Yeah, but let's see how many articles come out about women putting caps on their internet dates' age or pieces warning men that if they don't hop to it and find a nice woman, they're going to spend their life alone and childless. (A girl can hope, can't she?)

Oh come on Jessica. You don't really hope that men will live with a societally-induced fear of loneliness and childlessness? Parity in misery is nothing to look forward to.

nice visual!

Matt - it's not societally induced; it's biological. And she's probably joking, but there is something to be said for parity.

In fact, I agree with the author of the dating article to which this post links - women have the edge now. Under the old paradigm, men could reproduce whenver and women were beholden to The Clock. Under the new paradigm, as Lipkin observes mating can be separating from procreating, giving women the edge, since we have the womb. All we need is a vial.

you're right matt, i don't. but maybe just ONE article... ;)

OK Jane, I get that there is now a parallel biological constraint on men, though I don't think decreased viability and sperm health is the same as menopause.

But "pieces warning men that if they don't hop to it and find a nice woman, they're going to spend their life alone and childless" is a statement about society, is it not?

"[T]here is something to be said for parity."

C'mon. Is this really a competition? Take this notion to it's logical conclusion and it's bankrupcy becomes obvious. If you're joking than I applaud you macabre sense of humor. Otherwise, I'd say this is cynically inconsistent with geniune feminist principles.

That said, my experience supports this evidence. I've noticed that as I reach my mid-30s my sexual fantasies often include impregnation (and yes, with the notion of having a family rather than just random progeny) to my sister's raucous amusement.

I'm not sure how my comments are inconsistent with feminism. But they're coming from a subjective place, rather than a rational one. So I'll give you that.

Why wasn't this done sooner? I mean...studying reproduction for a number of anatomy and physiology classes, it makes a gal wonder.

This makes perfect, logical sense...but who's going to pay attention to the findings until it starts to show prevalent destructive tendencies in large populations? Certainly, if women want to get pregnant they have to monitor pre-pregnancy behavior (I know...no one likes to hear it) but there are strong, positive correlations between body weight, smoking, drinking, or and female fertility--so why shouldn't there pressure on male "pre-pregnancy" behavior? There are so many sperm, so many chances for a fatal mutation. Drug abuse, stress, anxiety, and alcoholism has shown to have effects on the fertility of younger men, why can't age and its numerous mutative qualities affect older men and their offspring?

I just had two seminars in the past two weeks on gender and medicine and race and medicine that were trying to eliminate the existence of biological race and prevalent gender distinctions. We rely too much on stereotypes that try to prove how women and men are scientifically designed to be unequal in contemporary medicine that it's begun to affect our social perceptions and expectations. That's probably why no one considered studying these correlations before. Findings like this make me hopeful, but I hope they have better control subjects in future studies.

"but there are strong, positive correlations between body weight, smoking, drinking, or and female fertility"

Erm...smoking, drinking, or anxiety and female fertility. Writing just isn't working out for me lately.

The other day I was browsing match.com with one of my girlfriends. I have a profile up (I probably shouldn't... I'm never interested in anyone so I'm basically throwing my money away) and regularly get emails from men significantly over my explicit age preference (as much as 4 years younger and up to 8 years older than me, which I think is totally reasonable -- someday I may go younger as well but I'm pretty young myself, 21 is a good limit for the guy). Usually I just ignore them, though occasionally I select the option that lets you outright reject them, just because I'm so irritated that they would presume to contact me when I'm clearly not looking for a significantly older guy (my friend is on eHarmony, which lets you give men a reason for rejecting them, and she will regularly tell them outright that they are too old. My friend rocks).

Anyway, we were browsing profiles and were astonished at the number of men who will date down 10, 15, 20 years, but won't date up more than a couple (or in some cases, wouldn't even date anyone their age). There was alcohol involved, so we mocked them pretty brutally. Which made us feel a little better. But still totally squicked out.

men have biological clocks too.

Duh!

These people could have saved a lot of money by just asking around, ya know.

Somewhere in my late twenties, I very suddenly went from hating babies and wondering why/how people could think they are cute, to "I want to have a baby right now!".

Law Fairy - LOL, yes you are being more than fair with your age limits. The men who don't respect your limits deserve your alcohol-fueled flaming.

The politics of dating are brutal. The anonymity of online just takes it to a new level.

I think this is very useful information to get out to men, but I also think more and more men are realizing that the greater the difference in age between them and their partner, the more hurdles there might be in life planning, etc.

Not that I would ever disuade anyone from choosing someone they love, regardless of age, but pointing out to men that there are advantages to dating within your own generation has been useful in some of my conversations with guys.

We've been sold a myth that we can keep on dating younger and younger women as we grow older without any consequences, and that's just a lie. There are consequences and sometimes (but not always) the better choice is to date contemporaries.

And as far as Jessica's "one article" comment, I don't read her as suggesting that we try to freak men out as much as women. I took her comment as both tongue-in-cheek and a means for pointing out how we've become so used to media playing on women's fertility insecurities that it's hard to imagine the same beind done to men.

