Why Marriage is Not Like Prostitution

What's more, most males could not possibly afford to buy a woman's reproductive potential if courtship were a simple economic exchange. What would be an appropriate market price for a nine-month pregnancy, the pain of childbirth, the exhaustion of breast-feeding, and twenty years of maternal care? At least half a million dollars at a basic salary of $25,000, one would think. How much do men spend on courtship in the first few months? Perhaps a tenth of 1 percent of the proper market price. Th...