March 28, 2012 • 28 mins
A typical U.S. couple will have an age gap of 2.3 years -- but this wasn't always the case. Join Caroline and Cristen as they explore the average age gap, May-December relationships and the ultimate question: How large is too large of an age gap?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today, since
(00:21):
we are talking about age gaps in romantic relationships, I
would like to take a point of pride in saying
that my parents are statistical outliers. Well kind of probably
in a number of ways really because they're kookie. But
one way in which they are cookie is that my
(00:41):
mother is a few years older than my father. I
know her birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, so it
happened recently. One of her grandchildren asked her how old
she is, to which I replied, her age has always
been shrouded in mystery, but we do know. It is
(01:01):
confirmed that she is I want to say, four or
five years older than my dad. I can't say for certain,
it is it's a great mystery. My my mother is
five years younger than my dad, so she is more
in line with the age differences that were common hundreds
of years ago, whereas your mom and dad are are
(01:23):
sort of trailblazers. Yeah. Um, although neither of our parents
really match up to the average today in the United States,
which is two point three years typically um in a
heterosexual couple, the groom will be two point three years
older than his bride, basically the same as the average
(01:45):
age difference in the UK, which is two point two years.
And that is with the guy typically being the older party, right,
And this is a trend forever. According to this two
eight Princeton study that we read, the ach gap for
couples has been declining throughout or had declined all throughout
the twentieth century, and that brings us to our current
(02:07):
average of two point three years, as Kristen said, But
before it declined, it was actually rising in the mid
nineteenth century for several reasons, and researchers site farmers in
the West as a good example of that rising age gap. Right,
Because the frontier in those early days were wild, untamed places,
(02:29):
so the sex ratio of men to women was really high,
which we talked about in our Our Madam's podcast a
while ago. So these psychologists, these Princeton psychologists, think that
farmers on the frontier would have been more likely to
select for younger wives so that they would make for
(02:51):
better partners in this untamed land. Because you're younger, you're stronger,
you can have more babies to help you out tame
in all those cattle heads, right exactly. And you know,
going back to the sex ratio that you mentioned, they
might not have had a choice. I mean, if the
women who were around who were unmarried were much younger,
(03:14):
then that's just who they had to marry, you know,
regardless of whether they were bringing them from the East
or whatever. If if the younger women were all that
were available, that's who they ended up marrying. But from
nineteen hundred to two thousand, heterosexual couples have been headed
toward homogamy, heteros heading toward homo. But when I'm talking
(03:34):
about homogamy, I mean age homogamy are the gap between
men and women who are coupling up has narrowed from
an average of five years in nineteen hundred to that
average of just over two years we mentioned by the
year two thousand. But even though the trend is age
(03:56):
homogamy may december relations ships of the significantly older man
or woman partnering up with someone significantly younger. Even though
we're seeing it more often, we're still largely uncomfortable with it. Right,
and Lois Smith Brady, who's written columns for The New
(04:16):
York Times over a decade for over a decade about couples,
wrote a piece for O Magazine which I Love in
two thousand and seven about these types of relationships, and
she says that a generation gap makes both people ask
hard questions about love, aging, permanent sacrifice, and family and
getting into the uncomfortable nous. She says that when it's
(04:37):
the woman who's much older, she becomes more conscious of
the fragility of her beauty, her fertility, and her vision.
So while it seems like society in general is more
accepting of older men and younger women, except when it's
in the case of Hugh Hefner and his twenty year
old girlfriends um, they're not as accepting of the older
woman younger man thing. The cougar phenomenon, which will talk
(05:00):
about ye whether or not it really is a thing
that is not just Courtney Cox on cougar Town. Right.
Uh so, but you also pulled some quotes from that
article about women who had dated younger men that that
points out that insecurity that might arise. So a lot
of these women who were interviewed for this piece in
(05:21):
a magazine, expressed that even though they were committed to
these men they were with, some of them married, some
of them just dating, the relationship still made them feel older.
One woman who's forty six who's married to a thirty
two year old man, said that women are just more
critical of ourselves. I don't feel older all the time,
just when I look in the mirror. And another woman,
a fifty year old who's dating a thirty three year
(05:42):
old guy, said that there's this whole issue of societal
perceptions of women who date much younger men. And she
said that if the older woman has money, she's seen
as pathetic because she's buying the attention of a younger man.
But if she has no money, it seems like she's
just hanging onto her lost youth, which is pretty hard. Yeah,
I mean, it's all. It's the whole Mrs Robinson thing
from the Graduate, even though and Bancroft when they were
(06:06):
filming The Graduate was six years I think it was
six years. Film buffs out there correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe and Bankropt, he played Mrs Robinson, was
only six years older than Dustin Hoffman. But the criticism
that um women, older women dating younger men, significantly younger
men might receive probably also relates to the very reason
(06:30):
why it is more common for women to marry older men.
And this is coming from a pair of Canadian researchers,
Monica Boyd and and Lee, and they point out that
the value and acceptability of aging men is higher than
that of the aging woman. And I don't think we
need to explain very much into that. We can talk
(06:51):
about the beauty myth, we can talk about men's earning power.
