One Red Hot Country Mama!

Finally, after years of reading the opposite, the Boston Globe published a piece by Stephanie Coontz on how successful, educated women can also be happy in their sexual and romantic relationships. Here is some of the traditional view (don’t you want to just yawn?)

Or as a forbes.com writer put it in an August 22, 2006, column directed at men: "Don’t marry a woman with a career." She won’t look up to you, warned author Michael Noer; she won’t be happy in marriage; and she might even cheat on you.

Note to self – take all Forbes advice with a giant grain of salt… what kind of advice is that? More:

Columnist Noer writes on forbes.com that if a wife outearns her husband, both will be unhappy. And pundits have seized on the work by sociologists Wilcox and Nock to suggest that wearing rose-colored lenses and maintaining a "family myth" of fairness will help women bolster their marriages more than trying to get husbands to share housework and child care. Today’s advice to educated women seems to be, have a job if you want, but don’t earn too much money or expect too much help at home.

Here is some of the shiny new research on the matter:

One reason educated women are more likely to marry today than in the past is that modern men are less threatened by equality and more interested in finding a mate who can share the burdens of breadwinning. Many studies show that men now want a wife who is at a similar educational or occupational level. The 2001 Journal of Marriage and Family paper found that in mate-preference surveys taken in 1985 and 1996, intelligence and education had moved up to number 5 on men’s list of desirable qualities in a mate in both surveys, ahead of good looks. Meanwhile, the desire for a good cook and housekeeper had dropped to 14th place in both surveys, near the bottom of the 18-point scale. And in choosing a spouse, males with a college degree rate good looks much lower in importance than do high school graduates. "In a high-achieving man’s definition of an A-list woman, the A increasingly stands for ‘accomplished.’ "

Finally, an article that recognizes strength and potential in women, and the strength in the men who appreciate them . Thank you Boston Globe! Hopefully the likes of forbes.com will eventually catch up to the rest of us.