What Women Want— What Men Want This page intentionally left blank What Women Want— What Men Want Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently John Marshall Townsend Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1998 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipai Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1998 by John Marshall Townsend Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Townsend, John Marshall. What women want—what men want: why the sexes still see love and commitment so differently /John Marshall Townsend. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511488-4 1. Sex differences (Psychology) 2. Man-woman relationships. 3. Men—Psychology. 4. Men—Sexual behavior. 5. Women—Psychology. 6. Women—Sexual behavior. I. Title. BF692.2.T69 1998 155.3*3—dc21 97-43547 i 3 5 7 9 H 6 4 z Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Munchie, Veeger II, Totus and Beckasoidis, with Love This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Introduction: Attractiveness, Sexuality, and Choosing Mates i i Women's and Men's Sexualities: Differences in Arousal, Goals, and Selectivity 11 2. Emotional Alarms: The Link Between Sex and Love 37 3 What Do Women Want? Women's Perceptions of Sexual Attractiveness 61 4 Choosing Partners for Marriage: Male Status and Female Competition 83 5 What Do Men Want? Men's Criteria for Choosing Partners 103 6 The Dating-Mating Market: The Man Shortage and Marriage Squeeze 121 7 Romance, Male Dominance, and the Quest for Investment 145 8 What Men and Women Want in Marriage 165 9 Who Does the Diapers and the Dishes? The Domestic Division of Labor 187 10 Are Men and Women Alike Around the Globe? Sex in China and Somoa 2.09 Conclusion: Coping with Sex Differences and Cultural Change 233 Notes 251 References 271 Index 2.83 This page intentionally left blank Preface i FIRST BEGAN to study sex and marriage in 198z when I received a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to investigate marriage, divorce, and child custody among Mexican Americans and anglos in California. My previous work had concerned mental disorders. I wanted to determine how much of the behavior we labeled "mental illness" was actu- ally produced by how we treated the people we called mentally ill, by what opportunities they had or didn't have, and by the institutions we put them in. Over a period of seven years I studied matched samples of mental patients, mental hospital staff, and the general public in Germany and the United States. I concluded that the evidence overwhelmingly favored the view that the major mental disorders are universal and they had a biogenetic basis. On the other hand, social factors—like family supports, social class, and whether patients were in custodial institutions, and if so, for how long—were often more potent determinants of what eventually became of people—whether they could lead relatively normal lives or not—than their diagnosis, symptoms, and medical treatment. I published a book and a series of articles stating this, and, happily, worldwide research sponsored by the World Health Organization later supported my conclusions. I thus began that study by assuming that part of the behavior of the mentally ill could be viewed as socially constructed roles, and my findings supported that view—as well as indicating that some equally valid evidence supported a biomedical view. ix