In this post, I want to look at a series of tweets from an ordinary pro-marriage pastor. He is concerned about declining marriage rates. He observed young people in his church, and he did some social science research. And he’s come up with a theory about why young Christians are delaying marriage, or not getting married at all.
First, here’s the marriage rate, accurate to 2020:
This pastor is just talking about ordinary Christian men in his tweets below, not the ones who do a ton of research on apologetics, etc.
Here is what the pastor said:
I saw this chart a while back and scratched out some rough thoughts…
Around 2010 or 2011, I noticed a significant shift in “the relationship marketplace.” I can sum up this shift with two trends I saw in my church circles.
First, I noticed that many (not all) average to above average Christian men in overall quality (e.g. health, looks, ambition, etc.) were struggling to get a girlfriend. At first, I thought these guys were just being too picky or had some other major deficiency. After all, there are a lot of lazy foolish men out there. This wasn’t the case with these men. They weren’t the top 1%. But they were quality and had very reasonable (perhaps too low) standards for a girlfriend.
Second, I noticed that many (not all) average to below average Christian women (I know me suggesting that such a thing exists is upsets a lot you) in overall quality (e.g. beauty, personality, temperament, etc.) had a fear of a committed relationship and were extremely picky. They would often complain that there weren’t any good men. But there were good men. They just thought those men were below them. They weren’t. The arrogance and pride of these women was shocking to me at the time. Not anymore.
I ran my concerns past a boomer pastor. He dismissed it. He thought all the women were just great and men needed to step up to win them. Man up and all that. That really was the moment I realized that there was some form of generational blindness related to what is happening. And that’s why I started tracking trends in sexuality not just generally but specifically as they related to dating (aka the relationship marketplace).
Now let me point out 2 particularly concerning trends that overturn older assumptions about the relationship marketplace.
First more and more women today are delaying marriage into their 30s. They, however, aren’t delaying sex. Very few of these unmarried women are virgins when they turn 30. Stats vary but it’s below 10% and perhaps closer to 5%. Moreover, these women have multiple sexual partners. It’s difficult to calculate the number but a survey of the material points toward between 7-14 sexual partners prior to getting married right around 30. Others say that is a low number. Regardless, the consequences of this are hard to overstate. This sort sexual promiscuity has intense negative emotional, spiritual, and even physical consequences in the lives of these women. Also, it means that a large number of these women are using hormonal birth control and having abortions.
[…]Second, as you see in the chart above, male virginity between ages 18-30 has increased 20% since ’89. That’s good, right? No. It’s doubtful that this increase in virginity is directly connected to an increase in morality among men.
[…]So who are these women having sex with?
There appears to be men who are consider “top tier guys” by women who are having a lot casual sex with a lot of women. Supposedly, 20% of the men are having 80% of the sex.
The pastor mentions that 80% of the young women these days are chasing the “top” 20% of men. It’s important to understand that these are not the top 20% of men according to criteria like commitment ability, protecting, providing and moral / spiritual leading. These are the “top” 20% of men according to appearance. In fact, if a man has definite, defensible views on moral or spiritual issues, that is bad, because that means that he is strict, judgmental and boring. Not high status.
What do young women consider “high status”?
Look at this survey of women who use Bumble about where they set the minimum and maximum height of men they are seeking:
What this shows is that women have the height slider set to find men who are between 6 feet tall and 7 feet tall. The average height of a North American man is 5’9″. This is what they value in a man.
Have a look at this survey of OKCupid users:
Again, the men with the highest status are judged by their appearances. And how do 80% of the women get the attention of these top 20% of men? Why, by giving them premarital sex, of course. Since these men are swimming in attention from 80% of the women, there is no need for them to commit first in order to get sex. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Although you might think that promiscuity makes men unstable, selfish and low status, you would be wrong. These are the men that women want.
As famous feminist Hanna Rosin explains:
But this analysis downplays the unbelievable gains women have lately made, and, more important, it forgets how much those gains depend on sexual liberation. Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-school party—are for the first time in history more successful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
I’ve written about how feminists support the hook-up culture before.
They aren’t looking for men who will commit until they reach their mid-30s or 40s, and feel peer pressure from their friends who are married and having kids. And many Christian women think that hooking up with hot bad boys is compatible with Christianity, because Christianity is just about God making women happy by letting them do whatever they feel like doing “in the moment”.
