The most common argument against when people say dating today is much harder, site the growing statistic of men never approaching women, and the growing divide between men and women politically and in terms of dating and what ages they get together is “ just look around you see plenty of short, bald, fat, whatever other adjective you want to throw in men with women all the time. How did your parents get together?”

The issue is the majority of these couples are old. These couples grew up in a time where being religious was still the majority among people in the United States. They grew up in a time where they didn’t even have cell phones until they were working age and so had to use a landline to plan a date a week in advance. This means a lot of data on men and women dating is simply outdated and shouldn’t be considered seriously. Really we should only be using data for the 18 to 30 cohort because that is who will determine future birth rates, social stability, and determines future social engagement. Even the OkCupid data that we all site consistently here is about 20 years old, it was of an era where online dating was not the norm and seen as taboo, so really shouldn’t be used as an argument for what men and women today do universally.

“Most adults born in 1940-1944 were married by age 25 (79.6% of women and 65.3% of men). Half a century later, the change was dramatic: Only 30.3% of women and 20.3% of men born from 1990-1994 were married by age 25.” https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/08/does-marrying-younger-mean-marrying-more-often.html#:~:text=When%20and%20How%20Often%20People,those%20born%20in%201990%2D1994.

My point is more any statistics we used to debate here are often lagged and represent different social eras entirely. Statistically speaking if you say today’s marriage rates are fine you are inherently including people who have been married for 20 years because they grew up in a society that promoted it, and you are underselling the problem because you’re not accounting for the expected decline of the future statistics given today’s climate