Divorce, Oedipal Asymmetries, and the Marital Age Gap*

Most marriages in our society are age hypergamous; that is, a man marries a woman younger than he. Sixty-nine percent of marriages exhibit this pattern. In another 11 percent the partners' ages are equal and in only 20 percent is the woman older than the man.1 The median age gap at first marriage is 1.8 years; at remarriage 3.7 years. This remarriage median reflects a heavy weighting toward women and men in their 20s and early 30s, when most remarriage occurs. A man in his 40s who remarries is likely to choose a mate nine to ten years younger then he. As the divorce rate, and with it, “serial monogamy,” increases, we can expect a growing number of age-differentiated marriages. Such a pattern may mean that some younger men will have to wait their turn for marriage, until even younger women become available. As demographic statistics also indicate, the numbers of single and divorced-but-not-remarried women will continue to grow and to increase with age: Women and men under 25 are equally likely to remarry; women in the 25- to 44-year-old age range are 65 percent as likely to remarry as men of those ages; those who are 45 to 64 are 38 percent as likely to remarry; those over 65 only 22 percent as likely.

The age gap at first marriage, though small, reflects our unquestioned cultural assumption that the male in “egalitarian” marriages should be at least somewhat superior (men are on average superior or equal to their mates in education and income as well). There are also social, cultural, and even ostensibly biological reasons for the increasing age gap with subsequent marriages: the continuing