BTW, did y'all know that men have testosterone cycles too? Women aren't the only ones with "times of the month" :)

Law Fairy -
How is Match.com? I've got a profile on True.com and I don't like it. They auto-email people you'd never pick yourself and then those people (who aren't remotely a match for you) of course send back "no thank you" emails, so you can have the super-confidence-building experience of being rejected by a few dozen strangers you never intended to contact in the first place. FUN!
At least they do a check to ensure members aren't married.

I like the idea of being able to reject with a reason, but I won't use eHarmony. I've read they don't allow members who have teh gay. That's half my dating pool gone right there!

Dating sucks.

Judging from that picture, I thought that article was going to be about priests who are clock fetishists. Or Antique Roadshow.

Bad news for Mr Hefner's soon to be new wife!

zinger...

The article says 40-50, so I take that to be an average age of about 50 years. which is pretty much older than most of us posting here, so no worries.

But I've been known to be attracted to good looking older women, so I'm not much of a majority statistic here.

Wait a second,

Women can suffer through decades of "You're going to grow old and childless if you don't start breedin' NOW" and yet when it comes to men that's unfair to do even in jest?

What's good for the goose apparently hurts the ganders wittle feelings.

Antahkarana
The New York Times article wasn't accurate about what is known about advanced paternal age- the age when the risk of the offspring having autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, certain cancers, diabetes1, MS begins to rise significantly. Remembers all of the people interviewed for the article have a financial stake. Most of those people know that when men are 35 and up risk of autism, schizophrenia, MS, diabetes 1 begins to be statistically significant. You need to do your on research on advanced paternal age and the paternal age effect.

About seven years ago Dr. Leslie B. Raschka wrote:

"The age of the father is an important determinant of the health of future generations. Children conceived by fathers older than 36 years of age are at increased risk for genetic illness due to recent mutation in the male germ cell.
The genetic illness of a child could originate in a mutation related to the age of the father or to a mutation in the spermatogenesis caused by ageing in previous generations. The ageing process in the male is an important, probably the most important, cause of genetic illness in human populations."

There is a lot more research that shows this aging of the sperm.

"A recent study revealed that sperm in men older than 35 showed more DNA damage than that of men in the younger age group. In addition, the older men's bodies appeared less efficient at eliminating the damaged cells, which could pass along problems to offspring."

Also for example:

Ethylin Jabs, M.D., director of the Center for Craniofacial Development and Disorders at Johns Hopkins.

Importantly, disorders linked to advancing paternal age begin to increase rapidly at about the same time as maternal risks increase -- age 33 to 35."
It would be a very good idea, I believe and I am not the only knowledgeable person to believe this, for men to start a semen bank account in their 20s.

It was deceptive of Rabin's article to talk of the mid to later 40s as the time to become concerned. The epidemic of non-familial autism is directly related, in part to all the men fathering babies past the age of 35.

Thanks for clearing up its misconceptions, anniepema! That is all very fascinating...I'm going to look into those studies immediately.

Vervain, it's okay. Eh. I dunno. I'm going through a phase where I don't know how I feel about online dating. I have a hard time trusting even some of my closest friends (thus, even moreso for random guys on the internet, no matter how pretty), and it's very hard for me to be genuinely interested in someone I don't have some kind of baseline of trust with -- so I find myself reticent even to talk to most of the guys online. That said, I've definitely met and dated guys I met on match and it wasn't horrid. How's that for a ringing endorsement? ;)

Match is not very useful in terms of actually helpful personality matching -- it bases its matches on VERY superficial qualifiers. Then again, it will at least screen out of your mutual matches guys (or gals) you're unlikely to be remotely attracted to.

I did eHarmony for a while and HATED it. It's way too expensive for the crap matches they give you. I got scores of men who were not REMOTELY my type physically (and, I can admit it, I'm fairly superficial. I won't go out with a guy if I think he's just butt-ugly. Sorry) and often guys who had OBVIOUS character dealbreakers. I got guys who said they were looking for housewives (WTF!!!), guys who were disrespectful of religious persons (I'm one), and guys who went on about "femininity" and other bullshit. I cancelled my subscription because I was sick of it, and it was obvious they have no goddamn clue about matching women who don't fit their cookie-cutter ideals about womanliness.

UM,

What's good for the goose apparently hurts the ganders wittle feelings.

Hehehehehe. I heart you.

Law Fairy, there was just an essay on salon.com about that same subject. The article's here - it's pretty interesting.

I'm with you on this, TLF. I did online dating for a few years (nerve.com), and I always made sure never to email a guy whose age limits were so appalling, even if I fell within them and he superficially matched what I was looking for. I felt it was a pretty good indicator of how he perceived women.

I also wouldn't email anyone who specified weight limits, not because it's wrong to have personal preferences, but because the whole dynamic squicked me out.

I thought that this had been found out some years ago.

Norbizness, you mean you don't have some cuddle time with your clock on a daily basis? What kind of a man are you?

