Preferential mating

By preferential mating is meant the conscious or unconscious choice of a mate because of certain desirable characteristics, whether or not these are possessed to any marked degree by the one doing the choosing. In assortative mating, much of the selection is unconscious, but in preferential mating a large share of it is conscious and thus more amenable to social influence, particularly education. But even here part of the process is unconscious, for individuals absorb much of their social thought from innumerable sources, some of which seldom come to the foreground of attention.

Similar social and economic status is undoubtedly a large factor in selection, not only because of consciousness of kind and the comfort of the familiar but also because one's acquaintanceship usually lies mostly within one's own class and the laws of numbers play their role well. There follow the more personal characteristics, such as beauty, disposition, vivacity, intelligence, health, stability, and a host of others. These will be rated differently by different social groups, and the ratings may change at different periods in time. Beauty is practically always desired but, of necessity, not always insisted upon. Also, it is well that individual standards of beauty vary as much as they do, for many a person who would rate low in a professional beauty contest can qualify as beautiful to someone. Beauty is such an elusive, indefinable attribute that it need not wholly depend upon regularity of features and conformity to an accepted type but is determined partly by the reflection of personality through face and body, revealing such factors as animation, kindness, courage, and grace of movement.

But it is impossible to compose a list of attributes that a person must have in order to be a successful husband or wife. The press has frequently exploited the subject through "love columns" as well as through the sensational statements of notoriety seekers. One of these, a doctor of some standing, warns young men against marrying a girl who cannot run 100 yards in 13 seconds. Presumably, this is merely a test of good health rather than ability to keep out of reach of said husband when in an irate mood. Anyway, the husband supposedly travels in another medium, for girls are adjured to pick husbands who can swim 25 yards in 30 seconds. One writer insists that the young man select a college graduate if possible, but another says that college women make the worst wives in the world. There are innumerable lists with names like "Ten Rules for Choosing a Husband (or Wife)" which include such banalities as "He must not be jealous," "He should not be conceited or tactless," "He should be willing to let his wife audit his accounts"; "She should be charming, clever, and entertaining, always neat in appearance, thrifty" in other words, a mate should be a paragon of virtue and grace.

Granted that these lists contain many admirable characteristics, as well as negative ones to be shunned, the absurdity is not so much in their innocuous enumeration as in the authoritative assumption that this or that list is the perfect guide and that unhappiness will result from the choice of a person who does not measure up. It is worth while to analyze certain characteristics that frequently have great influence one way or another, for youth needs all the enlightenment it can get on this difficult question, but to make arbitrary lists that can automatically sort out the successful or unsuccessful prospects is patently impossible.