Lonely at the top

Does success make women less marriageableto men? In some cases, the answer is yes: Most women like to “marry up,” and that is harder to do if a woman is on the top floor of her profession.

But a bigger problem simply may lie in successful women’s lack of planning for marriage, said Carrie Lukas, director of policy at the Independent Women’s Forum.

Most women want a loving husband and children, Mrs. Lukas said. If they know that is what they want,”then theyshould take that goal as seriously as their goal to reach law partner by age 35.”

NewYork Times columnist Maureen Dowd has bemoaned the relationship woes of”uppity alpha” females.

The “aroma of male power is an aphrodisiac for women, but the perfume of female power is a turnoff for men,” Miss Dowd says in “Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide.”

The unfairness is everywhere, Miss Dowd writes. She cites a University of Michigan study that suggests commitment-minded men prefer women with subordinate jobs — secretary or personal assistant — over women who are supervisors. Why? Because men think women in higher-status jobs are more likely to be independent and cheat on them, a study co-author told Miss Dowd.

Miss Dowd also unearths a British report that finds that when it comes to mate selection, having a high IQ is “a plus” for men but a handicap for women.

Specifically, Miss Dowd writes, each 16-point increase in IQ raises a man’s marriage prospects by 35 percent but reduces a woman’s marriage prospects by 40 percent.

So was the feminist movement, which told women to be all that they could be, some sort of cruel hoax? laments Miss Dowd. “Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?”

Indeed, problems do arise.

“Hypergamy” refers to the historical tendency of women, especially, to want to “marry up” to a higher status or income, writes University of Washington economics professor Elaina Rose. “Hypergamy tends to disadvantage women” if they are in higher-status positions than most of the men around them, she said in a paper released in October.

An increase in well-educated men would be an ideal solution, but that doesn’t seem likely because women outnumber men, 57 percent to 43 percent, on college campuses.

Men are “increasingly not college-educated,” says Janice Crouse, senior fellow at the Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute.

This inequality forces marriage-minded women to compete with one another over a smaller pool of eligible men, said Mrs. Crouse, adding that much more should be done to increase male college enrollment.

Still, having a bachelor’s, medical or doctorate degree shouldn’t mean a woman can’t become a Mrs., research shows.

In fact, the opposite is true, said Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. “Women who aren’t employed or aren’t educated are more likely to end up unmarried mothers than married mothers,” she said.

Two studies show that college education is linked to successful marriages.

College graduates are far more likely to say they are in happy marriages, compared with people with less education, says a survey of 1,500 adults conducted this year by the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI).

Separately, a 2004 study by University of Maryland professor Steven P. Martin shows that the divorce rate among college-educated couples has declined by half since the 1970s.

Mrs. Gallagher, who wrote about the Martin study, said there could be financial or personal reasons why college-educated couples seem to do the best in marriage. Another reason, she said, may be their awareness of new data on marriage.

“College-educated Americans are undoubtedly the principal consumers of the new social science evidence that [says] divorce hurts kids,” she wrote.

Some marriage researchers think the biggest relationship problem for high-achieving women is that they simply delay marriage too long.

“In times past and still today, virtually all persons who were going to marry during their lifetimes had married by age 45,” National Marriage Project co-directors Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe wrote in the 2005 “State of Our Unions” report.

The NFI study, written by University of Texas at Austin professor NorvalGlenn, found that marrying between the ages of 23 and 27 might be optimal for couples.

Mr. Glenn deduced this by asking married couples of various ages whether they were “very happy.” Those who married between 23 and 27 were significantly more likely to answer yes.

The group least likely to say their marriages were “very happy” were those who waited until age 28 or older to marry, the NFI study found.

Certainly, people are “not doomed” if they wait until their in their 30s to marry, Mrs. Whitehead said at an NFI event. But the evidence doesn’t suggest that prolonging singlehood will translate into a more successful marriage, she said.

In many fast-paced social circles, “there’s an expectation that your career comes first and it would be crazy to be in your young 20s and thinking about marriage,” said Mrs. Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum. The peer pressure is to “not think” about marriage and instead engage in casual relationships or have live-in boyfriends.

That is shortsighted, she said, because a “career only lasts so long, while your family is going to be with you for the rest of your life.” If marriage is a woman’s goal, Mrs. Lukas said, she should “try to focus on relationships that will further that goal.”

Marrying young — as a teenager, for instance — also has a poor track record, Mrs. Gallagher said. “But if you’re 23 years old and you find the right person, you are plenty old enough to get married and make a happy marriage. Sooner is better than later.”

Ironically, the HBO series “Sex and the City,” which star Kim Cattrall described as a “valentine to singles,” ended with all the major characters in stable relationships, Mrs. Lukas observed. For most women, she said, “the single lifestyle can only last to a point” before it becomes unsatisfying.