How Much Money Must Your Mate Have? If you have money yourself or have it in your family you are more apt to make a hard-headed choice for a mate than one who has little money. He will marry more spontaneously. If you think back you may remember that during the depression of 1929-33 people of high economic status postponed marrying until more stable times whereas the people with small incomes went right on marrying, if they could possibly manage it.
Generally people tend to marry pretty much into their own economic class. The girl who was raised in the poor section of town and is now working as a sales clerk in a five-and-ten store may yearn to marry a sophisticated man from a wealthy family, but that is not the kind of mate she needs. It is doubtful that she could be happy with him because their differences are too great.
There are exceptions, of course. Occasionally we all read about, and cheer, a news report of a modern Cinderella but we usually frown when we read of the opposite: of a rich girl marrying a poor man. That somehow seems abnormal to us. The girl may lose caste. A man of moderate means who himself married a debutante expressed his views on such arrangements however when he said to us: “Never marry for money. But it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl!”
How About the Mate’s National Background and Religion? Are you an American of Italian extraction who would not consider marrying a girl of Swedish background? Or are you a Catholic who would not think of marrying anyone but another Catholic? You may have good reasons for your exclusiveness but the fact remains that your field has been narrowed.
How Is Your Job Affecting Your Prospects? People tend to marry mates who live conveniently near and who have similar interests. (About a fifth of all married couples meet each other at work.) A school teacher, for example, is much more likely to know school teachers of the opposite sex than to know physicians of the opposite sex. Yet many occupations are such that far more of one sex enter them than is true of the other. For example, there are normally nearly five women teachers to one man teacher; seven or eight feminine librarians to one male librarian; some twenty-five or thirty women in nursing to each man in somewhat similar work. Is it any wonder that the rate of marriage among school teachers, librarians and among nurses is much lower than average? Girls who choose nursing for a career cut their marriage prospects by at least 50 percent.
Finally, How Is Geography Affecting Your Prospects for Mates? Though the conditions of World War II broadened the matrimonial horizon of many men and girls as they moved about the country the fact remains that location is an important factor in confining the choice of millions of people.
In a study of several thousand marriages in Philadelphia it was discovered that four out of five young people there selected their mates from within their own city. In one out of three of the marriages the couple had lived within five blocks of each other before marriage.