Having economic shackles as the only incentive to keep two unhappy people together for longer than necessary seems like a terrible environment in which to raise happy and healthy children. Having experienced that as a child, it was miserable and set me up with unhealthy ideas about relationships.
Might as well make divorce illegal again. After all, something nicer might come along.
If the only thing holding your marriage together is needing to pay the bills or a judge, being forced to stay together only serves to make people like you feel righteous.
Your comment makes me wonder about what other unhealthy ideas about relationships you want to force upon others. Perhaps you should spend less time on r/MRAs and r/TheRedPill.
> So with everyone getting free money, including the children, there is no need for a father to take care of the family when he decides to diforce, right?
Having to pay child care costs and alimony above the poverty line are things that exist now and will have reason to exist even if a BI is implemented.
Hmm... So with everyone getting free money, including the children, there is no need for a father to take care of the family when he decides to diforce, right? Afterall, the family gets a good deal of income even when daddy is gone. So marriage will no longer be a bond forever, it will be a bond until something nicer comes along since there is no financial penalty anymore: no pressure to stay together for the kids. Mom and Dad can simply split up and move elsewhere. Wonder how that incease in broken families works out for the future kids...
Edit: my mother had me checked - I am not insane. Anyway: while you are right that keeping two unhappy people together might be much worse than them splitting up, I can imagine that a big organisation like the church (any church) will be a force opposing this idea once they figure this one out.
A marriage should end when either of the parties want it to end, or else it's no longer consensual. I don't believe in forcing people to stay married. But divorce still needs to mean splitting the finances so nobody is left destitute and without skills for employment. Alimony was invented for a reason. Before it existed, divorce was immensely cruel.
This is another reason we need to be fighting for economic reform. Divorce will never be pleasant, but ensuring economic self-sufficiency for everyone, at least finances will be out of the picture in these separations. Another way for us to create a society that supports men.
I suspect you've hit the nail on the head of why the social taboo against divorce exists in the first place.
Ceteris paribus, it's better for children if their parents stay together. Therefore we've raised the social cost of a divorce until it's only accessible to people who really need to get out.
Because of cultural changes, this doesn't work as well as it has in the past at keeping couples together. There's good points (fewer people trapped in bad or abusive marriages) and bad points (more families who have to deal with the many practical problems of single parenthood).
The lack of a social safety net in the US is not something antiquated marriage laws should be misused to insufficiently provide.
We need better general solutions in this area, a lot of the separation-related problems would vanish. Job-separation and spouse-separation overlap substantially, and it's rather harmful as-is when spouses are incentivized to stay in abusive relationships if they wouldn't even receive significant support separated from an abusive deadbeat anyways. They become trapped.
I didn't mention alimony at all in my comment and would rather not delve into it, so I'm not sure why you fixated on it. Divorce can be costly even without any sort of alimony (personally, I think it is mostly an outdated concept).
That being said, while I agree that historically marriage was all about children I do think there are social benefits to bonded pairs which extend beyond raising children. For example, single people are more likely to commit crimes.
The fact that there are valid cases for divorce doesn't negate that fact that even in those cases there should be massive disincentives against it and that the overwhelming majority of divorces today likely should not be allowed because there is no valid reason for them. There's a lack of awareness about how destructive broken households and families are to children and society.
uhm, what?
either there is a valid case for divorce or there isn't. you can't have it both ways. if there is a valid case for divorce then absolutely nothing should stand in the way.
preventing divorce on its own does not help fix broken households.
i do agree that as a socety we should do everything in our power to fix broken households. and by doing that, divorces will be reduced. but this is not done by disincentivizing divorce. it is done by removing the things that are the cause for the household to break.
"Money arguments are the second leading cause of divorce, behind infidelity"
the infidelity issue is addressed by better education (teach children that when they get married, their responsibility is to take care of each other (and teach them how to do that))
and the money issue is addressed by financial support for parents. it doesn't have to be UBI, but it should be to make sure that couples have enough money to live and raise children. in germany this is achieved by guaranteeing an existence minimum, and by unconditional extra money of around 200euro per child.
disincentivizing divorce by not financially supporting the single parent is a very bad idea because it forces them to remain in an abusive relationship.
