This is not necessarily true. "To all those quick-witted graduates of higher education, here is something we guys have always known: Why buy the cow, when the milk is free? "
Fuentes has a better point - that men suitable for long-term marriage do so before they hit 35. Many men develop, at varying ages but almost always before male fertility starts to seriously decline, an intense desire to get hitched. My high school Spanish teacher, a Mormon, described that to my class and I didn't believe it until it happened to me 13 years later.
I had joined a small firm in the San Joaquin Valley after graduating from law school and working in political campaigns for a year, then had a fine time for about a year dating ladies desperate for an eligible batchelor, with absolutely no expectation of marriage by me.
Then BANG! it hit me. It Was Time. Somehow I woke up one morning with a completely different attitude. I considered all the ladies and thought, no. A few days later my secretary said there was someone at her church I should meet. Anna Margaret must have been telepathic - somehow she waited to introduce us until I was ready.
Candy wasn't much to look at but was easily the smartest of the bunch I'd seen since moving to the Valley, sweet, and I thought I could put up with her for 50-60 years. What I wanted was companionship. Lust had nothing to do with it, nor love. Something inside was screaming at me to get hitched Right Now, and she was the one I was most likely to stay with. Love came by degrees.
That was 25 years ago. I drove one son back to college Wednesday and she's driving the other today. Our daughter is a high school senior.
I've paid some attention to this since and the pattern I see around here is definitely that almost all men marry before they're 35 - and generally before they're 32. This means that the pool of suitable men for never-married women over 32 is quite small. Even divorced men tend to stick with their first marriage for at least 4-5 years, so they're generally still in it at the ages when they're age-suitable for never-married females over 32.
Particularly when you consider that men of any age, but particularly men in their 30s, can marry any women their age or younger, of any financial station in life, whereas unmarried women over 32 usually insist on a man who is a) older and b) richer.
The higher on the income scale she is, therefore, the smaller the number of potential partners.