A Wife is Not a Luxury...

In the USSR there was a saying that a car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation, which was quickly transformed into a joke: "A wife is not a luxury, but a means of transportation." The joke referred to numerous cases when a guy would marry a woman who had some Jewish blood in her, and based on that, the family would be allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union, since Jews were the only group of people who were privileged to be granted such a permission.

Anyway, right before Christmas I ran into an acquaintance at a store who told me about her daughter who recently graduated from Yale with a degree in women's studies and is working in a field totally unrelated to her major. I have always believed that if one were to spend money for the elite schools, one better make sure that their child studied something which can translate into a lucrative career. In other words, spending loads of money on women's studies at Yale appears to be a total waste for me. I diplomatically asked her why that major. To which she replied that she does not believe in girls becoming doctors and lawyers because that only invites some mediocre and unmotivated guys to marry them. I have never looked at this like that before.

Well, she may be right, after all! Just look at the figures released yesterday at the demographic trend: "In 1970, 28 percent of wives had husbands who were better educated, and 20 percent were married to men with less education. By 2007, the comparable figures were 19 percent and 28 percent. In 1970, 4 percent of husbands had wives who made more money; in 2007, 22 percent did." (Read the whole article here.)