Love in the Time of Corona (II): Distance and Devotion

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During the COVID lockdown, online dating has increased and exchanges have become more meaningful. Location matters less.

Jessie has a beautiful personality and sparkling eyes. While single and open to dating already before the lockdown, her social life often fell victim to a grueling work schedule and frequent travel. She was also taking care of extended family living across the country. There was a constant silent underlying disappointment emanating from these constraints, which were as real as they were hard to avoid. Dating was a bittersweet experience for Jessie, who felt that it was easy to meet people but hard to find meaningful relationships.

Along came Corona and the lockdown. One day, travel was out; the next, the commute was off. And Jessie’s employer extended to every employee the flexibility of daily working hours that was soon becoming a bare necessity for working parents.

When I chatted to her last, Jessie confided that dating under Corona had developed into an interesting direction. It was frustrating not being able to meet anyone in person. But you ended up having more and better conversations with the people you already knew. Dating has not stopped. While face to face meetings disappear, online and phone interactions take over.

The figures back this up. On the 4th of April, the OKCupid blog blog recorded “All over the world, matches on OkCupid have increased 10% — and conversations have increased over 20%! — as singles turn to online dating for connection. – In response to the new question “How do you plan on dating during this time of coronavirus?” a whopping 94% of respondents said they’ll continue to date, albeit virtually.”

And the conversations intensify. Jessie found that as there are fewer distractions, you actually focus on your date. You listen. You get to know each other much better than you would have if meeting face-to-face all the time.

OKCupid agrees. “Virtual dating is ushering in a new era of “slow dating” that’s been welcomed by singles. (..). – With virtual dating, the focus lands on the quality of conversations and time spent together, making it easier to figure out whether the person you’re talking to is compatible with whatever you’re looking for. – In just the past two weeks, there’s been a 5% increase in OkCupid users looking for long-term relationships and a 20% decrease in users looking for hookups.”

This lets many (especially female) singles breathe a sigh of relief. I literally see shoulders untense for many of my single friends. The last pressure point that Jessie saw fall was geography. If there was never strictly a need to be in the same city as your date, there definitely isn’t now.

She is not alone. “Women have also been more likely to expand their preferred location to “anywhere” so they can connect across borders. And those who do, have 5% more conversations than those who don’t.

What if ironically, confinement’s limitations lead to a wider global reach in dating?

 

Love In The Time of Corona (I)

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From the beginning of this most unusual way of life that we have all adopted, the “lockdown”, I have wondered what it does to people’s love lives. Those who already live with a partner or a family move in closer and spend more time with each other. Those who date or wish to date, can no longer do that in its most traditional form of meeting and going out. Everybody is constrained in the things they can do outside the house. – So I let my thoughts wander but eventually got distracted by a work life that happens to be just as full when working from home.

And then my friend Laure whatsapped me out of my complaisance and urged me to explore the effects of the Corona-lockdown. It turns out she started worrying about some friends and family for whom too much togetherness might be detrimental.

So let’s start with this; although it is usually the successful result of good dating rather than its beginning: togetherness. What does it do to us, and (as economists like to ask) what works?

Hygge and Fiesta

We all have personal preferences when it comes to closeness – and these preferences differ depending on who we are close to: strangers, acquaintances or family. So far so logical. But here comes a funny twist: people in colder countries prefer larger distances with strangers, and closer distances with family, compared to the global average. And the opposite holds for people in warm countries: it is ok to be a bit closer to a stranger, but family doesn’t need to cuddle close all the time. It is not exactly clear why the architects of Hygge also hug more, but it may have to do with literally having to warm each other up. Or with being used to staying inside more throughout the year.

Another variation is that older people prefer larger distances, to strangers as well as to family, than younger people. – All this to be taken with a grain of salt – the research quoted drew on a large but not representative global sample.

The most important lesson from this is to acknowledge that our personal preferences may differ, and that they may also significantly differ from the degree of closeness enforced by the lockdown. You may want to use the full space of your house to generate huggy Hygge or friendly Fiesta, depending on what you need.

But what happens really when all of us, with our manifold tolerances for togetherness, are confined?

Lockdown babies or divorce boom

I cannot wait to see the research papers that will come out assessing the effect of the current lockdown period. Different timing and severity of rules across states and countries may produce a nice natural experiment. For the time being, we can learn from earlier research on hurricane and holiday periods. Carefully trying to conclude from these, the story seems to be that extended togetherness acts like a catalyst: it strengthens strong relationships, and it may well be the last straw for the more fragile ones. There is evidence that low-severity storm warnings entail a peak in fertility, while at the same time divorces tend to rise after the classical vacation times of winter and summer.

