…the 14,127 visitors (as of yesterday) to my humble blog who downloaded this  commentary I wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education about what happens when campus gender imbalances push past the 60/40 mark. From what l can tell, the visitors have ranged from fathers worried about sending their daughters to gender imbalanced colleges to male college students wondering why they haven’t been able to capitalize on the “operational sex ratio.”

The interest in this confirms my long-held hunch that the “boy troubles” issue is moving beyond the K-12 years and into college and beyond. In future years, the key question will be whether women will adjust their well documented preference for marrying “above” them and instead settle for a mate of lesser education background. The key indicator will be the number of highly educated women who opt to remain childless or have children absent a husband.

We already know how that dilemma has played out among African American women, and we’re starting to get some clues about white women. This recent NYTimes article includes some intriguing numbers and observations, including this:

Women with advanced degrees are more likely to be childless, the study found. Of women 40 to 44 with graduate or professional degrees, 27 percent are childless, compared with 18 percent of women who did not continue their education beyond high school, the data show.

 So, to those visitors new to the topic, I welcome you and suggest you peruse the library to the right. For a good overall picture of where things are headed you might want to start with Jonathan Rauch’s “The Coming American Matriarchy.”

Tags: marriageable mate

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