Um So, even though it's becoming a little bit more common,
um it's it's still considered something that maybe maybe these
older women are buying, you know, the the affection of
these younger men. And also the same the same thing
is lodged though too against older men like you Hefner
(07:13):
or Donald Trump dating significantly younger women, saying it's just
an issue of money and power that love cancer pass
that kind of age gap, right, And the O magazine
piece really was striving to show that these relationships are
just like any other relationship. It's just that age happens
to be a major factor in them. But not everybody
not everybody is is so comfortable and accepting and The
(07:36):
Global Male quoted sex therapist Julia Cole, who said that
the May December romances are only successful when both partners
acknowledge their transitional nature. She says that they're about control,
I guess on the older person's part, or the need
to be looked after by the younger person. Well sure,
but don't most romantic relationships boiled down to a desire
(07:58):
for companionship? Well sure um. Also, Monica boyd And and
Lee pointed out that textbooks in the nineties, sixties, and
seventies would portray large age differences in couples as being
fostered by people who had either like father daughter or
mother son psychological issues. So there's probably some still some
(08:20):
of that lingering prejudice out there, even though statistically people
with significant age differences are no less likely to be
happy in their marriages, happy and satisfying their marriages, and
are no more prone to divorce. Right, it's a matter
of just like in any other relationship, it's a matter
(08:41):
of finding someone you're compatible with. And some of the
couples quoted in Oh, We're saying that it was more
an issue of finally finding someone who was on the
same page, who was interested in the same things. It
doesn't matter if the guy is twenty years younger than you.
If he's interested in the same things you are, there's
still the potential potential for attraction. But what about the
issue of the age gap actually putting you at different
(09:03):
life stages. That's true, that's a big concern that a
lot of psychologist rays, including Susan Heitler who wrote for
Psychology Today, that as couples with an age gap get older,
they will continue to negotiate differing life stage desires. So
you might have one partner who is entering the winter
of his or her life and the younger partner who's
(09:24):
just in middle age and is having to take care
of the older partner. And psychiatrists j R. Bruns goes
as far as to say that the trend of May
December romance is damaging to our society. And going even further,
George Gilder, who's an activist and author, says that when
older men abandoned their wives for younger women, there is
a major rupture of the social system, and this is
(09:45):
a practice of hoarding women by older men with exceptional wealth.
Fame and power. But I'm going to go ahead and
say that Bruns and Guilder are not correct in that assessment.
Please film in well, I mean, if we're talking about UM,
this made a simber relationship, especially between older man significantly
(10:08):
younger women, being a product of wealth and power on
the guy's part. This UM demographic research from Canada that
I've mentioned a couple of times from Monica, Boyd and
and Lee completely contradicts that. And actually, while yeah, you
have those instances of the celebrity made a simber relationships,
(10:28):
but on the whole in the general population, UM, the
wide age gaps are actually associated with lower educational attainment
and lower income. So people like half our outliers. Yes,
absolutely and going more into these real world risks rewards
(10:49):
of the age gaps in relationships. There is some concern
among teen girls, especially partnering up with significantly older guys. UM.
This is coming from research out of the Gootmacker Institute
that highlighted some disconcerting patterns for for these kind of relationships. Yeah,
(11:11):
the Goomacker Institute looked at data from the National Survey
of Family Growth regarding age differences and found that among
teen girls aged fifteen to seventeen, Most had a partner
within two years of their own age, but the next
biggest chunk, at twenty nine percent, had a partner three
to five years older. And among girls that they looked
at age fifteen to seventeen who had a partner six
(11:33):
or more years older had a pregnancy rate three points
seven times as high as the rate among those whose
partner was no more than two years older. So, this,
this whole study and age demographics and pregnancy rates brings
up the concern about exploitation and vulnerability of young girls well.
And also this is the time when if you have
(11:54):
two teens that are are roughly the same age, they're
probably the same sort of sexual maturity and experience level.
And if you are a teen trying to go after
a significantly older person who might have had a lot
more experience, um, you might feel insecure because of that
and want to possibly demonstrate more sexual maturity than you
(12:18):
might really have. Yeah. Psychologist Lynn Phillips interviewed a bunch
of young girls or young women who were in relationships
with guys who were ten twelve years older. She also
interviewed older women who had been in those types of
relationships when they were teens, and she found an interesting
division the young girls who were you know, fifteen to
(12:39):
seventeen about Um, I didn't find a problem with the
relationship that they were in. They found the older guys
more polite. They totally were like, I'm not being exploited
or taken advantage of. This guy has done sowing his
wild oats, which is why he's hanging out with a
seventeen year old. So there was definitely a perception that
(13:00):
a little bit skewed. But given hindsight, she found that
the older women who had been in that situation before
expressed nothing but anger and disgust at the relationship they
had had. Yeah, but speaking of older women, let's talk
about the flip side, where we have the older women
who are um desirous of significantly younger men and I'm
(13:24):
talking about, yep, the cougars. I got to talk about
the cougars and unfortunately use the term cougar while talking
about a lot already. Yeah, and um, just for a
little etymology fund before we dive into more statistics. Uh,
A lexicographer out of Canada traces cougar the use of
cougar back to around when cougar date dot Com was
(13:47):
first born and two thousand one with a publication of
Valerie Gibson's Cougar, a Guide for older Women Dating younger men.
And there was also um this idea that it goes
back to. It was some trend among Canadian youth hockey teams.
They started using cougar yeah, as a slang term for
(14:08):
for older desirous that's women. That is so random. Yeah,
I didn't expect that at all. Canada, the home of
the cougars. I guess, well done, Canada. Well cougari Ism,
cougar dum, cougar nous really exploded a couple of years
ago with the rise of Cougar Town, Courtney Cox's TV show.
