It was pretty different in our case. I grew up working class, on a small farm in Upper East Tennessee. We were Baptists, albeit of the Jimmy Carter variety. My wife’s family is upper middle class; a secular Jewish family from the Baltimore/DC area. Both parents have graduate degrees, and my MIL is a fairly successful author. So I guess I “married up”.
Well, that kind of depends on what exactly you mean by socioeconomic class and how far back you go - that article is apparently about changes in income inequality since 1980. It used to be common for the boss to marry the secretary and for a doctor to marry a nurse. Now, that doctor is more likely to marry another doctor, which leads to many more more couples with two high earners or two lower earners and fewer with one of each and therefore more inequality. According to that article
But when the researchers compared that with data on married couples from 1960 and 1980, they found that people in the recent period increasingly went for partners with the same wage and education levels.
That research probably includes couples who got married in 1940 and before.
I don’t think on-line dating itself has a thing to do with it. I’m sure it’s got much more to do with workplaces being less gender segregated - in 1950, how many male doctors could have married a female doctor? Maybe 10% of doctors were female in 1950 - now it’s more like 35%.
My parents raised me comfortably middle class. I married into an impoverished family formerly of noble lineage.
I definitely married “up”
My Dad finished about 6 years of grammar school, served in the US Army as an enlisted man, worked as an oiler/punch press operator/ machinist/tool and die maker. Mom started high school but dropped out after a year or two, and was a housewife the rest of her life.
My wife’s Dad was a Naval Academy grad, served as an officer in WWII, went to grad school and taught math in college. Her Mom went to college and taught for a couple of years before marrying and then was a housewife for the rest of her life.
When I started dating my wife-to-be, she taught me which fork to use, and a lot of other social graces. I was impressed with the differences in the culture of her family vs mine…and preferred many of the things that her family did compared to how my own family operated. I was never ashamed of my background, but really saw the differences in attitudes about education, finance, politics, manners, and many other matters.
I consider having exposure to two different cultures to be an advantage.
My wife grew up in Taiwan and I grew up in Utah, but both of us were lower middle class and went on to university, although she got a grad degree.
Actually, my father did progress enough in his job that we were solid middle class, and my mother was an RN, but she quit for a while until my younger brother was in school, then only worked part time until much later.
As my father was a child of he depression and both of my parents grew up on poor farms, we had a lower middle class mindset.
My wifes family was upper end poor to lower middle class; my family was upper middle class to moderately wealthy
She was clever, smart, very beautiful, and had a huge amount of confidence and ambition.
I was equally clever, possibly a bit smarter, fairly darn handsome; but with
…an inability to finish a sentence?
He’s so damn handsome she probably jumped on him before he could finish.
Yeah, this seems more likely to me than online dating. How many women even worked outside the home at all in 1950? They were all pushed out of the jobs they had when the GIs came home.
I married up as far as economics go, coming from a poor working class family, while my wife grew up in a succesful entrepreneur family. However, I grew up in a cultured home, where classical music and world literature, and educating oneself were the default, and I got a Master’s degree, while my wife’s family were boorish, religious money grabbers, and my wife only recently went further than basic education (although never boorish or incurious or religious herself). So it’s not an either / or situation.
No doubt
It was one of those thoughts, that I could not sum up well, and intended to delete - but evidently i did not.
My general point, she was really brought a lot more to the table than I did. I have done well in life - but I started on second base, and I can recognize that my wife did more to reach the same place.
My late wife married up when she married me. I don’t mean that I had lots of money and she was poor, but she had only a HS diploma and was working in a convenience store, while I had an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League school and a graduate degree from a well-respected university.
My close friends and co-workers would often say, “Don’t get me wrong…she’s a sweetie and I love her to death. But how did you ever end up marrying her? I just wouldn’t have imagined you two together.”
The fact is, she was the most fun and pleasant person to be with. Of course I found her irresistibly attractive. But we never fought or argued and it was a joy to spend time with her.