What Christian women, their parents and pastors believe
Here are some things I’ve heard over the years by Christian women, their parents, and their pastors:
- there’s nothing wrong with women choosing men based on height, appearance, and bad boy character traits
- bad boy character can easily be fixed by nagging, sex-withholding, and threatening divorce
- marriage will magically happen when the woman feels like getting married, until then she should focus on casually “dating” attractive men, career, travel and fun
- a woman’s ability to choose good men and be a good wife and mother isn’t harmed by having premarital sex with hot bad boys
- men aren’t discouraged by a woman’s student loan debt or secular left indoctrination, or her desire to put the kids in daycare and public schools, so she can keep working after they are born
- it’s wrong for men to have standards about what they want in a wife and mother, or to prefer early marriage
- if Christian men want to attract women, they should spend more money on expensive cars, clothes and watches
- women are just as likely to get pregnant at 35 as they are at 20, as long as they are in good shape and healthy
- studies that show that past promiscuity causes the woman to be unhappy, and the marriage to be unstable, are all false
There are costs and risks to men who decide to marry. There are external threats from policy, courts, the workplace, the schools, etc. It’s become dangerous for men to advocate for Christian views, and having a family makes it even more risky. These risks make sense when the man gets early investment from a woman – support, investment and many well-raised children. These risks make NO sense when there is no early investment from a woman. A woman who chased “high status” men will never be attracted to a good man. She may eventually want to settle for one, but she will never respect him.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Men want virgins.
Not STDs.
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Men with a future don’t want women with a past.
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Fantastic post. That’s a keeper.
“A woman who chased “high status” men will never be attracted to a good man. She may eventually want to settle for one, but she will never respect him.”
Yes, hence the term “Alpha Widow.” A guy who is an 8 will gladly do it with a woman who is a 5 or 6 who gives it up easily, but of course, he’ll never invest in her or marry her. But the 5 or 6 woman now thinks she’s an 8. Worse yet, over the years she’ll develop a composite Alpha guy that has all the best traits of her many partners. The Beta husband she settles for has to compete with a fictional character. He would lose out to her memories of any Alpha, but he really gets crushed by the composite.
So glad that the pastor woke up to the truth. I hope many other pastors recognize that and educate their congregations, as well as hold members to biblical standards.
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good point. Because when I try to explain this stuff to friends and family, they look at me as if I’m acting like Neverland’s real.
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Huge props to the pastor who analyzed the data. I hope this might signal a shift in the church away from treating women who identify as Christian like demigods.
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I have seen this firsthand, for years I attended a large, wealthy church. Several of the most attractive women there could’ve married any of the men, some of whom had very lucrative careers. Yet, they wanted to pursue short flings, some of them with “bad boys.” A shame and heartbreaking, for the men there, all of whom realized they were better off with not pursuing these women, and for society as a whole, and it will be for these women, when they finally come to their senses and realize none of the good men want them after they expended their beauty/youth/fertility on happy good times.
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Sadly, you are correct. I have witnessed it in my own extended family. A “party-girl” young niece who cannot understand why now none of the good men are remotely interested in her.
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Great post WK.
Lookie here, even Michael Foster kind of gets it. But did you see what his recommendations were? Nothing in there about what women should be doing.
How about this, Mike? How about
Men: Don’t marry any woman having sex with men she’s not married to.
WOMEN: STOP HAVING SEX WITH MEN YOU AREN’T MARRIED TO.
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I dont think any pastor is good on these issues. I was surprised to see any pastor get even a fraction of this right. In my experience, most of them don’t read anything about the changes that feminism has caused to women. They just assume that if the girl is cute and is carrying a Bible, then men should want to marry her.
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You’ve got one pastor here that is! Thanks in part to you, I make certain any young man I speak to about marriage picks a wife of like mind!
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Oh, excellent! Thank you for being good on this issue!
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WK, you wrote:
Here are some things I’ve heard over the years by Christian women, their parents, and their pastors:
You left out the ones that most Christian women are saying:
“Not All Women Are Like That”
“I am not like that” (or, somewhat less commonly, “I am not like that anymore.”)
“My friends are not like that”
“The women who go to Church here are not like that”
“Christian women are not like that”
“Yeah, OK, true, but there are exceptions to that.”