Thats not true. It creates tons of value if it is structured to produce children and doesnt incentivize divorce like the current system does. No party to a marriage should be flat or better off after a divorce and that is often not true for the lower earning spouse often providing childcare right now. They can often keep the house, collect almoat the same cash and not have to deal with the higher income spouse anymore right now. Its a recipe to not work things out and for divorce to be overwhelming innitiated by the lower income partner.
But we have to look at what happens in reality. Financial turmoil is a leading cause of divorce. It is hard enough to pull yourself out of poverty, even harder with a child, even yet more difficult if you have a "dead-weight" partner no matter how much you love or care for them. The sad reality is a man who spirals into poverty is quite likely to lose his wife.
Also, it's a losing proposition to claim benifits while married. The government penalizes marriage in low income, benefits claiming couples [1]. And it's hard to look past the simple observation, born out by statistical analysis of divorce, that women simply choose to leave men who aren't able to provide.
"For example, a single mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year would generally receive around $5,200 per year of food stamp benefits. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving benefits from Section 8 or public housing would receive a subsidy worth on average around $11,000 per year if she was not employed, but if she marries a man earning $20,000 per year, these benefits would be cut nearly in half. Both food stamps and housing programs provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separate and unmarried."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Reform alimony now.
Force consistent rules at the federal level. Make childless divorces straightforward and fair. Eliminate the notion that a former spouse is responsible for maintaining a 'standard of living' established during the marriage. If two adults want to part ways, make them responsible for being adults.
To anyone not married, please understand what you are agreeing to by getting married. It is a legally binding contract that has nothing to do with romanticized notions of true love. There is an industry of people looking to profit from you and exploit you. Be extremely careful who you enter into that contract with.
I'd actually like to point out that staying together with someone you don't like because you are obligated to (due to social norms or religious reasons or whatever) is not only bad for you, it's also bad for your children.
Parental divorce, especially if it happened in mutual agreement, is far better than a having parents constantly fight and being raised in an environment full of micro-aggressions and hostility.
Blaming failed marriages on divorce is blaming the symptoms for the disease. Social acceptance of divorce isn't making married couples fall out, failed relationships are. Pretending everything is fine won't make it so.
(insert obligatory comparison to drug decriminalization here)
In a healthy society, divorce should be difficult, expensive, and rare. Social incentives should be structured to make it less appealing than working on the marriage. Conversely, marriage and children within marriage should be incentivized by law and social programs. It may such policies are unworkable in our present configuration.
I'm really drawn on this. It's not like I want people to stay in abusive relationships, but the statistics around single parent homes in the US aren't great. I'm sure there's all sorts of chicken-and-egg problems in the data, and I'm not claiming that I know the best way of sorting those out without the sort of study that would never pass an ethics board ("group A was assigned to divorce, while group B was forced to continue marriage despite child abuse and other family issues"). I suspect that there is some amount of misery in a relationship which, if the parents endure rather than throwing in the towel, results in a happier/healthier childhood for the children. I don't know exactly where that threshold is, and where the "oh shit this nightmare has gone too far and it's leaving psychological trauma on the children" zone begins. Trying to get the parents to want to stay together is a worthy effort, but when you've decided to make children I socially expect you to put their needs first; I don't think it's unreasonable to encourage people to stay in an unhappy marriage rather than leaving their kids with a broken home, assuming the current home wouldn't be worse for the kids than the broken one. I doubt that marriages of the past struck a good balance there, and I doubt that modern marriages do either.
Could be worse, could not. Maintaining two households is costly and could lead to imprisonment of one parent if they can't keep up with paying child support an imputed income a judge assigns to them. Were I to fall out of love with my wife I would be very much tempted not to divorce and instead maintain an amiable platonic relationship until my child is gone.
I'm not sure which is worse, two parents who don't love each other, or two parent who don't love each other and are in separate households with one under constant stress of possible imprisonment if they lose their job.
sure, people aren't static, and needs and wants change over time. sometimes they diverge.
I certainly didn't mean that one should betray their own needs or boundaries to accommodate their spouse. My intent was more to convey that fostering a caring, loving, respectful, and interdependent relationship drastically lowers the probability of a divorce. Life still happens.
Of course our existing systems aren't perfect either. I do think there's probably a case for a lower bounds on when alimony is viable. e.g., if the paying party is/would be below the poverty line, but I'm far from well enough informed to speculate what a good system would be.
> if there is a valid case for divorce then absolutely nothing should stand in the way.
