London, April 12
The days of seeing a woman on the arm of a man old enough to be her father might soon be over, for an increasing number of the fairer sex are ditching sugar daddies for toy boys.

And, the information comes from none other than UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS), which has the figures to back this phenomenon.

The ONS found that 26 per cent of marriages now has wives who are older than their husbands – a number almost double than the early 1960s. The organisation has also found that there has also been a drop in the number of men who take women younger to them by five years or more as their spouses. This number has dropped to around 50 per cent from nearly nearly two-thirds over the same period.

According to Professor Patrick O’Donnell, a specialist in the psychology of interpersonal attraction at Glasgow University, this reversal of older women marrying younger men is due to the challenging of traditional ideas that state that men are only attracted to younger women.

“There is a lot of debate about this issue. As women gain in economic equality, they no longer marry for economic protection in the way they might have in the past - leading them to marry older men. So instead they marry purely on the grounds of attraction and means they tend to search for younger more beautiful people. The idea that women would go for older men purely because they find them attractive is a fallacy,” he said.

Relate councillor Denise Knowles feels that the trend is taking place because older women are seeing younger men as someone who they can have fun with, and for men, it is a case of finding the older woman more confident and in-charge.

“For many women, the career has been the big thing and they now want to investigate other options, but they are looking for somebody to have fun with, but also who doesn’t necessarily want to have children. There is also the idea that they want somebody who is young enough not to feel threatened by the woman’s career, so they encourage that person but not enter into some sort of competition,” she said.

“For the younger man it was not simply the case of pursuing a ‘mother figure’. An older woman can come across as being a lot more confident about themselves and this can be very attractive to a younger man. It can mean that they enter into an equal relationship,” she added.

Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, added: “This has a lot to do with women’s increased position as a sex. They are doing better than men, more powerful jobs, better education. They are therefore able to be more demanding, and essentially doing what men used to do: go for the younger, more beautiful models. It’s a slight twist on the sexism issue.” — ANI