New French leader Macron’s wife 24 years older than him – why’s that the future

The 39-year- old political newbie Emmanuel Macron just won the weekend election in France to become the country’s youngest leader in more than 100 years.

But to many people, that fact has been eclipsed by the “novelty” of the fact that his wife, Brigitte Marie-Claude Macron, is 64-years-old (though she looks nearly eight years younger and is very stylish), 24 years younger than him.

In a patriarchal world where it is old men who marry younger women, many have been left agog. The story gets juicier, because he first met Brigitte as a 15-year-old schoolboy and she was his teacher. They started an affair. Brigitte was married then.

The fact that the difference in age between 70-year-old US president Donald Trump and his wife Melanie, who is 47, is nearly 24 years, didn’t raise eyebrows because, well, again, men get to marry younger women.
I am not a priest, so will not speak about Brigitte’s affair with her student decades ago. Nor will we canvass the sexist issue here.

Our interest today is the evolutionary necessity and the economics of love and marriage.

Younger women are more likely to have healthier children than older women, and (at least in the past) they were also less at risk of dying during childbirth. Younger men are also more likely to father healthier children than older ones, but the cut off age for men is much higher than for women.

The evolutionary success of humans then, needed older men to marry younger women. The argument of course, is how young.

But it is really economics and politics that set this norm in stone. Centuries after we left the cave (never mind that African politicians still behave like cavemen) and with social progress, things changed.

In those days, roles that fell to men like defending the family meant fighting off animals that would eat them; feeding them meant chasing down a gazelle in a hunt; and fighting off invading chieftains who would capture them.

Those roles, among other things, evolved into male privilege.

Anyhow, since lately providing for the family means a trip to the supermarket, and protecting them requires you to hire a security firm, things that require money, in patriarchal societies where men monopolised wealth, those with money, ability to earn, or land, were better providers.

Now, assuming honest work and commerce, a 50-year-old man is more likely to have more money and land, than a 24-year-old recent college graduate.

Of course it is important to marry for love, first, but next the most sensible thing a woman should do is to consider a man’s ability to provide, either in his future earning potential, or current wealth. This scenario inevitably ended in older men marrying younger woman.

But there is something illogical. Not everyone marries to have children. If you are not marrying to have children, issues of “child bearing age” become irrelevant. So the case for marrying a younger woman begins to disappear. On average, women live five per cent longer than men – which translates to about four years.

So the only “socially necessary” age difference between couples is four years – in favour of women. In other words, if couples want to die at around the same time, the woman should always be four years older! It no longer makes rational sense for men to marry younger women.

Macron, you would say, married in a direction supported by science.

Even if they wanted to have children, the advancement of science has reduced the risks of older women giving birth, as the increasing number who are having their first children at 50 are showing us.

Despite persisting discrimination against women, the shift to service industries and technology are significantly eroding the disadvantages women face in the economy.

However, one thing hasn’t changed. Just like older men are likely to be richer than young ones, older women are also likely to be richer than younger ones. Now we said earlier that it’s important to think about your partner’s ability to provide.

In a changing world, given that women have a longevity edge, it’s only right that men consider their future wive’s ability to provide.

If you are 28-year-old man, have a modest-paying job, and want to start a family, the best chance of your family’s success is to marry a 32-40 old woman, because she will probably have more money than your high school sweetheart.

But we know that matters of the heart are not governed by grand philosophy, and social and cultural attitudes usually run anything between 25 to 100 years behind that required by technological progress.

Therefore, I doubt that in Uganda, there will be any followers in Macron’s more enlightened and scientific path.
Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3