Is it that marriage itself is beneficial or that people capable of maintaining a relationship make better parents?
Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example. So I think we need to look at widows or something to control for those kinds of issues.
I was wondering about that, too. The data are very clear: if you grow up with married parents, you will do better. But, should everyone be rushing off to get married, or is marriage selective for people who will do better? Or is it partly selective, and also partly forcing yourself to work through a marriage makes you a better person?
Its effects may be more visible, because in previous iterations society condemned children out of wedlock so data on it was not as reliable. Naturally, potential solutions would result in rather unwelcome dystopias that could be encapsulates in a phrase 'oi you got loicense for those kids?'
It is a bit of all the above. People select marriage partners who are trust worthy, stable, and not constantly looking for excitement.
These same people, when they find a suitable spouse, are more likely to tough it out when things get unpleasant in the belief their spouse is fundamentally a good person.
In marriage just like at work, you don’t judge someone by one event. People may have a bad day. Or they are sick and not themselves. Instead you should judge their actions over a long period of time. If someone has always been there for you, appreciated you and delivered what they promised, and for some reason hurt you today; you are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Possibly some of the poor outcomes are due to married people being more likely to be able to sustain a stable relationship. There are a lot of factors confounded with marriage, and it doesn’t seem like the author controlled for them (this is an article about a book and not a peer reviewed study). She explicitly mentioned that married couples are more likely to have a better household income and that single moms are less likely to have support from outside family members. So I suspect that outcomes might be better for a single parent with the income and family support the same as a married couple, but that situation is rare. Similarly, if you forced two people to get married and have kids when they didn’t want to, those kids probably aren’t going to get the same benefit of growing up in a married household.
>In the book, released last month, Kearney points out a rather obvious fact: Children raised by two parents have a much higher chance of success than those raised by one. Yet she goes even further to argue that whether parents are married or not impacts their children's success.
> In the U.S., she says, unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe. Children in many of these households are more likely to experience two or three parental partnerships by age 15.
Yeah, I'm also curious. Another commenter in this thread blames individualism and inability to cope with minor incompatibilities but I wonder if it's really true.
I suspect this is a result of the tax system in the US which is structured in a way that strongly incentivises parents into marriage.
Europe generally taxes incomes individually and offers parental leave to help when one of the parents is out of the workforce with a baby. In the US there's just the pooling of tax allowances.
For dual income households in very high cost of living areas though you need to balance the benefits of pooling tax allowances while only one of you is working with the reduction in mortgage interest tax deduction (which has the same maximum for both a married couple or unmarried single filers.)
If im taking care of a partner, i should be able to deduct expenses up to my total income like corporations can. halving the tax is still not enough to move the needle for people to get married due to better taxes.
So in your view they're going from cohabiting to marriage to separated/divorced, rather than cohabiting to separated? In that case it seems more likely to me (non-US person) that cultural factors are pushing people towards marriage, rather than purely financial considerations.
Specifically on the "unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe." quoted in the parent comment.
I think there are cultural reasons why Americans are more likely to get married too, but don't discount the financial incentives since they are pretty substantial for new parents. Remember this is a country with no right to paid maternity leave!
Take an example of an unmarried couple in San Francisco earning the median salary for the city of roughly $100,000/year each. As they both earn the same amount and get their health insurance through their respective employers so getting married has no immediate financial impact on them.
They then decide to have a baby and one of them wants to take a year off to be with their young baby. They need health insurance but if they are unmarried and go on their partners health plan then that part of the health benefit is not tax deductible for their partner. If they get married they will pay maybe $12,000/year less in tax by filing jointly. ($7k federal tax, $3k state tax, $2k from deductible health benefits though maybe one partner would qualify for medicare.)
So I think the financial considerations are a big part of why Americans choose to get married more than Europeans. As someone who moved here as an adult I find it so weird that it's talked about so much! Having children in a stable unmarried partnership is completely unremarkable for my friends and family in Europe.
Funny you mention that. I have four siblings, raised together in a (mostly) traditional family, and all five of us have children now. The only one who is not married is my schizophrenic sister.
However, my late aunt was schizophrenic and stayed married for her entire adult life, so who knows.
Because it’s on you to show what about the correlation makes causation unlikely, and most people don’t take that step. We all know correlation isn’t causation, that’s trite and obvious. Why wouldn’t the correlation between married parents and better child outcomes be causative?
"what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence"
It's on the person who is implying a causation to state why they think that there is such a causal relationship.
Marriage success and child success have so many other things that they are correlated to: Home ownership, IQ, wealth, zip code, parental educational background, ability to talk about feelings, empath, conflict skill, ...,
So somebody comes around and picks "Marriage" out of this huge list, and somehow now the burden is supposed to be on the listeners to disprove it?
Maybe in high school debate class, it is. But for established societal norms that most people can see the benefits of, someone who comes in with a fringe belief is expected to provide a more interesting answer. If someone said “correlation is not causation” to the assertion that people who go to the gym regularly are more fit, people would dismiss them out of hand and treat them like an annoyance too.
Some bad answers (and non-answers) to your question here. There are many studies on this with various conclusions worth reading, example set [1]. At a high level, US marriages (and potentially non-US long-term partnerships) bring stability, additional economic support, an additional role model (completely missing for boys growing up in a single mother household), additional attention & emotional support at home, and the ability to split parenting tasks as the need arises (ex. dad goes to a school event because mom needs to work late, or vice versa).
Also important to note is that parental attention has a large impact on academic outcomes of kids [2], so in single parent households where the parent doesn't have the time to provide sufficient attention, the kids suffer at school compared to their two-parent peers.
All people, kids and adults, have a finite level of emotional and mental energy that they have to “dispense” in everyday life. If you are a couple that’s dealing with marital strife, this is emotional overhead that gets diverted to dealing with that instead of your kids.
Same goes for kids. A child that’s struggling to comprehend why parents decided to leave each other will be using that emotional energy to process it instead of focusing on personal growth.
This is not taking into account the divorce process is costly, with money diverted to lawyers, instead of being pooled and applied to improve family life.
Also, persons who divorce early in a relationship may not have taken the time to understand compatibility with each other, may be emotionally immature and impulsive. The lack of insight might be something that perpetuates into other aspects of their life.
There are, obviously, relationship patterns where it takes a long time for one partner to realize the other one has gradually become more and more abusive and controlling, either because they have low self-confidence or self-esteem. This somewhat tracks the concept of emotional maturity, but this is difficult to talk about as this form of framing puts the blame onto the abused partner.
>This is not taking into account the divorce process is costly,
When parties choose not to fight, it's not near as costly. This said there is a new set of costs incurred in creating and managing two households in most cases.
This question is answered in the interview. She is saying that a household with a stable long lasting relationship is what’s driving these better outcomes. She’s also saying that in America marriage (unfortunately) seems to be the only way to keep people together for a long while (long enough for a child to not experience a parade of parents by the time they are 15 according to the article).
In my personal opinion. I think what she’s stumbled on is yet again proof of Americans hyper individuality rearing its ugly face. The Europeans can stay together longer without the marriage piece of paper because
1) Selfishness derived from hyper individuality doesn’t drive people to nope out of relationships at the first sign of minuscule problems or one side not getting their way
2) Since over there not everything is an economical benefit proposal people value the relationship with different metrics than our countrymen and women do.
Again, both parents in a stable long lasting relationship are capable of a stable long lasting relationship. Americans being bad at this doesn’t mean long term relationships are the sole difference, though they likely do provide some benefits it’s not the total difference in populations.
"I don't know exactly what it is about marriage, but it is a very practical matter," says Kearney, chafing at all the criticism. "If you just look in the data, marriage is what delivers kids a stable, long-term, two-parent household in this country."
The data is clear, however understanding the root causes is important because it impacts what approaches are most useful. If the relationships themselves are important the having a high school class in maintaining healthy relationship could be useful. If it’s the broader issues then we need to address those issues.
I'd like to see a control on this. Is there a group of people who thought they were married, but by bureaucratic snafu actually weren't? Did they have different outcomes than people who were really married?
I'm sorry to be off-topic but widows/ers just hurts my eyes. Why not use a more elegant alternative, widow(er)s? Even the uglier widow(s|ers) would be better.
we have a concept in welfare and income stats called equivalisation.
this is where we try to control for the positive material externalities that come from sharing resources among people. you dont have to buy two of everything if you share, it's cheaper to add a room than obtain a whole house and duplicate bathrooms + kitchens etc.
widows would fall afoul of this (in the sense that they've lived with that advantage for most of their lives), as well as obtain a likely wealth effect from inheritance, but it wouldn't surprise me if the entirity or majority of the marriage effect is largely just a restatement of equivalisation + social transfers/safety nets.
I think that having two adult role models to give a child love, and to serve as an example of 'how to have good interactions with others' is also quite important.
I was a child of divorce, and honestly it was a bit traumatizing. My parents were (and still are) often quite angry, mean and dishonest. They spent literally over $100,000 on legal fees, but "didn't have the money" to buy me a guitar.
So despite being (relatively) well off, coming from a violent, if not outright abusive at times household, suffering from parental neglect... yeah honestly that may have contributed to things like "skipping class to do drugs".
I think there's a lot of socializing that can happen in a functional two parent household that doesn't happen in single parent households, and this may be an additional advantage, in addition to equivalisation + social transfers/safety nets.
Plus as previous comments have said, if your parent has the trait "functional, responsible adult capable of having healthy relationships", that probably really increases your outcomes.
My experience is similar to yours, especially the mean and dishonest part; your parents did not have money for a guitar, mine did not have money to pay for university. The worst is that since they were both way above the income level needed to have government support (grant/scholarship, access to subsidized housing, etc) the only way I could have done it was to leave my parents as soon as I got adult age (emancipation).
They still give little care about what we do (I have younger brother) and still shit on each other and are still very much fighting with money. I learned the other day that almost 20 years lates they are still fighting for the split of 75K with another 75K in unresolved state.
I think we really ought to have laws that make people pay for their children if they separate. Like a untouchable fund that has to be filled up depending on the income level of the parents and that can be used later on to fund studies or life starting costs.
To be honest I think my father would have made the right thing, but it is my mother who orchestrated the whole thing and left us to rot after leaving will all the stuff plus all the money.
It is extremely unpopular opinion but my experience tell me that women shouldn't be allowed so much latitude considering all little real responsibility they are given and how little social cost they will have to pay for it...
If there are effects of marriage, it seems fairly obvious that they are due to the explicit commitment that the two people have made to each other, not the government’s tickbox.
One large barrier to breakup is how much damage a breakup will do and how much effort it entails.
If a break up is very easy then small insults will lead to break up.
A marriage contract is.. a legal contract; thereby it can be a barrier to a break up.
I have considered breaking up with my girlfriend before yet the effort of splitting our things and ensuring that she has a nice continuation of a place to live comfortably has caused me to reevaluate if the reasons I want to break up are good enough. That's all the parent was suggesting. Does the marriage contract have any bearing on keeping people together.
The effect you describe could be sufficiently studied by comparing married partners to unmarried long term partners.
Not the ridiculous idea of people who thought they were married but were apparently not due to some technicality or bureaucratic error which they were not aware of.
Sweden is a better example. Incredible parental support, high birth rates compared to the rest of Europe.
(Personally, I don’t think high birth rates are a good thing. The long term survival of our species depends on curtailing global population. But that’s a different subject.)
Germany has very good support for parents, and has been working hard to reverse the downwards fertility trend. Some progress is showing. (Note that I don’t disagree that Sweden is doing better.)
How many African and Middle Eastern immigrants do you think the US currently has?
I'll give you a hint - it's quite a lot less than the number of Mormons in the US. Who are a group significantly whiter than the US general population, and with higher birth rates to boot.
