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Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

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Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#421

Post by bobthepanda »

mahogany wrote: post #372
globular-toast wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really not see the difference here? You do know children generally outlive their parents, right? But the more general difference is a home maker is not a maid. A home maker owns the home. That's a very big difference. Somehow people have been convinced that it's better to work to build/maintain someone else's property instead of your own.

> Somehow people have been convinced that it's better to work to build/maintain someone else's property instead of your own. It is a bit strange, isn't it? We've transitioned to having both parents work, but then we pay a large percentage of the extra income on child care, house upkeep (cleaning, repairs, improvements, etc), prepared food, etc. -- things that one parent could do if they were at home instead of workin…

Elizabeth Warren literally wrote the book on this. It's how she became prominent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#423

Post by xwdv »

watwut wrote: post #337
xwdv wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a weird dynamic. There is a threshold where if your partner isn’t making some meaningful amount of money relative to you, it’s better for them to just not work at all than spend 40 hours a week toiling away for a pittance of a paycheck. What is there to gain from having a wife work as a cashier when you make 10x as much as her? You either want to be a power couple or just get the best partner you can and off…

Trophy wife is not just about being stay at home. The term expresses lack of respect toward that wife, whose role is to look pretty and is not expected to contribute, to be knowledgeable nor have skills. Second, men who earn a lot don't marry cashiers all that often. They want to marry within the same social class. They marry educated women whose earning potential is better then minimum wage. Third, being stay at hom…

Unfortunately there is no guarantee that a woman with desirable genetic traits is also a high income earner, so in practice men must choose to concede some qualities if they are to have a good chance of finding a wife.

Usually, this means choosing beauty over earning potential, as beauty is much harder to find and then the value of money decreases as you earn more of it.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#424

Post by bumby »

fleddr wrote: post #419
bumby wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd question some of your analysis here. > The chance for [handsome, sociable, strong, economically successful or at least stable, funny] men to go unnoticed and unclaimed until they are 30-40 y/o has to be close to zero. No doubt it's a smaller pool, but close to zero? I would be skeptical about such an absolute claim unless there's actual data. The pew research article doesn't speak to this point specifical…

I'm not going to be able to provide a scientific justification for the "close to zero" remark, I'm basing this on common sense. Handsome men stand out. They are desirable and attract attention wherever they go. As such, they can't be overlooked. If you then combine this favorable quality with great social skills, not only will they be discovered, it may be that man doing the discovery. If said man is also successful,…

>This decade is the time frame where almost everybody settles

I think this gets to the heart of it. Nobody wants to "settle", meaning there is a mismatch between expectations between two parties.

To extend your original phrasing (which I disagree with), a desirable man would not be single in his 30s or 40s. But by the same logic, neither would a desirable female. The latter point being underscored by the stereotypical premium put on youth and biological pressure due to age.

So that analogy (which I disagree with) leaves you with a less desirable single female expecting to land a highly desirable male. Of course, this will lead to frustration and they will be, as you say (which I disagree with), forced to settle. I would argue they will be forced to make sure their expectations match reality. If your hypothesis holds, they wouldn't be single if they were truly highly desirable. I don't agree with that but I don't see why that same logic doesn't apply to both sexes, outside of market inefficiencies (which technology has heavily eroded).

Is there a particular reason why your original comment focused only on men? If anything, the reduced pressure to settle down due to a lower threshold of biological constraints seems to provide a basis for it to be less applicable to men, not more.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#425

Post by Terretta »

aitchnyu wrote: post #312
valbaca wrote: post #59

Honestly, kind of boring results. - Volume wins out: there are lots of teachers and nurses - Like-marries-like: most marry someone in their own profession Not that boring is bad. Just interesting that the trends overshadow any kind of special results.

Yeah, this vis needs to filter out teachers and nurses since they are top results for anybody, and/or professions need to be color coded by category so I can glance at a list of 15 items and see that ${medicalprofessional} surprisingly marries educators.

Rather than filter just those two, it could have an option to re-weight by availability.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#426

Post by fleddr »

bumby wrote: post #424
fleddr wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to be able to provide a scientific justification for the "close to zero" remark, I'm basing this on common sense. Handsome men stand out. They are desirable and attract attention wherever they go. As such, they can't be overlooked. If you then combine this favorable quality with great social skills, not only will they be discovered, it may be that man doing the discovery. If said man is also successful,…

> This decade is the time frame where almost everybody settles I think this gets to the heart of it. Nobody wants to "settle", meaning there is a mismatch between expectations between two parties. To extend your original phrasing (which I disagree with), a desirable man would not be single in his 30s or 40s. But by the same logic, neither would a desirable female. The latter point being underscored by the stereotypic…

I didn't focus specifically on these women to imply it only applies to women, I merely responded to somebody far up the thread that singled out that demographic.

