I was a bit amused by the editors’ of the Washington Post’s concern over the adverse effect that extreme political polarization has on marriage:
The problem with polarization, though, is that it has effects well beyond the political realm, and these can be difficult to anticipate. One example is the collapse of American marriage. A growing number of young women are discovering that they can’t find suitable male partners. As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives. But it’s not just that. There’s a growing ideological divide, too. Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the percentage of single women ages 18-30 who identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over 20 percent to 32 percent. Young men have not followed suit. If anything, they have grown more conservative.
This ideology gap is particularly pronounced among Gen Z Whites. According to a major new American Enterprise Institute survey, 46 percent of White Gen Z women are liberal, compared to only 28 percent of White Gen Z men, more of whom (36 percent) now identify as conservative. Norms around sexuality and gender are diverging, too. Where 61 percent of Gen Z women see themselves as feminist, only 43 percent of Gen Z men do.
The first part that struck me was that the risk isn’t to marriage but to the family. That has been a problem for some time.
The second thing that struck me was that when a woman marries she is no longer in the demographic they’re concerned about (“single women 18-30”). How much of the problem is definitional?
The next thing I thought of was that there is plenty of evidence suggesting that women are more hypergamic than men, i.e. more predisposed to “marry up”. That becomes a problem increasingly as women’s incomes are the same as those of men. When you’re a woman in the top 10% of income earners and the only men who are “husband material” are in the top 3% of income earners, guess what? There are more of you than there are of them.
Yet another factor is that ideology is not immutable, indeed, there is substantial evidence suggesting that your views change throughout life based on your experiences. How worried should we actually be about ideological differences that will change with age and experience?
I don’t think the feminist thing will be much of a factor except at the extremes. Feminism is a very big tent. Income is a factor but I see most women actually settling for men who make about the same, few wanting to marry those making substantially less. Since there are more men at the top end it should work out.
Less sure about the politics. Most of the hard core MAGA folks are older but there is a large group of younger ones. There are few things more toxic than rabidly liberal 19 y/o girl but they grow out of that and it doesnt last long. Few get married at 19 anyway. I think it likely means the most partisan folks will marry similar and since most people arent really that into politics it will mostly work out. If anything maybe a higher divorce rate as people become more interested in politics as they age?
Steve