Yes hyper individuality is part of it. The other part of it is gender equality. For most of human civilization genders were not equal so both sexes evolved traits that are also unequal.
The most glaring trait responsible for lack of marriage is female hypergamy. Previously women being of generally unequal/lower status then men and overall a smaller pool of candidates (no online dating) would be forced to be more egalitarian in mate selection. It was easy for a woman to find a man who got paid more than them because this was most men.
Now that women are doing better and having relatively more equal pay with men hypergamy is rearing it's head in a more pronounced fashion. Female selection preferences are much more strict because if women are getting paid equally with men then they must find men that are paid more as well and this is obviously a much smaller pool than when women had no jobs.
This along with exposure to the top men via online dating, women can now match with the top men in the entire city rather then the top men in her social circle. And this is exactly what you see in the online dating statistics.
The top 20% of men match with the top 80% of women and the bottom 20% of women match with the bottom 80% of men. I mean as progressive as you want to be there's no denying what I'm saying here as this data is just glaring. It spits in the face of people who say otherwise as it's measuring current dating behavior. Individualism is part of the story because it does push for more power for women overall. But it is in the end this individualism among women that is changing the game in the US. But not just the US, other countries as well.
So what's going on is you have a few men who have an abundance of choice. They're never going to settle because when men have an abundance of choice they switch their mating strategy from monogamy to harlem style polygamy. And then the rest of the men have a much harder time finding anyone at all.
This is actually more beneficial to women from certain theoretical perspectives. In anthropology there's a saying that monogamy benefits men while polygamy benefits women and general female behavior shows it. Basically for the best genes and resources, women generally prefer to "share" a top alpha man with other women over being in an exclusive monogamous relationship with a beta male.
Men on the other hand don't accept this strategy because they are providers of resources. If a woman sleeps with another man then the partner may end up raising and spending resources on another mans child. Thus all men have intense instincts to basically end an entire relationship once a woman has a single sexual affair.
You can actually see how this behavior plays out in certain countries like Japan where women are totally ok with their husbands fucking prostitutes. As long as that man "loves" them and is providing resources for them, fucking a prostitute without love is totally ok for japanese women. Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i9qS5vDXLSI
Basically we live in an era of changing social norms and it's accelerating natural selection. The majority of men born today will not pass on their genes. Traits of alpha males including height, confidence will be expressed to a greater extent in future generations and it's possible for the trend to continue roughly culling the bottom 80% of men out of the evolutionary process.
Women are slowly getting the upper hand in terms of natural selection, and for men to get the upper hand usually they have to reintroduce monogamy back into the society as this guarantees a mate for every man. Monogamy is the more beneficial strategy to men overall because very few men can actually benefit from polygamy just by the nature of the way numbers work. Monogamous restrictions are pervasive enough throughout human civilization that some women have even evolved monogamous instincts via sexual selection as men actually actively seek these traits out in women.
This is basically what's going on from the most scientific point of view. It's not politically correct so a lot of people vehemently disagree. Of course everything I say here is speaking to a general truth. There are plenty of exceptions but those exceptions do not negate the existence of the general truth.
One of your 20%'s was probably intended to be 80%.
That aside, yeah; we live in an interesting time. Sadly, technological progress, equality, and monogamy are all positively correlated, so despite some acceleration of natural selection, this is surely a net negative for society.
An assumption here is that attractive men both pair with women at a higher rate and also have more children. I don't see any reason that's the case - the very largest families I am aware of in my extended social circle belong to men who are not necessarily the greatest catches.
>An assumption here is that attractive men both pair with women at a higher rate and also have more children. I don't see any reason that's the case - the very largest families I am aware of in my extended social circle belong to men who are not necessarily the greatest catches.
Three things.
1. Attractive is not physical attraction. While men are visual women have different criteria for attraction that is much more multivariate. Wealth, confidence, looks, power, personality. Generally, overall social status and height are the two most consistent metrics for female attraction preferences.
2. What I'm describing is a recent phenomenon. A gradual shift that we're seeing in the last decade or so, so relationships established at the beginning of 2010 and before tend to be more traditional/conservative.
3. Birth control changes the game. Evolution manifests procreation as both a conscious desire to have children and as sexual urges from men and women. Thus I may be incorrect here. It may be that thanks to birth control alpha men may not spread their progeny as much and that people in healthy monogamous relationships end up creating the next generation as hook up culture essentially is an evolutionary dead end with birth control.
> 2. What I'm describing is a recent phenomenon. A gradual shift that we're seeing in the last decade or so, so relationships established at the beginning of 2010 and before tend to be more traditional/conservative.
There is room for considerable bias here;
1. Most generations consider their immediate neighbors more and less conservative, going back and forward respectively
2. People become more conservative with age; particularly when major investments are in play such as a home purchase and having children. It's a small coincidence that children and mortgages both take about 20 years to come to fruition.
Agreed. But the issue with bias is that the biased person is unable to visualize their own bias. They always think the other party is biased. Unfortunately I believe that out of both of us here, the bias actually lies with you but you're unable to see it. Here's why:
>1. Most generations consider their immediate neighbors more and less conservative, going back and forward respectively
Yeah, but i'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a general trend towards liberalism. The past decade brought about a general liberal movement outside of the one where people get more conservative with age.
That much is obvious. Society is shifting towards more and more woke-ism, feminism which is good in some ways but in other ways it's becoming extremist on those fronts. It's so extreme that many of the liberal policies in California are causing an exodus where people move to more conservative states like arizona and texas.
>2. People become more conservative with age; particularly when major investments are in play such as a home purchase and having children. It's a small coincidence that children and mortgages both take about 20 years to come to fruition.
I'm talking Monogamy and polygamy. Not finances or investments or law. For example in the 60s women sex before marriage was not normal. Now a body count of 5+ among women before marriage is considered normal. But you realize this has nothing to do with mortgages, children or major investments.
The bias here lies with the fact that you see things through the lens of politics. I'm talking about anthropology and biology. It's human Behavior and psychology... Not politics.
You'll be downvoted on this website, but you spoke nothing but facts.
###
I'll sum this up.
The female's mating strategy is the dual mating strategy (genetics vs resources). Historically women had to find some balance in this (should i marry the prince or the struggling artist - plot of tianic). Modern society satifies the resources side of the equation (whether that be overt welfare or covert welfare (getting a student loan + going to college + paper pushing corporate job)), leaving women the freedom to completely maximize the genetics side. The men providing the genetics side has no incentive to stick around to fulfill the resources side.
There are a metric shit ton of assumptions in here that I’m not sure are true. The truth of the matter is that women tend to work together and men… not so much. Once you see the whole picture, I can see how you can see the world through such a perverse lens.
Sadly, I’m about to hop off the train, but if someone replies that they are interested, I’ll provide a writup that will surprise you.
There is nothing "academic" about what you posted. If it was, there would be footnotes and sources where you mentioned things... that being said...
Assumptions.
You assume that most of human history that women were not equal. This is actually, quite false[1]. Only in recent western history were they unequal. This by no means dismisses the fact that women were, in fact, oppressed for several dozen of the last generations and for most of the western world. However, this is NOT long enough to create any kind of genetic pressure.
> In anthropology there's a saying that monogamy benefits men while polygamy benefits women...
I googled this "saying" and it was only your post that came up. Did you just make this up? lol
> If a woman sleeps with another man then the partner may end up raising and spending resources on another mans child.
Sure, if you have the emotional maturity of a 16 year old, this makes a lot of sense.
> Thus all men have intense instincts to basically end an entire relationship once a woman has a single sexual affair.
No, these are not "instincts", they are a loss of trust in a partner and no relationship can survive if there isn't trust. Open relationships exist, polygamy is a thing. I can assure you.
> where women are totally ok with their husbands fucking prostitutes
I think this just proves my point... trust is essential. Sex is just sex unless you attach something special to it.
> Basically we live in an era of changing social norms and it's accelerating natural selection.
I would absolutely love to see a citation for how natural selection is "accelerating" because, if anything, it is the opposite. We're having fewer children in most developed countries, not more.[2]
:sigh:
Let me tell you what is actually going on now. Women tend to work together, more so than men[3]. What this means, is that there are entire communities where they talk about who they go on dates with. I'm not even making this up.[4] This means if you are a creep, no one will date you because you are a creep. Do something stupid, every woman will know about it on your next date. So, no, there isn't some mysterious "beta" or "alpha" bullshit, it's just that women are smart enough to work together to make sure they don't date the wrong person.
Your entire comment is built on a pile of assumptions and leaps of logic that are barely coherent, with no references to back them up.
You present a source with women being hunters. I never denied this. I here present a source of female and male unequal-ness as a comprehensive study across time and culture. Which do you think is more relevant to the conversation at hand? Which resource was strategically picked to fulfill some biased agenda? Obviously not the comprehensive study.
>I googled this "saying" and it was only your post that came up. Did you just make this up? lol
I googled it too and found multiple resources within minutes. The reason you didn't find it is obvious. You're not conducting a logical search with intent. You're conducting a biased search. You don't agree with me so you don't want to find a source. So subconciously you spend less effort and end up finding nothing. Typical.
What happens next is when presented with sources against his own agenda the naysayer starts to nitpick. Starts to find as many flaws with the source as he can.
Where this saying came from. Where I first heard it was in the UCLA anthropology department. It was stated by the professor and the text book. The professor btw, was female, and so am i.
>Sure, if you have the emotional maturity of a 16 year old, this makes a lot of sense.
This isn't a response. It's an attack please present evidence. It's called paternity fraud and it's a real genetic strategy both in humans and in animals.
>No, these are not "instincts", they are a loss of trust in a partner and no relationship can survive if there isn't trust. Open relationships exist, polygamy is a thing. I can assure you.
Polygamy is a thing. I didn't deny this in my arguments. It exists but it is beneficial to women not to men.
>I would absolutely love to see a citation for how natural selection is "accelerating" because, if anything, it is the opposite. We're having fewer children in most developed countries, not more.[2]
Having fewer children is part of natural selection. It means the children that were not "had" are naturally selected out. Natural selection happens either by not being born or being killed before reproduction. I don't think you understand.
When countries have fewer children it means MORE children are being UNSELECTED. and the natural selection process is becoming more vicious and thus "accelerating".
>Your entire comment is built on a pile of assumptions and leaps of logic that are barely coherent, with no references to back them up.
I posted sources.
>Let me tell you what is actually going on now. Women tend to work together, more so than men[3]. What this means, is that there are entire communities where they talk about who they go on dates with. I'm not even making this up.[4] This means if you are a creep, no one will date you because you are a creep. Do something stupid, every woman will know about it on your next date. So, no, there isn't some mysterious "beta" or "alpha" bullshit, it's just that women are smart enough to work together to make sure they don't date the wrong person.
Yes that society is our current society. We have entire facebook groups where we identify and red flag men who we don't want to date. As a woman we only want to date alphas. I won't date someone who makes less than me. Alphas exist in the animal world, it makes no sense to suddenly deny the existence of alphas in the human world.
Clearly there are men who are more powerful and more attractive than others. Those men are basically "alphas". Women like you and me tend to work together to improve our own successes. That means polygamous relationships with the top men. This is what I want and this is what you want.
What confuses me is that often your arguments are in agreement with mine. I don't think you're maintaining a logical stream of consistent thought.
> I don't think you're maintaining a logical stream of consistent thought.
Apologies, I'm typing this on a busy train.
We are, in fact, in agreement on much. However, we are viewing reality through different lenses.
> I here present a source of female and male unequal-ness as a comprehensive study across time and culture.
It seems to focus mostly on the last 1-2k years, and not so much on the hundreds of thousands of years before that. You said:
> For MOST of human civilization genders were not equal so both sexes evolved traits that are also unequal.
