But there should be some kind of middle ground -- somewhere between the guy who doesn't pay attention to you and the guy who inspects you the way he would a border collie at Westminster; someone who doesn't return your calls and someone who puts his socks in your underwear drawer after two dinner dates. Some of the men looking for matrimony are mensches, sure. But it's hard not to get suspicious about such mysteriously sudden attachments. Jennifer Michael, a 36-year-old advertising brand planner in New York, said that in her experience, wife shoppers were men who had the right jobs and right homes and were simply looking to acquire the right wife to complete the set. She recalled a 34-year-old ex who "checked out babies more than other women." Michael said that often, when she'd reveal something about herself, the ex would reply, "'Oh, that's good; that works well for me.'" Michael, now engaged to a man she said showed no wife-shopping tendencies, said that these kinds of remarks made her think that commitmentphilia wasn't about finding real partnership, but rather "all about them; it's such a selfish thing."

Men are in something of a bind here. Sure there's selfishness in dating: Everyone, after all, is seeking a perfect match. But the terms of that search morph dramatically as we age; it's sometimes hard to see how the grown-up practice of drinking and dining with complete strangers is even related to the exhilarating, slippery encounters of youth. In their 30s and 40s, men are faced with the reality that perhaps their appetite for lascivious experimentation is waning, but to begin an outright search for a lifetime partnership feels weighty, and will possibly be regarded as creepy. Every encounter is more loaded than it used to be: Will someone get hurt? Will someone's time get wasted? If a relationship extends beyond a few dinners, does that mean that issues of commitment come into play?

Not to mention that in a climate when economic and professional power continue to shift rapidly between the genders, men might be scared. "Women are so independent now that a lot of men may feel superfluous," said Helena Rosenberg, author of "How to Get Married After 35: A User's Guide to Getting to the Altar." "Women take themselves on vacations, buy themselves cars, buy themselves homes. That's got to be very frightening." Indeed, our professional, financial and social opportunities combined with increased reproductive technology that allows us to postpone childbearing have created an intoxicating mix. Some women have discovered that the unencumbered life -- the one that men have traditionally invoked as a reason not to settle down -- is precisely all it's cracked up to be.

"Elizabeth," a 32-year-old New Yorker, asked for anonymity because she is in a two-year relationship that she said is close to ending because of her boyfriend's insistence on starting a family. She said her 31-year-old partner "is super into babies. And I'm ... not." Elizabeth said her boyfriend is "better at cooking, likes to stay home ... Basically, the textbook kind of guy you want to date." But, she said, she has occasionally wondered, given his pressure for family in the face of her ardent desire to hold off for a few years, whether her boyfriend is with her because he loves her, or because she is an appealing vessel for their progeny. "I'm starting to feel like a cad. I should appreciate the hell out of this guy, because I love him so much. But I'm not ready to have babies! Or get married!"

Women feeling like cads, men pleading for commitment?

"Isn't it unbelievable? The whole world is upside down," said the jovial author of "The Male Biological Clock," Harry Fisch. But he added that the phenomenon makes sense to him, since women under 30 are having fewer kids, while the birth rate for women over 40 continues to rise. Fisch said he wrote his book in part to stimulate research on the impact male hormonal and physiological changes could have on the psyche. We don't know for sure whether a male urge to couple and propagate is related in some primal way to changes in his body. But Fisch said he could make "an educated guess" that the biological changes "are related to this new phenomenon [of men pushing to settle down]. You don't see the desire to settle down as much when men are younger and have higher testosterone levels. It increases later on."

Many men I contacted about this story were suspiciously unwilling to discuss their own domestic or reproductive impulses, though a number told me that they had "friends" who were prowling for wives. One 31-year-old New York artist, William, claimed that he did not approach dates with a checklist, but that after the end of his last serious relationship, he does see dates as "either marriage or a one-night stand." And Todd, a 32-year-old secondary school teacher from outside Philadelphia, said that though he does not yet feel a biological impulse to marry, he has already spent some time thinking about his own romantic course in comparison with his father's. "Occasionally I feel like if I meet somebody, and get married in two years, and then wait to have kids for another two years, I'm going to be 36 by the time I have my first child, and that kid is going to graduate high school when I'm 54," he said. This is just the kind of mental arithmetic that some women have tortured themselves with for years.

It's also the kind of thinking that haunts Dr. Glen McWilliams, 39, a urologist and friend of Fisch's, who said he is aware of his own biological clock and worries about whether he'll be in any shape to throw a football or ski with his future children. He said that he and his friends have waited to complete their medical training before turning their focus to their personal lives, and that indeed, "many of the successful women you meet nowadays are willing to put it off." McWilliams said that though it's never been his thing, he now studiously avoids hooking up with sexually aggressive women he suspects might just be out for a good time. And of his dating habits, he admitted, "It's true that my ability to interview is much more refined. Someone you're talking to who's more grounded might be a keeper, whereas someone more flighty who wants to go live in Europe for a year, you know she's not ready to settle down." McWilliams said specifically that he often enjoys a woman who will argue with him on an early date. "I'd rather have a tough, strong, determined woman I can have an argument with than a cute, sweet woman who won't stand up for herself," he said. "Because that lets me know that if I'm not around, she will defend herself and my children."

Sometimes wife shopping produces a happy ending. Kristin Kemp, a 31-year-old young adult novelist in New York, has been married for six months to a man she admits came on too strong. Kemp met investment banker Johan Svenson a year after her divorce from her first husband. Describing their first date, Kemp said, "We had this conversation in which he said to me, 'You wouldn't have to be a stay-at-home mom. You could work as much as you want. Do you want to have kids? Because I want a whole bunch of them.'" Svenson was then only 25, but as Kemp said, "He comes from a family that is very tight and he was anxious to get his own family that was very tight." Kemp said she was taken aback and tentative with Svenson for six months. "I didn't even know if I wanted to be in this," said Kemp. "I just wanted somebody to hang out with." Then, Kemp said, she realized the relationship "was just so much fun and I thought, 'Why am I resisting this?'

"These guys exist and I see my friends dump them all the time," said Kemp. "I realize there are things wrong with some of them. But I also think that a lot of women are afraid of being treated properly. It's almost like they're not happy unless they find a guy who doesn't want to commit. I don't know why that is."

Recent Stories