There must be something we can do to manage the extremes of the new situation. Has anyone been here before and can advise?

More about space

Select people have had to endure confined living for extended periods well before Corona. This concerns for example astronauts. While their situation is more extreme than our lockdown, it is also chosen and entered into only after long and careful planning. – I happen to be married to a rocket scientist. Not only a rocket scientist, but a sort of ‘space psychologist’. I kid you not – his postgrad research was a multi-disciplinary affair across the faculties of aerospace engineering and psychology: prevention of “human error” in aerospace. So after a few weeks of lockdown, he started sharing some wisdom from the experience of people living in the international space station ISS (a good example is here).

Several experiences that hit us now unprepared, and are uncomfortable, are very familiar to astronauts. First, a feeling of relative help- and powerlessness. You cannot ‘exit’ the situation, and you have to go through it in due course until you arrive. Second, you are so isolated that it is easy to forget what day and time it is. There is no natural rhythm, no commute marking the border between work and life, and it is easy to lose that boundary. Astronauts know this and make an extra effort to restore the balance, to choose the boundary and impose a routine.

When it comes to managing relationships, the key is maximum self-awareness. It is important to know one’s own needs very well and to meet them. Only when our self-care is sufficient do we have the bandwidth of understanding that allows accommodating and nurturing others. Stress will reduce the bandwidth and will be more risky when people don’t know themselves or their needs well. In the conversation linked above, astronaut Sandy Magnus explained that her stress buster was exercise, and that astronauts on the ISS are supposed to work out 2 hours per day.

(2 hours a day! Check that. I really need to up my elvis.)

Astronauts learn and accept elaborate routines. Duties and burdens are clearly agreed, equitable and sustainable. This ensures security and prevents conflict.

Sharing space and time

Most households do not have the elaborate upfront agreements of a space station; rather, roles are more or less loosely negotiated based on bargaining power and availability of outside help, among other things. Over the recent decades, marriages have become more (if not completely) equitable in the time use between spouses, with women working more outside and less inside the home. The arrival of Corona risks upsetting that ‘balance.’ Traditionally female housework that had moved to the market economy such as child- and eldercare, cleaning, sometimes cooking – is moving back into the homes; and some goods are no longer purchased but produced at home.  There is a significant risk that women are silently expected to bear the brunt of these developments; with household arrangements pivoting back to the 1950s. And sadly this seems to be happening.

However, it should not have to be the case. If the protocols of the domestic space station have been set up equitably to begin with, with spouses having fairly similar time use, the new old chores may be shared equally.  I see many men promote their newly discovered domestic virtues, if mostly cooking and baking, on social media. And in my own house, the man has been lead parent ever since a child arrived. Thankfully, our kids’ school is being exemplary keeping up a relatively normal school day remotely.

The kids are allright

Our house has not switched back to the 1950s but right away to the 1800s. We play Little House on the Prairie, with the kids folding laundry and learning how to broom. Our eldest, Tiger Girl, asked to learn chores, and documented her ‘cleaning apprenticeship’ in a power point presentation as a school homework. She has indeed shown exceptional dedication, sweeping bathrooms, watching younger siblings, chopping and cooking – only to present me with a bill at the end of the month. As her pricing was modest and she does not have an allowance, I dutifully signed.

Overall, the education project has been more challenging but also more successful. In some ways, the limits of the lockdown do lock in consequences, and the children have been learning and listening faster and become more helpful, hopeful and hard working.

This relative domestic bliss may certify us as members of the Hygge culture. Upon reflection, I have to admit we may get quite used to it.

 

(Part II of ‘Love in the Time of Corona’ will look at how the lives of dating singles changed with the lockdown. Stay tuned.)

Valentin, Valentine, Valentino – Love Around the Globe

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It is Valentine’s Day 2020 and I have long pondered what blog to write you on the occasion. When I prepared my TEDx last year, I realized that I use largely Western evidence to write for a Western audience. This also applies to my TED video, to be released soon. I have to recognize that some of this evidence does not apply to the wider globe. The degree of women’s agency varies across countries, as does access to information and the presence or shape of democracy and the rule of law. For example. Not to mention social norms and traditions.

With that in mind, I have written this blog as a little tour through the dating columns of the world. You will find that love is everywhere, while its form, and the priorities around it vary.