(emphasis mine). For most of human civilization, was a very, very long time and most written records have (unfortunately) been lost prior to a few thousand years ago. That was the part I was rebutting, because it was an invalid premise that is then used to deduce that there was some kind of genetic pre-disposition that was used throughout the remainder of your comment.
> I googled it too and found multiple resources within minutes.
I couldn't find the quote: "monogamy benefits men while polygamy benefits women and general female behavior shows it" since you made it sound like it was a popular thing. I admit, I didn't bother researching the entire topic, since it wasn't "a saying".
I'm not debating who it is useful for, I was saying that it is a non-issue. Women and men cheat, and cheating is when one person in a relationship breaks the rules of that relationship. It doesn't matter if it is an open relationship, monogamous relationship, polygamous relationship, friends with benefits, swingers, platonic friendship, or whatever. If you break the rules, you can't be trusted and the relationship must be ended.
In a monogamous relationship, one of those rules is usually against sex with another person. There's no "instincts" there, they broke the rules. End of discussion. The fact that it was sexual intercourse is a non-issue. The rules of the relationship were broken.
> It's an attack please present evidence.
I present to you: adoption. It's when a man (or woman) raises another man's child as their own. The adopted even get to inherit property in some parts of the world.
> As a woman we only want to date alphas. I won't date someone who makes less than me. Alphas exist in the animal world, it makes no sense to suddenly deny the existence of alphas in the human world.
Well, there is no such thing as "alphas." This comes from a debunked paper that got popular 50 years ago ... we are not wolves and even wolves don't have "alpha males" in the popular sense.[1] A pack of wolves is simply a family and it makes sense that mom & dad would/should be the only ones having sex instead of brothers/sisters. Even when it is a mixed family, the breeding pair changes, come and go.
Instead of saying that women want "alphas," I think it is simpler to just state the reality of the situation: women want men who can pay child support / alimony, in the event things go sideways. When shit hits the fan, you don't want a hot guy with no future (maybe sometimes, actually), you want a guy who can (monetarily) care for your children that you'll be inevitably stuck with because our society sucks at taking care of single mothers. Women have even come up with creative solutions to ensure they don't end up with "losers" getting them pregnant. Fixing society's issues here is probably the way to unfuck large portions of our society, but it is unlikely to happen because it is stuck in a feedback loop -- there is still a patriarchy who has no desire to fix this.
Anyway, like I said, I think we are saying the same stuff, just different ways of seeing it.
You are hilarious. Most of what you say makes no sense and has little relation to what is observable in the real world.
But the funniest thing is about how women supposedly work together, when everyone knows and experience that men make teams while women create clicks. If you have ever done sports or any collaborative activity, you know very much you do not want to be the guy left alone with too many women. Even if they have similar capabilities; there is no way their ego won't go in the way.
Women do not work together at all; they gossip to gain knowledge on current affairs that they will potentially translate to power. They will cheer for their enemy that they secretly hate and all kinds of duplicitous behavior. This is something that is extremely well represented in literature, movies and TV shows.
But I guess the authors are hallucinating or living in a complete parallel world where women are much worse than they are in reality?
I mean, come on...
Hold on. This isn't ideology. These are just points and I have nothing against men. It's just facts. Just because I say these things and just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I hate men.
It's unfortunate that these things are happening to men but that's just reality.
Please be logical and rational rather than accusatory.
You are right, but kind of proving their point by not engaging with the content and dismissing it. As a women you can sit back passively and pass on people, while the men have to put in the effort and come to you.
Edit: The question was added to their comment after I clicked reply.
> if women are getting paid equally with men then they must find men that are paid more as well and this is obviously a much smaller pool than when women had no jobs.
Well-paid women are much more likely to date men who make less than them. What matters today is that the household is happy and overall has enough financial stability between both earners combined.
> switch their mating strategy from monogamy to harlem style polygamy. And then the rest of the men have a much harder time finding anyone at all.
*harem, not Harlem. Also "harem-style" polygamy is rare in the USA, the most common form by far is "kitchen-table polygamy". In this version, it's actually easier for arbitrary random men to find mates because women in stable poly relationships happily have sex with a wide variety of men "on the side", and can carve out space and time to give those men chances to earn a strong relationship with those women.
> Thus all men have intense instincts to basically end an entire relationship once a woman has a single sexual affair.
Anywhere "affair" is a thing, anyone has intense instincts to end the relationship, because of a catastrophic breakdown of trust. In the vast majority of poly relationships in the USA, women having sex with other men isn't an "affair" and doesn't trigger this type of reaction.
>Well-paid women are much more likely to date men who make less than them. What matters today is that the household is happy and overall has enough financial stability between both earners combined.
Of course the stats play out this way. But it doesn't change the fact women WANT to date men who get paid higher than them.
Think about it. Men do not care how much a woman gets paid. In fact they have a slight preference for women who get paid less. So given that a rich woman has the same attraction level on average as a poor woman, their performance will be on average identical. Meaning they date a man with the same average salary.
Then of course rich women on average will be more likely to have more money than a man with an average salary. Use your critical thinking here. The statistics have to play out this way.
But none of it changes what women want and none of it changes female behavior. We want men who are better than us. We want the best and we demand it.
>harem, not Harlem. Also "harem-style" polygamy is rare in the USA, the most common form by far is "kitchen-table polygamy". In this version, it's actually easier for arbitrary random men to find mates because women in stable poly relationships happily have sex with a wide variety of men "on the side", and can carve out space and time to give those men chances to earn a strong relationship with those women.
Assume that agreed upon polygamy is so rare that it's existence is negligible. I'm talking about people who get married to multiple wives.
What is common is hookup culture. This is the real "polygamy" in the US right now. So take for example my hypergamous instincts make me desire this really hot rich guy. But that guy is so desirable that he has many many options. On some level I know this but it doesn't matter... I want him and I don't mind the fact that he fucked other women and he doesn't mind who I fucked either because he's an alpha male who has an abundance of choice.
The average male who I don't care for and is invisible to me, usually tries to get into an ltr. It's the best option for him due to a dearth of choices. For him it is critical that the woman he is with did not have intercourse with anyone else. This isn't some "thing" I made up that desire in men is scientifically verified to be a distinct instinct than women. Yes. Science as in actual science not some hand wavy stuff that's from most of your reply.
>Anywhere "affair" is a thing, anyone has intense instincts to end the relationship, because of a catastrophic breakdown of trust. In the vast majority of poly relationships in the USA, women having sex with other men isn't an "affair" and doesn't trigger this type of reaction.
Wrong. Again human emotions stem from primal desires and instincts not from arbitrary rules of trust. The topic you are going on about has been studied and the studies show you are utterly and completely wrong. Stop looking at official polygamous marriages. Agreements like that are so rare it's negligible. This is the point: Men are not ok with women having sexual affairs in general and women are a bit more on with it and these two differences stem from biology not some made up relationship rules. Citation:
This also explains my emotions. Why I'm more willing to hook up with a man who's done well with a lot of woman and why men in general don't like to marry women with high body counts.
from my admittedly limited knowledge of the Nordics, they are much more collectivist than Americans.
For example, Swedes have it drilled into their heads from an early age that "everyone deserves a home". This is not the case in America, where "poor people deserve to be poor because they're lazy, cut welfare, universal health care is socialism" is an acceptable statement, and in fact the basically party line for one of the two major political parties.
This comment is interesting because these are the same countries that are often used to show how “backwards” the US is due to their comparatively strong safety nets, etc. I guess when it comes to Europe, people can only pick and choose the best example for each discussion despite it varying wildly just like the US, is that right?
No, you’re right; but these 4 countries aren’t even close to the European average on many aspects. Some of them aren’t even part of the EU, which is normally what gets compared against US markers.
Why do you assume Europeans do any better at this? Do you have comparable statistics?
From my own experience, it is extremely unlikely that it is any different once you accounted for all variables. One reason Europeans might stay together longer together is for the tax benefits and other government subventions they would not get if they were single. In fact, except for single mothers who get everything with very litte conditions but terrible outcomes.
The reality does not have much to do with a special government, religion, or whatever convoluted explanation you want to find. The answer is right there in plain sight; expect you cannot really say it because of strong enforcement of the public discourse.
If that was not clear, I am saying that women are the variable that is messing everything up, and as a recipient of this reality I think anyone who believe otherwise is either a fool or politically motivated for some reason.
Divorce is also more common for selfish and self-centered people, and I would argue that those traits do not make for good parents. (which is not to say that a good person should remain married to such a spouse --- arguably the only thing worse than a good divorce is a bad marriage)
Ages ago, I worked at a school for boys, and one could pretty much map negative trats of the parents to corresponding unsocial behaviours on the part of the child.
> Ages ago, I worked at a school for boys, and one could pretty much map negative trats of the parents to corresponding unsocial behaviours on the part of the child.
My parents were both teachers, and it was a very commonly held belief among teachers that you could predict a kid's academic outcome reasonably well by simply learning about their parent(s) behaviors and home life. Kids' academic achievement has little to do with the quality of schools, quality of teachers, wealth or poverty of the area, but has everything to do with the positive and negative traits of their parents.
I strongly agree with this, but it is an inconvenient truth because everyone wants to search out good policy in the domain space to improve outcomes. That is unfortunately extremely challenging, as you can't fix broken parents. You end up having to design systems to clean up the mess after kids turn into adults, because there are limited mechanisms to encourage better behavior from suboptimal parents.
(did a sustained stint as a volunteer guardian ad litem [1] and occasionally provide advice to others performing the work)
Never said to give up, but be realistic about the effort to outcome improvement ratio. Universal school lunches are an easy win [1], for example. With time and resources having limits, target what provides the most value. Take care of kids until they reach escape velocity.
So maybe the path to success for a school is to game the rating system long enough to become a magnet school, then parents who care and can afford to will relocate to be in your school district. Now that the "good" parents have come to you, you're a "good school"!
Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example
is that really a significant factor? i'd think that the number of people suffering from mental issues is a minority, and even if in their group are more divorces, those should only be a fraction of the total number of divorces.
Yes, because either parent could have menial issues. Especially when you include things like gambling addiction which are also linked to divorce.
~2.8% of the population has bipolar disorder. The odds that one partner at the start of a relationship is bipolar should be ~5.6%. 1% of the population is schizophrenic so ~2% of the population. We aren’t quite up to 7.6% of relationships just from those 2 groups because there’s overlap but it does stack.
Granted I haven’t done the research to pin down exact numbers but higher rates of divorce operates in both directions. So stable couples are healthier than average and divorced couples are worse than average.
Still something like 16-25% of the overall population has some form of diagnosable mental illness, couples have 2 people, and divorced are more likely to have various conditions. So the effect size would need to be huge for this not to be relevant.
Post a generality on HN and you're bound to get corrected by the math police.
Most studies agree that bipolar disorder is not evenly distributed across the sexes. Schizophrenia is roughly equal but occurs for men before/during peak childbearing years, and for women happens after.
> Most studies agree that bipolar disorder is not evenly distributed across the sexes.
I don’t think that actually impacts the statistics here the way you think it would.
Suppose 2% of the population had X. If 1% of women had X, ~3% of men would have X and therefore ~4% of couples would.
Nailing down the differences in divorce rates, age of onset, differences in rates of relationship formation, etc are all worth considering. But my point was simply it’s significant not that I had calculated some exact number.
I know Australia would provide a psuedo-natural experiment, because of the family laws effectively making de-facto relationships legally more or less equivalent of actual marriage.
Married people vs divorced probably have the same distribution of mental illness. I think it has to due more with two incomes, two parents attention/time/insights/wisdom to benefit from. Maybe mom is good at math and dad is good at writing or history. It seems like more is better when it comes to raising a kid--hence the phrase 'it takes a village'. I bet if you did a study that also counted how many other extended family members are involved in the kid's life that would also show the same correlation.
