Short Stuff: Marrying Up

don't you think. Ay, that's what Forbes said. I read that article. Um, but all to say the idea of marrying up, which actually has a real name behind it, which is, how are you gonna announced this? Hypergamme a hypergammy, hyper monogamy, hypergamy. Okay, hypergamy, hypergamy, that's what I'm going with has to say about this hypergammey hypergammy Yeah, okay, it's basically the idea of what you just said, marrying up a woman trading something, usually her looks for a

higher socioeconomic status. She's marrying a husband who might not look as good but makes more money. Um. And she is from a lower class, but she's marrying up because she has something to trade. That is the basis of it. And like you said, it's pretty misogynistic in in general as a concept. The sad thing is is it was absolutely a part of human history for a very long

time up until very recently. Yeah, there's geographic hypergamy. Um. There was this journal article called cross Border Marriages colon Gender and Mobility and Transnational Asia where the author, Nicole Constable and by the way, thanks how stuff works dot Com for this, talked about, Um, it's the same thing, but it's actually um. In addition to finances, it's it's you know, the lady from the farm moving into the

big city, Uh, to move up both geographically and financially. Yeah, moving from less developed areas to more developed areas, etcetera. So um. And again this is it was just a thing for a really long time because this was while women were considered inferior to men, or maybe we're prevented from working outside of the house in some societies. At certain times in the past, the one way that a woman could kind of control her destiny was to choose

who she was going to marry. If her culture allowed her to choose, and that this was a way to like say, Okay, I'm gonna make a good life for myself. I'm going to choose carefully, and I'm going to choose the guy who makes the most money or has the most status that I can get to marry me. Right, and especially a lot of times you would have, uh, probably a father pushing a daughter to do this, So

it's sort of like a whole families moving up in status. Uh. You certainly found this in different cultures around the world in the past. I know that in eight one it was first used or first found in a book kind of like explicitly explicitly written about um in a book called Panjab Casts. That was a book by Sir Denzil Ibbotson where they talked about, you know, a man seeking to marry his daughter off to a member of a

tribe superior to his own. So I think culturally that's it was a lot of times, you know, parents pushing a daughter to do this. Right. So the thing is, though, if this is like a worldwide cultural trait, even as you have like increasing globalization, eventually you're going to reach this kind of stasis where women who are at the top of the social ladder and men who are at the very bottom of the social lader won't have anybody to marry because the woman can't marry up there's nobody

above her. The man can't marry down because there's nobody below him. And apparently some research, especially up into the seventies, found that this was actually the case in some cultures. That's right. Uh, And then we came up with a different word. And so maybe we'll take a break, what a cliffhanger, and we'll tell you what the different word is right after this, alright, laid on ut bub hypogamy, hypogammy, man,

I think hypogamy if we're going with hypergamy. Yeah, but I was also saying hypergammy and I like that too, So hypogammy and hyper gammy. It really gets it across a little more if you can't see it spelled out, you know. I think I just pictures like the skit of us when we're you know, in our eighties and nineties, respectfully, like sitting around and debating how to pronounce things. Oh boy, and I guess we're always will be in there with Emily and you me too. I'll just be living together

in some like community in Florida in the future. Um, and they're like just still rolling their eyes there. They have a machine that rolls their eyes for them. So hypogamy is a marriage between a man of lower status to a woman of higher status. Yeah, like a Jefferson and Marcy Darcy situation. I don't know what that means from married with children Marcy Darcy's second husband Jefferson. I don't. I didn't see that shore well, I don't remember. I mean I watched a little bit. But who were they?

Was that they the neighbors or something? They across the street neighbors? Okay, I think I remember that lady. That's a lady who in real I've hated al Bundy in real life. Right. Oh, I didn't know that? Is that? I think? So? I think they really didn't like each other if I'm thinking about the right person. I did not know that. Uh. So there's also another word, um, and this is as it turns out, basically almost everyone is homogamy, which is marriage between people with similar statuses

and characteristics. Yeah, in our modern world, homogamy seems to be ruling the stage. Yeah. In fact, I dug up this article from two thousand fourteen and this from Business Insider, But there was, it was all over the place, so clearly there was just like a study published and researchers compared UH quality levels UM such as attractiveness as socio economic status within couples, and they found that basically the

