Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Saturday, February 23 2013 @ 09:27 am
Last modified on
First, The Atlantic said online dating is a threat to monogamy.
Then, The Atlantic said online dating is in no way a threat to commitment or marriage.
And then, just when it seemed like the fickle magazine couldn't make up its mind, The Atlantic said this[*1] : there is something hurting monogamy, but it definitely isn't online dating. Sure, online dating is a big deal these days, but, says Jordan Weissmann, "there are much, much bigger social forces at work in this country."
Just look, he suggests, at the huge shortage of college educated men in America. It's a subject The Atlantic knows well - Kate Bolick wrote a piece[*2] called "All the Single Ladies" back in November 2011 that promptly went viral.
In the article, Bolick argues that an eruption of male joblessness and a sharp decline in men's life prospects have have disturbed the "romantic market" in ways that significantly limit a marriage-minded woman's options. Women are left with two undesirable options: deadbeats (whose numbers are rising) and playboys (whose power is growing).
Weissmann agrees with Bolick's thesis. "Across the United States today," he writes, "young women are much more likely to graduate from college than their male peers, a trend that's been compounding itself for a few decades now." When you take into account the fact that college graduates overwhelmingly tend to date other college graduates, you find yourself with an enormous imbalance in the national dating pool.
Nearly two centuries of social science research suggests that, when the gender ratio is skewed and there are fewer men than women, men are less likely to commit. In 1938, Marica Guttentag and Robert Secord posited the theory that men are more promiscuous in female-heavy populations and more faithful in male-heavy populations. Other researchers found that, in developed countries, a higher ratio of men leads to more marriage for women, less divorce, and fewer illegitimate children.
More contemporary research has shown that "female college students are less likely to have a boyfriend or go on traditional dates, and are more likely to have bad feelings about the men on campus, at schools that enroll disproportionate number of women."
Something may indeed be changing our ideas about monogamy, but it's unlikely to be online dating. This brave new world also presents an opportunity: it's time for our ideas about romance, family, and commitment to evolve, and time to abolish "traditional" marriage as society's highest ideal.