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Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YdcYaFj0Q3IcBuJwQH59tGp9xHduVP1yUMwX4SlS6FA/edit?usp=sharing
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Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YdcYaFj0Q3IcBuJwQH59tGp9xHduVP1yUMwX4SlS6FA/edit?usp=sharing
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Age gaps in relationships are often misunderstood. Men are instinctively drawn to younger women for fertility reasons, while women seek men who can provide for their families. Wealth and success play a role in these preferences. Different cultures have different marriage traditions, and age gaps tend to be smaller in wealthier countries. Attachment styles and satisfaction in age gap relationships are similar to those in similar age relationships. Class can also influence partner preferences, with lower-class individuals more likely to be in age gap relationships. Age gap relationships do not necessarily lead to deterioration. Women's income does not necessarily correlate with age gap marriages. Age gaps can affect lifespan, with women living shorter lives when their husband is older, but longer when their husband is younger. Society's negative opinions can impact individuals in age gap relationships, but commitment can still be maintained. Further research is needed to fully understand Hello, everyone. Welcome to Let's Talk About It. I'm your host, Francesca Casas, and for this episode, let's talk about something a lot of people might avoid in conversations, age gaps. For this topic, I started thinking about the relationships you see in fantasy stories, where one of the characters is this immortal or long-living being that may have a romantic relationship with their protagonist, who is usually just a human. As I was trying to relate this to our normal lives, I was eventually led to the question, what causes a person to look for someone older or maybe younger in a relationship? And how are the people in these relationships affected? I feel like this is an important discussion to have because maybe there's something behind these age gaps that the general public doesn't really know about. Most of society looks down on these relationships, but they don't really know any of the theory or science behind them. Maybe these relationships aren't something people choose. Maybe they're something that just happens so naturally. It's also important to know how these things can affect people because it might be happening to someone you Let's talk about it. I think just about everyone immediately imagines age gap relationships between an older man and a younger woman. Imagining an older woman and a younger man just isn't as common for it to be an instinctive thought. An article written by Sarah Skeltonberry and Darren Fowler reasons that most of the preferences of each gender come from natural instincts. Men feel the need to be with younger women who are more likely to give them children. On the other hand, women don't really care about fertility in men, but rather their ability to care for and provide for their families. This explains why wealth, which usually accumulates as someone ages, is more sought after in men. Honeyman Tsar and Tara McInnish agree and add that financially successful men are more desirable for younger women. But they mention that an improving economy that elevates women allows for younger men to be preferred instead of older men, therefore switching the financially successful role to the female partner. The specifics of the connection between women's wages and age gaps are actually something I'll be talking about later on. It's interesting to note that every country has its own marriage tradition. Michael Bozin writes that arranged marriages in the Arab world are oftentimes age gap marriages, and in Europe and North America, where people typically choose who they want to marry, the age gap is still present at times. Additionally, Mary Bergstrom says that the age gap in relationships is smaller in richer countries than it is in developing countries. Bozin noticed in his research that when women were younger in their first relationship, then the age gap is greater. Women in their 20s usually have a three-year difference with their husbands, but a woman who is 25 or 26 would usually have a 9 to 10-month difference, and for men, it's the opposite. One reason people think a woman would be looking for an older man is because of attachment issues. An article by Justin L. Miller and Christopher Agnes says women do not experience different levels of relationship satisfaction when compared to women in similar age relationships. They studied this by surveying women in age gap and similar age relationships. The researchers had them rate how afraid they were of losing the affection of their partner. To measure this, the relationship assessment scale and the quality of the marriage index determined how satisfied they were in their relationships. With these tests, they found that the attachment styles between the two relationship types weren't that different. A larger gap didn't affect how anxious they were about losing the love of their partner. The satisfaction between the two was also very similar. Now, I'm not entirely sure how well this study applies to the entirety of society because it was mainly done to women in their 20s, so the diverse range in ages isn't too great, but I think it's a nice quick look into age gap relationships. Another journal article written by William Chilpik, Robin Edelstein, and Chris Fraley said something interesting about attachment. In their research, they studied attachment dynamics throughout a lifetime, starting from age 18 to age 70. They discovered that attachment avoidance becomes less prevalent as age increases, but it was highest in middle-aged individuals and lowest in young and older adults. Chilpik, Edelstein, and Fraley also stated that women were more likely to have higher anxiety than men during young adulthood. I think it's interesting to see two different studies get different results because I feel like these articles show how diverse people are and how they feel in their relationships. I feel like it all really depends on how you grew up, who you were surrounded with, and who your partner is. Other researchers, Hernan Vera, Donna Berardo, and Felix Berardo, dived into how class could affect what age you might look for in a partner. They also