Men are as likely as women (and sometimes even more likely) to want marriage and children.
A Match.com study called Single in America, designed by biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, found that men are far more open to commitment than the stereotype implies. According to the study, both men and women are as likely, overall, to want to get married (33% want to tie the knot). Furthermore, men in every age group are actually more interested in having children, even in the 21-to-34 age group (51% of men in that group want kids, compared to 46% of women). Men were also less likely to report that they’d needed more space in a relationship (58%, compared to 77% of women), and less likely to insist on nights out with friends (23%, compared to 35% of women).
Several unrelated studies have demonstrated that sleep deprivation has lasting adverse effects on women that are not seen in men. One study at the University of Warwick Medical School examined the sleep habits of 6,000 participants and found that women who sleep less than five hours a night are twice as likely to have high blood pressure, while men’s blood pressure remains unchanged. Another study, this one at Duke University, studied the habits of 210 male and female participants in detail, and found that even when accounting for potential risk factors, women with poor sleep habits were more at risk for heart disease and diabetes, while men’s risks were the same regardless of their sleep patterns.
British researchers separated 130 participants (of both sexes) into three groups — sitting alone, sitting near an attractive man, or sitting near an attractive woman. The participants were then given the opportunity to donate to a fund they were told would be doubled and paid back out at the end of the game. Men seated near an attractive woman donated 28% more than when they were seated near a man; women donated the same amount regardless of whom they were near. Follow-up experiments also found that men pitted against each other were more likely to be competitive when a woman looked on, as well as to dedicate time to charity or to promise to give blood.
This generation’s teens are substantially less involved in sex and drugs than the previous generation.
Despite frequent observations to the contrary, teens today are much less likely to use alcohol or tobacco, to try illegal drugs, or to have sex (or get pregnant) than their parents’ generation. According to the Monitoring the Future survey at the University of Michigan, high school seniors are almost half as likely as their parents’ generation to have had alcohol recently (40% in 2011, compared to 72% in 1980). Additionally, 43% of seniors had tried an illegal drug other than pot in 1981; in 2011, only 25% of seniors had done so. High school boys are only half as likely to have had sex as they were decades ago (28% in 2010, compared to about 50% in 1988). And according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, teenage pregnancy is at its lowest rate in 40 years.