trophy wife stereotype was bunk. Um. It does happen, and that's why you see a news story like you know Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones in his I can't remember, but let's say it was his fifties married like a nineteen year old or something. You know, it's fairly cross or the the old that ancient billionaire who was like ninety that had like the playboy bunny wife. I can't remember them. So like that stuff makes the news and you see that stereotype sort of reinforced with these big,

splashy stories. But the sum of this study basically is like that's basically rare, and that almost everybody marries people that are like them. Yeah, and um, the one researcher in that UM that article basically said, well, some people are like no, Like, look at a doctor. A male doctor usually has a really beautiful wife. And this researcher

was like, yeah, look at the doctor. He's probably likelier to be beautiful too, And he's probably like doctor Hunk, right, he's probably likelier to Mick Dreamy is more like um, he's probably he's likelier because he makes more money and because he's a doctor to be in better shape, to not be overweight, to go to a dermatologist, to like go to an expensive hairdresser and do these things to

be better looking. And then also, by the way, his wife actually is highly educated and had her own career, but she gave it up to stay home with the kids. So you're like missing stuff when you just make these presumptions about it. And from what these researchers are finding, like homogamy is definitely like the way almost everyone goes, at least in the West in in modern times. Yeah.

And I will also say, and the one bone pick to have with his study is they only surveyed couples in their early to mid twenties, So that makes a lot more sense because I think the traditional sort of stereotype of marrying up or the trophy wife is the bill wyman, like the older rich guy who may be on his second wife goes off and finds like some you know, young model to get married to the question though,

is is does this make for a good relationship? Like people get married to people that are more like them across the board because those marriages seem to last more so, does you know, does the sixty year old retiring doctor who leaves his wife and marries the twenty two year old that they probably don't have a whole lot in common? Uh? Do those marriages work? So it depends, Um, it depends

on what kind of marriage you're talking about. What they found was that I guess economically hypergaminus sure um, and homogeneous relationships or marriages didn't have any greater divorce rates. They then I think the general population maybe. And then it was educational hypergamyss um marriages where the husband has more education than the wife. Um, those are the ones

that resulted in greater greater rates of divorce. And I think that's the stereotype that you think of out in movies where like, you know, the older very educated man marry some young dim wit and they just don't have anything uncommon and that's destined to fail. Yeah, or like um, Tommy Lee was really like embarrassed by Pamela Anderson's dizziness and was really mean to her from what Yeah, like really mean and I think had a real impact on

her her self confidence for a while. But I don't know that Tommy Lee has some great educational background though yeah he never struck me as like, oh who knows. I don't want to I don't want to cast dispersions. I don't know, Tommy. Don't judge a book by its cover. Uh. They also have found that this is becoming less and less of a thing a period, just because obviously, you know, in in the modern age, there are plenty of women who out earned their husbands and have advanced career wise

further than their husbands. And I in fact, I know some people who like had stay at home dads instead of stay at home moms because um, the wife and mother had like ended up having a much better job. And I think, like that's just happening more and more because obviously opportunity has changed a lot since you know, the early days of like a family trying to marry their daughter off to a higher cast, right, and it has changed a lot, But sadly, there's still like a

big um there. There's the the perception of widespread hypergamy in America and Europe still to this day. But the researchers found out it's not this idea of marrying up. It's that you can you can explain the whole thing by the gender pay gap exactly, that if if women were paid the same as men, there wouldn't be any hypergamy in America or Europe anymore. Basically, yeah, so let's get the gender pay gap closed. Why don't we? It's always this makes me think of the Sydney Pollocks character

in the movie Husbands and Wives. He was It was sort of that stereotypical thing where this older academic married sort of a young woman who wasn't as smart as he was, and she was just continually embarrassing him at this party and he just snapped at the end and they got in a big argument and he yelled, you're an infant. And that's one of the lines I say a lot. It's just a joke to Emily, and she always thinks it's very funny. Who was it? Sidney Pollock?

Who great director, but boy, he was such a fun actor in the movies that he was in. Yeah, he was the eyes wide chuck guy. Right, yeah, okay, yeah, Sydney Pollock, alright, there's one other thing too, um uh don. Binary and gay couples I believe actually do have greater differences of educational attainment. They're more likely to have differences, but I didn't see that they're more likely to end in divorce. Yeah, very interesting. So that's it. That's hyper gammy.

Hyper gammy, which means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M