If the trends continue, then the growing number of single people will presumably begin to exert political pressure to eliminate the laws that favor and reward marriage and implicitly discriminate against them.
—
June kicks off the U.S. wedding season. Whether you love nuptials or hate them, an astounding trend is occurring: fewer couples are tying the knot.
The number of U.S. marriage ceremonies peaked in the early 1980s, when almost 2.5 million marriages were recorded each year. Since then, however, the total number of people getting married has fallen steadily. Now only about two million marriages happen a year, a drop of almost half a million from their peak.
As a result, barely more than half of adults in the U.S. say they’re living with a spouse. It is the lowest share on record, and down from 70 percent in 1967.
What’s behind this trend? Is marriage becoming obsolete? Why should we care?
Marriage rates are dropping too
The drop in marriages is even more dramatic when the rapid growth in the U.S. population is taken into account. In fact, the marriage rate is the lowest in at least 150 years.
The figure below shows the number of marriages per 1,000 people for the last century and ahalf. It does not matter if it is a person’s first, second or even third marriage. The rate simply tracks the number of weddings that occurred adjusted by the population.
In the late 1800s, about nine out of every 1,000 people got married each year. After rising in the early 1900s through World War I, the marriage rate plummeted during the Great Depression, when fewer people were able to afford starting a family. The rate shot up again at the end of World War II as servicemen returned home, eager to get hitched and have babies.
But since the early 1980s, the marriage rate has steadily dropped until it leveled off in 2009 at about seven per 1,000.
A global trend
It’s not just the U.S. where this is happening.
The United Nations gathered data for roughly 100 countries, showing how marriage rates changed from 1970 to 2005. Marriage rates fell in four-fifths of them.
Australia’s marriage rate, for example, fell from 9.3 marriages per 1,000 people in 1970 to 5.6 in 2005. Egypt’s declined from 9.3 to 7.2. In Poland, it dropped from 8.6 to 6.5.
The drop occurred in all types of countries, poor and rich. And it clearly wasn’t based on geography, since one of the biggest declines occurred in Cuba (13.4 to 5), while one of the biggest increases occurred in the neighboring island of Jamaica (4.9 to 8.7).
Among countries that experienced a reduction, the average rate fell from 8.2 marriages per 1,000 to just 5.2, which is an even lower rate than what the U.S. is now experiencing.
Why has the drop occurred?
The range of culprits is quite large.
Some blame widening U.S. income and wealth inequality. Others point the finger at the fall in religious adherence or cite the increase in education and income of women, making women choosier about whom to marry. Still others focus on rising student debt and rising housing costs, forcing people to put off marriage. Finally some believe marriage is simply an old, outdated tradition that is no longer necessary.
But given that this is a trend happening across the globe in a wide variety of countries with very different income, religious adherence, education and social factors, it’s hard to pin the blame on just a single culprit.
Don’t blame the government
Moreover, this drop in marriages is not occurring because of adverse legal or public policy changes. Governments across the globe continue to provide incentives and legal protections that encourage marriage.
For example, the U.S. federal government has over 1,000 laws that make special adjustments based on marital status. Many of these adjustments allow married couples to get preferential tax treatment and more retirement benefits, and bypass inheritance laws.
Moreover, government legalization of same-sex marriages around the world has boosted the number of individuals able to enter into legally sanctioned unions.
While legalizing same-sex marriages has boosted the number of marriages, this increase has not been enough to reverse the declining trend.
Is it a switch to cohabiting?
Another popular explanation for why fewer people are getting married is that more couples prefer to live together informally, known as cohabitation.
It is true that the percentage of people living with a partner instead of marrying has risen over time. In 1970 just half-of-one-percent of all adults were cohabiting in the U.S. Today the figure is 7.5 percent.
However, this trend fails to explain the whole story of falling marriage rates. Even when we combine the share of adults who are married with those who are cohabiting, the picture still reveals a strong downward trend. In the late 1960s, over 70 percent of all U.S. adults were either married or cohabiting. The most recent data show less than 60 percent of adults are living together in either a marriage or cohabiting relationship.
This means over time, a smaller percentage of people are living as a couple. The number of people living alone, without a spouse, partner, children or roommates has almost doubled. The number of people living by themselves in the U.S. was less than 8 percent in the late 1960s. Today’s it’s almost 15 percent.
Costs and benefits of marriage
So why have marriage rates declined around the world, while the number of people living on their own has exploded? In my mind, the simple answer is that for more people, the current costs of marriage outweigh the benefits.
The benefits of marriage are numerous and well-known. Researchers have linked marriage to better outcomes for children, less crime, an increase in longevity and happier lives, among many factors. My own research revealed that marriage is associated with more wealth.
Nevertheless, as Gary Becker pointed out in his widely used theory of marriage, these benefits don’t come for free. Marriage is hard work. Living with someone means taking into account another person’s feelings, moods, needs and desires instead of focusing just on your own. This extra work has large time, emotional and financial costs.
