Maybe the progressives can bend the arc of history. Maybe feminists can change the rules of the game. But try as they might, the self-appointed agents of change cannot change human nature.
Specifically, women and men will always be different, and their divergent tastes and desires don’t always match the script of modern, enlightened, egalitarianism.
“Even as young women have grown more politically progressive,” pollster Dan Cox noted, “their dating preferences are still a bit … traditional. When seeking a long-term partner, financial viability remains a threshold issue for most women.”
Cox, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, compiled some telling poll numbers. More than 80% of all women, including 75% of working-class women (that is, those whose education ended in high school), say a man being unemployed is a romantic turnoff. Only a minority of men say the same about women.
Most women see it as a strike against men if they live with their parents, but most men don’t hold it against women if they live with mom and dad.
More than two-thirds of women who use dating apps say it’s important that men list their occupations. Men are about half as likely to give the same answer.
And here’s the big one: 71% of Americans say that to be a good partner, men ought to “be able to support a family financially”; only 32% of Americans say the same about women.
So every time you read an op-ed deriding the idea of a male breadwinner, realize that the writer is either in a small minority or deluding herself.
A lot has changed, but this much has not: women still want men who can take care of them.