"Their book suggests that many women don't marry the father of their child not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability."
Marriage is not a magical thing that fixes economic problems, even if you want to keep turning the clock back and make certain acts outside of marriage illegal. The only thing that fixes economic problems is money.
"Kearney says she wants to grab the attention of both conservatives who say they care about children's well-being and progressives reluctant to talk about family structures, because the link between single parenting, inequality and mobility in America is too strong to deny."
Marriage is not a magical thing that creates good family structures, and parents can be deadbeat parents even within a marriage. It might give people motivation to stick around, but families that "stick together for the children" can have A) abuse, and B) the same sort of economic problems as unmarried if one or both parents aren't working. What does enable good family structures is support, provided by extended family or other things.
I would like to hear from people who downvote you their reasons. In discussions such as these where nuances matter a lot, a downvote (or upvote) is meaningless.
>Marriage is not a magical thing that creates good family structures, and parents can be deadbeat parents even within a marriage. It might give people motivation to stick around, but families that "stick together for the children" can have A) abuse, and B) the same sort of economic problems as unmarried if one or both parents aren't working. What does enable good family structures is support, provided by extended family or other things.
We're talking about on average though. Those things might happen, but only in a very small number of cases, and on average forcing a marriage to "work" might still be better.
>and on average forcing a marriage to "work" might still be better.
For the children yes, and in a time when you had little information and were told it was your purpose in life to have children this might have worked.
Today this is just going to lead people to say "Well, fuck having children", and with the US child fertility rate at 1.64 this seems to be the 'average' decision that has been taken.
> Marriage is not a magical thing that fixes economic problems, even if you want to keep turning the clock back and make certain acts outside of marriage illegal. The only thing that fixes economic problems is money.
Speaking as a parent, I’m not sure this is true. If I didn’t have my wife, then I would need to take twice as many sick days for my kids, which would be very tough on my career. I wouldn’t have an extra salary (or if she didn’t work, then a full time person caring for my kids). I wouldn’t have someone to split school pickup/drop off with, which again would be very taxing on my career. I’d still need the same amount of space in my home with or without my wife. And all of this also means that we have more time for child/parent interactions at home.
So yeah, I think there’s huge benefits to having a spouse around while raising kids.
He talked about not having a marriage and you misread it as not having a partner. That's a pretty severe misunderstanding and I'm very curious what caused it.
America is moving the other way because all the wealth and power has been sucked up by the 0.1% and a large majority are too tired, stressed, and poor.
Everything stems from this.
Too much wealth tied up in the health insurance scam to switch to single payer, so people stay bound to their employment, and they can't afford time off or visits to the doctor because nothing is completely covered anymore.
Too much wealth available to politicians and getting elected requires massive funding, so already rich folk are the vast majority of elected officials now. Which means they're completely out of touch of what a poor person's life consists of nowadays.
I’m not sure everything stems from this. Marriage was not just for the wealthy and nobles in the Middle Ages, or in the 1800s or in subsaharan Africa, etc.
If it’s a matter of relative wealth disparity, there have been plenty of eras (probably the majority of recorded human history) in which the kings and nobles had a similar wealth gap to their poorest married subjects as we see today between the 1% and the 99%.
I’m not defending wealth disparity; simply suggesting there’s likely another cause for the marriage-rate collapse.
Do you live in an area with high international demand for housing?
Not all of the US is a hot spot for high paid immigrants, yet. Displacement is a real thing. Not everyone can change states or nations to make the finances work out.
You are agreeing in a weird way. Yes, in America if you live somewhere that other people want to live, then you have to move or take on two incomes. That was my point, that because US real estate has become an attractive investment over the past decades and the growth and current size foreign capital outweighs the average American family’s purchasing power which results in: people resort to two incomes, wait to start families, have fewer children when they do have children, etc…
> You can also choose how many and why type of cars to have
See that's an interesting example. In most places in the US[^1] you have no realistic choice but to have at least 1 car per adult in the household. That's not quite the full extend of choice for "how many cars" one would wish for.
> what food to eat
Have you heard of "food deserts"?
[^1] this is false in a few places that were not bulldozed in the 1960s and still allow for non-car centric life. These places tend to have very high cost of living because they're desirable.
A few years back when I worked in a downtown office in a suburban metro, my wife would often drop me off/pick me up and then she'd have the car all day. Other times I'd bike. When only one person works outside the home, you have more flexibility.
We also lived in what was barely not a food desert at that time, and we walked to the grocery store all the time. "Food desert" can mean it takes 10 minutes to walk to the store. Like for a low income urban census tract it means 0.5 miles. We go on afternoon walks 3-5x that every day.
Don’t let the reality that this was in response to a statement that implied a universal reality that it’s impossible to raise a family on a single income be lost on you.
I’m the sole breadwinner, my wife and I have six kids, and I don’t make fantastic money for being a developer ($60,000/year- took a haircut for this role for the 100% work from home). We make it work.
To be fair, this is mostly a consequence of women entering the workforce. Not that that’s bad, but it’s an unintended consequence that companies were then able to convince workers to work for less because people could survive on it still.
Because it’s not about the jobs, it’s about what salary people will settle for.
If a family had to make X to live comfortable before, now you can do so with each of you making half that as long as it adds up to X. People shouldn’t settle for less, but they do even if only a few percent… where before people didn’t to the same degree because it had more immediate impact.
This in turn is one of the several market forces that has contributed to deflated wages.
That's an argument that should be increasing the number of dual parent households. If a family could be supported on a single income, then abandoning your family would have fewer consequences and thus seemingly more likely.
A substantial reason for that is cultural change though. You can’t close to double the supply of something without expecting the price to go down (probably by something close to half).
> I’m not defending wealth disparity; simply suggesting there’s likely another cause for the marriage-rate collapse.
In the past that you're talking about, women were not allowed to be independent, i.e., own property or obtain jobs that could support a family. So women had little choice but to get married.
As long as non-marriage is a realistic choice for women, the marriage rates will never be as high as they were when society made women subservient.
>> In the past that you're talking about, women were not allowed to be independent, i.e., own property or obtain jobs that could support a family.
That is maybe half true or not true at all. Women could own property and could be somewhat independent. Queen Elisabeth owned a whole country in the 16th century. In general not only women but men as well had a duty to their families and had to do what their parents demanded of them. And marriage was high on the list of things parents expected from their children whether they were male or female.
I think the person you're replying to was using the US as context (given the theme of the article), but you are correct that in certain regions of the world, women's rights to property ownership and inheritance were protected.
> Queen Elisabeth owned a whole country in the 16th century.
That's one women, and a strange example to cite, because my comment was in response to a discussion about the disparity of wealth ("kings and nobles had a similar wealth gap to their poorest married subjects as we see today between the 1% and the 99%). Obviously, queens have no trouble raising successful children, but that doesn't help anyone else in society. (It should be noted, however, that Elizabeth I was the so-called "Virgin Queen" who had no children.)
>> That's one women, and a strange example to cite
Why? She an example of a very well known women completely in charge of a future empire in the 16th century. I thought it was clear there were also untold numbers of ordinary women who were also completely in charge of their own households from ancient times till modern age. It is kind of hard to give an example of a woman nobody would know.
> I thought it was clear there were also untold numbers of ordinary women who were also completely in charge of their own households from ancient times till modern age.
Which might be fine if after that men went home and took over traditional female tasks like cooking, cleaning and childcare. But they didn’t, and instead women ended up bringing in the money and having to do everything else while the husbands played video games and didn’t contribute. This resulted in women getting rid of the husband so they didn’t have an extra kid to take care of.
So then this creates a viscous cycle where the single woman will raise boys without a father role model, and those boys will go onto become poor husbands etc?
Marriage was not just for the wealthy and nobles in the Middle Ages, or in the 1800s or in subsaharan Africa, etc.
In the Middle Ages, children were an investment. You fed them and clothed them and raised them for just a few years before they started to pay off. As soon as they were physically able to walk and listen to instructions, children began to work, usually on the family farm.
This human capital that a couple could grow themselves made marriage and child-rearing a highly profitable activity. It led to generational wealth, which marriage existed to secure and apportion.
This is no longer true in modern city life. Children are a luxury good, not capital. They don’t produce any wealth for their parents. They simply consume enormous resources until they move out and start their own independent lives.
I find it ridiculous that healthcare is the greatest driver of cost of living but no one does anything about it. Doctors and nurses are overworked too. It’s the biggest scam going right now and all the politicians are in on it.
You can place the blame for both things on the federal government.
1. Obamacare was promised to save families $2500 per year. Instead healthcare costs have predictably nearly doubled.
2. A few decades ago the government actively discouraged medical schools from enrolling enough would-be doctors because they had a misguided belief that the country would have too many.
PPACA was one of the biggest policy fails and put us at a great competitive disadvantage. We were coming out of the Great Financial Crisis and the Rust Belt desperately needed manufacturing revival which the likes of Walmart forced abroad. At least some of that is reversing.
I suspect there are other complicating factors in western cultures that may but additional stress on relationships, including blaming yourself instead of the environment for your situation.
very much this. in "poor countries" people can have a lifestyle that matches their income, and they can survive on that. yes, many struggle, and they all would like to have a better life, but most can at least find an affordable place to live and don't go hungry.
the problem in "rich countries" is that affordable places to live are missing. so being poor without government support to pay for a home causes you to be homeless.
One issue is that although most Western countries have Paid Parental Leave (except for US) pregnancy still puts women at a career disadvantage. Because companies can sometimes find out that either (a) the person's role was unnecessary or (b) their replacement is better.
And so especially for women in senior positions it's just not worth the risk.
Another is around the cost and availability of child care. Current global shortage is a real issue.
so effectively that means that children themselves are a career disadvantage, which is a problem in itself that needs to be addressed because we can't sustain a society where having children is a negative.
the equality part of the issue could be addressed with men getting equal parental leave, but it doesn't solve the actual problem.
we really need to support parenting more, deemphasize the importance of career and emphasize the importance of having children.
Everything does not stem from wealth inequality. Almost-everything wrong in US culture stems from selfishness. Which would include things you talked about. But it also includes people making selfish choices that bring about the end of their marriages (affairs, career, addictions).
If selfishness isn't a good general explanation for Pareto distributions, is there a reason that it's particularly explanatory for wealth distribution?
They are choosing to further enrich themselves past what any single person can consume, instead of helping those around them, the definition of selfishness.
You could get the same distribution if everyone is assigned a random amount of selfishness regardless of wealth, but some people are better at achieving their selfish goals than others, or just luckier. How could someone know that the result is primarily due to non-uniform selfishness?
You could measure selfishness in small experimental scenarios and try to correlate it with the wealth of the subjects. Does that evidence exist?
Most inherit it. Then lose it. That’s the typical path of wealth. Rarely, it’s amassed by someone who starts with little. Here these people, the ones who create rather than squander wealth, are called “selfish” often by the wealth squanderers, the children of abundance.
Agreed but food stamps are finitely available per unit time, whereas wealthy people could be considered availed of far far more food stamps per unit time.
Having travelled a fair bit, I can tell you that economic insecurity breeds a culture of selfishness, not the other way around. Where people are not economically precarious, there's almost no culture of trying to get one up on those around you. It's when you're scared of falling behind that you struggle so hard to keep yourself ahead.
Wealth inequality is strongly correlated but ultimately not the root cause -- it is rather precarity that causes many of our social ills.
This argument is non sequitor. If wealth inequality was the problem, couples would be forced by economics to work together to bring in more together than they could separately and to share resources like housing to reduce costs.