I think it's important to be precise about the group. I'm assuming a subset of women that have delayed relationships or family planning for 1-2 decades due to their full dedication to their careers. Most educated women would not fall in this group. They would have found some balance between the two, and start earlier with the social aspect of life. So the group is highly specific, to a degree extreme.

I do not believe that men and women look for the exact same qualities in each other. The thing these women optimized for (professional status) is not necessarily high on the list of all men. And even if it was, (many/most) men would settle for "less" in the meanwhile, indicating that again time is the selector. These women have desirable qualities, but they don't matter if they're not on the market when it matters.

The opposite situation is not the same. Whether it is biological or cultural, men fully dedicated to their career do tend to find partners accepting this imbalance, thus they don't wait until 40 years old to start a relationship or family. It doesn't even have to be a harmful stereotype if its fully consensual.

So I agree that this dynamic is less applicable to men. And indeed, said women have to adjust expectations.

Again I could sum it up as this: start in your twenties if you're picky.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#427

Post by bumby »

fleddr wrote: post #426
bumby wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decade is the time frame where almost everybody settles I think this gets to the heart of it. Nobody wants to "settle", meaning there is a mismatch between expectations between two parties. To extend your original phrasing (which I disagree with), a desirable man would not be single in his 30s or 40s. But by the same logic, neither would a desirable female. The latter point being underscored by the stereotypic…

I didn't focus specifically on these women to imply it only applies to women, I merely responded to somebody far up the thread that singled out that demographic. I think it's important to be precise about the group. I'm assuming a subset of women that have delayed relationships or family planning for 1-2 decades due to their full dedication to their careers. Most educated women would not fall in this group. They woul…

That clears up a lot. The original post was not nearly as specific regarding the subset group you’re singling out.

It may be that there is misalignment between what that subset is targeting and what their targets are targeting.

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#428

Post by QuarterReptile »

bumby wrote: post #392
QuarterReptile wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change is the soaring achievement levels of some woman where they achieve themselves right out of marriage-ability.

Can you elaborate on why high achieving women are less likely to get married? I think the research shows the opposite and the marriages tend to last longer

At the individual level, yes, there will probably always be a man outcompeting any woman at the top of a competitive field. But on a population level, the instability [0] of matches where the woman out-earns the man means that the pattern of women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches. And foregoing that weaker match has increasingly little apparent downside when you're finding some career satisfaction and materially very comfortable.

I think you're referring to the fact that successful marriages are largely becoming a luxury good, but these can both be true for a couple of reasons. First, using education as a proxy for attainment (please give me something better, because I haven't found it) I struggle to find statistics going past four year degrees to really talk about the top or competitive fields, and that isn't sufficient. Second, it seems reasonable to me that the women (and men) excelling professionally would have, on average, better chances of making a marriage work; it may be that a strong correlation between women's propensity for success in career and success in marriage is obscuring a negative effect of outlier-achievement on rates of getting and staying married that is also coming into play.

Besides all this, it's consistent with what I encounter in my daily life.

[0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w19023

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#429

Post by whakim »

bumby wrote: post #402
newbie2020 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I’m pretty sure it’s awesome being a winner!

I guess it depends on how you define winner. If you measure winning primarily by social status or money, sure. But one of the main points of the book is to illustrating the costs of all that "winning". There was one quote from the book of a high-achieving mother who, due to long hours, only got to spend 20 minutes a day with her child but "wouldn't give up those 20 minutes for the world." If you're someone who values…

I think this is a valid point in the United States (to a certain extent, of course: I don't think "working too hard and not seeing your kids enough" is really comparable to "living paycheck to paycheck", although I understand that they're directionally the same). Does the author address other countries, though? The logic of meritocracy has been used to justify huge increases in inequality in countries where people work significantly less hard (e.g. France, India, Sweden).

Re: Which jobs most often pair together among married couples

#430

Post by bumby »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #428
bumby wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why high achieving women are less likely to get married? I think the research shows the opposite and the marriages tend to last longer

At the individual level, yes, there will probably always be a man outcompeting any woman at the top of a competitive field. But on a population level, the instability [0] of matches where the woman out-earns the man means that the pattern of women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches. And foregoing that weaker match has increasingly little…

>women outnumbering men in ever-more prestigious fields is going to leave some very successful women without good matches.

I agree with your post but the quote above speaks to my original point further up the thread. The fact that this assumes that the only suitable mate is one of the same career status is part of what drivers income inequality.

Other than that, the only other proxy for attainment is income but it’s still the same story

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