While decades ago many people believed the benefits of marriage outweighed these costs, the data around the world are clearly showing that more people are viewing the benefits of being married, or even cohabiting, as much smaller than the costs.
Why do we care?
As the wedding season takes hold, I have already been invited to a few nuptials, so it is clear marriage is not actually becoming obsolete.
Society today is geared toward couples. However, if the trends continue, then the growing number of single people will presumably begin to exert political pressure to eliminate the laws that favor and reward marriage and implicitly discriminate against them.
The question is: how large will this policy shift be and how soon until it occurs?
Originally Published on TheConversation.com
—
Photo: Getty Images
About The Conversation US
“cite the increase in education and income of women, making women choosier about whom to marry.”
Interesting way of phrasing women have no interest in supporting a man financially, which is what it comes down to. I wonder if common law marriage is tracked and how it affects the decision of people who choose to not marry, but would otherwise cohabit.
It’s not just that, but in economically developed countries, population growth is in decline.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly-dying-despite-an-increasing-world-population.html
http://www.techinsider.io/do-it-for-denmark-ad-campaign-to-encourage-pregnancy-2015-10
Heck, in Japan people aren’t even having sex and and many don’t have a desire to.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
I also heard the the U.S. population growth is largely die to immigrants and immigration. If marriage is about starting families. People at least in first world economies don’t really want to start them. If you think it’s bad now, wait for the sexbots.
lolwhat
So removing a bunch of arbitrary benefits handed to married couples will then lead to discrimination?
Why should those benefits even exist? Surely by existing, it is singletons are being discriminated against?
This piece barely goes into any reason why these benefits *should* exist and seems to be implying that people today aren’t marrying because they aren’t able to share their emotional space with someone else. Tosh.
Hi Kim,
Frog with no legs. It means argument from assumption rather than fact.
There is an old joke:
Scientist put a frog on a table and tell it to jump. It jumps
They cut off it’s front legs and tell it to jump, it jumps.
They cut off it’s rear legs and tell it to jump, it does not jump.
The scientist conclude that a frog with no legs can’t hear.
That is what this is. We have become so accustom to blaming men rather than ourselves that it is almost visceral, even in light of contradictory evidence. It is mostly because we are talking about men rather than to them, and even with that, only a certain type of man that fits our preconceived notions of what men are, with all others censored for speaking against the agenda. That is how we have assumed a result to be a cause.
I’ve talked to men, average every day men, by the thousands and the indication of that is vastly different then the assumption.
Have we ever asked if men are turning to porn as an alternative to the drudgery of dating, the lack of motivation, the hazards of interpersonal relationships with women. Have we looked at how women objectify men as romance objects no differently then men do women as sexual objects rather then speak only from the feminine side of our mouths? Have we asked which came first in this chicken and egg scenario, how one sets the stage for the other when the ego gratification of the dating woman is predicated on the man competing for her, winning her, that she is participating in her own objectification by objectifying him?
I can answer that for you. We have not, we will not.
As one man explained to me, and many agreed:
I can go out, and do all the work necessary to even get a date, lay myself out there time and time again like a salesmen in competition, often times outgunned by such things as money and looks. I can put on the act, do the pony dance until I finally get a date (not being in the top 20%).
Then, I can spend money, spend a night paying for and placating to a woman as if I was put on this earth to fulfill her romantic obsession, be little more than an object to her with two future options: First, do that some more, second, get a thank you and the check.
I can do that two, three, even four times and get little more than a kiss on the cheek and a brush off, then rinse and repeat as many times as I’d like in the hope that I can enter into a relationship that, by its very nature, puts me at risk and offers me nothing in return beyond the occasional sex.
If I’m lucky, or unlucky actually, I can take what is offered, settle by being picked rather than picking all based on that performance rather than the man I am. I can get into a relationship, have kids, end up in the empty bed or worse, like so many of my friends being bilked to support a woman’s new boyfriend and the kids that used to be mine.
I can play that self-depreciating, self-defeating game of roulette, or I can turn on my computer for five minutes, rub one out, and be on my way enjoying all else that life has to offer.
Now we can argue that, or we can address that. We can stop blaming “toxic masculinity” for everything from grubs to cloudy days, or we can examine toxic femininity, the toxic society with openness and honesty rather than scream misogynist every time a guy holds the “other” to some sort of accountability.
We can put all the cards on the table, or we can keep passing them with our toes under the table. We can begin to fix everything, or we can continue to blame men while ignoring how we’ve created the problem with our own sexism and not theirs.
We could do a lot, and we can do that by ceasing this silly feminist war on masculinity, but rather listen to and learn from them…but we won’t, because no matter how much better we as a society, so many women believe themselves to be they are their own worst enemies, far greater then enemies of men.
Men are coming to a place where they do not care. We can go nomad, and be quiet content with that, and many men are. This society, our women need us far more than we do them, and being human, with all the fragility and ego that goes with that, we won’t see that until it hits is square in the face…when its too late. Lemmings off a cliff as it were.
