China is grappling with the problem of what to do with what they call “leftover” women—unmarried women, often highly educated and urban, who can’t find a mate.
Meanwhile, as the communist regime struggles with coupling, across the pacific a similar situation is occurring in the United States with African-American “leftover women” who are apparently lining up for a harrowing dose of reality from YouTube sensation, Kevin Samuels.
In his most viewed video, he serves a dose of reality to a 36-year-old owner of a pet grooming business who believes she deserves a “six-figure guy.”
There’s certainly a mesmerizing quality to his endless interviews with women convinced that their Ph.D. and high earnings will attract a “high-value man”—despite these women often being overweight and single mothers.
Samuels is arrogant, misogynist, and totally wrong on many fronts. But I suspect the big attraction to his show is seeing a man calling out the “because I’m worth it” mentality afflicting so many successful women today. Watching their sense of entitlement flounder on the rocky shoals of today’s marriage market makes for cringy but entertaining watching.
What is concerning is that black America is giving us a glimpse of our future.
I spent five years living in New York in the mid-1980s and wrote about the growing pool of well-educated black women already having difficulty meeting black men who could match them. They grumbled that unless they were willing to marry down or broaden their racial preferences, they’d be left on their own.
Meanwhile, here in Australia, we are heading for similar problems. The extraordinary success of feminism to promote girls’ education is adding to the already tight market for 30-plus, educated women keen to settle down.
Last week, I received an email from a woman long married to her university sweetheart, who shared that her friends are complaining “there aren’t enough men on their socio-economic level to form partnerships.”
As she says, our society never acknowledges we need to promote men’s education in order to help women find such relationships.
Her friends are already up against it. In the 25 to 34-year age group, more than half of females now have a degree compared with about a third of males, and the gap is increasing.
These successful women show little shift from their traditional hypergamy, still desiring to marry up or at least find a comparable man.
The imbalance in numbers of well-educated men and women is simply deepening the mighty hole women created in their marriage prospects decades ago.
Where it all really went astray was the strategic decision by women back in the 1970s to delay settling down.
They embraced feminist rhetoric telling themselves they could have it all—spend the first decade of their adult lives getting educated, establishing their careers, having fun and only then get serious about finding the right mate. And that’s what they did, meaning that over the past half-century, the average age of first marriage has shifted from the early 20s to around 30.
Boy, did those chickens come home to roost. Suddenly men didn’t have to marry to get things like sex—for many, particularly handsome, successful males, that became freely available. They could afford to sit back and wait while their own market value steadily increased.
Even less attractive blokes who spent their early dating years being constantly rejected were able to acquire assets, career success, and confidence so that by the time women decided to get serious, many former nerds found themselves much in demand.
Allowing most men, particularly educated men, to remain fancy-free for that critical decade means that by the time women hit 30, the pool of eligible prospects is already depleted.
Desirable successful 30-something males have all the choices, with many fishing outside their pond, some choosing younger women and others seeking partners who offer something other than career success. Almost one-in-three degree-educated 35-year-old men marry or live with women aged 30 or under.
For the leftovers—successful women in their 30 facing their rapidly closing reproductive window—the prospects are grim. The solution is easy, many say—they should just get real and marry down, even with younger men.
But the reality is most men in their 20s aren’t interested in dealing with the hassle of an older woman’s fertility time clock, when a younger woman means less pressure, more time for making good decisions. And as an online dating coach, I found many younger men happy to meet up with my older partners, but sex was usually the only thing on their agenda.
Currently, what we are seeing in this top-end 30s dating market is a lot of desperate women and elusive men who are enjoying playing the field.
Part of the story here relates to boys’ education. Young men, with lower levels of education, are dropping out of the labour force, many are still living with their parents, with no income, no prospects, no women.
But how much of this is MGTOW—men choosing to go their own way? It makes sense in this anti-male culture for these younger men to be nervous of sexual contact which could turn around to bite them, just as the older successful men know the wrong marriage is a very quick way to lose most of what they have.
And that is why there is good reason to expect elusive men to become ever more common.
