Why Won't He Marry Me?-Blame Feminism

Is the modern man pissed off at the modern woman, and reacting by becoming a bunch of slackers?  Author Suzanne Venker thinks so:

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.



Now the men have nowhere to go.



It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.



But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault? ... After decades of browbeating the American male, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.



Contrary to what feminists like Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, say, the so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.


.....


Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.

If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.

So ladies, you've heard the theory, now it's time to get crackin'!   If you want that boyfriend to man up and marry you, the only thing to do is quit that job, burn your degree(s), faint at mice, and generally simper.  That way his male instincts can kick in, and he will feel compelled to put a ring on it.

"But wait," you might say, "I thought the more educated a woman was, and the more income a woman makes, the more likely she is to get married!"  And yes, you would be correct.  But why miss an opportunity to rail against the phantom specter of the "angry feminist"? With the rise of assortative mating, the high achieving man is now more than ever more likely to permanently pair off with the high achieving woman, rather than the demure nearby office secretary of yore.  So ironically, the feminist woman is actually more likely to marry, not less. 

So what about the less high achieving guy?  Why isn't he marrying his counterpart?  Low-income women are less likely to marry, and more likely to have children out of wedlock.  Are the men not sticking around because they are angry at women, and need "to feel like men"?  Actually, I think it's the other way around.  I think women are less likely to want to get married.  As an economic decision, marriage can actually have a negative effect on the lowest income households, who depend on government benefits, with their attendent strict income cutoffs.  Other, slightly wealthier households headed by women still may not see much net gain with adding in lower-income men.  Women still want men, but may not need marriage to survive as they did in the past, making marriage much more of an option and status symbol than in the past.