Have fun!

America

Modern Love in the New York Times is a wonderful series. This one proposes American husbands can be trained like dolphins and other wild animals. American wives too. (I shall try these tricks on a German husband soon.)

China

China has a popular TV dating game show, Fei Cheng Wu Rao, “If you are not serious, don’t bother me.” It involves quite a bit of conversation on stage, and interaction between groups of two genders to narrow down a choice. Rather than seeking lofty romance or high ideals, contestants do not shy away from materialistic pursuits. Famous quotes include “I would rather cry in a BMW than laugh on a bicycle.” It went so far that Government intervened and ordered a psychologist chaperone to accompany the talk show host.

Egypt

One of my favorite dating columnists of all times is Nehad Abolkomsan. She has a popular TV show ‘Nehad’s Stories’ which gives advice to young women, often in matters of love and courtship. Her advice is quite evidence based and matter of fact. When you learn that Nehad’s day job is that of a lawyer and chairwoman of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, you understand why her program focuses on empowering women, seeking to give them a voice, agency and confidence. Including and especially when negotiating the dating and marriage markets. Here you can watch an episode, which is beautifully put in scene and focuses on how women should select their groom. She encourages looking for qualities suggesting that he would be supportive of a woman’s ambition and slow to anger. She also promotes a longer than average engagement period, based on statistics that put Egyptian marriages concluded after a short engagement at high risk of divorce. Quoting a survey into the preferences of Egyptian women, she finds that 80% of young women care about the ethical values of the potential groom, followed by a distant 19% valuing family and lineage and 13% love and romance. The episode ends with an interview of a young woman from Upper Egypt who has defied odds and traditions to realize personal and professional success.

Germany

The weekly Die Zeit has a series on dating with the title ‘It’s Complicated.’ It loves lives up to the stereotype that in the country of poets and philosophers, every puddle needs to have depth. The articles raise questions, reflect and explore with open endings, rather than advise or present complete personal stories. Popular topics include the pitfalls of online dating, aging and age differences, gender and social expectations and their reversal, as well as honesty and trust and their challenges, up to safety risks such as stalking. The common thread seems to be the question ‘What If?’ ranging from the light hearted ‘What if your date blows on his coffee?’ to several serious columns asking implicitly ‘What if s/he is the wrongest of them all?’

Nigeria

Efua Oyofo runs the blog ‘Dating While Nigerian’, which has now become a facebook page. I find it interesting that Efua is a labor and jobs professional, given that search and matching are relevant for both labor and marriage markets, and that several economic models apply to both. Her blog is quite forward, and an Economist article featuring it suggests that Nigerian dating breaks a few Western rules.

I hope you enjoyed this brief tour and found some inspiration for your own Valentine’s Day!

PS If your country has a popular dating column, please send me a link.

Is there an Oscar Curse?

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What do Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Helen Hunt, Kate Winslet and Reese Witherspoon have in common?

They all received at least one Oscar. And they all divorced or separated subsequently.

These anecdotes fuel the superstition that female Oscar wins and nominations lead to divorce. However, if you look at a broader sample, it may look like male Oscar winners and nominees increase their divorce risk while women don’t. – In truth, the jury is still out, because establishing a causal effect is tricky here: Oscars are not random, and then who exactly is the comparison group formed by non-nominee screen actors? It must be large indeed.

There is a true root in the superstition

The suspicion behind the anecdotes has a true core unfortunately. Professional success can cause women much pain. Good evidence, from otherwise quite equal Sweden of all places, and cited here, shows that some promotions nearly double the divorce rate of women, but not men.

For example, winning a local or parliamentary election, or becoming CEO can call the curse. In the US, a wife earning more than the husband is associated with a higher divorce probability.

This is not the case however, when couples agreed or expected from the beginning that earnings would be equal or in favor of the wife. It is the change, within the same couple, from a traditional gender norm to its opposite, that spells fragility.

Women know and try to preempt the ‘curse’

Women change their behavior in anticipation of what might happen. Within marriage, if the woman starts doing well in her job and at some point, reaches her man’s salary level or even exceeds it, she adopts traditional attributes. She tries to compensate the violation of the (gender) norm by putting in more housework, and sometimes, withdrawing from wage work altogether. The literature says, the woman is ‘doing gender’. Before marriage, women significantly downplay their ambitions in terms of career and salary when they believe to be watched by men.

