Men won't buy the cow if the milk is free

[crossfire]

Here's the article:
Susan Patton: A Little Valentine's Day Straight Talk - WSJ.com

She also reduces men down to a commodity that one has to compete for. (Walking sperm banks?) She also uses a circular argument to encourage women to start in on the competition when they are young, so they don't have to compete against the younger women when they get older? (So are there younger women in there competing, or not? If there are, then why do you need to encourage women to join the competition when they are younger?)
She uses a false appeal to "intelligence" with such faulty reasoning? Pfft! Who's gonna fall for that, except maybe the pseudo-intellectual "cows," as she calls them.

It might just be me, but this whole argument sounds like a cover for the old "young unmarried women are a bane upon society, as they are not smart enough to make intelligent decisions, (especially regarding anything involving their bodies)" argument, imo.

 

[dawny0826]

In one of her arguments, she brings up the old notion that casual sex is disadvantageous to women on the grounds that men are unlikely to commit to women who give them sex. As she puts it, "Men won't buy the cow if the milk is free".

For the young woman who aspires, in college, to find her husband, this might be true, if she's hooking up with men who do not share the same expectations. But, it seems that Patton takes this to the extreme.

Being careful and selective when you're seeking commitment could be wise. Foregoing experimentation altogether in favor of finding that one person to commit to seems extreme.

I agree with this:

An extraordinary education is the greatest gift you can give yourself. But if you are a young woman who has had that blessing, the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult.

Then, she loses me.

She's suggesting that college is the best place to start looking for a husband, insisting that it's the best place to find someone who is compatible, yet, she essentially skips over how one would test for compatibility.

Her argument is void of reasonable solutions for the very woman that she reaches out to - the intelligent woman who wants to find a spouse in college. This requires exploration. To pursue a committed relationship doesn't mean you'd have to forego other pursuits along the way that seem worthwhile.

A second problem I see with that argument is that it seems to encourage abstinence before marriage, which strikes me as a very good way to increase one's chances of marrying someone you are sexually incompatible with.

True, though I would see nothing wrong with such a choice if this is what a woman wanted.

 

[Badran]

But what do you make of the argument?

It's a very common approach to marriage in general, and a particularly common view many people have in regards to how a woman's ambition should be prioritized. For example, one of the most common warnings i think my sister has had to hear in her life was "Let's see how you get a husband with that attitude.", or "No man is gonna put up with such..." what have you.

I think the article can be summarized quite easily. She says towards the end:

There is nothing incongruous about educated, ambitious women wanting to be wives and mothers. Don't let anyone tell you that these traditional roles are retrograde; they are perfectly natural and even wonderful.

And of course it's perfectly natural for a woman to want to be a wife and a mother. Almost all women want at least one of those two, and in most cases both, and the case is similar for men. Though of course i would not necessarily use the word 'natural' to describe the desire for marriage, but more for the desire of being with someone in general, or may be more particularly in some resemblance of a committed relationship or another, but not particularly marriage as is customary in the author's particular society, which of course is following of different customs in others. But i'll avoid focusing on that.

Let's just say that's all natural and wonderful. What's not natural or wonderful however is:

Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry

You're not getting any younger, but the competition for the men you'd be interested in marrying most definitely is.

When you find a good man, take it slow. Casual sex is irresistible to men, but the smart move is not to give it away. If you offer intimacy without commitment, the incentive to commit is eliminated. The grandmotherly message of yesterday is still true today: Men won't buy the cow if the milk is free.

Pressure, generalizations, and as other posters pointed out, reducing both men and women, and making women feel like finding a partner is a requirement and a burden, rather than something to look forward to, and indeed, work towards in some ways.

In short, i think the problem is that some people approach the importance of all this in a wrong way. For many people, it is indeed the most important thing in their lives to find someone to share their lives with. But that doesn't mean that they should take the approach or embrace the view the author is trying put forth, because that approach is simply not healthy.

 

[MD]

I don't see why everyone's so upset, the author of the article is using evolutionary biology principles to support her points. They seem pretty valid.

 

[LuisDantas]

Evolutionary biology may do a lot to explain behavior. It is not at all enough to justify it.

 

[Alceste]

I don't see why everyone's so upset, the author of the article is using evolutionary biology principles to support her points. They seem pretty valid.

No she isn't. She doesn't even mention evolutionary biology. Are we reading the same article?

 

[Alceste]

But what do you make of the argument?

I think it's really bad advice, for so many reasons!

First, if you have a satisfying and challenging career, do you even need a husband? Gone are the days when women couldn't own property. You don't need a man to put a roof over your head any more. You don't even need a man to have kids.

So given that women can independently obtain anything that marriage used to be expected to deliver, there is only one good reason to get married: you want to spend your life with sometime who wants to spend their life with you.

