Where have all the good men gone? That is purportedly a common lamentation by women on college campuses. By “good” they mean ambitious, good looking young men ready for a relationship and willing to commit. The Atlantic even wrote about the decline of dating and marriage among the young, saying:
Young people aren’t dating anymore. News media and social media are awash in commentary about the decline in youth romance. It’s visible in the corporate data, with dating-app engagement taking a hit. And it’s visible in the survey data, where the share of 12th graders who say they’ve dated has fallen from about 85 percent in the 1980s to less than 50 percent in the early 2020s, with the decline particularly steep in the past few years.
Numerous articles in the popular press, creators on YouTube and numerous social media websites all claim men are not pursuing women like they used to. Some Christian organizations believe our culture has experienced a decline of manhood and masculinity leading young men to eschew dating and romance. Recent surveys claimed that nearly one-third (~30%) of adult men under the age of 30 are not in a relationship and are not looking. Indeed, another data source claimed 39% of men age 25 to 54 are single.
The New York Times even ran an article titled, “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.” Supposedly – especially since the so-called “Me-Too” movement – men just have not been acting the same.
Marriage in general is on the decline, especially among the poor. There are a variety of theories but probably the most prevalent is that men are falling behind women in education and career, according to The New York Times. Put bluntly, there is just not enough marriage material men to go around, and many young men refuse to grow up while young women reuse to settle. The following from NYT:
Though young people in general are taking longer to reach the traditional milestones of adulthood, it’s particularly true of young men.
Among men ages 25 to 34, 19 percent still live with their parents, up from 14 percent in 1983, according to census data. Of women that age, 13 percent live with their parents, up from 11 percent four decades ago.
Interestingly, women’s perception of most men is not particularly positive either. There is a growing chorus of YouTube content creators who highlight, analyze, criticize, and explain the mismatch in women’s desire for potential mates and every way that modern men fall short. Clinical Psychologist and YouTube relationship guru, Dr. Orion Taraban (handle @PsycHacks), has written a book, produced more than 2,000 short videos, many of which are about women’s elevated expectations. His videos have apparently struck a nerve because he has nearly 1 million subscribers and his videos have been viewed 165 million times.
Data collected from dating website, OK Cupid, found that in surveys of male attractiveness, women rated 80% of the men as worse-looking than the medium category. Unlike in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, in real life women rate almost every man as below average. By contrast, men’s rating of women is almost perfectly distributed along a bell curve (i.e., normal distribution). Anonymous YouTuber, PsychoMath (handle @Hoe_Math), explains male/female attraction in graphical form (similar to this chart). Women and men are on a vertical scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) opposite each other. Men on dating websites tend to message women within a relatively narrow band of attractiveness near their own perceived attractiveness. Women aim much higher, often only messaging or responding to messages of men substantially higher than their own (perceived) attractiveness.
Research has found that men seek short term, casual relationships (e.g. one-night stands, hookups, booty calls) more often than women. Thus, men seeking hookups must generally settle for the companionship of women less attractive than themselves for such encounters. By contrast, women available for casual encounters can command the attention of men much more attractive than themselves. PsychoMath argues that these types of encounters cause women to reset their expectations to the level of these encounters for romantic relationships. It is basically, “I got an elite male for a hookup so I should be able to get one for marriage.” It does not always work that way. (It probably never works that way.) PsychoMath has 800,000 subscribers, and his nearly 800 videos have been viewed 124 million times. There are dozens, if not hundreds of other creators on social media producing content on the mismatch in male/female pair bonding.
What might the long-term results be for society? Fewer babies. Lower socioeconomic status women having babies without partners and raising children in impoverished single parent households. Many average women holding out for hypergamy, hoping to marry a higher status male and struggling. As one commenter on YouTube suggested, women waiting for Mr. Big will finally settle for Mr. Average, which could result in her resenting her husband for the rest of her life, making her marriage less stable. Perhaps, also marrying too late to have children or having only one. Elite males and high-status females seem adept at finding each other, however. This is a pattern called assortative mating, described by political scientist, Charles Murray. The smart, rich, and good looking marry each other.