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The age old age question

For any social anthropologist worth his clipboard the streets of Pattaya would surely be akin to studying a human-sized Petri dish when it comes to the mating habits of Homo sapiens. Yet, to the best of my limited knowledge, no reputable seat of learning, let alone a disreputable version of same, has ever bothered to descend en-masse to conduct the kind of research for which foundations and think-tank agencies hand over fistfuls of dollars to conduct. Instead, mating studies, be they of humans, zoological specimens, poultry, or woolly mammoths, tend to take place in areas like Vermont in the United States or Cornwall in England. The findings in these studies seem to surprise a majority of the researchers. Yet I can’t help thinking if they had spent just two weeks in the maelstrom of evenings on Walking Street, getting a little inebriated in the company of scantily-clad ladies of easy virtue and poorly-attired foreign men of equally easy virtue, the results would have been arrived at in a far speedier fashion. The cost of the research, even allowing for such unusual items as ‘lady drinks’ and ‘bar fines’, would have been so economically efficient the same group of researchers would be able to find an excuse to come back year on year for further ‘confirmation’ of their original findings.

The above preamble was brought on by the findings of an overseas-conducted study, this time by a pair of boffins from the eminent Stanford University, who discovered men tend to marry down in age no matter whether they’re wealthy or poor, educated or possess the IQ of a turnip. The research showed the older a man is when he marries after 40, no matter if he’s successful in terms of monetary wealth or educational level, the greater the chance of his bride being significantly younger.

“If you look at guys who do marry, the poor guys marry down in age just as much as the rich guys do,” said Paula England, a Stanford University sociologist and co-author of the study. “That was kind of surprising to us,” (What she really meant: surprising to her).

Men in their 40s tend to marry women who are an average of seven years younger; men in their 50s are marrying brides an average 11 years younger; men in their 60s go even further in tending to marry women who are 13 years younger. Men in Pattaya marry women who are anywhere between their milk teeth and the final year of high school. That’s not really true, but if the age difference of anywhere between a quarter and half a century, the average in Fun Town, is taken into account then it may as well be

England and research partner Elizabeth McClintock of Stanford said the male ideal of beauty is found in women in their early 20s. Did I hear a ‘here, here’ from the Pattaya Old, Fat, Bastards Collective? That ideal remains fixed for men (and advertising industry executives, Hollywood, Bollywood, and Thai movie makers, clothes designers and, need I go on?), even while they are growing older.

More people are marrying later in life, often for the second or third time, and with older and younger men chasing younger women, the law of supply and demand has made the marriage market a tough place for middle-aged people of both genders, according to England. For middle-aged men, the marriage market is tougher because they must compete with younger men for the same pool of younger brides. Therein lies one of the keys to success of Pattaya. Less clear from the data is how lower-income, less educated older men are successfully marrying younger women. Easily explained in Fun Town: bulging wallets.

“We do find that money helps men’s chances of getting married,” England said. “But if we take youth as our crude measure of beauty, it doesn’t seem like men are being able to exchange their money for younger women, so we don’t know what’s differentiating which older guys are able to marry very young women.” Can I cynically smell a new funding application for grant money to conduct further research? Come over here and let me help you in your quest, I know plenty of bar owners who will write dodgy receipts to cover ‘bar fines’ and ‘lady drinks’.