I have, for some time now, had a theory that sort of relates to what OP is talking about, although it may not be directly on point. The theory is that recent socio-economic shifts (which have touched millenials the most) have altered what I call "the sexual economy" significantly.
The idea is that, in the past, women paid a lower price for getting with a man who was decent, but not necessarily of particularly high socio-economic status. She could become a nurse and marry a mechanic and still expect to afford the two kids she wanted, a nice suburban house, and a white picket fence.
Today, the price for failing to attract a man well above that socio-economic level is a lot higher because of student loans and rising inequality, as I'll explain.
First, I think we're all familiar with the nature of the student loan bubble and how it is preventing many young people from accessing the kind of socio-economic progress their parents did, but often lost in this topic is the gender aspect: student loans are sort of a feminist issue. More women go to college than men, so the massive increased debt loads we've seen placed on students in the last couple of decades have largely hit women more than men. Also, women are less common in the fields with the highest post-graduate incomes (ex: STEM), way more common in fields with very low post-graduate incomes, and tend to earn less than men after graduation for a multitude of reasons (career choice, hours worked, etc - these factors, not discrimination, account for 90%+ of the gender pay gap). This means women not only carry more debt than men, but have a harder time paying it off.
Secondly, socio-economic equality is quite a serious thing today.
Income inequality here in the USA is the widest its been in about a century. Socio-economic mobility in the USA is
as limited as we've seen it -
who your parents are matters more than it used to, and your odds of improving your station are much lower than they were. The USA was once more socially mobile than places like the UK, but even that has changed - places like Canada, the UK, and others in the developed world are now shown to have
as much, if not more mobility than the USA (though socio-economic mobility is getting constrained in just about all of those places, so there remain similar issues there too).
The middle class has also been
badly hollowed out.
Today's women, for all of the talk about independence and careerism, generally want families and husbands at some point. The vast majority, if given their absolute ideal outcomes in life, are going to see themselves at some point having a husband and a couple of kids + a nice suburban home and a car. The rise of social media has only enhanced this desire as more women are bombarded with images of the ideal outcome on their mobile devices and computers (as well as on reality television shows) - expectations are high.
The point of all of this is to show that these expectations have gotten far harder to meet for today's young woman than they were before. Today, a young woman has student loans her parents didn't have, and her mother came up during a time in which the middle class was still relatively strong and socio-economic mobility was far stronger in the USA. All of this combines to create more economic insecurity for her.
On top of all of this, the guys who could bail her out of this are getting harder to find. Men have fallen behind pretty badly in education, and women outnumber them now in the attainment of most notable degrees. Young women are earning more in many major urban areas than young men. In the past, it was relatively easy for a pretty young woman to get her Mrs. Degree, find a white collar dude, and be set for life after graduating with minimal debt. She could even forego that route, get a regular blue collar guy, and still expect a nice middle class lifestyle between the two of them. This has gotten a lot harder.
The path to a pretty cushy, stable middle class lifestyle was broader before - again, even a blue collar dude could provide it for her and if she went for her Mrs. at a university, a solid white collar guy wasn't too hard to grab with minimal debt. Today, young women take on incredible debt to graduate into jobs that don't buy them nearly as much as they bought their parents. The guys around them are fewer and disproportionately lower achieving, and not as many of them can help her toward economic security as before - even if they come close to her education level, they too are laden with debt.
This means that if a woman wants a shot at that nice "middle class+" (that is "middle class or beyond") suburban lifestyle she was probably raised in and always aspired to replicate (2+ kids, 2+ cars, nice-to-luxurious suburban home, etc), she generally needs one of two things:
1. Be an extremely high achiever herself (ex: break into investment banking, biglaw, or medicine) and find a partner at a similar level or somewhat below (but still probably also a white collar professional).
2. Find a male high achiever and attach your fortunes to him.
Since only a very few women can exercise option 1 here, option 2 ends up being the best shot for most.
If she can't follow option 1 and foregoes option 2, she takes a huge risk unless she has some sort of familial inheritance to fall back on. Let's say a typical young woman earning a typical middling salary with a typical liberal arts degree in a large (and, of course, expensive) urban area gets a guy at her income level, foregoing option 2 and unable to pursue option 1 because she (like most) just didn't have the academic performance or connections. She has plenty of debt and so does he, plus (as noted above) it has become more costly for people her age to afford their own homes and move up the socio-economic ladder. Following this path, she may not get to a point where she and her partner can plausibly afford that "endgame" suburban lifestyle before it is too late for her and her partner to have her family.
Say she decides to follow option 2 instead, and as a result she gets a man with much more socio-economic clout than her. If she does this and can lock him down, she'll have no issue reaching the endgame "middle class+" lifestyle with more than enough time to spare - he can afford to provide it more easily than her male socio-economic peer could, and since she isn't talented/connected enough to follow option 1 (which might enable her to provide it for herself to a degree) this may be her only chance to get there in a timely fashion.
My conclusion is that all of this has led to the "beta bucks" scenario we've always joked about on this forum becoming more consequential than ever before. Women who want to get to that middle class+ lifestyle I described have a way smaller margin for error than before: if they don't have family money to smooth out the bumps and aren't themselves very high achievers, then their odds of being able to afford that lifestyle at any point in the near future (before they age well beyond the point at which the fertility clock has rung) are not good. This wasn't as true for their mothers and grandmothers, but it is true for them.
This creates more economic insecurity among the current generation of women, which I think has the following outcomes:
1. More escorting/sugar-babying (see the rise of trends like tagthesponsor and SeekingArrangement, which have always existed but blew up in a big way recently - I suggest this is a product of younger women simply being more economically insecure than their predecessors).
2. Higher demand for high-achieving men (an even greater obsession with fame/high socio-economic status in men and greater options for men who have it - more women need such men than ever before, and the rise of social media has also exposed more women to the potential benefits and trappings of fame/high socio-economic status than ever before, further increasing demand).
3. More assortive mating (those who already have the wealth closing ranks by pairing with others who already have wealth, limiting the risk of either dropping below the standards at which they were raised in an economy where the odds of that happening have gone up for those who aren't careful).
Again, very few women have the connections/academics to be high earners themselves and short-circuit these problems, and few have enough family money to escape these issues. For most women, it's either find a relatively high achieving guy or bust. These women really, REALLY need "beta bucks" more than ever before, be it through more traditional (marry the high earner) way or the less traditional path (SeekingArrangement, TagTheSponsor, aka "milk the rich boomers", or other avenues like erotic modeling). Those bucks are her way out, so to speak - a life raft in a sea of financial insecurity.
Their mother could conceivably get by without all of this, but today's women often simply cannot hope to get what they want without that life raft. Having one is, in a sense, more important than ever, and missing one is far more costly than it was before. The path to her preferred lifestyle is MUCH narrower than it was, and Mr. Beta Bucks is by far the most reliable option.
Women subconsciously realize this, and perhaps it is altering their behavior. I don't know if it is doing so to quite the extent OP implies, but my anecdotal observations have left me with the idea that
something is up.
Just my thoughts.