(14:29):
And I guess it was around the same time that
Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher got married. She of the long,
glossy black hair of which I am so jealous, right,
and that's this whole thing of Oh, well, now women
have all of the botox and the plastic surgery that
we need in order to keep ourselves looking young, fresh
and just the delectable to the young men's right. And uh.
(14:55):
Writing for The Daily Beast in two thousand nine, Ramensituda
blame the blosion of cougar characters on Hollywood's lack of
marketable twenty something starletts. He's basically saying, like Lindsay Lohan
is drunk all the time. So now we're injecting all
these older actresses with botox, which is why we're seeing
more older women younger men relationships on screen. But stretch
(15:18):
that that example that has inherently flawed Caroline, because Lindsay
Lohan has it seems like she has abused some botox
and it was a little disconcerting and something with the lips. Um. Yeah,
I don't necessarily by that that Daily Beast argument, and
the New York Times sitting by it either they beg
to differ. They staid up. Maybe so if you're talking
about television or the box office. But behind the unleashing
(15:41):
of cougars and pop culture is a real demographic shift,
driven by new choices that women over forty year making
as they redefine the concept of a suitable mate. And
this is probably true as we have more earning power,
and we might not have had the time in our
twenties and in our third ties while we were building
up these successful careers to set up a family and
(16:04):
really devote ourselves to building some kind of relationship. So
we reach our forties and hey, you know we we
might not be as constrained to date within our age box, right.
But the New York Times points out that as women
have delayed marriage, men have continued to date and marry
younger women, And so that kind of brings up the
point that we made about the two thousand eight Princeton
(16:25):
study with basically who is left and and it's definitely
not an issue of just women being like, oh my god,
who's left to date? These are definitely choices that people
are making. But there is also the issue of if
you are a successful woman who's put off marriage and
family and all this stuff, and some of the men
your age are dating women twenty years younger, you know,
(16:46):
where are you going to look? Cougar date dot com apparently.
And one of the issues as far as choosing partners
is economics, and both women and men, particularly as the
wage gap has narrowed, are growing more comfortable with the
possibility that the woman is the higher earner. This is
this is coming out of the New York Times also,
And while the woman may not want to take a
(17:07):
slacker under her wing. They say she is less likely
to be focused on the status of her partner than
women of previous generations. And for some numerical perspective on
this demographic shift toward women who are dating and marrying
younger men, the number of marriages between women who are
at least five to ten years older than their spouse
(17:29):
is five point four percent and one point three percent, respectively.
But according to andrew A. Beverage, who's a demographer at
Queen's College, both of those rates have doubled between nineteen
sixty and two thousand seven. And meanwhile, the percentage of
marriages of older men and younger women steadily decreased through
(17:51):
nineteen eighty and since then has remained pretty stable. So this,
this idea of the rise of the cougar statistically true. Yeah.
And this is backed up by Sander Karen, who's a
University of Main professor of family relations in human sexuality,
who said, for a long time, we've been fed this
idea that women should look for a man to take
(18:12):
care of her, a man that is more educated, has
a better job, and makes more money. She says that
that might be fine, and Danny. If you're in high
school and have a fairy tale prince charming idea, but
when you look at adult women, mess yourself sufficient and
they don't have to look for that. M m m.
And a survey in two thousand three by a RP
of two thousand ninety four older single women ages forty
(18:34):
to sixty nine found that were dating or had recently
dated a man at least five years younger, backing up
that quote about we don't need no man take care
of us. Yeah, but we're still dating the companionship, but
it's not so much that we're like we need some
older father figure who's going to protect us from the
big scary world and give us money like the six
(18:55):
Season seventies textbook would suggest we have. We have father
issues of some sort. Um. So, but the big question
that a lot of researchers have wanted to figure out,
and there are multiple answers for this, is whether or
not there is some kind of golden age gap, whether
or not um there is one um age gap that
(19:18):
somehow makes for a better couple than than others. And
like I said, there are multiple answers related to mortality, risk, reproduction,
and just basic marital satisfaction, because we've already said that
that the age gap doesn't seem to correlate to marital
(19:39):
satisfaction and whether or not you are going to get
divorced your risk of divorce, But there are there are
some interesting links between age gap and mortality and how
it affects men and women differently. Specifically, women who marry
men seven to nine years younger than them have a
(20:00):
twenty percent higher mortality risk than women who marry men
their own age. Meanwhile, men who marry women seven and
nine years younger have an eleven percent lower mortality risk.
So for women marrying younger means we might die sooner,
but men marrying younger means they'll live longer. Right, so
(20:23):
there's just no winning except if you marry a man
who is about your same age, is what this study uncovered. Yeah.
The study is coming out of the max Plank Institute
in Germany from two thousand ten and um. They eliminated
some of the statistical shortcomings of earlier research and controlled
for as many factors as possible and came up with
(20:46):
this estimate that a woman should marry a man of
exactly the same age for the best mortality outcomes for her.
But there was also this UM Swedish study which calculated
that UM, for a AND's best outcome, he should marry
a woman fifteen years younger. But my best outcome that
(21:06):
study meant the most children. Oh okay, so not living longer, yes, um.
And there was also a follow up study on that
which claimed that the ideal reproductive match for a man
is to marry a woman six years since junior. So
again we're all over the map. Marry someone you're same age,
marry someone two years younger than you, marry someone six
(21:28):
years or fifteen years, I don't know. Maybe just marry
who you like. Yeah, put that on a pillow. That
is going to be the more a moral of the story.