If children were not involved, I would agree with you. But because children are negatively affected by divorce, there should be disincentives for divorce. Even valid reasons for divorce have alternatives. That may include substance abuse treatment. Job programs. Marital counseling. Parenting classes. There should be pressure for parents to work through difficult marriages instead of divorce when children are involved.
> preventing divorce on its own does not help fix broken households.
I agree, but incentivizing divorce doesn't improve things either. "Broken households" are statistically still better environments for children than single parent households. I also want to point out that between 1/3 and 1/2 of marriages end in divorce, and most of them are not "broken households".
> but this is not done by disincentivizing divorce
Marriage is hard. If you're presenting mothers with the choice of divorce with favorable custody, alimony, and child support rulings, or trying to work through a bad or difficult marriage for the children's sake, it is far easier to choose the divorce, and they do. Most divorces result in worse outcomes for the children. Period. That's why they should disincentivized, and certainly shouldn't be incentivized.
> "Money arguments are the second leading cause of divorce, behind infidelity"
Infidelity may be the leading cause, but it still makes up a minority of divorces today, and in many of those cases, it's the woman who is unfaithful and files for divorce anyway (again, incentives). If you look up the leading reasons for divorce aside from infidelity, they're nearly all various forms of not getting along well. Abuse makes up a very small portion of divorces.
> the infidelity issue is addressed by better education
If you really believe this, I have a bridge to sell you. People aren't cheating because they don't know it's wrong. Plenty of highly educated people cheat.
> and the money issue is addressed by financial support for parents.
Throwing money at parents isn't going to prevent divorce (and we want to prevent divorce), unless you're saying only married couples get the money.
> In Germany...
Divorce rates in Germany are similar to the US, so whatever you're doing, it's not working there either.
> disincentivizing divorce by not financially supporting the single parent is a very bad idea because it forces them to remain in an abusive relationship.
Again, a very, very, very small fraction of divorces are the result of abuse. It's a red herring that ignores the real problem -- the overwhelming majority of divorces occurring today result in worse outcomes for children. The state has a duty to protect children from the negative consequences of divorce, ergo, the state should disincentivize divorce.
The social benefit of staying together instead of splitting up at the first sign of trouble is to raise progeny together as a bonded pair.
Birds do this better than human beings and that's why they are usually bond for life. It is expensive to raise offsprings and it is not worth expending energy to gather resources to raising offsprings that aren't your own.
So..from a game theory point of view..it is not about divorces or alimony but the ability or inclination(or lack thereof) to be monogamous.
Earliest mention of alimony occurs in the code of Hammurabi..wherein a man shall return the dowry of the woman along with a portion of his property ..but only when the woman has borne his offsprings. And until the children have been reared and the property/monies split evenly amongst mother and children, she cannot seek another suitor or marital partner or have other children.
Alimony comes from necessity ..it is necessary in a society that is rife with inequalities. If men and women were equal in a marriage, there would be no need for alimony.
In the olden days, a woman entered a marriage with a dowry. In gold or currency or property. The dowry was meant to be her financial nest egg and the man has no rights over it. Entire dynasties and kingdoms were based on marriages and dowries.
And then it was the time of churches to decree what is moral and what wasn't. Divorces were all initially only due to infidelity and often by the man. Alimony became a safeguard so a man wouldn't profit from his philandering ways. If the fault lies with the woman, the woman forfeits the right to collect alimony.
With no fault divorces in our modern times, alimony became part of the divorce settlement. If we don't have divorces, there won't be alimonies..if we don't have a marriages, there won't be divorces.
Therefore, the only way eliminate gender inequalities is to eliminate the institution of marriage.
Times have changed. What if..as a thought experiment, we revamp all manners of social contracts. We will have to reconsider the basic human right to procreate to perpetuate the species. It should become a responsibility and a privilege to be earned..not a birthright to be exercised by all. And also eliminate the institution of marriage.
Might as well make divorce illegal again. After all, something nicer might come along.
If the only thing holding your marriage together is needing to pay the bills or a judge, being forced to stay together only serves to make people like you feel righteous.
Your comment makes me wonder about what other unhealthy ideas about relationships you want to force upon others. Perhaps you should spend less time on r/MRAs and r/TheRedPill.
> So with everyone getting free money, including the children, there is no need for a father to take care of the family when he decides to diforce, right?
Having to pay child care costs and alimony above the poverty line are things that exist now and will have reason to exist even if a BI is implemented.
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