Yes, my point was just that the graph alone cannot prove that people aren’t able to avoid “money-hungry” spouses and shouldn’t be cited as if it does. Arguments comparing it to a game of chicken make more sense to me, especially in child-free marriages, although for most marriages, I think it’s important to remember the specific unavoidable burdens on the child-bearing players of the game, a biological “throwing” of the steering wheel out of the window that isn’t at all symmetric between players.
I personally am planning to fully support my future spouse and be the primary breadwinner if they’re amenable to it, and in doing so have unintentionally opened up a larger amount of potential partners I could end up with. In my particular (majority male) social group, I am far more likely to hear complaints about not being able to find a partner who will be a stay at home parent than I am to find complaints about wanting a partner to pay for half of the bills.
I think it is strictly the better position to be in to be the working one while the other partner is taking care of the home, and am personally too ambitious to be willing to take a low paying job or ever be a stay at home parent, but men who wish to do so are of course fine to live their lives that way too.
I agree that the biological burden is asymmetric. But also, in the past, women used to have about dozen children (most of them died at infancy), while today, it is maybe two on average? From this perspective, women today are more similar to men, than to the women of the past.
I am far more likely to hear complaints about not being able to find a partner who will be a stay at home parent than I am to find complaints about wanting a partner to pay for half of the bills.
I suspect that many of them will find neither. Instead, they will probably find a partner who likes their job too much to stay at home, but not enough to pay for half of the bills (and definitely not enough to let your friends stay at home). Because the job is not optimized to pay the bills.
Yes, my point was just that the graph alone cannot prove that people aren’t able to avoid “money-hungry” spouses and shouldn’t be cited as if it does. Arguments comparing it to a game of chicken make more sense to me, especially in child-free marriages, although for most marriages, I think it’s important to remember the specific unavoidable burdens on the child-bearing players of the game, a biological “throwing” of the steering wheel out of the window that isn’t at all symmetric between players.
I personally am planning to fully support my future spouse and be the primary breadwinner if they’re amenable to it, and in doing so have unintentionally opened up a larger amount of potential partners I could end up with. In my particular (majority male) social group, I am far more likely to hear complaints about not being able to find a partner who will be a stay at home parent than I am to find complaints about wanting a partner to pay for half of the bills.
I think it is strictly the better position to be in to be the working one while the other partner is taking care of the home, and am personally too ambitious to be willing to take a low paying job or ever be a stay at home parent, but men who wish to do so are of course fine to live their lives that way too.
I agree that the biological burden is asymmetric. But also, in the past, women used to have about dozen children (most of them died at infancy), while today, it is maybe two on average? From this perspective, women today are more similar to men, than to the women of the past.
I suspect that many of them will find neither. Instead, they will probably find a partner who likes their job too much to stay at home, but not enough to pay for half of the bills (and definitely not enough to let your friends stay at home). Because the job is not optimized to pay the bills.