About a month or so ago, Susan Patton aka “Princeton Mom” caused quite a storm in the media when she released a book titled “Marrying Smart: Advice for Finding THE ONE” where she give outdated advice to women on finding a suitable man for marriage, and that they need to do so before they graduate from college.

Blame Disney for the instilling in women the idea that finding Prince Charming would be their ticket to living Happily Ever After, and sappy romance films have not been much help in the matter.  Now with the media propagating a female’s youth, beauty, and fertility and having little sympathy for aging women, the message is clear: women need to be married before age 30 or risk being alone and childless for the rest of her life.  

This biological countdown in women prompted many to scramble for dates in search of an eligible husband.  But if the number of self-help books on dating were any indication, finding “the one” is never easy.  Thus the birth of Patton’s book was fitting at a time when jobs are as scarce as eligible men, and so its notorious success fed off the fear, insecurity, and anger of single and married women alike.

The most infamous advice in her book is directed at college women. “There is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are,” Patton wrote. “You will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”  

Therefore, she suggest that women who are getting a college education should grab an eligible mate on campus, because “[m]en regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated…[s]mart women can’t marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal.”

Now why does this sound familiar? Oh, probably because that is what my grandmother used to tell me.  I am not a feminist by any means, but even I am irked by Patton’s retro women-should-be-housewives mindset. Patton not only simplifies a woman’s goal in life down to marrying well, but she objectifies men as prizes instead of relationship partners. It might have been the case that men tended to marry younger, less intelligent women, but this is not the 1950s anymore.

According to Patton, women should spend “at least 75% in searching for a partner and 25% in professional development.”  So I guess if I spend 15 hours in class plus maybe 10 hours more at work, I should spend another 75 hours a week on finding a husband (more than a full-time job, of course.)  And if I want to sleep or eat at all, that leaves me with less than 2 hours a day of free time.  Wow, I am awestruck at how miserable my life would be were I to follow Patton’s advice.

Patton’s old-fashioned view seemed painfully ignorant, but with just enough subjective experience to pass off as a semi-sound argument.  Perhaps the most shocking (but not surprising) part is that most of her opinions are not based on facts, and she has little to no cited studies to back up her points. Thank goodness for that.

Statistics prove that educated women have a better chance of getting married and staying married.  Several decades ago, women with college education were labeled as spinsters because they spent more time on advancing their career and education than finding a husband and raising children. Times have changed since, and studies now find that 91% of women who graduated from college do marry.  

They also tend to marry later, as opposed to being married right out of college. According to Betsy Stevenson’s study, the 20-year divorce rate for college graduates who married after the age of 25 is only 19%, which is extremely good compared to the national average of 40%.

Besides, only 20% of people from ages 18-29 are married, so if you do not plan on following Patton’s advice, you will not be alone.

How many of us have sighed wistfully when we saw how that guy proposed to the girl at this year’s Fashion Show? I know I did. The warm and fuzzy feeling of belonging to someone til death do us part is probably incomparable, not to mention having that sweet tax exemption.  In all seriousness, I am happy for the couple and their commitment, but I do worry for the girls who look at their example and think, “This is what I want when I graduate.”

Marrying simply for the sake of getting married not only result in a higher chance for divorce, it is also unfair to the male party who also had to commit to the marriage. Those fairy tales never showed what happened after the happy ending, but my guess is Cinderella is bored out of her mind to be stuck in a castle all day. College is, after all, a place for learning and boosting our chances of landing that dream job, a self-reliant safety net for a more fulfilling future.  So why throw it all away for a ring on the finger?