later is a bit like buying a zero-interest-rate bond at face value in Weimar Germany. (…or Obama America…)
Most young women, thanks to the intellectual ravages of feminism, deny reality through their 20s. The marketplace can be a bit rough for a 25 year old guy who doesn’t command resources, social status, physical fitness, looks, etc.
But, oh, how things change 10 years later.
Some of the mind-poisoned feminists remain true to warped world views, but many wise up, joining the ranks of the women who were clear headed all along.
Suddenly women are looking at that graph, and seeing that the reproductive success of 40 year old women is about 35% of that of 30 year old women, they start to panic.
Guys, on the other hand, have sorted themselves into various fractions, like ink climbing up damp blotting paper – at this level we had the frat jock with a winning smile who now smokes two packs a day and isn’t selling many cars at the dealership, up here we have the convenience store manager, here we have the small business owner, further up we have the IT sales guy doing $300k/year in commissions, etc.
I’ve had occasion to rebuff many a divorced woman (I do so for multiple reasons – asymmetric information tactic, Catholic teaching, etc.), and women my own age. After – all through high school and college – preferring women a few years older than me, I’ve set a soft cap at 32 years, and a hard cap at 35 (the floor is around 28 or so – if you’re younger than that, ladies, don’t worry, you’ll get there eventually). I want kids, and there’s enough supply on the market that I can afford to be pretty picky.
I’m hardly alone in this.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and the market clears, or close enough, so for every divorced 42 year old women with two children, there’s some guy down enough on his luck that that might be the very best he can get. The issue, though, is that the typical divorced 42 year old women with two children isn’t too thrilled with what she can get on the market, and might very well choose to remain single in preference to the bald alcoholic 60 year old that she might find.
At the end of this discussion my friend pointed out, “this getting-divorced woman has large breasts”. Which (a) will, in fact, help, because (b) it’s an evolved defense to confuse men’s algorithm for detecting youth and fertility.
I found the “this getting-divorced woman has large breasts” comment refreshing, because it was a breath of fresh realism in a field that is otherwise dominated by wishful thinking.
Anyway, the comments are open. Let the flaming begin.
January 29th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Anyway, the comments are open
Hmm. Sorry – you wrote something about ‘large breasts’ and after that it was all ‘wah-wah-blah-wah-bosoms’ to the end. Let me go back and start again.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:23 am
[quote comment="230690"]Hmm. Sorry – you wrote something about ‘large breasts’ and after that it was all ‘wah-wah-blah-wah-bosoms’,,,[/quote]
I can’t resist: (mildly NSFW: turn down the sound)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c49_1209767961
January 29th, 2010 at 11:24 am
[quote comment="230690"]Anyway, the comments are open
Hmm. Sorry – you wrote something about ‘large breasts’ and after that it was all ‘wah-wah-blah-wah-bosoms’ to the end.
Let me go back and start again.[/quote]
LLOL!
January 29th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Way to suck the romance out of everything…and make it awesome.
January 29th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Problem is they vote. And they vote for a gov’t that will take out the trash and change the oil in their car.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
[quote comment="230697"]Problem is they vote.
[/quote]
I think I’ve been clear on my thoughts on this.
January 29th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Travis, you need to widen your social circle before making statements like that. When I met Beth, she was 39, divorced, and had two young daughters. The rest, as they say, is history.
Men might, as a rule, prefer younger, fecund women if they could get those things plus everything else they want, but that doesn’t mean we’re blind to the attractions of older, experienced, reliable women who know what it takes to make a marriage work.
January 29th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
“The market clears, or close enough” would make a good t-shirt slogan.
It’s got a poe-etical feel
to it.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
In my (not personal) experience, relative attractiveness can get a woman remarried no matter how many times divorced. And it’s been more than once. The example I’m thinking of doesn’t have kids, and certainly could be considered a risky child-bearing proposition at this point.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Told you so. Pttthhhpt!
January 29th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Travis, you need to widen your social circle before making statements like that.
He’d have to cast a very wide net. Ladies such as yours and mine are rare and in demand.
That I am married to my lady at all was an incredible stroke of luck and foolishness: luck on my part, foolishness on the part of her ex-husband. If he’d just listened to her they’d still be married and I’d be a bitter, single man alienated from my children and loathing my ex-wife.
I’ve met a baker’s dozen (more?) of ladies in their 30s and 40s who found them selves divorced. While they might make good dating material, or good buddies they all have issues of one sort or another that would keep me from wanting to marry them.
One might find a gold nugget on one’s property. If the intent is to strike it rich you’re better off in the gold fields than your own backyard.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
So as a tubby and balding 60 year old, I am the guy who will get your large-breasted leavings? You are certainly right that the playing field shifts as time goes on. I’m married, happy about it, not straying, but what would I do if my wife stepped in front of a truck?
I like being married, and would look to marry again. I have children, have changed a lot of diapers – probably wouldn’t seek to do it again, even if some young-and-lithe set her cap for me. So I might well be interested in someone like her. A little older might be better – someone who knows why a Dan Quayle joke is funny, and that Paul McCartney was in a group before he was in Wings.
