45 year old man dating a 21 year old woman

Yet, only 10 percent of these marriages were between men and women with that optimal age difference. The researchers did this by examining church records of 700 marriages from the Utsjoki, Inari and Enontekiö populations from the 17th through 19th centuries (in order to eliminate the effects of modern medicine on child survival). "We found that marrying women 14.6 years younger maximized men's lifetime reproductive success-in other words, the number of offspring surviving to age 18."

"We studied how parental age difference at marriage affected reproductive success among Sami people who married only once in their lifetime," says ecologist Samuli Helle of the University of Turku in Finland. But is it culture, genetics or the environment that drives such a choice-and is there an optimal age difference? New research shows that, at least for the Sami people of preindustrial Finland, men should marry a woman almost 15 years their junior to maximize their chances of having the most offspring that survive. Men marry younger women and women prefer to marry older men, in general.