Young people are too inexperienced and foolish to get that right, IMO. Several of my relationships when I was younger drifted to talk of marriage greater levels of commitment (like living together). That's because we were on auto-pilot, behaving in accordance with society's expectations. Not because we really wanted to spend our lives together. All it took for me to come to my senses was to really ask myself honestly if being with this particular guy was better than being single. In every case but one (the man I married), it wasn't.

Over half of the women I know who drifted into marriage and kids in their twenties are terribly unhappy, and so are their husbands. The exception would be those who have divorced their first partner and found a more compatible partner or decided to fly solo.

People who marry later in life have a far lower divorce rate, and IME those who have kids are far better equipped to deal with the financial burden and the stress.

As for having to compete with younger women, pffffft. Who wants to be with a man who is into immature little girls with college debt and no jobs? Most men these days want a partner. An emotional, intellectual and professional equal. If a man doesn't want that, you don't want him. It's a recipe for certain misery.

I genuinely feel sorry for the author if she thinks her marriage is the primary source of her happiness. Her life so far must have been very dull , confined and unimaginative. And talk about an unfair burden for your partner - making them solely responsible for your life satisfaction! No wonder so many marriages end in divorce.

 

[crossfire]

I don't see why everyone's so upset, the author of the article is using evolutionary biology principles to support her points. They seem pretty valid.

Do you mean this part of the article:

Think about it: If you spend the first 10 years out of college focused entirely on building your career, when you finally get around to looking for a husband you'll be in your 30s, competing with women in their 20s. That's not a competition in which you're likely to fare well. If you want to have children, your biological clock will be ticking loud enough to ward off any potential suitors. Don't let it get to that point.

You should be spending far more time planning for your husband than for your career—and you should start doing so much sooner than you think. This is especially the case if you are a woman with exceptionally good academic credentials, aiming for corporate stardom.​

Since when has getting married and planning around that been part of evolutionary biology?

 

[Sunstone]

I don't see why everyone's so upset, the author of the article is using evolutionary biology principles to support her points. They seem pretty valid.

At its best, evolutionary biology is descriptive, not prescriptive.

 

[MD]

Blah blah blah, everyone here shouts out about evolution here like it's gospel but when it's used in it's proper form get upset.

Here are some basic principles
a) women value power in a man
b) men value beauty in a woman

Yes there are other things humans look for as well, but those are the primary things each sex is attracted to. There are exceptions of course and as a k selective species (as win we have few offspring and invest heavily in them) we also look for compatibility, love, etc. But we are also sneaky, men like to dump their sperm wherever they can and women want to sleep with the hot guy and have the nice sweet guy raise theirs and the hot guys kids. But we also want social/group cohesion so there's not too much of that going on. Overall there are a combination of evolutionary factors which go into play with mate selection, but I will choose the most base factor here with regards to this article.

Biologically women have a time limit to their mating and most women are more monogamous than most men. So if you are a woman and you wish to procreate then it would be in your best interest to find someone at a younger age when your reproductive value is higher than at a later age when it's not. For men it's the opposite, their worth is low at a younger age and grows because their wealth and power grows, their reproductive value is higher at a later age. It would be wiser for a woman who wants kids to look in her 20s than her 30s. For men it's the opposite.

Now there are exceptions to this and yes some women have made it all work out in a splendid manner and kudos to them. But those are few and far in between. In the end many women in the west don't have kids and that's why the west is so heavily dependant on 3rd world immigration to pump money into their economies. In a few generations, women with genes who are predisposed towards choosing a mate over career will outnumber the opposite because those who chose a career will have fewer or no kids and eventually the genes will disappear over time.

Yes there are social and cultural factors but in the end even with all that the gene triumphs. If you follow evolutionary biology the sole purpose for the member of any species is to ensure that its genetic material passes on and is looked after. If your genes die out with you, then evolution removes you from the equation once you die. And I'm including the inclusive fitness here as well.

Now as a society we should give women more maternity leave, and more opportunites to pursue both career and family. But unfortunately capitalism is inherently patriarchial and will never allow that.

 

[Alceste]

Blah blah blah, everyone here shouts out about evolution here like it's gospel but when it's used in it's proper form get upset.

Here are some basic principles
a) women value power in a man
b) men value beauty in a woman

Yes there are other things humans look for as well, but those are the primary things each sex is attracted to. There are exceptions of course and as a k selective species (as win we have few offspring and invest heavily in them) we also look for compatibility, love, etc. But we are also sneaky, men like to dump their sperm wherever they can and women want to sleep with the hot guy and have the nice sweet guy raise theirs and the hot guys kids. But we also want social/group cohesion so there's not too much of that going on. Overall there are a combination of evolutionary factors which go into play with mate selection, but I will choose the most base factor here with regards to this article.