> many women don't marry the father of their child not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability.
If you think of marriage as purely a business partnership, would you go into business with someone who is unreliable?
It's better to be a sole proprietorship than have your entire business brought down by a bad partner, where both partners are liable for the bad partner's actions and decisions.
Because women have a limited window to have children and have to work with the options available. A woman can’t put off kids indefinitely waiting for partners to stabilize financially, emotionally etc.
that window is at least 20 years wide. if it's not possible to find a reliable partner in that time then the world is in a very sorry state.
i accept that it can be difficult, and that people can be blinded by love but if i already know that a person is unreliable enough that i don't want to marry them, then why have a child from them?
How could I miss that it's fundamentally part of everyone's martial vows?? /S
Marriage is about love, companionship, and children. Particularly because of children there will always be a significant economic component. But it's not the driver, it's a supporting component.
At some point, you need to stop blaming (or giving power to) others for your situation, and take control for your own wellbeing. Who you marry is well within your control, and not the 0.1%. Take some responsibility, it's a good first step to improving your, and your community's situation.
>Everything stems from this.
No, not it doesn't. If you think that wealth distribution is the cause of all of today's problems, you need to do more exploration.
And how do you explain how very poor countries where the top 1% have wealth comparable to wealthy American peers and 99% of the country has less income American middle class had 100 years ago and they have no problems with marriages?
I don't think this matters at all. The poorest in America are above average on the global level when it comes to quality of life. Yet the actual poorest citizens of the world seem to have no problems staying married and raising children.
> Kearney says she's not advocating that children live in a household filled with marital tension or where parents are unhappy or mistreating each other.
Then what is the proposed solution? Pointing out the problem is the easy part. But if you want more people to be married, and if they're currently choosing not to get married, then you need to either force them to get married against their will (institutionalized shotgun marriages) or incentivize them to get married by offering benefits to married couples. The former produces miserable, abusive marriages and traumatized children. And as for the latter, as a country we're already utterly incapable of allocating funding for the aid of childrearing--where's the guaranteed maternity/paternity leave? where's the socialized childcare?--so pardon me if I don't quite see that solution as politically feasible.
solving problems is just as important as finding them. the parent comment may be unfair for dismissing the finding of a problem as the easy part, but they are absolutely right in asking how do we solve this.
so let's be more constructive and explore possible solutions to this problem as well, and not just argue about the problem itself.
i do agree that the political landscape in the US makes addressing this problem difficult. the only option i see is to develop grassroots support for this issue by changing peoples opinions on the need to support parenting and having children.
You don't get it, maternity leave and socialized childcare is the devil talking. The downfall of society is because the liberal agenda to brainwash our our women and kids, the former with feminism making them think they can do things other then be homemakers, and the latter because those families with working women have to send their kids to childcare where they're taught collectivism, normalized sexual deviancy, and to disrespect their parents. /s
Ok, this is one end of the sarcastic stereotype, but the other end is that:
No one needs to take responsibility anymore, live life to the full, have sex with 200 people, take drugs and experiment, and eventually at 40 try and have a child with IVF because at that point that’s your only shot. If you don’t like who you had it with after 5 years, just leave them, it’s fine. Oh and then pass off your children’s moral social education to bad schools.
That’s also not a good plan. Neither is the one you talked about, but society definitely needs to find a golden middle ground, because something is really bad right now. The progressive liberal path really doesn’t work in the long run.
People might not feel that way if you didn't belittle homemakers (or do we need movements to let people know they can do things other than be doctors/lawyers/whatever profession you view as high status?)
A more equitable solution than socialized childcare that recognizes that homemaker is a valuable job that lots of women (50% of those with children) would prefer to do would be to increase the refundable child tax credit. Then you could use that money for hired childcare or to "hire yourself" as a caretaker according to your preference (obviously men could also be the homemaker if that's what the couple wants).
At the end of the day I'd say even talking about homemakers doesn't matter as much as you think.
People in general like the addition economic freedom from making more money. Even starting at WWII women started working in huge numbers in the US and that number has increased ever since. The sending the money back in tax credits barely works in a single income house because the otherside in the massive increase of available workers in the US is the massive inflation of assets. When one person works solely to afford a house, the other person can't take a break to have a child. Now add in the out of control costs of healthcare tied to your job no one in the younger generation is going to want to have a child.
Maybe, but anecdotally, despite the zeitgeist of the last 10 years claiming otherwise, my wife and I both raised in middle class suburbs of different parts of red-state Arizona both internalized the message growing up that girls not working was an anachronism that only Mormons/Catholics still stuck to (and that it was "oppressive" or weird). It's so ingrained in the middle/upper middle class that people can't even see it. e.g. this article from Yale[0]:
> Despite efforts to promote gender equality in occupations and professions, many women still choose to stay at home or work part-time. In the United States, for example, a 2015 Gallup survey found that more than half of women with children under age 18 would prefer to stay at home over working outside the home. Also, nearly 40 percent of women without children under age 18 indicated that they preferred the homemaker role.
Let the phrasing sink in. Despite efforts, women still prefer that role. It's quite clear from context that their preference is wrong.
As far as economics goes, people wildly overstate how unachievable it is. Having a stay-at-home parent is not something reserved for the 1%, and in fact many poorer people do it for economic reasons. People have been taught not to want it, so they don't try to figure out how to make it work.
And conversely why is there no counter for men being stay at home rather than women? Other than a few month around the time of childbirth there is little reason for the woman to be the stay at home partner.... this is why I doubt the motivation behind the people saying "oh its just women's preference" since surely some sizable portion of men would also like to have this option.
There has been some progress in that area over the last 30 years; the percent of stay-at-home dads has ~doubled, and now 18% of stay-at-home parents are dads, up from 11% 30 years ago[0]. There are certainly people pushing to normalize SAHDs in addition to calling for gender parity with paternity leave.
That said, women are still almost 2x likely to prefer homemaking[1] even with the social engineering, and I suspect women's preferences are stronger than men's (e.g. I think it would be nice to be a SAHD, and I'd prefer it over outside work, but we probably wouldn't be together if my wife weren't the SAHM). So as a man you have to be prepared to accept that that's how the world is. Someone has to bring in money, and it'll probably be you.
> A more equitable solution than socialized childcare that recognizes that homemaker is a valuable job
It isn't a valuable job, economically speaking. It's an anachronism and essentially a luxury for couples where one parent makes enough to support the entire household. Not only this, but it essentially puts all of the pressure on the working parent to economically hold up the household
The cases where it economically makes sense are practically nonexistent in 2023
It's viable and modern enough that over 25% of women do it [0]. And there's a wide spectrum of people who make that choice. There's a large amount of parents that take on that role because their alternatives (e.g. retail jobs or gig work) would leave them in a worse position after paying for childcare, but no one's claiming retail work is not economically viable. Though if I had to make a judgement, I'd say raising your children full-time is more valuable work than e.g. Instacart or Starbucks, which are both luxuries.
Honestly I don't know how you could even make an economic statement about it that doesn't boil down to a tautology unless you're also willing to say e.g. teachers aren't an economically valuable job.
The solution is to grow people in pods and raise them in barracks-creches. Our legacy biology will only continue to diverge from our environment over time.
The other option, which was the one traditionally used, is strong social pressure favoring marriage and stigmas against divorce. We can recognize that it's an unfortunate reality that will occur, while still not normalizing or glorifying it.
The other option we are seeing now is women in general will greatly reduce or stop having children.
Couple this in with two members of a family required to work to afford housing and healthcare the entire entire traditionalist appeal is going to fall apart due to complete unworkability.
Or you just take away the reason most men don’t want to get married (atleast without a prenup). Get rid of alimony, no child support if the father declines when the mother is pregnant before 3 months, get rid of no fault divorce, cheating by the dependent spouse means that spouse automatically forfeits their share of the money.
I think at the very least we should end all welfare causing perverse inventives in the family and see where the system settles.
But im afraid pandora's box has been opened and i don't see a way to fix this that doesn't involve alot of people losing rights/individualism (which im opposed too).
Even the problem is misidentified. Marriage is only a proxy for the things that are important. That’s important to identifying a solution as you get boneheaded solutions like ‘give men more power over women so they can’t leave marriages’. Rather than the entirely sensible ones you mention.
Do you mean the children of Black parents? If that's really the case, I see no problem of cancellation here as it would further accentuate the point of systematic disadvantages of people of color.
> Few have the combination of intellectual integrity and social obliviousness to publicly ignore that these socioeconomic factors likely have common causes among them, including lower intelligence, poorer impulse control, tendency towards violence and aggression, lower empathy, etc.
OK, assuming for a moment these are true. What solutions do you offer? Because if this is the conclusion, i.e. the fault is inherent to the Black people, you basically block any (reasonable) solution. Whereas if you focus on relevant external factors, there is always a way out.
All those are symptoms of chronic vitamin D deficiency. High melanin content associated with adaptation to the higher year-round insolation at lower latitudes also inhibits the natural production of vitamin D in the body. Living at higher latitudes, wearing more clothing due to the weather (further limiting sun exposure), and a modern lifestyle largely spent indoors all exacerbate the underlying problem.
I'm not offering any solutions. I don't accept that it's my duty to fix their problems any more than it is an Eskimo's to fix mine.
We've done more than enough. We've put them ahead of ourselves financially, socially, even legally. We've thrown ourselves into a spiral of self-loathing and despair because of their problems. Incalculable sums of money, time, and other resources have been burned by well-meaning Whites all around the world trying to elevate those of darker complexion. It's all been futile.
And so the problem that I see, from my unashamedly White perspective, is that we are suffering for their failures. The solution I offer to that problem is simple: stop. At this point, only the most anti-White prick could possibly find a way to blame us for giving up.
For those who are curious about this, I would recommend that you graph violent crimes and the prevalence of unwed mothers, and then re-do the graph for each race which one is interested in.
Sure, but what's the way out? What is the solution for both the white and blac population? We can just accept the data as they are or, as a society, try to do something that improves the situation.
In this case, it would make sense to ask why black fathers are much less interested in being a father than their white counterparts. Is it culture? Is it social issues? Once we discover the cause, we can try to do something, at least education-wise.
Anecdote incoming. Usual disclaimers apply. I genuinely am not sure what true numbers are.
Couple#1
They are married for a good while with three kids. He is a cop in Chicago; she has semi-random kid watching gigs. While it did not happen, they did openly discuss strategic divorce to ease their financial situation.
Couple#2
She works corpo job. He works a cash only contracting job. They are married in every sense, but legally. Two kids. She would not marry for fear of losing existing benefits.
###
There are some benefits to being married, but the 'benefits of kids while not married' outweigh those. And you can't argue against those cuz then you are taking food away from the hungry.
Some of what I am about to say is state specific ( in my case IL ), so take this into consideration. Income is a consideration for any help. Married couple will have higher documented income, while unmarried cohabiting couple won't. In other words, single parent ( on paper ) will claim a child and with lower income have a better chance of being in the low enough income bracket.
I have zero idea how common that situation is though, but I know someone who structures their life around snap benefits ( or whatever they are called now ) and its kinda ridiculous, because her monthly benedit is on par with our family's grocery budget. I struggled not to report it as fraud ( the person in question is not poor; they are using - abusing?- the system ).
Married couple will have higher documented income, while unmarried cohabiting couple won't
that seems to be the problem then. i think generally, hiding the income of a divorced partner is difficult so making your first scenario less likely in many places.
and the other case would also require one partner to maintain credible evidence that they actually live apart and do not support each other. where i come from this is not easy to do.
if you live in an area where this is possible then that's a disappointing state of local legislation.
either way i doubt there is a large number of people doing this. at least i hope not. and it may as well be considered fraud.
i wouldn't bother reporting it though, because it is not going to improve your own life.