But there was one rule of thumb that we ran
across for determining the social acceptability of an age gap,
and this is coming from Christopher Beam at Slate and
supposedly you can decide whether or not your age gap
(21:50):
is a oka with society UM by dividing the age
gap between partners by two and then adding seven. Yes.
I brought this up with my roommate last night just
to run it by him, and before I had even
finished speaking. He had already finished my sentence for him.
He's like, oh, yeah, I used to do that all
the time. And I was like, what are you talking about.
He's like, well, you know, just living in a college
(22:10):
town after you've already graduated college, you have to be
really careful about who you hang out. So yeah, he
he um, he double checked one uh one date he
had so if he's third using that, using that method,
if he's thirty, then the lowest he could go would
be twenty two. There you go. So he was yeah,
this was a couple of years ago, and he was
(22:31):
within that and with all of this research too. And
I feel like I have to say this so many
times on the podcast, but one thing that did not
come up was how this age gap information relates to
same sex couples, which I was really surprised by. Yeah,
there was no there was no demographic information on that.
(22:52):
So same sex folks out there, we were thinking about you,
but unfortunately research has not been thinking enough of about it. Um.
So it seems like really, in real world terms, age
gaps and relationships don't necessarily matter. It can make a
big difference if it is more of a generation gap. Yeah,
the life stage gap. Yeah, you have to worry about
(23:14):
those life stages. If one if one partner you know
needs to be at home and can't really get out
as much, and the other partners like, whoa, let's go
travel and go on cruises and stuff, you have to
worry about that. But another takeaway from this too is
that the whole Hugh Hefner super young playboy girlfriend is
the exception and not the rule. That these age gaps
(23:36):
are usually more predictive of lower living standards. So some
interesting data when you tease it all apart May December
relationships doesn't necessarily mean that you have strange paternal issues.
Just maybe means that you found someone or maternal or maternal.
Maybe it just means that you found someone who uh
(23:57):
who floats your boat. But maybe it was just a
born a long time after you were right. Just be flexible,
be open minded, you know, share some interests. What do
you think about cougar though, Caroline? Should we retire it?
Let's retire it? Yes, that's all I got. Well, folks
um age gaps, what do you think about them? People
(24:18):
who are in relationships with large age gaps? How has
it worked out? Has there ever been a hindrance. Does
age really matter in relationship? And if people ever say
things to you in a critical way, do people ever
ask if that person is your parent? There there was
one person quoted who said that people thought that she
was hanging out with her dad. That could be awkward.
(24:39):
Let us know your awkward stories. Mom. Stuff at Discovery
dot Com is email address, and I have an email
here from Christie on our episode about whether or not
gay households are more egalitarian, and she writes, and the
studies that dealt with the division of labor and couples,
did those compiling the information determine a way to differentiate
between gender roles and the same sex couples. It's easy
(25:02):
enough to determine roles hours, money and heterosexual couples, but
when both partners or women are both partners or men,
I'd imagine that it's a little more difficult. It's been
my observation in the same sex couples, I know that
one partner is more feminine and the other partners were masculine,
and they tend to fill those traditional traditional gender roles. Accordingly,
I've observed that the them tends to do more child
(25:23):
rearing and housework just like the wife would do in
a typical hetero marriage. They're quite frank about it, actually,
as opposed to many hetero couples who just assumed that
the woman will do most of the work. If studies
just asked all of the partners and same sex couples
what hours they spend on work, household, kids, and an
average everything together, of course the numbers wouldn't match. My
observation and my lesbian friends is that they have the
(25:44):
same kind of work division in generals that hetero couples do.
And I answered Christie that the study that we referenced
did indeed take those sex roles in general roles into
account by gendering the lips of activity. So it wasn't
just one big, massive average. It was averaging out work
(26:04):
that is typically done by women typically done by men,
and seeing who does what that way. And thanks for
the good question. And this one is from Delan. She's
writing us about female wrestling. She says, I am a
thirteen year old seventh grade girl. I am not really big,
only about a hundred pounds and only five foot, but
I take martial arts. I have taken different types since
(26:27):
I was six years old, and when I go to
my classes, most of the students are boys. Only me
and my siths are the gals. We sometimes grapple wrestling
kind of but starts on the ground, and when we
do so, most of the boys refuse to fight me
and my little sister. They will not fight my sis
ten years old because she really doesn't stand a chance.
But me, well, they are terrified of me. I'm not
(26:48):
just bragging or anything, but have you, gals, anyway that
you think I could convince the guys that is not
shameful to get their butt kicked by a girl and grappling.
It's kind of embarrassing when I have to work with
a low ranking kid or my sith and don't have
a challenge. Do you have any ideas, Caroline, I don't
know how to get so the boys are smaller than
(27:09):
her um and they're and and they're too nervous that
they might get beaten by a girl. Yeah, these are
attitudes that she wants to be changed so that she
can have a fair fight. What can she do? I
don't know, Maybe maybe her Maybe she can ask her
instructor to pair her up with with someone. I might
have to be, might have to be instructor intervention. Yeah,
(27:32):
but then I mean, you know, then there's the boys
might get angry. I don't know, hey, but you might
as well take a risk. It seems like maybe the
first option, Dylan, would be to talk to your instructor
and see if and see if he or she can
intervene and then go from there. Or maybe just tell
tell the boys to stop being being so skeered. Yeah, exactly. So.
