According to the Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Wolfe, women are simply no longer interested in being with men.
“A 2022 Pew survey of single adults showed only 34% of single women were looking for romance, compared with 54% of single men,” Wolfe reports, adding, “Over half of single women said they believed they were happier than their married counterparts.”
But while it is nice that single women may think they are happier than their married counterparts, is that really true?
Not according to the data we have.
According to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, married women with children are by far the happiest women in America. Married women without children are the next happiest, followed by unmarried women with and without children, who are the unhappiest.
Wolfe is also misleading when it comes to single women not looking for romance. While it is true that among all single women, just 34% are looking to date, that includes divorced and widowed single women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s.
When you look at the very same Pew poll Wolfe used, it shows that among single women under 40, 61% are looking for romance, which almost matches the 67% of men under 40 who are also looking for a partner.
More recently, Harvard University released its spring poll on young Americans between the ages of 18 and 29, which found that identical percentages of young men and women thought finding a romantic partner (66% of men, 66% of women) and getting married (57% of men, 57% of women) were important goals in their lives.
Now, Harvard and Pew did find some variation in the success of young people being able to find romantic partners. According to Pew, 51% of adult men under 29 were single compared to just 31% of women the same age. Similarly, Harvard found that 45% of women were involved in a long-term romantic relationship compared to just 28% of men.
This is not a case of a few lucky young guys dating a bunch of women. Instead, this is just a simple function of the fact that women are generally more attracted to men who can provide for themselves and others financially, and older men are better at commanding economic resources than younger men.
Not that everything is going right in the marriage department. Both men and women are far less likely to be married today than they were 20 years ago. And the Harvard poll hints at some reasons why.
First of all, marriage is far less important to Democrats than it is to Republicans. Over 75% of young Republicans say getting married is an important goal for them, compared to just 56% of Democrats.
And you can see that commitment to marriage right there in the Harvard data. Among the 18-29-year-olds interviewed, 21% of Trump voters said they were married compared to just 11% of Democrats.
So, if you are among those young Democratic women who are interested in men and do want to get married, it might be worth your time to step out of your comfort zone and date a Republican.