Not everyone wants to marry a millionaire

MUMBAI: The bimbette is always in search of a rich husband. The rich, old codger chases the beautiful ingenue. Along with the nag, the scold and the clinging vine, the gold-digger pursuing the rich old reprobate is a hardy stereotype.
He’s no Prince Charming and she isn’t exactly Snow White. But they wouldn’t mind including each other in their mutual fairy tales if the exchange of vows includes the exchange of keys—of the Ferrari, the chateau and the penthouse, not to forget the Swiss account or the sleeping partnerships.
Variations of the theme abound on shows like ‘Who Wants To Marry AMillionaire?’ These perpetuate the fantasy that wealth and power permit a man to stage his own private beauty pageant,with with its implicit commodification of female bodies. Now, however, comes new research that indicates that such fantasies are just that, fantasies.
The idea that women are hunting for rich husbands while men choose wives for their beauty is a long way from the truth, report American scientists The study published in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ contradicts a view propounded by some evolutionary biologists that says successful, older alpha males are hard-wired to chase after attractive young women with whom they’d like to sire a pack of healthy brats.
The women, the theorists add, have a biological yen for older, packleader types who have the resources to support and protect their young. A somewhat similar distinction is encoded the concept of ‘anuloma’ and ‘viloma’ marriages in paternalistic Hindu law. Anuloma (with the hair) refers to the caste of the mother who is socially inferior to the father, and viloma (against the hair) is used when the mother is socially superior to the father.
“Our results fly in face of such theories,’’ said Stephen Emlen, a behavioural ecologist at Cornell University, who conducted the study with Peter Buston, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to ‘New Scientist’.
While some celebrity marriages do fit the October-March pattern, the study suggests that most men and women in the western world look for partners with qualities on a par with their own,whether it’s income, beauty or a desire to have kids.
Attractive females, for example, are much more likely to seek similarly healthy and goodlooking mate than a rich one. And wealthy males are more likely to seek a rich wife than a pretty one. Notwithstanding the miles of romances published, scientists say unions of “like’’ individuals are more advantageous even from an evolutionary perspective. This is because they are more stable, said Dr Emlen.
“This is beneficial because humans require long-term relationships both to produce a lot of children and to ensure that they survive to adulthood,’’ he said. For their study, the researchers distributed questionnaires to almost 1,000 men and women aged 18 to 24.
The volunteers were first asked to rank the desirability of ten attributes in l o n g - t e rm partner, and then rank themselves on the same ten attributes. Analysing the results, Dr Buston and Dr Emlen found a consistent match between the qualities ranked as highly desirable in a partner and those found in the volunteers themselves.
The study confirms that before setting out to search for a mate, people assess their own assets and then look for a mate in their own league. “The implication,’’ said Dr Emlen, “is that long and happy marriages are most likely for couples sharing similar values, education, physical appearance and intellectual interests. Choosing a partner with far superior qualities would risk a future break-up, because such a partner would eventually be tempted away by a ‘higher quality mate’.’’
However, other evolutionary psychologists warn against oversimplification. One likens choice of mates to a poker game in which one has to balance ones preferences against those of the partner and the other players in the game.