You see, WK, it’s gotten so bad and so prevalent that even women are being forced to admit how bad it’s gotten and how bad THEY are. So they have to explain it away with the “not like that” and “but there’s exceptions”. Every time women’s bad behavior is talked about, the women present are just compelled to (1) exclude themselves and women they “know”; and (2) deflect to “exceptions”.
Women want to think they’re “special”. You can’t generalize, especially about them. Women in their own minds are all special snowflakes. Women in their own minds believe they’re “exceptions”, so therefore, the rules don’t apply to them.
Women take all of this extremely personally, because talk like this makes them feel bad. They know men are onto them. They know men are figuring this out.
Which means women are losing power. It means they’re losing control of the narrative.
And that’s when they start shaming you… “Misogynist” “incel” “bitter” “you hate women” “You hate God” “You’re not a real Christian” “You need to check your heart”…. etc.
That’s how this goes, and it’s why very little headway is being made.
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They have no interest in solving the problems that are concerning to marriage-minded men. Its all denial and deflection. You just have to look at the Twitter replies to the pastor, in this and other threads he’s done. It’s not conern or cooperation. Its rage and rebellion. Nothing men can do if women don’t want to be held accountable for their own choices. And i am talking about conservative Christian women.
The older women are not like this, it’s the new generation of young women who are unfit for marriage.
When I was 25, i was reading people like Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Danielle Crittenden, F. Carolyn Craglia, Jennifer Roback Morse, etc. To find out all about how marriage and parenting work.
I cannot start at level zero with a 35 year old woman who has not read Suzanne Venker, Helen Smith, etc. I don’t have time now to explain their own sexual and maternal nature to them. They should have done it on their own when they were younger.
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And i am talking about conservative Christian women. The older women are not like this, it’s the new generation of young women who are unfit for marriage.
I disagree. The older women are like this too. The older women are just as bad, if not worse. I know they’re worse because I’m older and those women are in my age cohort. I grew up with them. I went to high school and college with them. I work with them. I dated them. I had sex with some of them. My friends had sex with a LOT more of them. I married one of them. I go to church with them.
I know what they did, because I was there when they did those things, and I saw what they did and who they did those things with.
I hear them talk. I see what they do. I see what they’re doing and what they plan to do.
The older women are every bit like this, and always have been.
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Boomer women were raised in the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Everybody was doing it back then. Some boomer women have figured it out with age, but they still won’t speak up against it because they feel like it is hypocritical of them to speak against their former promiscuity. (It’s not. It’s called “wisdom learned the hard way.”)
Other boomer women just look back at it as the good old days, and want more of it. Even if they call themselves “christian” now. I know boomer women in both categories, but very few speak up against this Age of Jezebel. And until they do, it will continue.
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I think the numbers definitely show that there were more marriage-minded stay-at-home mom women in previous generations, but you’re right to say that most of the women today don’t speak up against feminism.
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Definitely, but check out the abortion rates in the mid 70’s right after Roe. Yikes! I think we went up to 1.6 million per year rapidly. And many of those were later term and brutal saline abortions too.
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they feel like it is hypocritical of them to speak against their former promiscuity.
Maybe. I think most of them won’t speak up because they know they’ll get canceled and shouted down and persecuted just like men do if they speak up.
I think another huge reason they don’t say anything is because they’re in the “herd” of women, and the hallmarks of the herd are consensus and everyone feeling good. There can’t be disagreement in the herd, and you can’t make anyone in the herd feel bad.
Women know the second worst thing you can do to a woman is make her feel bad. If you make a woman feel bad, WomanWorld deems you guilty of a most heinous crime. Plus, the women refraining have Felt Bad before and will get mad if you make them Feel Bad.
One of the cardinal rules of WomanWorld is “every woman must feel good, or at least not feel bad; and if you make a woman feel bad, then you’re bad.”
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That’s why so many of them vote for bloodthirsty Dimm demons.
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Its nice for me to see groups likes Moms for Liberty and Women in Apologetics bucking the trend, but that’s the exception, not the rule. LibsOfTikTok is really good, too. I also love the women who write for Daily Wire and The Federalist. Ashe Schow at DW seems to cover every story that comes out about false accusations against men.
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Honestly the fact that any Christian leader has an attitude that isn’t “blame men harder” deserves credit.
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I’m shocked by it. They just keep accepting women’s feminist-soaked choices as a given and resort to shaming men into taking bad deals. I was literally chastised this week by a Southern Baptist who married a liberal teacher with an English degree, who bullied him into voting for Biden, telling me how wonderful marriage is.
