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The story
News that the share of first marriages where the wife is older hit a record 25.5% sparked discussion on 5ch’s News Express+ board. Citing an interview with sociologist Masahiro Yamada, the article describes a shift away from the once-dominant pattern of husbands being older. Thread posters pointed to the gap in earning power between men and women in the marriage market, and to older generations who still bristle at “wife older than husband” pairings — though opinions split over how to read the numbers, with some noting that “a quarter is still a minority; same-age or younger wives still make up 75%.”
Published Thu, Sep 3, 6:30 AM
CHANTO WEB
Age-gap marriages used to typically mean an older husband. But now, marriages where the wife is older are on the rise. Among first-time marriages, the share with an older wife hit a record 25.5%. Why are more men choosing older wives? What do they find in life with a younger husband? We asked sociologist Masahiro Yamada about changing views on marriage and the new shape of married life.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Finding out that a woman who looks like an old hag by any measure is actually younger than you really drives home your own age.
Opposite, actually — being older makes her think she's got the upper hand, so she won't forgive it.
On dating apps I've never seen a high-earning woman except doctors — high-earning men are overwhelmingly more common.
That's because 5ch guys are snipers — great at hitting targets from long range. From total stranger to lover in one shot, closing the distance instantly lol
Apparently a higher marriage rate also raises the odds of more kids being born, so honestly I just want marriage numbers to go up, whatever it takes.
How big an age gap are you even picturing here…
Five years older and five years younger are worlds apart — an older woman (oba) is just a no-go.
You should stop that. Might be a joke to you, but she's definitely hurt by it.
Once those months pass, you'd better hug her from behind and say 'we're the same age now' — otherwise I'm cursing you to stub your little toe on a dresser corner.
Which is exactly why, for both men and women, a younger partner who spoils you is the best.
With the falling birthrate, there aren't enough workers or people to support the social security system, so we're heading toward a world where you work until you die.
If you don't want to work until you die, then:
working-age people need to have three or more kids,
the elderly who are around now should keep working until their healthy life expectancy runs out,
and society needs to stop tolerating the kind of slacking off NEETs get away with.
Stayed single, saved up money, retired early. Living a relaxed, hobby-centered life, and even in old age I'm comfortable on employee pension plus a personal pension. If I'd gotten married and had a wife and kids, I'd still be grinding myself down at work lol
Pensions are a system that skims disposable income from the working-age population and redistributes it to the elderly.
The original point was to support people too old to work by cutting into working-age people's disposable income.
Now that healthy life expectancy has risen and people once considered too old to work can actually work,
pensions for under-80s — which needlessly skim working-age disposable income — should be scaled back,
and the excessive social security burden on the working-age population should be reduced.
Even if healthy life expectancy has gone up, old people are still forgetful and slow at work — no change there. Just imagine how much Japan's productivity has dropped because of the mandatory employment-to-65 rule.
This is data for first marriages only. If you include remarriages, the husband's older in most cases, so overall it's not actually that high a share. High-status men keep snagging young women over and over through remarriage, while the divorced women left behind mostly can't remarry.
And since this is only first-marriage statistics, the share out of all marriages is probably pretty small — plus they might be getting divorced quickly too.
But the data says a quarter of wives are older.
Smells like that whole 'men in their 40s are popular now!!' narrative all over again.
There's the whole 'husband as household head' (teishu kanpaku) thing and the 'kanpaku declaration' — but that's all premised on the wife actually being the emperor. He's called 'kanpaku' (regent) because he acts like the emperor even though the wife is the real emperor.
This thread is literally about data showing older wives are on the rise in the real world, though.
Even if you say younger is better, the point is that younger women increasingly won't marry older guys anymore.
If you want to marry a young woman, you need to get married while you're young yourself.
The average age gap is only 1.4 years, right? So why do I picture her being a whole 12 years older (laughs).
Even a 1-year gap with the wife older bothers some people from the older generation.
Even 1-2 years bothers the older generation — a full 12-year gap would be unthinkable.
Background and Key Points
The news is based on official marriage statistics limited to cases where both spouses are marrying for the first time — a distinction that isn’t obvious from the original article, since it differs from the picture once remarriages are factored in. Also, “a record 25.5%” cuts both ways: it means couples who are the same age or where the husband is older still account for 75%, so “older wives” haven’t become the mainstream. That’s exactly where thread opinion split — some read the shift as a genuine change in values, others as still a minor share within the margin of error. Cited factors include the asymmetry in earning power between men and women in the marriage market (high earners skew male) and lingering resistance from the older generation toward “wife older than husband” pairings — though it’s worth noting these are all just thread posters’ impressions, not claims backed by statistics.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Marriage] 25% of First-Time Married Couples Now Have an “Older Wife,” a Record High. Unpacking the Reality of “Reiwa-Era Marriage” Through Data — the “Men Work, Women Stay Home” Trap Blocking the Marriage Market.”
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