Replies

"But wouldn't you draw a distinction between Bill Clinton, who had a wife his own age but was running around on the side with a twenty-something, and Fred Thompson, who is in his sixties and married to a woman who is, I guess, about 40? Seems a big difference to me."

Sorta' different things, usually; in the one case you are trying to hide what you are doing from the public eye, in the other you are out front about it: "I don't care what people think".

And one thing to ask is:

"Which sort of behavior- private or public - is more subversive of "conservative" "social" or "family" values".

Of course, as noted some of the responses above, some people have no problem with it at all, as long as it's in the context of marriage.

I have my doubts, though, that this argument is likely to be entirely convincing to women who can imagine themselves as the the first or second wife of a thrice married man.

FWIW, IMO this is largely a class thing.

For many years you were most likely to see this combination at either end of the income range; poor younger women would marry older men of often also modest means for stability and a modicum of security, and rich men would marry younger women for status or personal satisfaction. Meanwhile the "middle class" value was that you stayed married for life, usually in a relationship where the woman was a few years younger than the man. (For middle-income families, this was usually the best strategy economically - divorce was a economic event from which one or both partners often never completely recovered financially).

Lately, as standards of living and disposable income (especially of upper-middle class professionals) has risen and SS and Medicare have somewhat reduced the economic risks of divorce, you are seeing an increase in the number of "middle-class" Americans - mostly men - who are willing and able to start "second families" in their 40s, 50s and 60s - behavior which was previously the province of the rich and the poor.

(I'm not. BTW, saying that economics drives everything in such decisions, especially at the individual level - only that it's quite important in determining "values" and "moral standards" at the group level).

Such remarriage to yonder women are still socially traumatic, though - when you see three or four such couples out to diner together (at least in my Mid-West city) you will most often see older men paired with younger women, you rarely see groups where the men and women are randomly assorted by age, or even where you have men in their 50s and 60s and the women a mixed group such as two women in their 30s and two women in their 50s and 60s.

Now, this puts Thompson in a tricky spot.

The romantic life he's been leading (dating other entertainers and then marrying a younger woman) is that of a certain section of the very well to do - successful entertainment figures. The voters he's trying to reach, however, are members of a more conservative middle and lower-middle class.