WOMAN EXPLAINS that women are single because men just aren’t good enough: the “religious,” “conservative” account.

Declining marriage rates among millenials . . . may be partly due to an increasing imbalance in the number of marriageable men and women at all levels of society. For example, women have attended and graduated from college at higher rates than men for some years now, and in 2010 women receiving doctoral degrees outnumbered men for the first time.

So, the marriageability of men is determined by how many pieces of paper they have framed on their walls. And the marriageability of women only increases with age and the size of their student loan debt. Just remember that the essay is written by a female lawyer who is presumably looking to “marry up,” and the presence of such odd assertions will make more sense.

Even if a woman is looking out only for a degreed man, her options extend beyond her age group. In a given year, sure, more women than men receive (often worthless) degrees, but the pool of degreed men includes those who received degrees in the past. And, though the pool of degreed women also includes those who are older, young women have the advantage over them: they’re younger, prettier, and more fertile. A woman has more options when she’s young. If she doesn’t get married then, it’s on her, not on men her age.

It is true that, while the rate of women interested in getting married has increased, the rate of men so interested has been decreasing. But this isn’t the same as men being unmarriageable. In any case, wouldn’t it be helpful to discern why more men aren’t interested? Just assuming that they aren’t good enough doesn’t get us anywhere.

In my experience, most conservative and religious women . . . expected to find a husband in college, and if not there, then at church, or perhaps in graduate school—or, in the worst-case scenario, through online dating. Many did. Many did not. But it is unfair to criticize those who did not, when the two populations where they are most likely to find a spouse are either evenly divided between men and women or, in the case of churches and some colleges, are heavily female.

Planet Earth is “evenly divided between men and women.” It’s a wonder anyone gets married!