(27:55):
Thanks to Dull everyone else for writing in mom Stuff
at Discovery dot com m is email address. You can
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at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can read what we're
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(28:18):
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reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today, since
(00:21):
we are talking about age gaps in romantic relationships, I
would like to take a point of pride in saying
that my parents are statistical outliers. Well kind of probably
in a number of ways really because they're kookie. But
one way in which they are cookie is that my
(00:41):
mother is a few years older than my father. I
know her birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, so it
happened recently. One of her grandchildren asked her how old
she is, to which I replied, her age has always
been shrouded in mystery, but we do know. It is
(01:01):
confirmed that she is I want to say, four or
five years older than my dad. I can't say for certain,
it is it's a great mystery. My my mother is
five years younger than my dad, so she is more
in line with the age differences that were common hundreds
of years ago, whereas your mom and dad are are
(01:23):
sort of trailblazers. Yeah. Um, although neither of our parents
really match up to the average today in the United States,
which is two point three years typically um in a
heterosexual couple, the groom will be two point three years
older than his bride, basically the same as the average
(01:45):
age difference in the UK, which is two point two years.
And that is with the guy typically being the older party, right,
And this is a trend forever. According to this two
eight Princeton study that we read, the ach gap for
couples has been declining throughout or had declined all throughout
the twentieth century, and that brings us to our current
(02:07):
average of two point three years, as Kristen said, But
before it declined, it was actually rising in the mid
nineteenth century for several reasons, and researchers site farmers in
the West as a good example of that rising age gap. Right,
Because the frontier in those early days were wild, untamed places,
(02:29):
so the sex ratio of men to women was really high,
which we talked about in our Our Madam's podcast a
while ago. So these psychologists, these Princeton psychologists, think that
farmers on the frontier would have been more likely to
select for younger wives so that they would make for
(02:51):
better partners in this untamed land. Because you're younger, you're stronger,
you can have more babies to help you out tame
in all those cattle heads, right exactly. And you know,
going back to the sex ratio that you mentioned, they
might not have had a choice. I mean, if the
women who were around who were unmarried were much younger,
(03:14):
then that's just who they had to marry, you know,
regardless of whether they were bringing them from the East
or whatever. If if the younger women were all that
were available, that's who they ended up marrying. But from
nineteen hundred to two thousand, heterosexual couples have been headed
toward homogamy, heteros heading toward homo. But when I'm talking
(03:34):
about homogamy, I mean age homogamy are the gap between
men and women who are coupling up has narrowed from
an average of five years in nineteen hundred to that
average of just over two years we mentioned by the
year two thousand. But even though the trend is age
(03:56):
homogamy may december relations ships of the significantly older man
or woman partnering up with someone significantly younger. Even though
we're seeing it more often, we're still largely uncomfortable with it. Right,
and Lois Smith Brady, who's written columns for The New
(04:16):
York Times over a decade for over a decade about couples,
wrote a piece for O Magazine which I Love in
two thousand and seven about these types of relationships, and
she says that a generation gap makes both people ask
hard questions about love, aging, permanent sacrifice, and family and
getting into the uncomfortable nous. She says that when it's
(04:37):
the woman who's much older, she becomes more conscious of
the fragility of her beauty, her fertility, and her vision.
So while it seems like society in general is more
accepting of older men and younger women, except when it's
in the case of Hugh Hefner and his twenty year
old girlfriends um, they're not as accepting of the older
woman younger man thing. The cougar phenomenon, which will talk
(05:00):
about ye whether or not it really is a thing
that is not just Courtney Cox on cougar Town. Right.
Uh so, but you also pulled some quotes from that
article about women who had dated younger men that that
points out that insecurity that might arise. So a lot
of these women who were interviewed for this piece in
(05:21):
a magazine, expressed that even though they were committed to
these men they were with, some of them married, some
of them just dating, the relationship still made them feel older.
One woman who's forty six who's married to a thirty
two year old man, said that women are just more
critical of ourselves. I don't feel older all the time,
just when I look in the mirror. And another woman,
a fifty year old who's dating a thirty three year
(05:42):
old guy, said that there's this whole issue of societal
perceptions of women who date much younger men. And she
said that if the older woman has money, she's seen
as pathetic because she's buying the attention of a younger man.
But if she has no money, it seems like she's
just hanging onto her lost youth, which is pretty hard. Yeah,
I mean, it's all. It's the whole Mrs Robinson thing
from the Graduate, even though and Bancroft when they were
(06:06):
filming The Graduate was six years I think it was
six years. Film buffs out there correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe and Bankropt, he played Mrs Robinson, was
only six years older than Dustin Hoffman. But the criticism
that um women, older women dating younger men, significantly younger
men might receive probably also relates to the very reason
(06:30):
why it is more common for women to marry older men.
And this is coming from a pair of Canadian researchers,
Monica Boyd and and Lee, and they point out that
the value and acceptability of aging men is higher than
that of the aging woman. And I don't think we
need to explain very much into that. We can talk
(06:51):
about the beauty myth, we can talk about men's earning power.