"Kearney says she wants to grab the attention of both conservatives who say they care about children's well-being and progressives reluctant to talk about family structures, because the link between single parenting, inequality and mobility in America is too strong to deny."
She doesn't need to grab the attention of conservatives because her findings already support their pre-existing beliefs, like it says earlier in the article. I get the feeling she felt like she needed to phrase this very delicately.
> She doesn't need to grab the attention of conservatives because her findings already support their pre-existing beliefs
Not quite, because the other solution to the problem is giving people access to sexual education and birth control so that they can decide to have children only after they find someone they're willing to marry, which are so famously contrary to conservative beliefs that they've based 40 years of political campaigning around their opposition.
I suspect her findings that the gender of the married parents is irrelevant, the thing that matters is whether or not they are married is the part that conservatives are unwilling to accept.
Or perhaps people will decide that childrearing is too much effort in addition to all the other pressures put upon them and birthrates will continue to fall. Perhaps South Korea and Japan are examples.
It appears that marriage and money are inextricably bound. After all, Melissa Kearney is an economist. And of course the success of children is related to the wealth and education of their parents. The article mentions money many times:
> Kearney notes that families headed by a single mother are five times more likely to live in poverty than families headed by a married couple.
> Most single mothers start from behind; they're less likely to have a college education or a high income. Single motherhood is a lot less prevalent in higher-educated women.
> Data also shows that many single mothers don't have help from any other adult, like a grandparent or other family member. That means it's mom who both supports the family financially and serves as the primary caregiver.
> many women don't marry the father of their child not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability.
This doesn't look like a "moral" problem (family values, yadda yadda). It looks more like a monetary problem.
As with nearly all of social science, we can’t really run the controlled experiments necessary to determine if this is a causal relationship. Just because it looks like a “monetary problem” does not mean that throwing money at it will fix anything.
> Just because it looks like a “monetary problem” does not mean that throwing money at it will fix anything.
There's a grain of truth and a grain of falsity to this statement. It's true that indiscriminately "throwing" money doesn't necessarily fix monetary problems. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the problem can be solved without addressing the economic conditions that seem to have created it. Certainly, lecturing people about "family values", which has been happening for many decades, hasn't fixed anything.
> This doesn't look like a "moral" problem (family values, yadda yadda). It looks more like a monetary problem.
Lower socioeconomic classes have less resource. Less resource means children do worse. Calling Captain Obvious.
Presumably, if a father was pulling his economic weight, the mother would marry him. The issue is that a male in a lower socioeconomic class is likely not pulling his own weight due to a lack of jobs.
So, if you want more marriage, improve the job prospects for the lower socioeocnomic classes that make up big chunks of the population.
The article really doesn’t answer that clickbait headline, but it seems analogous to “Why Jews earn so many PhDs”. It’s mostly culture, which is a tangled and recursive process that can’t be deconstructed into some government funded social programs.
Proof that we need more "family values"; more religious conservatism?
This is what a lot of people seem to believe --- people who've never bothered to look at the actual evidence --- or who refuse to accept it once they see.
A detailed county by county survey of the entire country shows that the most religious and conservative parts of the country have higher divorces rates by far.
Getting married in the Bible Belt and giving money to the church seems to *create* a lot of one parent families.
we do need more family values, but religious conservatism is not that. we also need equality between women and men, and that is where conservatism gets in the way. i suspect that lack of equality is what's driving most divorces in those conservative areas because women no longer allow themselves to be treated as being lesser than men, so they stand up for themselves and the conservative men can't handle that.
ok, fair enough. would it help to elaborate on the points?
let me try:
by more family values i mean: value family more. that implies better financial support and less taxes for having children, parental leave, counseling and other measures that help parents stay together. but also raising the image of being a parent in society in general.
religious conservatism refers to older family values where the woman submits to man among other things as is mentioned in other comments in this subthread.
equality between men and women means equal value and station. a lot has improved in that area, but it's not quite there yet. we also need to learn to respect each other equally, especially in a relationship. equal value and station doesn't just mean equal rights or equal pay for the same work, but also equal importance of their contribution, their wishes and their needs, regardless of who is doing what in a family.
the last claim that religions conservatism drives divorces, again is supported by other comments
more family support? compare the support for parents available in the US vs most other countries in the world, in particular the EU and read the comments here.
equality between men and women? again, there is plenty of evidence worldwide that we have not achieved that. not by a long shot.
the only thing that is not self-evident is the relationship between religious conservatism and divorce. that's one i am not sure about myself. but it is at least supported by a few others here.
reading emotions in text messages being difficult as it is, it would be helpful to point that out up front. it helps avoid a wrong reading.
to me these points are more or less self evident, but it is fair to point out that not everyone may see it that way, so thanks for prompting me to elaborate.
I appreciate your perspective, although I must express my continued disagreement. It is evident that I perceive a bias in the source material. (i love arguing)
i admit that the for last one about divorces caused by lack of equality more evidence would be good. but the other two are solid. if you have a different opinion on those, i'd love to hear it.
Growing up in a southern evangelical environment I can say anecdotally this is no surprise. When one side of a partnership considers themselves their peers better it leads to a path that ends in divorce.
The study shows even non-religious people in those same counties have high rates of divorce, so it’s clearly an issue affecting everyone.
This is also pointless if they didn’t control for ethnicity. The South has a greater percentage of African-Americans who have higher rates of divorce. The problems beleaguering black communities has more to do with just living in religious or conservative counties
A substacker I follow claimed that Kearney's thesis ignores a confounder, that unhappily married couples are more likely both to split up and to have kids with worse outcomes. The fairer comparison would be between unhappily married two-parent homes, and single-parent homes. Haven't read the book so can't say if this is true.
Marriage is a legal construct; it can provide a level of security (and fairness) that isn't otherwise accessible. But as the laws change, the benefits change too.
I think men marry in the hope of binding their partner; fat chance. Marriage gives the partner a claim on a big chunk of the man's assets, so it incentivizes women to divorce their husbands. The great majority of divorces are initiated by the wife. I'm not sure why women marry; I'm not a woman, but maybe the reason is the same.
Marriage is an outdated custom. People should learn how to live together without submitting to these ancient legal customs.
Source: I'm twice married, and twice divorced; both partnerships lasted 15+ years. I'll never marry again.
It's mad, no? When I ask people point blank why they're getting married, they just stare at me. Obviously part of that is because I'm being autistically rude in asking such a questions, but I haven't heard any compelling answers either.
Well if you ask such an autistic question (given that I am responding to a adult person and not some small kid who doesn't have a clue about actual life), don't expect much, it clearly signalizes that you are either taking a piss or are so immature there is no point even discussing it. Its a bit like asking why do you like color blue, mature adults don't ask that and for kids you can say anything or nothing, same result.
But I'll bite - if you decide to settle down with a partner you match with very well on tons of actually important stuff, including how your future together could look like while lacking any significant (yet known) drawbacks, and you want to raise kid(s) together, then the question is why not. Without the kids part, less reasons but why not.
The inexperienced people (in my case immature kids/teens, I've answered similar but better formed question couple of times already) think its just a paper signed, and contractual obligations stemming from it. Far from it, at least for us. It changed our relationship, for the better, made it stronger and not only due to longer cancellation procedure. Do I have some peer-reviewed study for that? Of course not, just my personal 2 cents.
As an adult that is seen as mature by my peers who happens to not understand marriage your post comes off as lacking empathy and also not doing a lot to explain why someone would choose marriage.
The reasons I extracted for why someone would want to choose marriage.
* "Why not"
* Changes the relationship for the better
* The relationship has longer cancellation procedure.
You have no idea how you are actually viewed by your peers, here for example you are far from it, pretty consistently, trying hard to find reasons to prove your own personal opinions, while ignoring others. A bit pointless debate at this point, since your own second asterix is more than enough for the topic discussed.
I can come up with a few very good reasons why not, but the question was why.
You mention that after you decided "why not", and got married, you in fact saw your relationship get "stronger and not only due to longer cancellation procedure". I'm happy it's working out for you, but would suggest it's not because you got married.
Can't tell if you're serious. Literally everything on their is either not unique to marriage, or made _worse_ by marriage.
I won't go through each nonsense reason in turn, but this one is pertinent:
> Accountability and Conflict Resolution
>
> Resolution Mechanisms: Marriage often compels couples to work out their differences and disputes in a more committed manner, as there is more at stake.
The opposite is true. People take marriage as a binary thing, and over-react to "last straw" situations. They get divorced, and that's the end. People in committed relationships work things out, because there's a whole lot of grey.
I've been in a relationship longer than most married couples I know, and I'm still seeing divorces every day at my kids school.
>> Literally everything is not unique to marriage, or made _worse_ by marriage.
The words "literally" and"everything" have real meanings. Maybe go through "literally everything". The first two on the list, for example, and consider many different jurisdictions.
The cherry picked example is even wrong. In many jurisdictions couples are legally compelled to go to marriage counseling or similar. Australia has it for couples with kids, several US states have it. So there are all the regular reasons to try to resolve things, plus added reasons.
The anecdote is nothing more than that. No one is claiming marriage is a cure all for all relationships. No one is claiming only marriages are durable relationships. But the idea that there is no practical reason to get married is absurd. Just making a loud, expensive, public announcement that "I'll do x" is known to make it more likely that you'll do x.
> The words "literally" and"everything" have real meanings
They do indeed, and I used them correctly :)
> In many jurisdictions couples are legally compelled to go to marriage counseling or similar. Australia has it for couples with kids
That's pretty messed up. Really? If you have kids, you are legally required to get married in Australia? I couldn't find anything about that, and I find it difficult to believe.
> The anecdote is nothing more than that
K, but I still don't see marriage working in my immediate circle, nor wider society. I don't need a scientific study to draw conclusions from that.
I find it's the opposite. Marriages break up because it's a binary thing; they either get through the "last straw", or they get divorced. Contrast that with people in committed relationships who have a sea of grey to work with, and eventually make it work when it could have been a divorce if they were married.
I have no data, but I'd bet there are more 40 year olds in relationships of over 20 years than there are married people.
Marriage is a formal process that provides a standard framework in which two families get to know one another.
The problem with American relationships is that it deals with two people.
A marriage is the full joining of two full families. By marrying my wife, I made my uncle related to my wife's uncle, so they better kind of get along. Indeed I have a vested interest in them getting along because it benefits my children.
A wedding provides a formal and socially acceptable way for these sorts of interactions to occur. If I just moved in with my wife... What are the chances her distant cousins would meet mine? Zero, I imagine. A wedding brings them together and benefits everyone.
But most Americans don't really have extended families so I see why weddings seem strange.
I hadn't thought of the extended family benefit, and that's maybe a good one. Though I will say from all I can tell, our families have had the same level of mingling that they would have had we got married. Could be wrong though.
But yes, many western cultures don't really have close extended families, so even this point is mostly null.
I have an inkling as to why people get married in the west, but I don't want to be set on fire here ;)
> I hadn't thought of the extended family benefit, and that's maybe a good one. Though I will say from all I can tell, our families have had the same level of mingling that they would have had we got married. Could be wrong though.
But maybe if marriage were more prevalent culturally, they would have?
> But yes, many western cultures don't really have close extended families, so even this point is mostly null.
Western culture is also rife with divorce, which creates a culture in which extended family doesn't actually want to meet, since divorce is like 50/50. Of course, in subcultures in America, like Mormons, certain Asian cultures, traditional Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Amish, etc, there is quite a bit of extended family, and these cultures heavily discourage divorce.
So it's pretty hard to detangle causation and correlation? Does extended family prevent divorce? or do intact nuclear families cause extended families? Or is it a feedback loop, that reinforces another? In that case, what is the most prudent action any individual can take to put the process in the right direction?
