Smart women need to marry down to become mothers because there aren't enough smart men to go around, researchers warn

Miz Inhorn again.  A singularly unfortuate surname for a feminist, one would think.  It is however her Ashkenazi father's surname. As the originating paper is unpublished, I cannot check what she actually said this time but if it is like the report below she is under a strange misapprehension. Education is NOT IQ. There is about a 50% of shared variance between them but that is a long way from identity.

So there is NO shortage of high IQ men.  The average male IQ is in fact slightly higher than for females and the distribution is leptokurtic, meaning that at the highest levels of IQ there are a LOT more men than women. So if the women cannot find them they are looking in the wrong place.

So what is it that Miz Inhorn has missed?  She has missed the fact that women have been slower to wake up to the education racket than men have. For a lot of people a degree confers NO economic advantage -- the graduate burger flippers in McDonalds, for instance.  And for others the advantage is only slight -- often too slight to make up for the years of missed employment. The history of an advantage to education is a history of a shrinking quantum.  It is not inconceivable that it will go into reverse as all the overeducated women search desperately for jobs

As ever, it is in business and the trades where the big money lies these days -- and many men go there in various ways rather than wasting time seeking the dubious honor of a degree. So females who aspire to marry a high earner would be wise to get to know some tradesmen and business types.  If she does that she is unlikely to find a less intelligent man -- just a more realistic man.

She may of course find him "uncultured" -- in which case she will get the just reward for her snobbery.  Perhaps some Christian values might be helpful to such a woman.

It is relationships that matter not your hobbies -- intellectual or otherwise.  Concentrate on people before all else and you will do well.  You might even find that "dumb" electrician to be a nice guy who will keep you in style.  And you can have your specialized conversations with your friends.

That's roughly what I do.  As a much published Ph.D. academic and as someone who ran Sydney Mensa for a number of years, I am betting that I have even greater difficulty than the ladies below in finding similarly qualified women to relate to. I never have.  So I don't try to.  I seek and find women with a good heart and have my specialized "cultural" conversations mostly with my son.

What I have just said runs hard against what women are mostly told these days but it is also traditional wisdom. And what has worked for thousands of years may have something to be said for it.


Intelligent women should consider marrying less clever men if they want to start a family, according to researchers.

There are simply not enough brainy men to go round – so women may need to widen their search, warned the author of a report that found a growing number of professional women were freezing their eggs because they couldn’t find ‘Mr Right’.

‘There are fewer educated men in the world for educated women to partner with,’ said Marcia Inhorn, professor of anthropology at Yale University.

‘So if women want to find a partner with whom they can have children, they need a more expansive notion of who is Mr Right.

‘A good partner might not be exactly someone of similar educational background and socio-economic circumstances but there can still be really wonderful relationships with men who are interested in marriage and parenthood.’

According to the World Bank, 70 countries have more women educated to university level than men. In Britain, the proportion of female students rose from 45 per cent in 1985 to 54 per cent in 2000.

Those who graduated in 2000 are now in their mid to late 30s and, according to Prof Inhorn, many are turning to egg freezing because they are unable to find partners of similar intelligence and educational background.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said 1,173 British women had eggs frozen in 2016, a ten per cent rise on the previous year.

Professor Inhorn’s study, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s meeting in Barcelona, involved questioning 150 American and Israeli women with high levels of education who had chosen to freeze their eggs.

She found that 85 per cent of them were single and the majority had opted for egg freezing due to a ‘lack of a stable partner’.

But women may be slow to follow Professor Inhorn’s advice as her own research also shows that hypogamy or ‘marrying down’ is unpopular with women.

‘They didn’t want to marry or partner with someone less educated and of lower socio-economic status,’ she said. ‘They wanted equality in their relationship.’ In fact, another study co-authored by Professor Inhorn found women often desired men from a higher socio-economic level.

‘Traditionally, women in societies around the world have tried to achieve hypergamy, or "marrying up" in an attempt to secure a better future for themselves and their children,’ the study said, although it acknowledged that with more women in education, ‘these trends may be reversing’.

SOURCE