I've known many violators of this "rule", male and female, on both sides of the equation. It's profoundly insulting to all parties concerned -- especially those on the younger side, but well into adulthood (i.e. in their mid-20s or above). Who presumably, according this "rule", must be too naive, or too needy, to appreciate the fact that their older partners must be "creeps."
The word "creepiness" is nowhere on that wiki page and I don't believe that creepiness is strongly associated with that formula attributed to Maurice Chevalier. To clarify what I mean by "associated", I'm talking about typical people holding both that formula and the "creepiness rule" as interchangeable labels for the same concept.
There is certainly some overlap between the two concepts but a 43-year old woman would understandably find a 73-year old chasing her a little "creepy" even though the she's within acceptable range of that math formula. Therefore, the "creepiness rule" is something else outside of that formula.
Another difference is the age/2+7 formula is a guideline for how society (the non-participants in the relationship) perceive the age disparity. The "creepiness rule" is more descriptive of how the participants perceive potential partners.
"The last-known Union widow, Gertrude Janeway, died in Jan. 2003 in Tennessee. John Janeway joined the Union army in 1864 and was briefly a POW at Andersonville. The couple married in 1927, after waiting three years until Gertrude turned 18. John was 81.
The person thought to be the last-known Confederate widow, Alberta Martin, was born Dec, 4, 1906, and died at age 97 in Alabama on May 31, 2004. In 1927, at age 21, she married William Jasper Martin, then 81. Martin joined the Confederate army in May 1864. Upon her husband's death, she married his grandson from his first marriage."
Looks like Western culture standards aren't cast in stone. Or made in heaven.
Forget creepiness - there's the issue of biological clock in women. Any man who wants to have kids pretty much has to work with an age ceiling.
I was actually surprised to see such a linear age range band, but maybe it's because it's so normal to have multiple marriages/divorces and such now. (I'd assumed men would have a bit of a ceiling for the age they were looking for around 42 or 44.)
While not as significant as that of women, we men seem have a biological clock as well. With all due respect, personally, I do not think that pinning things entirely women is a healthy attitude.
"A 2014 study had experts suggesting that the debate based on mixed evidence whether a father’s age is linked to his child’s vulnerability to individual disorders like autism and schizophrenia had been settled.[6][7] The result being that "Men have a biological clock of sorts because of random mutations in sperm over time". Dr. Patrick F. Sullivan, a professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina, who was not involved in the study said "This is the best paper I’ve seen on this topic, and it suggests several lines of inquiry into mental illness"."
My standard library does not contain any such rule. I therefore consider such a rule to not be common sense/knowledge. Please /define/ what you consider the 'standard' rule to be.
Offhand, yes there are situations that I realize qualify as such (usually the gold digger style scenarios), however I have never heard of an actual logically applicable /rule/ to quantify that emotional sentiment.
Slightly offtopic, but I'm feeling a little ranty.
This whole idea that two adults cannot engage in a romantic relationship without being unnecessarily harassed, based solely on their ages, is ridiculous. Just because it makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean that the people involved are uncomfortable, being taken advantage of, or naive. It just means they have found apparent happiness in another human being. It's no one else's business and judging others based on the age of their partner (assuming both are consenting adults) should be stopped.
I'm not sure which country has it, but I'll generalize some criteria:
* Able to make rational decisions for one's self.
* Successful co-operation with already existing 'adults'.
* Able to produce surplus survival resources to enable successful raising of offspring.
By the above requirements I would suspect that if you removed an automatic assumption of truth based on chronological age, that a majority of American 'adults' would fail at lease one item on the above list. In some cases it really isn't their fault, but a fault of society failing to correct it's own conditions.
Note the mistake of assuming preference = requirement. The whole everything that isn't forbidden is mandatory and everything that isn't mandatory is forbidden.
So search for a woman within age range X to Y, but I have never in my life carded a woman to make sure.
I might be wrong but the ancestry of the "rule" was some sort of statutory rape disqualification. Follow that rule as an adult in (insert state here) and it was a get out of jail free card for the guy even if the girl was technically underage. To handle those annoying "he's 18 and one day while and she's 17 and 11 months and 29 days old" situations. So technically you can't consent till you're 18, but if one partner is 18 and the other is 18/2+7 aka 16 or older, its not illegal. Needless to say this is not legal advice and I don't remember the state and it once being true in AL in 1920 doesn't mean its true today, anyway.
(and I'm getting downvoted. thanks guys. My point isn't that its great not to prosecute rapists or make a statement about some weird moral/ethical perspective on dating younger women or that I totally confused the article with some legal debate, but to point out that AFAIK this "common sense math formula" originally came from a statutory rape law in the American south decades ago, and thats the answer to the debate on HN of "where did this supposedly well known law come from that no one knows the source of" Perhaps given this as a start someone who knows the history of those laws, perhaps in the south, could confirm the details? I'm not asking you to agree with it, or promoting its reinstatement, just stating its history)
Those OKCupid statics are really useful, they help you understand what's commonly expected, e.g. if you date outside the commonly accepted age range, you might face additional challenge than others. That is useful information to have, so you can be prepared for such challenges.
But for gods sake, use that information to your advantage, not handy-cap your own mind, same as how you should use any other kinds of knowledge.