My dad has a masters in chemistry and my mom has a high school education. She’s a dumbass. She turns me off women.
1 Like
Our loss.
8 Likes
Ours too IMO
6 Likes
Yes.
Dad was brilliant, but never attended college - WWII instead. Mom finished business college.
Hip_tiger_wife B.A. in Art/Graphic Design vs. my math & FSA - different gifts.
Our youngest (supergeek) self-studied, no college, at cybersecurity makes more than I do. He’s as smart as our MD son who heads the hospital residency program. MD’s wife is also an MD. 
My father was smarter and a faster learner than any of youse guys. He was also abusive, dangerous, irrational, and unapologetic. One of the biggest grade a assholes I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Thank goodness he abandoned the family when I was young.
My mother barely has a grade 10 education and is probably average. I’ve never seen her raise her voice, ever. She’s pretty much always happy. And that’s raising 4 kids in the stigma of a single mother in the 60s and 70s on a secretary wage.
End result of smart vs not, dads dead and couldn’t get enough people to have a funeral, moms older and had all of her kids willing to have her move in and look after her. She lived with me at one point and now lives with my sister.
So, yeah, moms the dumb one and look where that got her.
8 Likes
I think it just gets at the often arbitrary definitions of “smart”
1 Like
My parents had decent grade school educations and some trades education back in The Old Country. My dad did some high school here in Canada, but he had my mom, my sister and me to support.
I still have my dad’s notebooks from back then. It made me smile to see some of the math he was learning. 
2 Likes
My mom graduated #1 in her class and my dad graduated #2 in his class. So we always joke that my dad is the dumb one
They were college sweethearts
My wife went to Yale and I went to no name state university
I think that as long as work hard and are a good person, you can get away with being dumb as rocks
2 Likes
Not worth a reply.
4 Likes
My parents were exactly the same intelligence. A tie. Sounds impossible yet…
1 Like
I was born in a country still under colonial rule. The first few years of my life were there. My father came from a poor background and was an agriculture extension officer. Those were people that moved around seeing if communal farmers were farming properly. My mother was a teacher. That was the best job for blacks through the formal education system. She came from a well to do family for blacks then.
We moved to USA as refugees and my father restarted his education and got a high school diploma while studying after work. He eventually got a PhD in Economics (agricultural economics) and he worked for FAO. He was as easy going as anyone can get. He passed away during COVID.
My mother was ok as a teacher and never went back to school. Every few years we would have another brother or sister. In our African culture women were the sole arbiters of family planning. I have a LOT of siblings and I am the oldest. My mom always reminds us she is the smart one and we inherited her genes. She is smart but really difficult to get along with. She’s also very superstitious. It’s the culture of the tribe we come from. It’s not so easy to reconcile.
I don’t know who was the smarter of the two. To be honest I don’t care about that.
6 Likes
Smart is not a term I would use to describe my dad. My mom, yes, even as her brain declines I still often see her brilliance.
I suspect my dad has/had trouble reading. But he remembers cool stuff. He’s a great story teller. He was in the Coast Guard, and when he signed up he couldn’t even swim. I don’t know how many he rescued but there were a lot. He never ascended very high in the ranks, I think bc he had trouble with test taking. But he still remembers all the things, even though that part of his life is nearly 40 years behind him.
7 Likes
Dad: STEM PhD from Ivy League school, zero social skills
Mom: 2 masters degrees from ok schools, very high social skills
They’re both smart, but Mom didn’t get an 800 on the SAT Math section like Dad did. Mom is happier though.
So who is smarter? Depends on your criteria.
1 Like
I know OP posts weird stuff…but in the aggregate sense its tough to make a marriage work if the educational divide between the two people is massive.
You need points of commonality. Values, Morals, Education etc.
Otherwise, its going to be really hard.
My parents were both educated (arguably my mother slightly better as she did a Ph. D vs J.D for father) but that means little if either of them have the emotional IQ of a turnip.
I have seen some really damaging “smart and succesful” people growing up and what the usually had in common is that they were very good at hiding the fallout from their very poor behavior.
Eh, I think it helps to have to have a similar level of intelligence. Intelligence and education are loosely correlated, but only loosely.
I have stuck my foot in my mouth talking to a friend who never went to college. She’s very smart and well-spoken and she had a white collar job at a level that ordinarily requires a college degree, but was able to advance on the basis of her considerable experience. So I sometimes forget that she doesn’t have a degree because she just seems like someone who would. But she doesn’t. And she married someone with a degree.
My mom has had the same experience with one of her friends. That friend was a realtor, but also just spoke and carried herself like a college educated person would… she just didn’t get a degree. And she married a man with a degree.
One of my girlfriends who has a master’s degree married a computer whiz (who makes WAY more money than she does) who never got any college degree. He’s very smart… just never got the paper to prove it. His experience speaks for itself and he’s had a great career in IT.
But sure, education is an indicator and a lot of college educated folks meet their spouses either in college or on the job (in a job with mostly other college-educated coworkers) so I’m sure it’s a lot more common to marry someone with a similar level of education.
People who talk ill of their mothers turn me off. (Unless she has done some horrible thing, which in this case doesn’t seem to be the case)
1 Like
Eh, my spouse and I are at pretty opposite ends of academic inclination and learning if that’s what we’re calling smart. My spouse has I think a grade 10 and a six month college certificate. And they definitely don’t like learning new things, it makes them uncomfortable. Me otoh, I’m always learning new stuff.
It doesn’t really come up. My learning is treated as a hobby that I do, they do yoga. Everything else in life, we’re aligned on. Plus, she’s more socially smart than I am, so sometimes I lean on her for that stuff, and I respect her knowledge.
The only time education comes up is when I state an opinion on something completely unrelated to any of my education and I get questioned. Like we’re talking about how to build a deck or something. When that happens, I proclaim “I HAVE A MASTERS DEGREE YOU KNOW”. Then my spouse calls me an idiot. But that’s the only time it comes up.
You can have these with a gap in ‘intelligence’
Commonality: they both can like camping, trashy tv, watching baseball, eating pizza.
Values and morals: what do smarts have to do with these?
Education: I’ve seen plenty of marriages work where one spouse has an advanced college degree and the other has none. And having more ‘education’ doesn’t mean someone is smarter. I know lawyers and accountants and scientists that somehow skated through life, and it’s a chore having any sort of ‘intelligent’ conversation with them
1 Like
100%
Hank Johnson (of “Guam will tip over and capsize” infamy) has a doctoral degree.
Bill Gates is a college dropout.
Education and intelligence are loosely correlated but only loosely.