A remedy has been found…

But this does not happen everywhere. The above has been documented with US and West German data for example. But it does not show up in East German data. No matter what angle you look from, and what factors you control for: the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall mark the boundary for the male breadwinner norm. Eastern German couples have no problem with women working and earning more than their husbands. And the more women earn, the less housework they put in. Which is kind of logical. And marriages are similarly stable independent of who the breadwinner is.

In other words: the male breadwinner norm, and with it, the ‘Oscar Curse’, are entirely cultural. They can be undone by institutions that actively promote another norm.

The Economics of Thankfulness

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This recent Thanksgiving, I wanted to write you a blog, but I couldn’t because I was busy bringing in a harvest of things to be thankful for. This is a true story. In the order of chronology, first, I got to speak at the Global Gender Summit about a topic I really love, employment-based childcare. Second, on Black Friday I delivered a TED talk about the content of this very blog: Loveonomics. (Videos to be published in spring.) And finally, on Saturday after Thanksgiving, I received the Alumni of the Year award of the Global Alliance in Management Education (the European business school ‘Ivy League’ hosting LSE, HEC, ESADE, Stockholm, Cologne and my alma mater St Gallen.). Senior alumni to boot. (God only knows what is senior about me, other than my memory sometimes.) All this on top of the really important essentials like life, health, family and friends.

Bottom line, feeling thoroughly #thankful.

And that got me to browse the literature on the topic. Why is it good to be thankful, and what if anything, can it do for your relationships? Here are 5 aspects of thankfulness that may resonate with you.

  1. Many experiments show that thankfulness can enhance wellbeing. Feeling thankful has been shown to be associated with, and also to cause, a stronger sense of wellbeing. The extent varies with the circumstances, of course, and in a few particular cases, the link does not work. But on the whole – worth trying.
  2. Gratitude seems to become better with practice. In some of the studies mentioned above, the wellbeing effects were the stronger, the more grateful the subjects already felt at the beginning of the experiments.
  3. When people are prompted to feel thankful, they connect with their sense of justice. A behavioral field study and experiment series primed people for different feelings, such as compassion and gratitude. It then let them choose a charity to donate to and those who were feeling thankful chose to donate to causes linked to justice, such as the ACLU. – This is particularly interesting because for the scholastics, gratitude has always been a sub-virtue of the cardinal virtue of justice. The reason is that gratitude makes us give to others what is due to them.
  4. Gratitude makes us more generous and cooperative, if need be at the expense of individual gains. An economic lab experiment showed that individuals induced to be grateful made larger monetary contributions benefiting the community. And this, regardless of whether they knew the beneficiaries.
  5. In family relationships, thankfulness is win-win and an element of a virtuous circle. To the extent that a relationship is a micro social order and a space of joint responsibility, gratitude gives credit to both giver and taker and does not diminish own pride. It encourages repeating the exchange that caused the gratitude.

In this sense, wishing you happy holidays and lots of gratitude from and to you!

 

 

 

 

 

129 Ways To Get A Husband. An Economist’s Answer – Part IV

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Today is the first really hot day this year. It also is one of the first weekends that allows a bit of a breather; no business trip, no die-hard work deadline, no big family event to take care of. Hallelujah.

Best time to sit in the garden between roses and peonies and question 50-year old romantic advice, from an economist’s point of view. Get me my iced matcha latte.

Where were we?

11 Get a job in a medical, dental or law school.

Hm. The idea behind this counsel was probably to immerse the ladies in an environment where they would find a doctor, dentist or lawyer husband. What was meant by ‘a job’ in those schools? Teaching jobs may not be in rich supply or easy to pick up. So, more likely an administrative job?  – This advice dates from a time where marriages were not yet, on average, assortatively matched. But nowadays, they are. Assortative matching means, partners in a couple tend to correspond in age, wage and education. In other words, lawyers tend to marry lawyers, and doctors other doctors, or at least someone of similar education and wage. This trend has started around the end of the second world war and has become stronger since (also see here and here.)

Therefore, for better or worse, a clerical job in a law or medical school will normally not make the job holder an eligible prospect for the budding lawyers and doctors studying there.

This basic assumption, of marriages not being between (professional) equals, but rather of female hypergamy (women marrying up) recurs several times in the original article on the ‘129 ways’. It makes for a big part of the smirks we cannot suppress when reading, because in our day and age it does not hold any more.

