Hey everyone! Thanks for the concerns, I am a new commenter, but like <<gruseom>> hinted, I have been reading HN for years, so this is not my first impression of the community. I also come from a culture where "gee why aren't you married yet" or "why don't you make more kids" are considered "safe" questions to ask to people, so the deleted-but-quoted comment was not offensive to me (but having also lived in the US, I understand that it could have been).

Anyway, just to reply to some of the comments: I mentioned the # of kids to present some reasoning behind the biological limitation to get married at 27. But kids and family are still fairly distant in the future for me, so it can change, I recognize that (i.e. haven't totally boxed myself in).

But let's even look at the more interesting side: men who want families have the OPTION of staying single well into their thirties without limiting the number of people who they could statistically find a match from. A 35 year old man has many more potential marriage partners than a 35 year old woman. And I think that is not going to change until it is as common for a 35 year old woman to date and marry a 5+ years younger man as it is for the reverse case.

I should mention that I am super open minded about these things - I am just observing some realities around me, not commenting on whether they are good or bad.

I think you have a valid point, but my experience is that it is not nearly as rosy a picture for men.

Most women I came across while dating in my early thirties were not open to the idea of a 5+ year difference. Many women in their mid-twenties consider 30 a magical number that some how makes you "too old". Less then four years of age difference seems to be more along the norm that women looked for. I've seen articles that confirm that as well.

That said, it is true that the exceptions for age difference favor men over women. Not sure what could be done to change that, but having a realistic expectation and timeline of your goal will go a lot further to it success then anything else. You realize you may have to hedge your bets to make it happen. Unfortunately many women will not pay attention to that fact until it is too late to make that choice.

I'm glad you were not offended. One thing, I'm 35 and were I not married I cringe at the thought of dating most 24yr old women. I'll say that in the personal cases of older women that married younger men I know, the men had finished school, had a stable career, got a house, and just got fed-up with all the drama of dating women near their age. But again, sample size may be too small.