Um So, even though it's becoming a little bit more common,
um it's it's still considered something that maybe maybe these
older women are buying, you know, the the affection of
these younger men. And also the same the same thing
is lodged though too against older men like you Hefner
(07:13):
or Donald Trump dating significantly younger women, saying it's just
an issue of money and power that love cancer pass
that kind of age gap, right, And the O magazine
piece really was striving to show that these relationships are
just like any other relationship. It's just that age happens
to be a major factor in them. But not everybody
not everybody is is so comfortable and accepting and The
(07:36):
Global Male quoted sex therapist Julia Cole, who said that
the May December romances are only successful when both partners
acknowledge their transitional nature. She says that they're about control,
I guess on the older person's part, or the need
to be looked after by the younger person. Well sure,
but don't most romantic relationships boiled down to a desire
(07:58):
for companionship? Well sure um. Also, Monica boyd And and
Lee pointed out that textbooks in the nineties, sixties, and
seventies would portray large age differences in couples as being
fostered by people who had either like father daughter or
mother son psychological issues. So there's probably some still some
(08:20):
of that lingering prejudice out there, even though statistically people
with significant age differences are no less likely to be
happy in their marriages, happy and satisfying their marriages, and
are no more prone to divorce. Right, it's a matter
of just like in any other relationship, it's a matter
(08:41):
of finding someone you're compatible with. And some of the
couples quoted in Oh, We're saying that it was more
an issue of finally finding someone who was on the
same page, who was interested in the same things. It
doesn't matter if the guy is twenty years younger than you.
If he's interested in the same things you are, there's
still the potential potential for attraction. But what about the
issue of the age gap actually putting you at different
(09:03):
life stages. That's true, that's a big concern that a
lot of psychologist rays, including Susan Heitler who wrote for
Psychology Today, that as couples with an age gap get older,
they will continue to negotiate differing life stage desires. So
you might have one partner who is entering the winter
of his or her life and the younger partner who's
(09:24):
just in middle age and is having to take care
of the older partner. And psychiatrists j R. Bruns goes
as far as to say that the trend of May
December romance is damaging to our society. And going even further,
George Gilder, who's an activist and author, says that when
older men abandoned their wives for younger women, there is
a major rupture of the social system, and this is
(09:45):
a practice of hoarding women by older men with exceptional wealth.
Fame and power. But I'm going to go ahead and
say that Bruns and Guilder are not correct in that assessment.
Please film in well, I mean, if we're talking about UM,
this made a simber relationship, especially between older man significantly
(10:08):
younger women, being a product of wealth and power on
the guy's part. This UM demographic research from Canada that
I've mentioned a couple of times from Monica, Boyd and
and Lee completely contradicts that. And actually, while yeah, you
have those instances of the celebrity made a simber relationships,
(10:28):
but on the whole in the general population, UM, the
wide age gaps are actually associated with lower educational attainment
and lower income. So people like half our outliers. Yes,
absolutely and going more into these real world risks rewards
(10:49):
of the age gaps in relationships. There is some concern
among teen girls, especially partnering up with significantly older guys. UM.
This is coming from research out of the Gootmacker Institute
that highlighted some disconcerting patterns for for these kind of relationships. Yeah,
(11:11):
the Goomacker Institute looked at data from the National Survey
of Family Growth regarding age differences and found that among
teen girls aged fifteen to seventeen, Most had a partner
within two years of their own age, but the next
biggest chunk, at twenty nine percent, had a partner three
to five years older. And among girls that they looked
at age fifteen to seventeen who had a partner six
(11:33):
or more years older had a pregnancy rate three points
seven times as high as the rate among those whose
partner was no more than two years older. So, this,
this whole study and age demographics and pregnancy rates brings
up the concern about exploitation and vulnerability of young girls well.
And also this is the time when if you have
(11:54):
two teens that are are roughly the same age, they're
probably the same sort of sexual maturity and experience level.
And if you are a teen trying to go after
a significantly older person who might have had a lot
more experience, um, you might feel insecure because of that
and want to possibly demonstrate more sexual maturity than you
(12:18):
might really have. Yeah. Psychologist Lynn Phillips interviewed a bunch
of young girls or young women who were in relationships
with guys who were ten twelve years older. She also
interviewed older women who had been in those types of
relationships when they were teens, and she found an interesting
division the young girls who were you know, fifteen to
(12:39):
seventeen about Um, I didn't find a problem with the
relationship that they were in. They found the older guys
more polite. They totally were like, I'm not being exploited
or taken advantage of. This guy has done sowing his
wild oats, which is why he's hanging out with a
seventeen year old. So there was definitely a perception that
(13:00):
a little bit skewed. But given hindsight, she found that
the older women who had been in that situation before
expressed nothing but anger and disgust at the relationship they
had had. Yeah, but speaking of older women, let's talk
about the flip side, where we have the older women
who are um desirous of significantly younger men and I'm
(13:24):
talking about, yep, the cougars. I got to talk about
the cougars and unfortunately use the term cougar while talking
about a lot already. Yeah, and um, just for a
little etymology fund before we dive into more statistics. Uh,
A lexicographer out of Canada traces cougar the use of
cougar back to around when cougar date dot Com was
(13:47):
first born and two thousand one with a publication of
Valerie Gibson's Cougar, a Guide for older Women Dating younger men.
And there was also um this idea that it goes
back to. It was some trend among Canadian youth hockey teams.
They started using cougar yeah, as a slang term for
(14:08):
for older desirous that's women. That is so random. Yeah,
I didn't expect that at all. Canada, the home of
the cougars. I guess, well done, Canada. Well cougari Ism,
cougar dum, cougar nous really exploded a couple of years
ago with the rise of Cougar Town, Courtney Cox's TV show.
(14:29):
And I guess it was around the same time that
Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher got married. She of the long,
glossy black hair of which I am so jealous, right,
and that's this whole thing of Oh, well, now women
have all of the botox and the plastic surgery that
we need in order to keep ourselves looking young, fresh
and just the delectable to the young men's right. And uh.