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My story from above gets better, or should I say, worse. At least one of the women figured out that all the men in the group would pay attention/lavish money on her and that they were at her beck and call.
She worked her way through the entire group, each of whom practically fought to shower her with dinners, trips, and attention. Later I became one the few to know that she was living a double or triple life and most likely had at least two affairs during this time not with just “bad boys,” but “criminal boys.”
One of them was a drug dealer, I am fairly certain, and when she finally got away from him after he used her and abused here she went to another that liked to get drunk/high and get into fights with police officers.
I stopped counting his arrest record after it got to twenty. But, hey, he was “totally hawt!”
I hate to sound bitter, and I would like to think she was the very extreme example, but stuff like this to a lesser or greater degree has been the norm from what I see in most of the women in my area.
There was a large drug recovery program in this church, and I was warned by one of the women addicts there to be very careful about choosing a mate there since so many of them were involved/broken by years of drug abuse.
I also noted that here appeared to be a pipeline that funneled the most attractive of the recovering female addicts to the richest men in the church.
This would take the form of an older “mama bear” type “guiding” the younger women. It was very frustrating if you were and everyday joe like me hoping to date.
Looking back, it was God protecting me. Thank GOD I never married any of them, though there might have been one or two good ones there. Today I pastor two churches and am happy most of the time. I still hope/pray one day I might find somebody, but now I wonder, as Wintery said, is it worth losing what I have due to an ill-advised marriage?
We have been sold a bill of goods in our society, that one MUST have a mate and that marriage/sex is the know-all, be-all, end-all to all life’s problems.
It is even a problem in the church where young people are told, “Just put God first and He will send the right one!” But what if He doesn’t? There is such a thing as being called singleness and you are freer to serve God that way.
This has been a long post, thanks for listening!
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Thanks for sharing! It makes no sense to me for women to be wasting their young years on men who are in olved on criminal activity or terrorism. What good is that stuff for purposes of commitment?
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To my point….I simply don’t know how this one woman that I described thinks, I am almost certain she has hidden mental issues and she was strung out on meth for a while….I am grateful she is off it, as far as I can tell, but the fact she is with another that is a troublemaker is disturbing!
God never promised us a rose garden, nor did he promise a spouse. You and I grew up in the same era, and at this point I am starting to wonder if I might be better off remaining single!
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Are these true Christian women? It sounds like the women you all are talking about do not live up to the Bible’s standard.
“Your doctrine and your life must match”
“Be equally yolked”
My church (Bay Area Christian Church) must be an outlyer…… we really try to coach and mentor our Single Professionals through the Word. They date… get mentored/counseled…. then marry. I’ve seen the many successful marriages continue to flourish and be an example for myself and others. And abstinence is definitely in the mix as God commands it.
So I ask again ….. do these women truly have a relationship with God or is the word Christianity just being thrown around as a label …. because someone apparently goes to church and Carrie’s a Bible? I don’t know any of these women in my congregation. And maybe I just don’t know them… they’re could be a few stragglers. But the women and young ladies in our congregation have convictions to be obedient to God’s Word.
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You are correct – they are pretenders. Churchians who call themselves “Christian.”
You’re in a good, but rare, church. Praise God!
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Great post. Let me add my 2 cents. Pastors, people in churches and so on. Don’t try to steer women onto the right path(marriage and families). They do the complete opposite by ignoring certain teachings in the Bible for example being a virgin is extremely important and being submissive.
Here’s a little story, when I was a little kid I would go to church every single Sunday with relatives, now I would go through the motions of standing up or walking to front to give tithes to the church and so on. But my relatives never tried to teach me what’s in the Bible but was mad when I didn’t believe in God when I was older. Same thing with these women. When you don’t teach them, and teach them the opposite we get highest divorce rates and record numbers of low birthrates.
That what frustrates me, older Christians wonder why the US is falling apart but at the same time knows what the problem and know how to fix the problems but don’t want to fix the problem.
Another story that proves my point. One of my relatives is a boomer, goes to church every single Sunday. And one day I was wondering if the older generation were more consistent with what Jesus teaches.
Long story short, the answer is no. I hinted at God wanting his children to have families and she said yes God want families, but I can’t(talking about women) can’t pop babies here and there and not have money( in other words being a single mother is what she’s considered being a family but need money for that).
