Kay Hymowitz notes that this year, 57% of all college grads will be women, which leads her to ponder. Here’s a question: when the time comes, will these women be willing to marry “down”?
凯-海默维茨(著名作家)发现,今年57%的大学毕业生为女性。这个结果让她不禁疑惑:这些受过高等教育的女性到了适婚年龄的时候,到底会不会“下嫁”呢?

It’s not entirely clear to me why Hymowitz asks this question, but I guess I get the gist of it. So, back when the typical woman had fewer years of college education than the typical man, and women had fewer and worse job opportunities, the typical marriage involved women marrying “up” educationally and socioeconomically. As women’s equality advanced, both altering the economic structure of the household and making it easier to pair off with an opposite-sex peer, it has become more common for like to marry like. And, now, more women than men are graduating college. It stands to reason that some of them are going to have to marry men who don’t graduate college.
我不清楚为什么海默维茨会提出这样的疑问,但我想推测一下其中的原因。让我们回到过去女人受教育少、工作机会少的时候去讨论这个问题,当时传统的婚姻观就是女人要“高攀上”受过良好教育的、有经济实力的高社会地位男人。随着女性地位的上升,家庭经济结构的变化,想找一个门当户对的异性结婚,比以外要容易一些。现在的大学毕业生中,女性的人数已经超过了男性,自然就引出了这样的问题:势必有一些女性不得不“下嫁”给没有从大学毕业的男性。

Most smart women don’t want to get hitched to less smart men because they don’t want a lifetime with someone who doesn’t understand them, who doesn’t “get” their interests and enthusiasms, who thinks they’re “weird.”
大多数女人不愿意嫁给不如自己聪明的男人,因为她们不想一辈子和一个不懂自己的人生活在一起。她们希望能和自己的另一半情趣相投,而不是被对方当成是一个“古怪的”女人。

Our grandparents’ marriages were largely about shared production, but contemporary marriage is largely about shared consumption. If your IQ is three standard deviations above the mean, then chances are so are your best friends’–including your romantic partner’s. We like people who are like us.
我们祖父母辈的婚姻主要是共同生产,而现在的婚姻主要是共同消费。如果你的智商比平均值高出了三点,那么你周围的朋友,包括你的另一半也有可能都是高智商人群。毕竟,我们喜欢和自己相似的人在一起,即所谓的“人以群分”。

College quality may be a decent proxy for intelligence, but fellas who graduate from colleges, or who don’t graduate college at all, can nevertheless signal their mental mettle by, say, talking. It works.
大学的学习也许可以衡量一个人的智力水平,但无论有没有上过大学,都可以通过谈话等方式来展现自己的气质。这招很管用。

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