(14:55):
Writing for The Daily Beast in two thousand nine, Ramensituda
blame the blosion of cougar characters on Hollywood's lack of
marketable twenty something starletts. He's basically saying, like Lindsay Lohan
is drunk all the time. So now we're injecting all
these older actresses with botox, which is why we're seeing
more older women younger men relationships on screen. But stretch
(15:18):
that that example that has inherently flawed Caroline, because Lindsay
Lohan has it seems like she has abused some botox
and it was a little disconcerting and something with the lips. Um. Yeah,
I don't necessarily by that that Daily Beast argument, and
the New York Times sitting by it either they beg
to differ. They staid up. Maybe so if you're talking
about television or the box office. But behind the unleashing
(15:41):
of cougars and pop culture is a real demographic shift,
driven by new choices that women over forty year making
as they redefine the concept of a suitable mate. And
this is probably true as we have more earning power,
and we might not have had the time in our
twenties and in our third ties while we were building
up these successful careers to set up a family and
(16:04):
really devote ourselves to building some kind of relationship. So
we reach our forties and hey, you know we we
might not be as constrained to date within our age box, right.
But the New York Times points out that as women
have delayed marriage, men have continued to date and marry
younger women, And so that kind of brings up the
point that we made about the two thousand eight Princeton
(16:25):
study with basically who is left and and it's definitely
not an issue of just women being like, oh my god,
who's left to date? These are definitely choices that people
are making. But there is also the issue of if
you are a successful woman who's put off marriage and
family and all this stuff, and some of the men
your age are dating women twenty years younger, you know,
(16:46):
where are you going to look? Cougar date dot com apparently.
And one of the issues as far as choosing partners
is economics, and both women and men, particularly as the
wage gap has narrowed, are growing more comfortable with the
possibility that the woman is the higher earner. This is
this is coming out of the New York Times also,
And while the woman may not want to take a
(17:07):
slacker under her wing. They say she is less likely
to be focused on the status of her partner than
women of previous generations. And for some numerical perspective on
this demographic shift toward women who are dating and marrying
younger men, the number of marriages between women who are
at least five to ten years older than their spouse
(17:29):
is five point four percent and one point three percent, respectively.
But according to andrew A. Beverage, who's a demographer at
Queen's College, both of those rates have doubled between nineteen
sixty and two thousand seven. And meanwhile, the percentage of
marriages of older men and younger women steadily decreased through
(17:51):
nineteen eighty and since then has remained pretty stable. So this,
this idea of the rise of the cougar statistically true. Yeah.
And this is backed up by Sander Karen, who's a
University of Main professor of family relations in human sexuality,
who said, for a long time, we've been fed this
idea that women should look for a man to take
(18:12):
care of her, a man that is more educated, has
a better job, and makes more money. She says that
that might be fine, and Danny. If you're in high
school and have a fairy tale prince charming idea, but
when you look at adult women, mess yourself sufficient and
they don't have to look for that. M m m.
And a survey in two thousand three by a RP
of two thousand ninety four older single women ages forty
(18:34):
to sixty nine found that were dating or had recently
dated a man at least five years younger, backing up
that quote about we don't need no man take care
of us. Yeah, but we're still dating the companionship, but
it's not so much that we're like we need some
older father figure who's going to protect us from the
big scary world and give us money like the six
(18:55):
Season seventies textbook would suggest we have. We have father
issues of some sort. Um. So, but the big question
that a lot of researchers have wanted to figure out,
and there are multiple answers for this, is whether or
not there is some kind of golden age gap, whether
or not um there is one um age gap that
(19:18):
somehow makes for a better couple than than others. And
like I said, there are multiple answers related to mortality, risk, reproduction,
and just basic marital satisfaction, because we've already said that
that the age gap doesn't seem to correlate to marital
(19:39):
satisfaction and whether or not you are going to get
divorced your risk of divorce, But there are there are
some interesting links between age gap and mortality and how
it affects men and women differently. Specifically, women who marry
men seven to nine years younger than them have a
(20:00):
twenty percent higher mortality risk than women who marry men
their own age. Meanwhile, men who marry women seven and
nine years younger have an eleven percent lower mortality risk.
So for women marrying younger means we might die sooner,
but men marrying younger means they'll live longer. Right, so
(20:23):
there's just no winning except if you marry a man
who is about your same age, is what this study uncovered. Yeah.
The study is coming out of the max Plank Institute
in Germany from two thousand ten and um. They eliminated
some of the statistical shortcomings of earlier research and controlled
for as many factors as possible and came up with
(20:46):
this estimate that a woman should marry a man of
exactly the same age for the best mortality outcomes for her.
But there was also this UM Swedish study which calculated
that UM, for a AND's best outcome, he should marry
a woman fifteen years younger. But my best outcome that
(21:06):
study meant the most children. Oh okay, so not living longer, yes, um.
And there was also a follow up study on that
which claimed that the ideal reproductive match for a man
is to marry a woman six years since junior. So
again we're all over the map. Marry someone you're same age,
marry someone two years younger than you, marry someone six
(21:28):
years or fifteen years, I don't know. Maybe just marry
who you like. Yeah, put that on a pillow. That
is going to be the more a moral of the story.
