Marriage Staggering

Lots of this is based upon the boomer-topian idea that men and women are basically the same. We are not – not even in the pair-bonding feature which gets mediated in the middle/mammalian brain. We exhibit “staggering” from the male to female (though not from the female to the male). You could see this in the older days, when childbirth was the number one killer of women – this left lots of widowers. When these guys, who were often in their thirties, remarried, they again chose young women in their most fertile age for their second wives – they did not choose women in their thirties/of a similar age to him… and the pair bonding worked – it gets strongly enforced by hypergamy and Briffault’s Law (a mid-thirties man is most often more powerful and wealthier than a younger man). Also an older man will not be manipulated by his wife to nearly the extent that a younger man will be – thus he will remain more “alpha” and dominant, which further strengthens the marriage.

Thus, the best way for everyone to “have it all” is for a man to spend the first 20 years or so of his adulthood as a single man, swash-buckle and adventure around the earth while building up his fortune, and then in his mid to late thirties, seek out a young bride. This will also be the time in a man’s life when he approaches mid-life crisis and he will be able to satisfy his “is this all there is to life” questions with the children that will give his life new meaning. He will live long enough yet to most likely see his grandchildren born and grow up, and thus realize his immortality through them.

For women, they should be looking to marry young – screw college. They can easily have 2 or 3 children by the time they are 25, and have the youngest one off to school by the time she is 30. Thus, the children will be properly raised in their early youth at least. 30 is not too late to enter college, and actually be there to learn something (as opposed to being a frat-party whore). Also, by this time, if the husband is around 15 or 20 years older than her, he might be looking to “slow down” and also likely has enough money that he can afford to do so, and take over some of the parenting responsibilities. It will be about at that age too when the children will need less totalitarian mothering, and more risk-taking fathering, for them to develop properly.

The woman would be out of school by her mid-thirties, and this is the age when women become desirable in the job-market. Despite all the laws to the contrary, business owners still aren’t stupid and don’t prefer hiring 25 year old women, because they know that maternity leave and “flex-time” costs them $$$. At my father’s business, we had a “silent policy” not to hire women under 35 simply because younger women cost the business too much money.

At 35, the woman still has plenty of time to advance her “career” and also, since her husband is older, he will die much sooner than her. Thus, she will have the last twenty years of her life to do her own swashbuckling around the earth – she will inherit his wealth and also have a well paid career. It also shortens the life of the marriage – 35 or so years, rather than 50 or 60.

The only kink in it, is that the father should will his wealth to his son(s) with a codicil that they must provide a living stipend to the mother, or something along those lines. Nothing would be a worse insult for the deceased father than for the mother to inherit it all, remarry, then die and have the new husband inherit all of the wealth of the previous husband – thereby robbing the deceased husband’s children of the wealth he worked his entire life for.

It works biologically for both the man and the woman… and the children. Staggering works quite well in regard to pair-bonding. Both the man and the woman can chase after their careers – just at different times in their lives. They also will both have long durations of adulthood when they are not tied down by spouse & children, allowing them to pursue their aspirations… just at different times.

We should stop treating men and women as the same, and recognize that the differences can be worked into better ways.