Good news for smart women

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WHY SMART MEN MARRY SMART WOMEN

By Christine B. Whelan

Simon & Schuster, $24, 256 pages

REVIEWED BY ILYA SHAPIRO

Maureen Dowd and other bitter, frustrated, successful women of a certain age have made a cottage industry out of spreading dire warnings to the young smart set about the trade-off between academic and professional success on the one hand and "finding a man" on the other. While it's all well and good to reap the fruits of equality and challenge male peers in the classroom, boardroom and courtroom, men are still looking to "marry their secretaries."

Even in this new liberated millennium, a successful single woman in her 30s "has a greater chance of getting killed by terrorists than of getting married" -- to paraphrase a line from that relationship classic, "When Harry Met Sally." Men don't want to marry women who are ambitious, or who make more money than they do. They are intimidated by graduate degrees and find independent, opinionated women off-putting.

Poppycock! says independent social scientist Christine Whelan -- Princeton undergrad, Oxford Ph.D. -- in a provocative new book that explains "Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women." The women Ms. Whelan dubs SWANS (Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse) actually marry at the same rate as all other women, just a bit later -- once they've finished their degrees, started careers, etc. (Full disclosure: Ms. Whelan is my college classmate and edited the Daily Princetonian when I was a columnist at that paper.)

Drawing on the wealth of demographic data in the 2000 U.S. Census and a specially commissioned Harris Interactive poll, Ms. Whelan establishes that the myth of a certain cohort being "overqualified for love" is just that and that what gentleman prefer is brains. And she cannot wait to proselytize this romantic gospel -- ask her about the book and every other sentence proclaims "good news" -- to the millions of SWANS who experience unnecessary anxiety caused by the misperception that they are facing uphill relationship odds.

Of course, Ms. Whelan may be a tad biased, having met her fiancee while writing this book (on the inside flap she shows off a prominent engagement ring).