12 Become a nurse or an air-line stewardess -they have very high marriage rates.

I have no idea where the authors of the ‘129 ways’ got their statistics. I researched a bit, and the marriage rate itself does not seem to vary so much across professions. It varies more with educational attainment, but not even that much: the more educated you are, the more likely it is you will marry (over 90% for those with a full college degree, about 80% for those with secondary school only, using US labor force data.)

Now, what is well documented, is the divorce rate of different occupations. I am not so sure you want to marry a flight attendant after reading those: they have the third highest divorce rate, at 50.5%.

Look out for an actuary instead.

13 Ask your friends’ husbands who the eligible men are in their offices.

There is nothing wrong with a bit of networking. Beware though of whom your friends’ husbands might recommend. I have found out over the years that a straight man may not be the best judge of what you could find attractive. Let’s just say, my father and brother had interesting date suggestions for me growing up. So you may want to specify a few criteria. Say 1-5 binary criteria that can be easily checked by your proxies.

14 Be nice to everybody – they may have an eligible brother or son.

Always a good rule, although ‘kind’ might be more authentic than ‘nice’.

Then, on second thoughts – why were you inclined not to be nice to someone in the first place? Was that particular person a source of trouble? It matters, because according to the above thinking they could be the family you are marrying into. Worth thinking through.

Ok, dear readers, until next week. If we have another breather.

129 Ways To Get A Husband. An Economist’s Answer – Part III

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Good morning, dear readers. It feels good to be up and running before office hours. Especially if your inner timetable is a bit messed up by a recent trip.

Loveonomics centers the mind, and on the right priorities. Whether the ‘129 ways’ are for you or not, hope they will cheer you up. Let’s continue…

8 Take several short vacations at different places rather than one long one at one place.

This could be summarized as ‘meet more people rather than fewer people for a longer time’. That is not a bad rule, especially if you start out dating. But overall, meeting and getting to know 13 people should be enough. Statistically, further search beyond 13 does not improve your satisfaction, see here.

9 Sit on a park bench and feed the pigeons.

Who do you expect to meet there? If the particular park you are thinking about is frequented by the single demographic you are aiming for in terms of age, gender, education and interests, by all means go for it. But your choice should be deliberate in function of this. I really doubt that any random park bench would do.

10 Take a bicycle trip through Europe.

There is a lot to be said for exercise and a change of scene, as well as an educational trip. Independent of whether you want to date or not. From the dating angle, I would research the cities and regions that have good odds, i.e. where your gender and age group is in the minority among singles. And then plan the bicycle trip around those.

To be continued next week.

129 Ways To Get a Husband. An Economist’s Answer – Part II

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Good morning, dear readers. There is nothing better than being up earlier than the others on a Sunday morning, whipping up a hot chocolate from scratch and writing about…loveonomics.

– If you don’t burn the chocolate, that is. But baked chocolate is also an inspiring taste. Trust me. Ok, where were we.. yes, let’s continue our review of the 129 ways..

4 Join a hiking club

On the one hand, this seems to be a good idea independently of wanting to date or not. Getting out, getting exercise, meeting new friends. On the other hand, if you want to do it with the particular aim of finding a partner, you need to do some prior research: who is in that hiking club, which demographics by age, gender, education, profession? Would these demographics appeal to you? Also, how much do you love to hike vs. other sports or causes? The day only has 24 hours and the hiking club competes with several other options. You should join causes and sports close to your heart and vision for yourself. If it is not clear to you which those are, your first step is to sit down with yourself and figure them out.

5 Look in the census for places with the most single men. (McCalls suggests Nevada)

It definitely matters where you are, as I wrote here before. One very important factor for quality of place when it comes to dating is the gender-ratio. A whole book as well as several of my blog posts have been written about the importance of gender-ratios for dating and it can hardly be emphasized enough. The gender in the minority will have more choice and will therefore set the terms. (Unless extremely powerful social or legal norms limit its decision-power or self-expression.) In that way, dating follows indeed the logic of a market and the influence over the result moves to the party that is in higher demand and shorter supply.

A remark on McCall’s choice of Nevada, which apparently had one of the highest single male/female ratios in the 1950s. It still performs well on this score, although cities on the West Coast, especially California, but also Oregon, and the state of Washington are all great places for women to date under this perspective. The metropolitan areas of the East Coast are the opposite (says the American Community Survey 2017). If you don’t live in America, look up the gender statistics of your country’s most recent census.