If I hadn’t succeeded in forming a family, would I be interested in a divorcee who was getting towards the end of her breeding years, and had already had children? I think your evobio stuff is true, largely, but that time passes and at my age diapers would be pretty daunting, I might not hope to make my own, and there’s be some attractiveness to a woman with a ready-made family. So I guess I am chiming in with Francis Porreto.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
The other point that I tried to make to Travis is that if a woman finds herself divorced and is financially stable, the incentive to remarry will certainly go down. Most husbands, even those as wonderful as my own, generate a lot of both physical and emotional work. The laundry that sits at the bottom of the stairs, invisible to all but the wife who ends up carrying it upstairs herself after the husband has walked past it ten times. The grocery shopping and dinner cooking is often the woman’s job. I’m sure that TJIC will argue that he does all of these things on his own every day. I will also assert the managing a home with one single male is much simpler than running a household of four. I think that a divorced woman might not want to go back to having to discuss and compromise about everything. Women whose husbands travel a great deal will often describe that though they miss their mates, not having to negotiate every detail of the day makes for an easier schedule.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
I can’t resist: (mildly NSFW: turn down the sound)
Oh that was awesome. Thank you!
January 29th, 2010 at 11:07 pm
[quote comment="230718"]In my (not personal) experience, relative attractiveness can get a woman remarried [/quote]
Sure.
ANYONE can get married.
The question is “what price do you command in the market”.
A hot woman can get married to a level N guy.
A hot divorced woman can get married to a level N-3 guy.
A non-hot woman can get married to a level N-1 guy..
A non-hot divorced woman with kids can get married to a level N-28 guy.
etc.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
[quote comment="230724"]The laundry that sits at the bottom of the stairs, invisible to all but the wife who ends up carrying it upstairs herself after the husband has walked past it ten times. [/quote]
The “I can’t see the laundry” / “I’m such a martyr for doing all the housework” duette that
you twohalf the couples since the beginning of time have invented never ceases to amuse me.Go, chimpanzees, go!
January 29th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
[quote comment="230722"]So as a tubby and balding 60 year old, I am the guy who will get your large-breasted leavings? [/quote]
Let me just say that I will treasure the phrase “large-breasted leavings” for a long time.
Also, on the topic of “large breasted leavings” – I flushed a woman recently who was well endowed, and quite cute (despite being blonde – my least favorite hair color). We had nothing in common … but, ahhhhh, just walking away was hard. There’s part of me that wishes I was more of a scoundrel.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
[quote comment="230721"]
I’ve met a baker’s dozen (more?) of ladies in their 30s and 40s who found them selves divorced. … they all have issues [/quote]
And thus we get into the asymetric information / rational betting side of the argument.
Half of the marriages that implode do so because the husband has issues.
Half because the wives have issues.
So if we assume that maybe 20% of single women in demographic X are broken, we’re still far better off dating single women in this demographic, as the divorced ones are at least 50% likely to be broken … and sometimes brokenness can take a long time to be discovered.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
[quote comment="230695"]Way to suck the romance out of everything…and make it awesome.[/quote]
Those are, in fact, two skills I list on my resume.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
I think that quote belongs on the “what the critics are saying” page.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:03 am
I still contend that market price is directly proportional to hotness and also just plain awesomeness. I think the formula you describe may apply to you where you equal N. But the rest of the world would rather have a hot/awesome wife no matter what her history. Dating her for a few weeks should fix the information asymmetry, as well as simply hearing what she has to say about her divorce…
January 30th, 2010 at 1:04 am
[quote comment="230738"][quote comment="230721"]
I’ve met a baker’s dozen (more?) of ladies in their 30s and 40s who found them selves divorced. … they all have issues [/quote]
So if we assume that maybe 20% of single women in demographic X are broken, we’re still far better off dating single women in this demographic, as the divorced ones are at least 50% likely to be broken … and sometimes brokenness can take a long time to be discovered.[/quote]
20% is way to optimistic for women in the 30 something demographic. They may not be “broken”, but they’re pretty damn set in their ways. Most of the single women willing to compromise with men got married before 30.
January 30th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Tjic, I think you are somewhere between urgent and crisis if you want/intend to marry and have children. The fact that you could squirt semen into a 22-year-old and make babies doesn’t alter the chasm between you and her in music enjoyed, politicians to sneer at (who now remembers Jane Swift? You do! She doesn’t!). If the women in your age cohort are aging out of easy breeding, you are in trouble. And as Michael notes, the women who have not married are more and more selected for ‘not-married-for-a-reason’.
AND you are in Massachusetts, where your views are rare. It’s hard to maintain a marriage when views are not shared.
January 30th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
If there’s anything to this Singularity stuff, that 42-year-old woman might have more kids someday…
Remember, other strange science-fiction type events have happened. A computer program beat the world chess champion, a non-white President was elected, the Red Sox won the World Series…
February 1st, 2010 at 6:46 am
more on time table: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006914.html
February 1st, 2010 at 10:30 am
[quote comment="230708"]women who know what it takes to make a marriage work.[/quote]
If they knew how to make a marriage work they wouldn’t be divorced.
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:28 am
[quote comment="230866"][quote comment="230708"]women who know what it takes to make a marriage work.[/quote]
If they knew how to make a marriage work they wouldn’t be divorced.[/quote]
Not 100% true…but not 0% true either.