But there was one rule of thumb that we ran
across for determining the social acceptability of an age gap,
and this is coming from Christopher Beam at Slate and
supposedly you can decide whether or not your age gap
(21:50):
is a oka with society UM by dividing the age
gap between partners by two and then adding seven. Yes.
I brought this up with my roommate last night just
to run it by him, and before I had even
finished speaking. He had already finished my sentence for him.
He's like, oh, yeah, I used to do that all
the time. And I was like, what are you talking about.
He's like, well, you know, just living in a college
(22:10):
town after you've already graduated college, you have to be
really careful about who you hang out. So yeah, he
he um, he double checked one uh one date he
had so if he's third using that, using that method,
if he's thirty, then the lowest he could go would
be twenty two. There you go. So he was yeah,
this was a couple of years ago, and he was
(22:31):
within that and with all of this research too. And
I feel like I have to say this so many
times on the podcast, but one thing that did not
come up was how this age gap information relates to
same sex couples, which I was really surprised by. Yeah,
there was no there was no demographic information on that.
(22:52):
So same sex folks out there, we were thinking about you,
but unfortunately research has not been thinking enough of about it. Um.
So it seems like really, in real world terms, age
gaps and relationships don't necessarily matter. It can make a
big difference if it is more of a generation gap. Yeah,
the life stage gap. Yeah, you have to worry about
(23:14):
those life stages. If one if one partner you know
needs to be at home and can't really get out
as much, and the other partners like, whoa, let's go
travel and go on cruises and stuff, you have to
worry about that. But another takeaway from this too is
that the whole Hugh Hefner super young playboy girlfriend is
the exception and not the rule. That these age gaps
(23:36):
are usually more predictive of lower living standards. So some
interesting data when you tease it all apart May December
relationships doesn't necessarily mean that you have strange paternal issues.
Just maybe means that you found someone or maternal or maternal.
Maybe it just means that you found someone who uh
(23:57):
who floats your boat. But maybe it was just a
born a long time after you were right. Just be flexible,
be open minded, you know, share some interests. What do
you think about cougar though, Caroline? Should we retire it?
Let's retire it? Yes, that's all I got. Well, folks
um age gaps, what do you think about them? People
(24:18):
who are in relationships with large age gaps? How has
it worked out? Has there ever been a hindrance. Does
age really matter in relationship? And if people ever say
things to you in a critical way, do people ever
ask if that person is your parent? There there was
one person quoted who said that people thought that she
was hanging out with her dad. That could be awkward.
(24:39):
Let us know your awkward stories. Mom. Stuff at Discovery
dot Com is email address, and I have an email
here from Christie on our episode about whether or not
gay households are more egalitarian, and she writes, and the
studies that dealt with the division of labor and couples,
did those compiling the information determine a way to differentiate
between gender roles and the same sex couples. It's easy
(25:02):
enough to determine roles hours, money and heterosexual couples, but
when both partners or women are both partners or men,
I'd imagine that it's a little more difficult. It's been
my observation in the same sex couples, I know that
one partner is more feminine and the other partners were masculine,
and they tend to fill those traditional traditional gender roles. Accordingly,
I've observed that the them tends to do more child
(25:23):
rearing and housework just like the wife would do in
a typical hetero marriage. They're quite frank about it, actually,
as opposed to many hetero couples who just assumed that
the woman will do most of the work. If studies
just asked all of the partners and same sex couples
what hours they spend on work, household, kids, and an
average everything together, of course the numbers wouldn't match. My
observation and my lesbian friends is that they have the
(25:44):
same kind of work division in generals that hetero couples do.
And I answered Christie that the study that we referenced
did indeed take those sex roles in general roles into
account by gendering the lips of activity. So it wasn't
just one big, massive average. It was averaging out work
(26:04):
that is typically done by women typically done by men,
and seeing who does what that way. And thanks for
the good question. And this one is from Delan. She's
writing us about female wrestling. She says, I am a
thirteen year old seventh grade girl. I am not really big,
only about a hundred pounds and only five foot, but
I take martial arts. I have taken different types since
(26:27):
I was six years old, and when I go to
my classes, most of the students are boys. Only me
and my siths are the gals. We sometimes grapple wrestling
kind of but starts on the ground, and when we
do so, most of the boys refuse to fight me
and my little sister. They will not fight my sis
ten years old because she really doesn't stand a chance.
But me, well, they are terrified of me. I'm not
(26:48):
just bragging or anything, but have you, gals, anyway that
you think I could convince the guys that is not
shameful to get their butt kicked by a girl and grappling.
It's kind of embarrassing when I have to work with
a low ranking kid or my sith and don't have
a challenge. Do you have any ideas, Caroline, I don't
know how to get so the boys are smaller than
(27:09):
her um and they're and and they're too nervous that
they might get beaten by a girl. Yeah, these are
attitudes that she wants to be changed so that she
can have a fair fight. What can she do? I
don't know, Maybe maybe her Maybe she can ask her
instructor to pair her up with with someone. I might
have to be, might have to be instructor intervention. Yeah,
(27:32):
but then I mean, you know, then there's the boys
might get angry. I don't know, hey, but you might
as well take a risk. It seems like maybe the
first option, Dylan, would be to talk to your instructor
and see if and see if he or she can
intervene and then go from there. Or maybe just tell
tell the boys to stop being being so skeered. Yeah, exactly. So.
(27:55):
Thanks to Dull everyone else for writing in mom Stuff
at Discovery dot com m is email address. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can read what we're
writing during the week at our website, it's how Stuff
Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
(28:18):
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