It's Valentine's day, and Susan Patton writes some very good advice for young women in the
Wall Street Journal.
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....
Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women....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. [That's too much common sense. She's sure to get flamed over that one! ~ OS] ...So what's a smart girl to do? Start looking early and stop wasting time dating men who aren't good for you: bad boys, crazy guys and married men.
Here, here, Ms Patton! I plan to give the same advice to my kids of
both sexes. In fact, though I attended college later than average, one of my goals was to find a wife, because I knew I'd have a much tougher time finding a high quality girl in the Army. And I did find a high quality girl in college.
Aimee definitely followed this advice. She was 19 when we met in college and 22 when we married (I was 28 and a spankin' new 2nd Lieutenant).
Ms Patton deserves credit for writing good advice that goes against the Feminist grain, especially since she will undoubtedly receive loads of grief because of it. Unfortunately, she marbles that good advice with a hefty dose of snobbery toward men, or, more accurately, a certain kind of man.
...the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult....Could you marry a man who isn't your intellectual or professional equal? Sure. But the likelihood is that it will be frustrating to be with someone who just can't keep up with you or your friends. When the conversation turns to Jean Cocteau or Henrik Ibsen, the Bayeux Tapestry or Noam Chomsky, you won't find that glazed look that comes over his face at all appealing.
Let's apply Ms Patton's logic to Ms Patton. Chances are that if I pontificated about the effects of valve overlap and lift on power and torque at varying rpm in an Otto cycle engine, or the difficulties of extracting petroleum and natural gas from the
Green River Formation vs the Marcellus Shale, Ms Patton's eyes would glaze over. By her logic, that means Ms Patton is neither my intellectual, nor professional equal.
The irony is that she undoubtedly relies on the Otto cycle engine and the products extracted from the Green River and Marcellus Formations
every single day, multiple times a day, which means my chosen topics of conversation are more relevant to her life than the ones she used as examples. In fact, her life wouldn't even be possible without those products.
But I'm not the kind of man at whom Ms Patton aims her snobbery, because I hold degrees in mechanical and geological engineering (or, maybe I am, since I earned my degrees at podunk state schools, not an Ivy League snob factory). Ms Patton reserves her snobbery for men without university credentials.
College is the best place to look for your mate. It is an environment teeming with like-minded, age-appropriate single men with whom you already share many things. You will never again have this concentration of exceptional men to choose from.
Again, this isn't bad advice, but what's wrong with men who work in skilled trades? After all, they make Ms Patton's life, with luxuries and comforts King Solomon could not have imagined, possible. They extract the fuels and generate the electricity she uses to make a living. They keep that electricity flowing and swoop in to the rescue when that flow is interrupted. They build the roads on which every single product Ms Patton owns and uses reached its intended destination, and drove those products to her. Surely, the fancy restaurants Ms Patton frequents cook with natural gas. Where does she think that natural gas originated? How did it reach her favorite restaurant? She probably
doesn't think about those questions, because the men who make it happen do their job so well she doesn't
have to think about it.
So, why does she think these men are beneath college educated women?
And if you start to earn more than he does? Forget about it. Very few men have egos that can endure what they will see as a form of emasculation.
Here we get to the crux of the issue. How valid is this fear? Do we have any empirical evidence by which to evaluate it? Thankfully, we do, because it turns out that college educated women are increasingly "
marrying down".
A record number of American women are “marrying down,” tying the knot with a husband who is less educated than they are, according to a new study.
Nearly 21% of married women in 2012 were better educated than their spouses, a threefold jump from 1960, according to the Pew Research Center. By contrast, a bit less than 20% of men had more formal education than their wives.
In the more than half-century that Pew has tracked the issue, this is the first time that a higher percentage of women than men have married down.
But wait, there's more.
Even with their superior education, however, women aren't necessarily marrying down when it comes to income, according to the report.
About 58% of better-educated women earned less than their husbands. Only 39% of women earned a higher salary.
In other words,
they're not "marrying down"! How is it possible that a near-super-majority of women who marry men with "inferior" educations earn less than their husbands?
It's all about choices.
Consider, for example, how men and women differ in their college majors. Here is a list (PDF) of the ten most remunerative majors compiled by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Men overwhelmingly outnumber women in all but one of them:
1. Petroleum Engineering: 87% male
2. Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration: 48% male
3. Mathematics and Computer Science: 67% male
4. Aerospace Engineering: 88% male
5. Chemical Engineering: 72% male
6. Electrical Engineering: 89% male
7. Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering: 97% male
8. Mechanical Engineering: 90% male
9. Metallurgical Engineering: 83% male
10. Mining and Mineral Engineering: 90% male
And here are the 10 least remunerative majors—where women prevail in nine out of ten:
1. Counseling Psychology: 74% female
2. Early Childhood Education: 97% female
3. Theology and Religious Vocations: 34% female
4. Human Services and Community Organization: 81% female
5. Social Work: 88% female6. Drama and Theater Arts: 60% female
7. Studio Arts: 66% female
8. Communication Disorders Sciences and Services: 94% female
9. Visual and Performing Arts: 77% female
10. Health and Medical Preparatory Programs: 55% female
In other words, there is likely nothing "superior" about the wives' education, because they probably majored in some form of "Liberal" indoctrination, as opposed to something useful. If they married men who work in the skilled trades,
it's no wonder they make less than their husbands.
Contra Costa County’s Los Medanos College offers a Process Technology, orPTEC program, that trains students for in demand jobs at local refineries and large factories. These positions pay $45,000 to $65,000 to start and many former students earn six figure salaries after just a few years on the job.
At the heart of the North Dakota shale oil boom, Bismarck State College’s National Energy Center of Excellence offers affordable online degree and certificate programs to students throughout the nation. With California’s Monterey Shale estimated by the Department of Energy to hold 15 billion barrels of oil, the University of Southern California (USC) says this resource could create 2.8 million new job opportunities here. Those with the right training can expect to be among the first in line for these good jobs.
But wait, there's more! Because training in skilled trades is far less expensive than a university degree, especially the ivy league colleges Ms Patton undoubtedly had in mind when she wrote her article.
There are a number of avenues available for those interested in a career in the skilled trades. Some community colleges offer programs and at $46 per unit, or less than $150 for a typical three unit class, California’s community colleges are still one of the best deals in the nation.
In other words, a man who trains for a skilled trade can graduate sooner, start working sooner, start earning a good salary sooner,
and do all of that with little to no debt, which puts him far ahead of Ivy Leaguers who buy useless degrees with piles of debt.
So, why the snobbery? I don't know. I don't get it. But it's exactly the kind of destructive, counterproductive attitude Mike Rowe, of "
Dirty Jobs" fame, attempts to combat with his
Mike Rowe Works Foundation.
For the record, college
can be worth the investment in time, money and effort,
if one avoids debt and learns a useful skill. On the other hand, majoring in anything that ends in the word "studies", is a waste of time, money and effort.
The snobbery towards people (the vast majority of them men) who choose to work with their hands
and their brains needs to stop.