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I dont if you have checked out my podcast with my female friend Desert Rose, but she is ultra conservative, and our goal with the podcast is to get women comfortable with all kinds of topics like this one. Women who don’t listen to men might be willing to listen to woman.
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I had a similar disheartening experience with an Uncle who supposed to be a “Pastor”. When asked why I was still single, I mentioned the “Christians” who don’t believe in living by what the Bible says and he jokingly told me, “Well, Rock. I hope you aren’t talking about the Bible and pulling out scriptures on the first date.”
And that struck me as odd. What if I do? If these ladies claim to be the Christians they say they are, why would it be bad to talk about God and the Bible on the first date? I didn’t want to put forth the debate right then and there, because I already had a lot of sensitive background info on my uncle. He and my aunt divorced about 8 years ago. She was with someone else 5 years ago, and lo and behold, just this past month, I see my Aunt back together with this Uncle. I’m quite certain this is the literal manifestation of what Jesus Christ said about divorce at Matt 19:9.
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Imagine that! Go on a date with a “Christian” woman, talk about the Bible, and it is somehow controversial?!?
That’s what churchianity has brought us.
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Nice ideas. Nothing particularly new, I think Dalrock was covering the same trends like ten years ago, but still poignant today, and necessary to remind people of.
One problem is that the “church” is way too diverse, you have woke Christians and boomer Christians and staunchly Republican/Democrat ones… not saying this is a good thing, just saying the more you widen your circle the more like the world your results will be.
Heck, even among the “homeschooling, traditional, reformed” kind of circles I revolve in there are some crazy ideas and influences.
I particularly hate the “stay pure until marriage” mantra we give the young people in the church, while simultaneously pushing girls into a useless degree, debt, and career before thinking about marriage. This denies basic biology and leads to a crazy amount of temptation, most do not survive. And it’s stupid for family formation and the future of the church.
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“while simultaneously pushing girls into a useless degree, debt, and career before thinking about marriage. This denies basic biology and leads to a crazy amount of temptation, most do not survive.”
I blog about all that stuff here. And i have a podcast too, with two episodes on masculinity and marriage.
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Here are some things I’ve heard over the years by Christian women, their parents, and their pastors:
there’s nothing wrong with women choosing men based on height, appearance, and bad boy character traits</I<
And yet these same Christian women, parents and pastors will vilify, pillory, and lambaste men for being attracted to pretty women, not being attracted to unattractive or obese women, and for openly stating that they want to date and marry pretty women. These same Christian women, parents, and pastors openly question these men's Christianity merely because these men are being men – they want pretty women and don't want unattractive or obese women.
These people expect Christian men to be eunuchs. They expect Christian men to have no standards at all.
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And so things shall continue until society collapses.
Honestly, what can we expect from the West, unless the whole of male society rises up and throws off the shackles of a government that acts as women’s personal goon squad. Those who rule over us know they can rule with ease so long as women hold the reins, and they are doing everything they can to ensure it stays that way. Offend a woman and someone with the power and authority to harm you, up to death, will not be far behind.
Also I do blame the internet and interconnectivity as being a big part of the problem. In the case of women, we have simply opened up the world to them. Instead of being excited at being pursued by local men or going after local men themselves, the internet has offered up an unending plate of fantasy and an equally unending flow of thirsty men willing to treat a women they will never meet like a queen, even to the point of giving her money! Seeing how the internet has removed barriers between all peoples gives the story of the tower of Babel much more weight:
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
We have removed the communications barrier between all of mankind. We can talk with anyone, anywhere at any time in an instant and in real time. “…then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them…”. The plans of mankind are wickedness, and now we see those plans unleashed a hundred fold, including the rebelliousness of women.
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Right now we have a $30 trillion national debt. The amount of money available for husband substitute programs is declining. So it will be really interesting to see how women adapt to that, and to a plummeting marriage rate.
I think men have the key to the problem, namely, to opt out of relationships that are not focused on serving God.
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And guns, ha, ha. I jest. ~
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This attitude among women was gaining popularity in the 1960s as evidenced by the Mamas & Papas song “Words of Love”.
“Words of love, so soft and tender,
Won’t win a girl’s heart anymore.
If you love her,then you must send her
Somewhere where she’s never been before.”
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Notice on the chart how women rate men. The 3 top levels of men equal 19. Proof the 80/20 rule does exist and by women proved this.
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