Comments on: May-December Marriages Again

By: one more thing

one more thing — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:31:48 +0000

A facinating post! Another factor that may dictate the ages at which the different sexes can marry: reproduction. While men can wait until very late in life to father children (see Strom Thurman) a woman’s fertility peaks at 28. To the extent that having children is important to a woman (and she does not want to undergo expensive fertility treaments or adopt), she may end up marrying earlier than she otherwise would have chosen.

By: Observer

Observer — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 23:41:35 +0000

You might be surprised, for example, at the number of Margaret Thatcher’s underlings who had the hots for her.

I worked at the 1986 world’s fair in Vancouver, Canada. One of the VIP visitirs, who gave a short speech at a reception sponsored by a British trade commission, was then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. While not a major political fan of hers at the time, I was quite surprised and impressed by her beauty and charisma in person. Some people’s attractive qualities do not transmit strongly through media, and perhaps sometimes media personnel do not want to emphasize the attractiveness of persons that they don’t sympathize with.

By: Matt Bedke

Matt Bedke — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 23:21:34 +0000

“In our own time, arguments that American girls weren’t cut out for (EP) or didn’t really want to (RP) play sports look rather threadbare given the explosive growth in participation in women’s sports following the passage of Title IX.” I’ll comment on the revealed preferences portion of the posting and leave EP to others. I’m not sure how the growth of women’s athletics after Title IX rebuts (or weakens) RP explanations. Under choice condition A with options x,y and z someone might choose x and thereby reveal a preverence for x under A. Under choice condition B with options p, d, and q, that same person might prefer p. Moreover, that person might have a meta-preference for condition B over condition A, and if those are options in a choice condition, an RP theorist could say that behavior would reveal the preference. The upshot is that RP doesn’t per se tell us what choice conditions to institute. No doubt, individuals determine their own choice conditions to a very limited extent, leaving chance or collective action to pick p the slack. To decide which choice conditions to institute requires a normative theory, which RP doesn’t purport to give us. It could turn out that we don’t want to satisfy people’s unreflective preferences. I think the better complain against RP is that it is not falsifiable, as it is introduced as an analytical definition. As a result it is committed to a radically oversimplified view of the kinds of motivational states agents have (just one!: preference). It is therefore likely to have poor predictive success, and it won’t be very useful when constructing a normative theory. We should also keep incommensurability between preferences as a live option, which RP does not allow.

By: Johan Richter

Johan Richter — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 22:33:32 +0000

gallagher writes: The problem I have with the EP “MSU” scenarios is they always assume some characteristic or behavior is a feature. Sometimes it’s a bug. I always figured the peacock’s tail was a classic bug. Just saying that something is a bug does not explain why it is still there. And while biologists do have a preference for adaptionistic explanations they also test other theories. Pinker would for example explian music as a by-product of adaptions.

By: David Salmanson

David Salmanson — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 22:00:08 +0000

Edmund Morgan discusses the marraige markets in colonial Virginia in American Slavery American Freedom and needless to say the May December marraiges worked the other way b/c of the specific situations in that society having to do with high mortality. So much for socio- or bio-destiny.

By: Karl Gallagher

Karl Gallagher — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:55:59 +0000

The problem I have with the EP “MSU” scenarios is they always assume some characteristic or behavior is a feature. Sometimes it’s a bug. I always figured the peacock’s tail was a classic bug.

By: Pat Curley

Pat Curley — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:32:41 +0000

If: 1. May-December marriages are no less happy than marriages at a more equal age, and 2. May-December marriages are more concentrated in the lower socioeconomic classes, and 3. Socioeconomic position is the best predictor of happiness in marriage, Then doesn’t this imply that May-December romances are more happy? Or is statement #1 adjusted for socioeconomic position?

By: Shai

Shai — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:07:11 +0000

I think we can preserve the MSU criticism by pointing out that it misses transitional states, not unlike behaviorism; and without that background a lot of those explanations will tend to be ad hoc and biased toward popularity of a certain type of argument without necessarily being the best one. But casting doubt is a lot less likely to convince than a better theory or explanation that accounts for the data. And I don’t know if I would lean on Fodor. Pinker wrote a convincing rebuttal of some of Fodor’s other arguments here: So How Does the Mind Work?

By: james

james — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:28:28 +0000

Brazil is big on May – December marriages. Women are taught that younger men will cheat and possibly leave a family. An older man will more likely remain faithful or at least maintain support of the family while cheating. Men are taught to cheat. While this is a generalization, it is the cultural stereotype for a reason.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 13:50:44 +0000

Interesting and thought-provoking; thanks Kieran. One additional possible partial explanation for the greater number of May-December marriages in the black and Hispanic communities is residual cultural differences. Cultural differences are very long-lasting (read Albion’s Seed for some demonstrations) and both African and some parts of American Hispanic cultures have traditionally had high rates of May-December marriages. An older friend of mine is from Ghana. He frequently gives me advice on looking for a wife; most of the girls he points out are 10-15 years younger than I (I’m 30). His wife is 9 years younger than he, and apparently that age discrepancy is what he expects in a marriage.

By: jet

jet — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 13:11:26 +0000

Scott, I was thinking something along your lines but more like a relative difference in wealth, instead of “stability”. Probably mean the same thing. May-December marriages amongst the working classes do not include a wealthy men by societies standards, but from a working class perspective, those men are probably very well off. The 35 year old door to door salesman who makes 30K a year probably has little trouble finding 20 somethings in a small town who are dazzled by his apparent abundance of wealth. And if there is anyplace where society’s rules need to be changed to even the playing field for women, it is with the working class in America.

By: lth

lth — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 10:45:52 +0000

Surely a factor in first-marriage age differences is in the perceived emotional maturity of the two subjects involved. It is said, and seems obvious, that women mature faster than men – thus, for two people of the same emotional maturity to marry, one will likely be a couple of years older than the other. This is, of course, all “on average”.

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 09:15:15 +0000

So heterogamous marriages are much more common amongst poorer groups, not richer ones! Being a devil’s advocate here, I could make the RP/EP argument that the nature of the capital women seek when they marry older men need not always be financial or political in nature. Anecdotally, the stories of lower middle class May-December marriages often involve a man who, while not rich, is viewed in some sense as stable. Older men are perceived as less offering a stabler income, even if not necessarily a particularly large one; a stabler set of prospects; less unpredictable behaviour; and less chance of running around or cheating. There is some sene that they are more liekly to be “good fathers”. The perception of lowered risk may be just as valuable as actual money or power, and for poorer people, risk minimisation is immensely important. And – again, anecdotally – the perception of how good May-December marriages are depends a lot on the age of the woman. A 35 year old woman who marries a 55 year old man is a whole lot less troubling to most people than a 25 year old woman marrying a 45 year old one. The idea is that an older woman is more credibly likely to be looking for maturity in an older man, while a 25 year old making the same claim is harder to believe.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 08:41:13 +0000

Since I can’t access the link, I would appreciate clarification of this quoted statement:

it is apparent that both sexes are more likely to marry an older person at the age of 50 than at the age of 30.

This could be read either as “people tend to marry others of the same age” or “older people are more likely to marry people older than themselves than are younger people.” I presume the latter was intended. Some years ago, reading reviews and excerpts of Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal, it struck me that evolutionary psychology was unnecessary to describe human behavior. Economics is a more parsimonious explanation. More bluntly, men screw around more than women because they can get away with it, and so forth.

By: wood turtle

wood turtle — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 07:43:57 +0000

Well, I’m glad somebody found out where the Devil is.