wanted to find out if age-similar relationships were lowering qualities in similar-age relationships. What they discovered was that lower-class individuals were more likely to be in age gap relationships, but they expected it to be more common in the upper class. The researchers assumed that the higher-class individuals could be less influenced by social norms to marry someone their own age and be more likely to look for older or younger people. Going back to how women look for older men as wealth accumulates as someone ages, I think that can be related to class and age gap. If someone is from a lower class, it makes sense that maybe, in the back of their minds, they might seek out someone who is more financially stable and could support a family. An older partner might also even elevate them in society. Vera and the Bernardos noticed that the quality of age-gap relationships and similar-age relationships didn't really vary, which relates to what Scantleberry and Fowler saw in their research about satisfaction in relationships. In this article, there wasn't any strong evidence supporting the idea that age-gap relationships eventually led to deterioration in the relationship. Another article that tries to identify the causes of age-gap relationships is a journal written by Angela Carollo, Anya Oksuzyan, Sven Jafal, and others. Their question focuses on how a woman's income could potentially be related to age-gap marriages. Just a disclaimer, this was conducted solely in Denmark, so it might not be accurate for all countries. But again, I think it's a good glimpse into this unique idea and could later be expanded through more research. This thought came up because it's common for women to be paid less than men. They wanted to discover if women with their older partners had lower wages than women who had a similar-age partner. In their research, they used twins to eliminate some environmental differences when growing up. These twins were all born after 1945 because there were structural changes in Denmark that made it more common for women to be married and have jobs in 1960. A hypothesis they had was that the more a woman was compared to her husband, the less income she could bring in. They found that the answer was much more complex than what their original question assumed, because they had found that there was no distinct pattern in their data. Their hypothesis was supported by the lowest and highest-earning women in the older cohort and the middle-low and median-earning women in the younger cohort. They also discovered that if the man was the older partner in the relationship, then having a good relationship with his wife would positively affect her income. Since wealth typically accumulates until age 50, they assumed that this result could be due to older, wealthier men being more attracted to career-oriented women who would want to accumulate more wealth. Personally, I think a healthy age-gap relationship is related to the female partner having a higher income from having support. A good partner would most likely encourage their partner to succeed and further themselves in their career. If a relationship is toxic and controlling, then one partner might encourage the other to not better themselves and keep them from earning more money. Sure, maybe now we know what can cause an age-gap relationship, but what exactly are the different effects of an age-gap and similar age relationship? An article I read by Sven De Fall goes into how an age-gap relationship might lower someone's lifespan. With the typical assumptions of mortality differences in marriage being health selection, caregiving in later life, and positive psychological effects of having a younger spouse, De Fall proposes that there is a pattern that women live shorter lives when their husband is older, but they live longer when their husband is younger. He also discovered that it's much more beneficial to have a younger spouse for men and harmful for women. This could be due to older people attracting healthier partners who are younger. Younger people could also provide more health care support. Another reason he gave for this result was that since women have more social contacts, they don't look for health in the partner as much the man does. But even with these results, De Fall couldn't see a clear pattern that determined lifespan. Further research that studies different aspects of age-gap relationships still needs to be done. So what else affects individuals in an age-gap relationship? Well, Miller and Agnew decided to see how society's negative opinions may affect those individuals. They wanted to know if there was any correlation between perceived relationship marginalization and relationship commitment and how couples can maintain that commitment. Previous research shows that non-traditional relationships such as same-sex, age-gap, and interracial relationships are often looked down on by society. Typically, it's people in non-traditional relationships who have a negative view on them. Miller and Agnew discovered that couples who are constantly looked down on by society have lower levels of commitment in their relationships. They also found that marginalized individuals were less invested compared to those who are not marginalized, but they were strongly committed to their partners. Miller and Agnew proposed that when being marginalized, the people in the relationship feel the need to compensate and go against society. So overall, they found that marginalization has positive and negative effects on their relationships. It can cause them to be less invested in their marriage, but they can also be more committed if they view their relationship as poor and in turn want to strengthen it. I guess age-gap relationships are always going to be there no matter what. It seems like it's something that happens naturally depending on different circumstances. I'm sure there are many other causes and many other effects I did not find in my research, but that would take many, many more hours of digging around the internet. Maybe some of you already know what I've just now discovered, but maybe some are beginning to ask more questions. I hope I've enlightened you on this topic. That concludes today's episode of Let's Talk About It. Music credits go to SFM Team and ESCP. Thank you for listening and learning with me today. Goodbye, good day, and good night. Thank you.
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