6 Read the obituaries to find eligible widowers.

This is weird. You don’t want to feed on someone else’s grieving. Such an attitude may disqualify you in the long run even if your company is appreciated in the short run. You also don’t know how long people need to grieve. The dating prospect may not be emotionally available for quite some time.

7 Take up golf and go to different golf courses.

Much better. Kindly refer to what I said on the hiking club. Note that the demographics of your nearest golf club may be quite different from the demographics of your nearest hiking club. The same may apply to the member fee. Assess and pick according to your preference.

To be continued next week.

Without burning the chocolate.

129 Ways To Get a Husband: What an Economist Would Say

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You may have seen the hilarious, now viral, article from a 1950s McCalls Magazine: 129 ways to get a husband. A lot has already been written about how this advice may be cringeworthy, outdated, and how off the underlying assumption that every woman needs a husband. I trust a healthy distance to any publication can be taken for granted among my readers and have therefore no vocation to join the choir of the outraged.

Rather, for those who are actually interested in how the 129 ways might perform in real life, let me explore them under an economist’s lens. I will do so in several installments, starting with the first three.

1 Get a dog and walk it

Getting out of the house and meeting people is definitely good. Frequency of encounters is vital to build acquaintance (see for example ‘How do friendships form?’). But that does not require a dog. Also, for courtship purposes it matters where you walk the dog. Are there a lot of sympathetic joggers on that path? Pleasant single dogwalkers?

Better not to get a dog just for courtship purposes. The dog is worth its own purpose. If you love dogs, and want a partner who loves them too, then of course go ahead.

2 Have your car break down at strategic places

Not a good idea. The underlying assumption seems to be that good men will stop and help you fix it, and that they know how to. A couple of things are at odds with reality here. First, the whole concept won’t work in an urban context. In the city, there will hardly be a place for him to stop and park right away, and on the highway, it is dangerous to just stop and park. So already you have to geographically limit the attempt to rural roads and villages. But that context also means that population density and therefore frequency of chance encounters is lower. Finally, 2019’s cars are not as easily fixed as 1950s cars, and car-fixing is no longer a frequent hobby. Bottom line: this strategy fishes in far too small a pond.

3 Attend night school – take courses men like

This one is really good, and the first example of some chance brilliance in this list. For dating purposes, it is a very good idea to seek out places where your own gender is outnumbered. So, ‘courses men like’ may have many men and few women. Excellent for bargaining power. I would still recommend making sure you choose a course you like, too – joint values and interests are great glue for any relationship.

To be continued next week.

Like Mother, Like Son

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My father was a conservative man, politically and socially. European version of conservative, but definitely the real deal. I don’t want to elaborate too much, but you can believe me that some of his views are no longer politically correct. 

There was one big, notable exception: women working, having a career and having power. He embraced that as good, full of sense and empirically proven. My mother worked, and he kept saying she was better at what she did than he was. A historian, he found it easy to name examples of successful and fascinating female leadership and female leader personalities: Maria Theresia of Austria ruled, closely followed by Maggie Thatcher. While a practicing Catholic, he had zero issue with women who taught, preached and otherwise spoke a lot, and publicly. Together with my mother, he devoutly followed the well broadcast exegesis of Jewish theology professor Ruth Lapide.

On the other hand, men and women keeping women from leadership, including themselves, were suspected to suffer from outright stupidity, a life-threatening disease to please or otherwise questionable motives and in any case were filed as making a massive mistake.

I keep coming back to this impressive mix of world views because I have not seen it often. Truth be told, its opposite is far more frequent: a generally modern and liberal worldview that does not go beyond lip service on gender equality, and secretly enjoys every opportunity to nudge women back out of the competition. (Ligue du LOL is an extreme case in point, but hardly the only one).

Where did Dad’s view originate? The conservatism was not unheard of in a male of his generation, but his outspoken emancipation? – If you believe Raquel Fernandez et al.’s well published article on Mothers and Sons, it has to do with Dad’s mom working. My Granny had a higher education as commercial secretary and took up work when facing early widowhood during WWII. My father saw her working (and rising in responsibility) through most of his child- and young adulthood.

She was not alone: the war moved many women into the workplace. The variation in draft rate across the US states is exactly the data variation that Fernandez uses to identify the effect she observes. Men growing up in a household with a working mother were more likely to encourage and support their wives’ work. “…the growing presence of a new type of man–one brought up in a family in which the mother worked–has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time.” Fernandez concludes.

That may have been it. At least one important factor. Thank you, Granny! (Miss you, by the way, and your son too.)