Biologically women have a time limit to their mating and most women are more monogamous than most men. So if you are a woman and you wish to procreate then it would be in your best interest to find someone at a younger age when your reproductive value is higher than at a later age when it's not. For men it's the opposite, their worth is low at a younger age and grows because their wealth and power grows, their reproductive value is higher at a later age. It would be wiser for a woman who wants kids to look in her 20s than her 30s. For men it's the opposite.

Now there are exceptions to this and yes some women have made it all work out in a splendid manner and kudos to them. But those are few and far in between. In the end many women in the west don't have kids and that's why the west is so heavily dependant on 3rd world immigration to pump money into their economies. In a few generations, women with genes who are predisposed towards choosing a mate over career will outnumber the opposite because those who chose a career will have fewer or no kids and eventually the genes will disappear over time.

Yes there are social and cultural factors but in the end even with all that the gene triumphs. If you follow evolutionary biology the sole purpose for the member of any species is to ensure that its genetic material passes on and is looked after. If your genes die out with you, then evolution removes you from the equation once you die. And I'm including the inclusive fitness here as well.

Now as a society we should give women more maternity leave, and more opportunites to pursue both career and family. But unfortunately capitalism is inherently patriarchial and will never allow that.

This all amounts to a bunch of "because I said so" and has nothing to do with evolutionary biology. Pro tip: Arguments based on science always refer to the research that backs them up.

 

[MD]

This all amounts to a bunch of "because I said so" and has nothing to do with evolutionary biology. Pro tip: Arguments based on science always refer to the research that backs them up.

Not really it's based on sound evolutionary principles. Anyone with a first year college course in biology knows this.

 

[Quintessence]

I can't even take this woman's arguments seriously considering she's got her priorities $#@ backwards from the gate.

The point of going to college or a university is education. It's not a ruddy social club. If making the most of the educational opportunity isn't the focus of most of your time and energy, you're doing it wrong and wasting both your time and your money.

 

[Alceste]

Not really it's based on sound evolutionary principles. Anyone with a first year college course in biology knows this.

Oh really? And what part of that biology course summed up the entirety of human mating behavior as "men are attracted to beauty and women are attracted to power", or claimed that "women are less inclined to infidelity than men"?

I want to see the research that backs those claims up. The research I've read (a meta analysis I became familiar with only thins morning) found that women are attracted to symmetry, which is a strong indicator of genetic health, and that our attraction tends to be driven by the pheromones of men who are a good genetic match. Other research I've read about has found that women cheat pretty much exactly as much as men do, although not necessarily for the same reasons. Fascinatingly, the evolutionary evidence for tens of thousands of years of human female infidelity is immortalized in the size of human testicles, which are in the middle range as far as the size of ape balls (determined by the amount of sperm competition) are concerned.

Men? Well, they are attracted to anyone who shows willing, in true primate form. Females do the mate selection in most mammals.

If you want to make an argument based on nothing but your gut feelings about how things are or should be, go crazy. Just don't call it scientific. That's a big pet peeve of mine. Here's a great example of a science based position, and I encourage you to read it.

Are Humans Monogamous?

Tl:dr - human pair bonds are most stable when both partners contribute equally to their shared investment (iow, kids and/or property), and when competition among males is highest (IOW, females are particular in their choice of a mate). There is also no evidence that human males or females are biologically inclined to be monogamous, and significant evidence to the contrary.

 

[Sunstone]

This is just anecdotal, but the happiest marriages I know of were second or third marriages that started between 30 and 50 years of age for the partners. Seems there might be a learning curve when it comes to marrying someone you can be deeply happy with.

 

[Revoltingest]

I'm a failure at marriage.
Only one, for 35 years.

 

[Alceste]

This is just anecdotal, but the happiest marriages I know of were second or third marriages that started between 30 and 50 years of age for the partners. Seems there might be a learning curve when it comes to marrying someone you can be deeply happy with.

As a woman who married at 37, I wholeheartedly agree. Even in the ********* possible circumstances (now, for example), our relationship is still a healthy, happy one compared to most.

 

[Drolefille]

These are more like evolutionary psychology principles, not biology, and evo psych is a lot of "this makes sense so it is" and not a lot of "we can test it." In short evo psych is not really scientific.

 

[Alceste]

These are more like evolutionary psychology principles, not biology, and evo psych is a lot of "this makes sense so it is" and not a lot of "we can test it." In short evo psych is not really scientific.

Not me - all my factual claims are testable, and have been tested.

Now as to the question of what is the recipe for human happiness and a healthy relationship... Well... I was going to say it can't be tested, but now that I think if it, it can and has, and I've read about the studies.

 

[freethinker44]

Not really it's based on sound evolutionary principles. Anyone with a first year college course in biology knows this.

Even if it was a based on evolutionary principles, that isn't a good reason to implement it in our lives. We're not insects, we aren't bound by our nature or our instincts. No matter what we were given by nature, we were also given intelligence, so at the end of the day the only that really determined your actions is your own mind.