Possibly you're not seeing the answers you're given as compelling because of your perspective. I can speak from an Islamic perspective and say that sexual relationships are considered immoral outside of marriage, so a man and woman cannot create a family and have kids unless they get married.
Once you get beyond a certain age if you mention your girlfriend in conversation people will assume she's some young thing you left your wife for. Marriage means you avoid this awkward situation
This is really cringe and you're probably not being perceived by others the way you think. I would suggest avoiding asking leading questions like this, it makes you sound like a child or at the very least an incredibly sheltered adult
what happened in those 15 years? i don't think that your partner married you with the goal of taking your assets. if that was the case i doubt the marriages would have lasted 15 years.
No, you're quite right; I wasn't taken for a sucker. I think they ended because of the legal implications of marriage; I think the relationships would have survived, if there hadn't been contracts.
In fact, they've both survived; I'm now friends with both exes. But the contracts caused us all a lot of damage.
[Edit] I'm all for people having the same rights regardless of who their partner is. I'm fine with "equal marriage" in that sense; at the same time, I want to say "Don't do it!" It's like saying everyone should have the same right to walk into the path of an express train.
It's good for some people, apparently; it looks to me that a subset of religious-minded people have relationships that marriage contracts don't screw up.
could you elaborate on that, if it is possible to do so without revealing personal details? maybe in contrast what you see as a difference in the relationships of religious minded people?
the only thing i can think of is open relationships without a commitment to each other. but even there i don't think that the contract itself would be the problem but different expectations of each partner. the problem of the contract is that it wouldn't be aligned with those expectations.
marriage is for people who want to commit to each other. divorce happens when that commitment is no longer a priority.
It’s not marriage that’s the issue but the punitive laws surrounding marriage in the US that actually incentivize divorce, combined with a culture that has normalized divorce. The laws and culture just don’t match up. The US has a social issue with some women using divorce for personal enrichment and neither US culture nor law penalizes this behavior.
In many countries people who get divorced unnecessary are subject to social stigmatization. This stigma seems to be a necessary ingredient of a successful marriage culture, and the loss of it is why marriage in the US has stopped working.
Marriage in the US is essentially Russian roulette with your finances, although the odds of losing are a lot worse.
> Kearney's argument that children who grow up in unmarried households are fighting the odds has progressives miffed and accusing Kearney of stigmatizing single mothers
I find this attitude applies to everything people don't want to hear. Anything that requires real change, effort, and difficulty seems to be met with anger and attack. It's so much easier to follow the accepted easy road of ignorance.
> "I'm not prioritizing one. I'm just recognizing the data and the evidence and the reality."
Good luck with that. People don't want data and evidence, they want to give their kids iPads at age 1 so they themselves can "have it all", they want to leave relationships the moment they realise compromise means not getting everything you want, they want to down pills to combat symptoms instead of working on where those symptoms are coming from.
The issue I have with your take on this is one of, most likely, reverse causality.
I may be making a bad guess, but if I had to I feel I would get the "If these women would just stay married like a traditional relationship demands, then all these problems go away" answer from you.
Now, I'll also make an assumption that you are also going to have a hard time admitting that this is a multi-generational problem caused by male lead institutions treating women like second class citizens where they have massively unequal power. Add in a little equality and you can no longer treat your partner like an optionless slave.
Because of the nature of the issues that are occuring anyone over 30 typically isn't getting convinced. The people that are getting convinced are the younger generations of whoms general fertility rate is falling off a cliff.
This is something of a useless article as a discussion point, since it discusses the conclusions the book argues for and the controversy, but not much of the actual argument, particularly its factual basis (assuming there is one) beyond post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Its worth noting that this issue has been discussed for a long time, and while the article acts as if the promotion of marriage in the face of trends the other way on a “think about the children” basis was a novel suggestion of the author, this is not at all the case; it’s been suggested for decades, been the basis of vast amounts of unsuccessful, even at the “step one” of actually influencing the marriage trend, public policy at the state and federal level (the latter as far back as the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act).
And there has been lots of analysis suggesting that marriage, per se, is not driving most of the difference, but things like income and parenting style are [0], and that those correlate with propensity to marry (but are not themselves driven by marriage), so promoting marriage is likely barking up the wrong tree.
In contrast to your argument though, Europe has comparatively higher welfare across the board, but the US has the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households.
In America single parents get more access to welfare programs than married ones so they are specifically incentivizing divorce. It isn’t a function of the welfare state level in general it’s this disparate incentive.
If that were the case wouldn't ypu see the correlation between long-term stability of the household and marriage to weaken? Since couples would be getting divorced but still living together if they were just doing it for the benefits.
I do kind of wonder about the dads. American dads do more house duties than dads from other countries but Maybe it’s just dads in high economic classes
These types of articles are doing the opposite of what they're trying to do. How exactly is framing marriage in purely economic terms supposed to encourage marriage? How is reducing people down to an income stream, a college diploma, genitalia, etc going to encourage marriage?
Take this for example:
> not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability.
It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other... no, they talk about economics. They talk about "what's good for me and my bank account"
The tone of this article: it reads like it was written by a sociopath. You ask the author "why do people get married" and hear this stupid shit about economics and "benefits to society", nothing about love or trust or any of the actual reasons. People can't just get along for some reason, economics has to insert itself into everything and liquidate whatever trust and spontaneity it can find
Because initial burst of love only lasts so long. After that it’s friendship, economics, co dependence and the other things that keep families working tougher as one unit
> It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other...
That’s how poor people think. Marriage is one of the most important economic decisions you’ll make for yourself and your children. And if you look at what the country’s economic elites actually do, they very much take economics into account, even if indirectly. A huge fraction of my friends from law school got married to other people from school. Part of that is that they’re around their classmates. But the social structure around then also gently nudges them into those decisions. My Asian parents didn’t hide the fact that my wife’s credentials played a major role in winning their approval, but I suspect the same dynamic manifested in a more subtle form among my classmates with American parents.
Because at the end of the day, marriage is primarily about economics.
You can be in love, be in a stable long term relationship, raise children together etc. without being married.
Being married means entering a trilateral pact between two people, and the state. It can make sense to do so for a lot of reasons, e.g. tax benefits (in particular in the US, as opposed to many other OECD countries).
That people conflate this arrangement with the government with what's going on in their personal lives is just fluff. It's understandable given cultural inertia, but if you really get down to it that's all it is.
> It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other...
> The tone of this article: it reads like it was written by a sociopath
The mediaeval Catholic philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas argued [0] that the primary purpose of marriage is for the good of children, by giving them certainty about their own paternity. A long way from modern ideas about “marriage for love” or “compatibility”-but I don’t think it it is sociopathic
[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5041.htm#article1 - that is the Supplement to the Summa so not written by Aquinas himself, rather written by his students after his death - although it is believed to be based on their notes and recollections of his lectures
Oh wow, Aquinas opining about something he himself had never experienced. I'm sure this has some merit. Let's spend a couple hundred years trying to figure out what he meant, I'm sure we'll get somewhere
I used to think marriage was pointless. Aquinas helped me change my mind about that. And now I am married with two children. But one of those children is older than the marriage is. (Actually both if we count from conception as opposed to from marriage.)
We should do more social studies research into US subcultures that have significantly different marriage norms than the mainstream US. Mormons and Asians both have strong taboos against divorce, and also have strong rates of upward mobility (i.e. much higher odds of kids from low income households ending up as high earning adults).
There is some research supporting the link, but not nearly enough: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-marriage-and-divorce-... (“A child born to a never-married mother in the bottom fifth of family income is 3 times more likely to stay in the bottom fifth than a child born to a continuously married mother with equally low income.”).
It’s possible that it’s not marriage per se. Both Mormons and Asians socialize children into “do what you’re obliged to do, not what you want to do.” Marriage is one aspect of that—you get married, and you stay married, and what you “want” doesn’t really matter. But it might be that mentality that also drives upward mobility rather than marriage per se.
I’d agree if not for the fact that this is somewhat true in much of Asia: China, India, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, etc). I’m sure there are exceptions but it’s hard find counter examples
The west used to be much more collectivist. Christianity as it's been practiced for most of history is a collective religion. The rise of individualism corresponds to the rise of atheism and agnosticism and 'nones' in the west.
Are you able to back this up? American individualism has existed for multiple generations, well before the rise of acceptance for atheism/agnosticism/“Nones”.
Americans have always had an individualist streak, fueled by Protestant Christianity, the cultural influence of Appalachia, and cultural diversity. The communitarian parts of Christianity held that somewhat in check. But as even that falls away, america has become hyper-individualized and morality has become almost completely personalized.
There are a number of other factors worth mentioning:
- The philosophy of John Locke, who greatly influenced the founders
- The US is a very new country, compared to those in Europe and Asia. The only preexisting culture was the Native Americans, and you (should) know what happened to them...
- The US is a nation of immigrants who left (sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily) their previous countries and cultures.
- The US is geographically very large and open. Even within the nation of immigrants, there was a huge amount of migration to populate "the west".
- The US has a very weak central government, by design of the Constitution, and it never had a state church. There's no centralizing cultural force.
The culture of Appalachia—specifically, the Scots-Irish—has been tremendously influential in America: https://reason.com/2005/07/01/the-fighting-scots-irish-2. It is deeply wrapped up in frontier culture, interestingly because Scots-Irish were encouraged to migrate to that land to serve as a buffer against the Indians.
From the very link that you cite: "Webb's book, though well-written and often insightful, is more an exercise in ethnic self-mythologizing than an evenhanded attempt to judge the impact of the Scots-Irish and their culture on America."
The complete paragraph indicates a different tone:
> But the Scots-Irish impact on American politics is more problematic than Webb would have us believe. The populist politics they pioneered doesn't necessarily produce the sort of values that sustain liberty. Indeed, the democratic impulse toward comfort and safety often undercuts self-reliance and individualism. Webb's book, though well-written and often insightful, is more an exercise in ethnic self-mythologizing than an evenhanded attempt to judge the impact of the Scots-Irish and their culture on America.
My reading of the article is that the author agrees with Webb that "the Scots-Irish impact" on America was large. The point of disagreement is whether that influence was as positive as Webb says, or whether it was "more problematic than Webb would have us believe."
Surely, the biggest factor is women’s financial freedom.
Even in the Asian countries lauded for collectivism, I would bet it is women’s civil rights and financial freedom that is changing the situation from collectivist to individualist.
Which makes sense to me since it is probably easier to keep a society collectivist if half the population has little choice.
> The US is a very new country, compared to those in Europe and Asia. The only preexisting culture was the Native Americans, and you (should) know what happened to them...
Forming a new country does not mean abandoning the parent culture. American society is still feeling the influence of the British empire.
> The US is geographically very large and open. Even within the nation of immigrants, there was a huge amount of migration to populate "the west".
This is certainly true, but I'd also venture that a lot of these western pioneers had more solid 'friends' that they could depend than a solid portion of Americans today.
> The US has a very weak central government, by design of the Constitution, and it never had a state church. There's no centralizing cultural force.
This is to America's advantage. In fact, a strong central government is often at odds with community mindedness, which is what we find in most left-wing enclaves (this is my opinion). In his book Democracy in America, de Tocqueville, writes:
"Americans of all ages, all stations of life and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand types-religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute."
"Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling ...they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government ... in the United States you are sure to find an association."
> American individualism has existed for multiple generations
Can you back this up? Because a review of historic American literature would make our modern age of hyper-individualism 'self-help', etc, seem like a completely foreign culture.
Societies tend towards an organizing principle, and liberty has been the organizing principle of the US since its founding no less than the interests of the German race was the organizing principle for the Third Reich and anti-capitalism was the organizing principle of the Soviet Union.
