How Tall You Are Can Predict How Happy Your Relationship Will Be, According To Research
If you're this height, you have a better chance of being in a long-term relationship.
Nino Sanger | Canva Being short has its disadvantages, but it's not all bad. A 2002 study found that short women are more likely to enjoy long-term romantic relationships with men and are more likely to have children. The study was conducted in England where the average height of a woman was found to be about five-feet-four inches.
Women on the lower side of that spectrum, from five feet tall to five foot three, were more likely to be in happy relationships and have children by the age of 42 than their taller sisters.
But wait, there's more. The study didn't just examine women, there were statistics taken about men, too. Sad but true, the women polled all preferred men who were taller than average for romantic relationships. About six feet tall, to be precise.
To me, it makes sense that women would prefer a taller man, just from an evolutionary standpoint, research from 2015 even backs that up. In our dumb caveman minds taller means bigger and bigger means better equipped to protect us from threats like rabid mastodons and peckish saber-toothed tigers.
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Researchers can't seem to find a similar reason for men to be more attracted to shorter women for long-term relationships than they are to shorter women.
Actually, according to this study, shorter women are statistically more likely to die in childbirth. So, if anything, our height should make us less viable long-term relationship partners.
Daniel Nettle who led this research team has one thought as to why this might be the case. “We know that men are drawn to things that in our evolutionary past would have been a cue for fertility. And in one sense tallness is a negative cue — tall women reach puberty later and probably their secondary sexual characteristics develop somewhat later."
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If Nettle is right, shorter women completing puberty earlier makes them better candidates for reproduction.
It's interesting research that goes against what we understand about evolution. Because scientists now know that there's a direct correlation between the height of a father and the height of his daughters.
So if we continue believing that evolutionary biological needs are in play when we pick our relationships, then we women are picking men who will give us daughters who are taller, and thus, not as viable for reproduction.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a freelance writer, editor, former Senior Editor of Pop Culture at Newsweek, and former Senior Staff Writer for YourTango. She has a passion for lifestyle, geek news, and true crime topics. Her bylines have appeared on Fatherly, Bustle, SheKnows, Jezebel, and many others.