"Dear Prudie" in Slate today had a letter from a guy feeling his age--nearing 60--who (among other things) bemoans the fact that women under 50 just don't seem to find him attractive.

Oh, the injustice!

It really is pervasive.

My $.02 on Match.com -

I tried Match.com a couple years ago and hated it so much that I didn't even complete the one-week free trial. I think I lasted 3 days. On the first day, I got at least 50 e-mails - no exaggeration. It was completely overwhelming. Some of the e-mails were from men 10-15 years older than me (much older than I specifically stated I was interested in). One of them even sent me a nasty second e-mail calling me all sorts of names when I didn't respond to his first e-mail within 24 hours. That was when I canceled early.

On the other hand, a good friend of mine was on Match.com for at least a year and loved it.

It is, Vervain. And grotesque. When my grandfather was trying to meet women through personal ads, he was 73, and he told me that he wasn't interested in dating a woman older than 66! He went out on a date with a 50-year-old woman and seemed insulted that she did not wish for a second date, because he was so much older than she.

I love my grandfather, but my patience was sorely tried.

st3ph, the same thing has totally happened to me!

I've had guys who actually have the audacity to chastise me for not getting back to them promptly (after they do this, I promptly decide not to get back to them at all). It's always some kind of whiny "why won't you just give me a chance?" spiel. In fact, it's convinced me that the best way to respond is to wait a few days and see if he goes apeshit crazy before I even decide whether or not to talk to him. It can make a pretty convenient screening mechanism ;)

On match.com & internet dating: I have not had the pleasure but have had friends who experienced moderate success with sites dedicated to some kind of affinity group--religion, hobbies, alma maters. It narrows the field a bit, and more reasonably simulates the experience of meeting someone through a friend or irl social group.

There are problems with that of course. Mostly that the religion-based sites often cater to (anti-feminist) fanatics and the other choices (like thesquare.com) are hopelessly elitist. But the free-for-all sites are more likely to overwhelm you with incompatible prospects, while these at least make sure you have one thing in common.

My dear husband's clock is ticking loud and clear, while mine is not yet blaring any alarms (we're less than 3 years apart). All the same, the delay for career is a strong counterbalance for men--he is anxious but unwilling to procreate before his career has taken off. Which is tough when his career is "writer"--no guarantee of a lucrative or established career at all. It's a problem.

I'm a little late on this, but the best online dating site I found back in my single days was www.okcupid.com. Attracts lots of feminist guys, very easy to screen out losers based on different categories, and it's completely free. And no, I don't work for them.

I've had guys who actually have the audacity to chastise me for not getting back to them promptly (after they do this, I promptly decide not to get back to them at all). It's always some kind of whiny "why won't you just give me a chance?" spiel.
It's always either whiney or with an attitude of "I can't believe you haven't replied yet, so I'm just going to write again." That usually gets the response that details exactly why I'm just not that into them: Too old, not living in my area, smoker, etc. etc. you're not, in fact, my type.

At 32, I find myself aged out of the running for lots of men--most of whom are older than me (i.e. a 36 yo who will only date women aged 19-27--good luck with that.)

Ugly In Pink, I've used okcupid! That's actually how I met the last guy I dated (he wasn't so feminist... I dumped him, but not as fast as I should have. Ah well) :P

I LOVE their quizzes. And I love how it can be both a dating AND a social networking site. Also, I have a success story about it -- after I met the guy I was dating (and liked him for a while), one of my girlfriends signed up because she figured, hey, maybe I could meet someone too. Well, she did, and they're engaged now. Yay okcupid!

Constant Dater, that's disgusting. I've had a number of men ask me out (both in real life and online) who seem like otherwise nice, great guys. But they're significantly older than me (e.g., a 42-year-old guy who, from talking to him anyway, actually seemed like a pretty decent guy and somewhat feminist, or at least feminist-friendly). And, maybe this is wrong, but whatever -- no matter how great he seems I won't date him BECAUSE I know there are so many awesome women out there who are closer to his age. And I just feel like I owe it to women everywhere to send guys the message, however I can, that if you're 42, you don't get to focus on 25-year-old women. Sorry, buddy. Look for women around your age. I happen to know some pretty awesome ones, if you'd like to be pointed in the right direction.

Now, that said, this rule certainly wouldn't prevent me from hooking up with, say, George Clooney. But movie stars kind of live on a whole different planet, so I rationalize it that way ;)

Any "older" females here interested in an unemployed 25 year old college graduate? ;) (Or do you know of a place to find such women?)

We can't forget that al the insecurities and harsh realities of the male in charge are often transferred to the female body--so naturally, boys have known all along that their biological clocks were ticking!

Doug, you seem like the kept guy played by George Peppard in Breakfast At Tiffany's haha.

The only online service I've checked out was eharmony a few years ago and the guys were ugly and traditional indeed. The site is Christian, homophobic and semi-racist too so it makes sense.

Doug S., it would help if you wrote novels that never got published too. :)