(Democracy was seen by the founders as way to protect liberty more than liberty was seen as a way to protect democracy.)
"Don't tread on me," was a slogan of the American revolution. Ditto, "give me liberty or give me death." For many decades, drug addiction raged in the US while heroin and cocaine remained legal because a Federal law against the free trade in these drugs was seen as an unconstitutional curtailment of the individual's liberty. The starting of a Federal income tax was likewise held up for decades on the same argument.
Again, liberty has been the main organizing principle of the US since its founding, and I'd be a little surprised to learn that there are Americans with IQs above 110 that do not know that, but I guess some people are too busy to learn about history and politics.
This is one of the reasons that I think Kant's ideas on Deontology (also Confucian philosophy around relationships) is the correct one for a functioning society. There is a framework of "Right" and "Wrong" that exists outside of "Good" and "Bad". Doing what is beneficial for society, and what is expected of society is right, regardless of the Good nature of it. If society expects you to fight in a war, and you kill someone, that is "Right" regardless of the fact that killing is "bad".
But to bring this back to the topic on hand. It is right to study and work hard at school, it is right to be disciplined and not disrupt class, it is right to work a job and do well at the job. This is separate from the fact that you are may be a good person (nice, charitable, etc). A teenager who is good, but not working hard is being wrong. A large part of this is putting wants aside to do what is right.
The West has mostly leaned towards individualism (aka “it's a free country”) while the East Asia under the influence of Confucianism is most collective.
Collectivism has its downsides. It can be suffocating. Society also doesn’t always take into consideration an individual’s limitations when it comes to meeting societal obligations - a moot point in more individualistic societies.
Collectivism also has upsides. I’m fascinated by Mormons because they seem to me to be the most Asian white people. Mormon men have a life expectancy almost 10 years longer than other white men. They have among the highest social mobility in the country. They, along with Jews, top the charts in measures of mental well being.
And this is all happening within the context of America. They deal with the same Obamacare, seem to have basically the same school systems, etc.
Yeah but everyone knows you shouldn’t eat junk food and should exercise more. And last I checked Utah is subject to the same consumer advertising, fast food chains, and processed food brands as everywhere else.
Having been raised Mormon and participating in the church and culture until my mid-20's, there are sooo many aspects of the religion that affect life across so many dimensions. I'm sure abstinence from drugs is benificial, but probably only account for a fraction of the effect.
Other things I'd consider:
* Longevity is associated with community, something the church is very good at
* Even elderly individuals are required to perform "a calling", giving them meaning and purpose later in life
* Mormons have a lot of children, and so when you're older you usually have a very strong social safety net
* Mormons have lower divorce rates, and divorce is correlated with greater mortality
As an agnostic and raising kids, I spend a lot of time now pondering how – if at all – to pass on as many of these benefits of Mormonism to my kids without mandating the magical beliefs, and I have to say it's difficult. But I think you do have to have some healthy middle-ground mix of conservatism and collectivisms just to strike a healthy balance with modern individualism and liberalism.
The West has mostly leaned towards individualism (aka “it's a free country”) while the East Asia under the influence of Confucianism is most collective.
Things have changed over the decades. Those countries have become more individualistic and divorce is less taboo among the current generation than the Boomers.
Deontology is the typical endorsed philosophy of most Christian ethics. I only point this out because by citing confucianism you make it seem as if this philosophy has no place in the west. But it does.
Its wrong to disturb societal harmony, by example: putting the guild of map printers out of work with a digital map from sattelites available on all devices.
Saying killing in war is “right” is putting a lot of words in this dead German guys mouth. Kant thought something was “right” if everyone doing it would not lead to contradiction. Killing is a common example of what is wrong, since if everyone killed no one would remain.
In the 70s I would have been imprisoned for being gay, was that “right” because society deems it so?
>In the 70s I would have been imprisoned for being gay, was that “right” because society deems it so?
It seems like that would be a yes, because it's doing what you want, following your natural desires, against the will / benefit of society.
Then by your own logic
>Killing is a common example of what is wrong, since if everyone killed no one would remain.
At the most basic concept, if everyone was gay then society / humans would cease to exist after the final generation.
You can even step back and say if everyone just gave into the basic sexual desires society would be worse off. it's sort of what the article implies. Ultimately the single women with kids is because people aren't doing what society deems right and having long-term monogamous relationships. We see the effect is that the children ultimately have worse outcomes.
So it seems clear that the answer to your question would be yes, but of course you can go further and say, is "prison" ever right? Or right in that case?
It is a bit sad you got downvoted because what you say follows logic and that's all there is to it.
The gay people have won the ideology war and got strong political support right now, but truthfully being gay is not something that should be encouraged or supported because as you say, in the long term it has unbelievably bad outcome for the survival of our species.
It is the same for single mothers, and my belief formed by my own experience, is that they bear lots of responsibility for the bad outcomes, but you can't say so...
My own mother decided to separate from my father for her own profit, to be able to do whatever she wanted to do, whenever she wanted to. She proceeded to neglect my brother and I at the most crucial time of our growth and simultaneously blamed my father for everything. Both my brother and I have suffered bad outcomes, considering the potential and other variables. And that is with her being a pretty high-income woman (top 10% consistently).
Now I am at a time in my life where I'm starting to look back on history and various facts resurface that make me understand things in a new light. I am at the point where I wonder how such an irresponsible woman even got allowed to have all the power other us.
There is something extremely wrong with our current society where women are allowed all the rights with none of the responsibility. In my opinion, such news/statistic is just the tip of the iceberg, it is something really easy to observe with no study anyway (you need the study because otherwise you will be called all kind of name for daring to hold women to any kind of standard).
The problems run much deeper than that and it is way too late to do much; it will take major events to bring meaningful change.
> This is one of the reasons that I think Kant's ideas on Deontology (also Confucian philosophy around relationships) is the correct one for a functioning society. There is a framework of "Right" and "Wrong" that exists outside of "Good" and "Bad". Doing what is beneficial for society, and what is expected of society is right, regardless of the Good nature of it. If society expects you to fight in a war, and you kill someone, that is "Right" regardless of the fact that killing is "bad".
This is a tangent but I've never heard anyone summarize Kant this way.
For Kant, "right" is a subset of "good". So there is no right action that is not good. In other words, per Kant, it's absolutely not acceptable for you to do something bad because it's "necessary" according to whatever metric.
Interesting that they're moving the other way. My impression has always been that there is a sort of social taboo on not getting married in the US when you have kids. Nice to see that finally changing.
As someone from Europe, I can't understand the inability of mainstream US culture and media to disentangle marriage from long term stable relationships. Take this paragraph from the article:
> More women are deciding to have children and also remain single. Almost half of all babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019, a dramatic increase since 1960, when only 5% of births were to unmarried mothers. And it's not because of divorce; today's unpartnered mothers are also more likely to have never been married.
They go from "single" to "unmarried" back to "unpartnered" without batting an eye. The statistics they cite are about marriage yet they are generalized to all single women. It doesn't make sense.
At least the author of the book is aware of this:
> In the U.S., she says, unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe. [...] "If you just look in the data, marriage is what delivers kids a stable, long-term, two-parent household in this country."
In my opinion looking into what's driving that difference between couples in the US and Europe would be worth a discussion on its own.
"In my opinion looking into what's driving that difference between couples in the US and Europe would be worth a discussion on its own."
The problem is especially acute in the underclass, and American underclass differs a lot from European underclass.
For example, a lot of the Western European poor are Muslims (in countries that keep the relevant statistics, Muslim immigrants and their descendants tend to score below average on income and educational outcomes), who are nevertheless socially very conservative and don't tend to have kids out of wedlock. Having kids out of wedlock is much more typical among secular Europeans, including highly educated ones.
In the US, the trend leaders when it comes to having kids out of wedlock are the poorest parts of the population, mostly blacks, where "unmarried" and "unpartnered" tend to go hand-in-hand.
> In the US, the trend leaders when it comes to having kids out of wedlock are the poorest parts of the population, mostly blacks, where "unmarried" and "unpartnered" tend to go hand-in-hand.
I know you’re talking about “trend leaders”. But you must have forgotten about Native Americans and Latinos. Native Americans and black people tend to have children out of wedlock at about the same rate. Latinos have children out of wedlock at a high but lower rate. But there are more Latinos in the United States than there are black people, so there’s actually more Latino children born out of wedlock. And Latinos have the highest birth rate too.
Same goes for white people in the United States. If the rate for black people is about 70% and the rate for white people is about 30%, there are still hundreds of thousands more white children born out of wedlock than black children each year in the United States.
(Sorry, the whole “trend leader” thing rubs me the wrong. It’s like when people talk about welfare recipients based on race. Someone always says “X percentage of black people are on welfare, tsk.” But then when you look at the numbers, Native Americans have the higher percentage within their own race. But again, most welfare recipients are white so there are literally hundreds of thousands more white people on welfare than black people lol. Why doesn’t that fact get a “tsk”?)
Someone replied to you saying/asking “aren’t black people religious”. Your “mostly black” comment limited the discussion. Imagine if you had said “mostly Latinos” instead. There could have been a discussion about Catholicism. There could have been something more, something else at least.
> As someone from Europe, I can't understand the inability of mainstream US culture and media to disentangle marriage from long term stable relationships.
In the US, the category of non-marriage stable long term relationships is very small. The veneer of christian morality still exists in America, even if the substance has rotted away. So anyone who is in a stable long term relationship tends to just go ahead and paper things up. Even people in unstable relationships tend to just get married and have three or four divorces.
There’s a huge amount of religious effort pushing the conflation of the two, and that’s a very powerful combination with America’s healthcare & retirement system. If you’re in a stable relationship, marriage saves many thousands of dollars per year and gives you privileged legal status for many important life events (childbirth/adoption, childcare, medical situations, retirement and end of life care).
That confuses simple analysis because most positive outcomes will strongly correlate marriage, and any researcher who has biases for whatever reason is probably not going to adequately correct for that.
I'm not really seeing any argument in the article that this is causation vs. correlation. I know there have been studies done on this, but even anecdotally, from the people I am aware of via Facebook, friends of friends, etc., the ones that are married or even just stable in their careers and life in general are all childless minus a few, whereas the ones that have had more turbulent lives have much higher rates of having children.
My reading of the situation is that if you are born into a disadvantaged household, you are going to struggle to get ahead because of how the system works. I don't think marriage is going to suddenly solve that or make a significant impact - the people I know where the father isn't in the picture, their situation wouldn't be any better if he was, and for some, the situation would be worse.
I suppose the book might do more to prove out a causal link but the reasoning in the article doesn't inspire enough confidence for me to chance investing the time reading it.
It might be interesting to consider others who are involved in child-rearing as well. If the main predictor is having two parents stavly present, as opposed to marriage, it may be worth considering other ways in which this is accomplished. For example, by friends or family. I've considered becoming a parent and one thing that strongly factors in whether it would work is whether I would be able to have that kind of support network beyond my partner, as raising a kid even as two people seems like a lot of stress: but 4 people dividing the work of 4 kids is seems much easier. Traditionally family would be around to fulfill this kind of role, but both I and my partner live far from our relatives, so we would need to lean on our friends instead, and given how hard it is to make friends as an adult these days, let alone ones close enough to help with childcare, it seems that's an option which is available to few. Perhaps fixing that problem would also help with this one.
The most disingenuous use of stats I see regularly published, are those bemoaning wealth inequality between ethnic and racial groups that don't control for family makeup. There is a 30+% difference between some groups on one vs. two parent households, but I guess that doesn't fit the right narrative an would presume people have some agency in their circumstances.
Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example. So I think we need to look at widows or something to control for those kinds of issues.
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