Cultural norms in choice of mate

These kinds of posts are better when the OP has brought some research to the table.

This article is written entirely from a male perspective. As a 17 year old girl I find inflammatory the way the female view point is completely absent. I think you will find that the vast majority of young women my age, myself included, are not attracted to "older" men. I also don't understand why you keep referring to "evolution". In no way would it be biologically advantageous for someone my age to procraete with an old man. You seem to forget that although men may generally remain fertile for longer than women, male fertility still declines with age. This is evident in the fact that their are increased health risks for offspring of older fathers as well as older mothers. The desirability of older men to young women only makes sense within a culture where stature and power are desirable attributes, and are more commonly held by older males. In a purely biological sense, it would make sense for young women to have children with young men who are most fertile and capable of handling the physical demands of raising a child. As the treatment of the sexes becomes more equal women have morer power and autonomy. They no longer need to rely on male counterparts to determine their position in society. Relationships are increasingly built on companionship, respect, and shared interests which are more commonly found in similar age partnerships.

Better suited to the open thread.

The best solution I’ve heard started by looking at who benefits from this norm [older women] and wondering whether they could have contributed to it.

While this is generally a good question to ask, at this point you would also need to think of a plausible mechanism by which older women could have contributed to the change. What new powers have older women (Would this be women over 30? those over 40?) gained compared to younger women, younger men and older men in this period that they could have used to change the norms so drastically? How would they have cooperated between themselves to thwart the other groups' desires?

A few centuries ago, we did not have the laws against child labour that we do today, and it was common for young children to work and support their families. This norm has changed, and I don't think we need to ask the question of who benefited and posit that there has been an increase in this-or-the-other group's power to explain the shift.

Nowadays in many parts of the world sixteen-year-old girls themselves have a say in who they hook up with, which is something a lot of societies in ancient times (and very many even now) did not grant them. This should definitely be a factor in your analysis!

While not exactly an answer to your question, this Economist article talks about certain situations where social norms and options available in the workplace etc might push younger women away from matrimony altogether, not just matrimony with much older men.

who benefits from this norm [older women]

Tsk, tsk. The norms were set up by a culture of powerful men, in order to benefit powerful men. Who benefits from the changing norm? Anyone who isn't a powerful man.

Did you ever watch that film A Beautiful Mind? Spreading out romantic advances is the pareto optimum. If nobody is sleeping with the older women, then also nobody is sleeping with the non-powerful men. Changes in sexual patterns can be thought of as victory for the average human.

And it's certainly not all sunshine and roses for the young women. Power imbalances in relationships are a risk factor for things like marital rape, controlling behavior, and general bad stuff. Oh and there's the whole "treated like property for large chunks of history" part. And as we go a bit younger, do you know what a fistula is? Yeah, just... I'm really glad the sexual norms have changed.

The best solution I’ve heard started by looking at who benefits from this norm [older women] and wondering whether they could have contributed to it.

Young men benefit from the decreased competition in the mating market.

Another, less plausible, suggestion I’ve heard is that it’s to do with mental capacity. I find this unconvincing because we have few objections to a high-status man dating a beautiful but low-intellect woman.

The objections never seemed all that few to me. The negative connotations of the term "trophy wife" are pretty well-established, IMO.

The best solution I’ve heard started by looking at who benefits from this norm [older women] and wondering whether they could have contributed to it. After all, the strength of this norm has been increased in the last sixty years or so, which coincides with the period in which women’s power has increased.

The primary mistake you're making here is confusing correlation and causation. Even if you assume that the feminism movement has been the sole cause of this, the status gains older women have made are orders of magnitude smaller than the status gains all women have made. (If you disagree with this, I'm going to tap out and let someone who is more well versed in the history of feminism make this argument.) This may have been a small bonus for them (I doubt it even entered anyone's consideration) but to me this seems like saying people invest their money because they don't want to store it in a chest in their closet. Sure, it's nice that they don't have to lock it up, but the primary reason they are investing is to make more money.

Security changed. Women are no longer forced to seek protection from powerful males in order to avoid sexual assault and the death of their children.

Puberty occurs much earlier in modern societies. Recently postpubescent girls and boys are children, and most people are turned off by the personalities of children (which of course makes evolutionary sense, as well as cultural sense in most societies). The age group you're thinking of is closer to 18 than to 15.

We have relatively gender-egalitarian norms now. In societies when older men are encouraged to date young women (and/or young men) the relationship is very asymmetric. We like having power-equal relationships, because we think it more moral, because we encourage sexual partners to be companions and friends rather than sticking to separate social spheres, and because it has become more valuable to have a partner who can help you socially and earn money than to have a fertile one.

Older women's interest would be to encourage woman-boy relationships rather than discourage man-girl ones.

I think we should look at this from a "Farmers and Foragers" perspective, as Robin Hanson often does. Foragers don't tolerate non-egalitarian relationships, and a young, vulnerable woman and an older, more-settled man have a wide gap in power. Farmers accepted marriages between young women and older men because they have more tolerance for power differences and less expectation of equality. More recently, we have switched back from farmer-style culture to forager culture, and these old-man/young-woman relationships are less tolerated.

I also think it is worth noting that women reach their peak fertility at around 23 years, not shortly after puberty. Your point still stands, because for long-term mating it is more valuable for the man to commit to a woman a few years before her fertility peak, so he can get more years of near-max fertility.

Why don’t men go for younger women?

What? They do. (My father is eight years older than my mother.) And maybe it'd be better if they didn't.

The best solution I’ve heard started by looking at who benefits from this norm [older women] and wondering whether they could have contributed to it.

Indeed, I've often witnessed women apparently suddenly lose all interest in a man as soon as they found out he was younger than them, whereas I've never seen the reverse (except in an “I don't think she would ever get with me since she found out I'm this young, so I won't even try” fashion) -- the men I know (incl. myself) don't seem to care how old a woman actually is, so long as she looks attractive. BTW, “you look younger” (“older”) is usually taken to be a compliment (an insult) here in Italy.

Hypothesis I haven't seen mentioned yet: contraceptive pills affect women's tastes in men. Specifically, the ideal of male attractiveness for young women has shifted away from older, more rugged stereotypically masculine "successful" older man, to, well, Zac Efron.

By no means the only hypothesis, there are many good ones mentioned already, I just didn't see this one and it's plausible that it's at least a contributing factor.

You're forgetting the other part of the "rich old man / sexy younger woman" trope: the young woman marries the older man for his money, and then has an affair with the handsome young pool boy. ;)