It’s been a joy conversing with you, Kim. I’ve enjoyed it greatly, as I have with many of the men, including Jules. ;p
I thank my God that I do not live in America, but in a country where men and women like each other and do not live all their life in the trenches of war.
That is all I can say and I realize it is time for me to leave GMP and find my own tribe here in Europe.
You write that men have come to a point where they do not care. I think that is a symptom of emotional disturbed damaged persons . Healthy individuals dare to love they dare to bond also with the opposite sex, AND they work for social change in far more sophisticated ways than saying “women need us far more than we need them”
When you dare no longer love and see that as a strength well then your head is pretty much messed up.
If feel sorry for you all.
I feel sorry for men that see online porn of the kind we find on the internet today (often produced in U.S) as the liberation from men.
Yes sex can be dissociated from feelings , “sex” and produced in factories and each individual have their “needs” sitting alone in front of their screen wanking .
Great progress, great liberation. I wonder what will be the next.
I am done with this website , it makes me sick.
@ KIM,
“I thank my God that I do not live in America, but in a country where men and women like each other and do not live all their life in the trenches of war.”
Yes, KIM. You do have much to be thankful for indeed. You have really hot the nail on the head KIM. The real issue here in America today is just as you have correctly identified: men and women really do not like one another any longer.
I know I am going to catch a lot of crap for saying this but I have said it many times before…..when you have a society as we have here in America where MOST women find MOST men unattractive (read not good enough), you are bound to get this as the outcome. Eventually the men realize it is pointless and simply disengage.
Is this a healthy and mentally well adjusted way to live? HELL NO! It is insane!!! This is why you see all these BS pieces all over the web in America touting things like “being authentic”, “being vulnerable”….This is all an extension of the self help industry and other shit so prevalent only in America. Everywhere you look these days, someone is a damn coach. That’s also the new “in thing.” It’s like so much of America: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
If men want to opt out for their own well being because they recognize the system in its current construct is a fraud, then that is OK with me. Hopefully, they will dedicate themselves to self improvement and personal growth. However, if they are doing so to “punish women” then I think it is self defeating. It is unhealthy discourse and dialogue born of bitterness, frustration, and rage. There are other ways to get what you want and need out of life.
I believe in God. I believe that God created man for woman and woman for man. He specifically created woman so that man would not be alone. This I believe, always. While I may have given up on love (in the romantic sense), I have not given up on woman.
Just as there are many good men, so too there are many good women. You simply must learn how to identify them and engage them. If all men want to focus on is “hot” women…..then men get what they deserve. If those women end up screwing them over, then you know what I say to them: I don’t want to hear your damn whining and shit. You chose her. So live with it! A well dressed thief is still a thief.
Sorry to vent…But, like you KIM I too am fed up with this site in many respects. I left for a month or so. My girlfriend does not like it very much. Says it is a waste of energy. Energy I should spend on her:) I think she has a point.
In fairness, I do think there are a lot of people who mean well and who genuinely want to move things forward with the sexes. But, what is needed in a America is breakthrough. A Reagan-Gorbachev deal. But, instead, each side seems to be hunkering down and not willing to give an inch, especially on the women side. So, I have decided to live instead of merely existing.
Cheers!
I’m likewise done with commenting here, Kim, but I am commenting here just to answer you.
You are assuming a reaction to be an action, Kim
If, in your country your men face 40 years of male bashing and feminist abuse, their rights ended, their children stolen from them, and a continued blame game as you are demonstrating here, your men would be the same way, eventually.
It’s taken a long time for men to get to this point, but it is what it is. Take that knowledge, that understanding of result with you, learn from it, so if and when that plague enters your world you can teach women to resist the temptation and not end up where we are here.
There was a time in this country where men and women loved each other, and I’ve worked very diligently to try to bring us back that, but today that involves holding women accountable for their part in all this.
“women need us more than we need them”. You see that as an action, but it is first a reaction taught to men by such as “women need men like a fish needs a bicycle”, which has been pounded into men for 3 generations. It is a wake-up call to yet another feminist lie, another attempt to help women see the result of such teaching, that men and not feminist are their friends, that they are turning the wrong people away.
Go out there on the internet and see the reality that has driven men to where they are now. Heck, even here, how many times have we heard of “toxic masculinity”. How many times have we seen men besmirched, blamed, attacked, profiled as a group with no accountability to women?
You see my words as hate toward women, but it is just conditioning. What they are, are a wake up call to women. You can paint me as a woman hater all you want, or you can see the truth that I am being honest and open with them rather than pander and placate, that I say the EXACT same thing to men. No one is clean in all this and I fear harming no one’s ego, because that is what it’s going to take, holding both men and women accountable, not just men.
You cannot judge a war by a snap-shot in time, from a time long after the first shots were fired, but to go back in time and examine the first shots fired, and how we went from there to here, how manhate has become a societal norm, and paranoia is the first rule of thumb.
…and why do I speak up? Watch this video. Tell me how this would make you feel to know that it is not an isolated incident, but a norm, policy, the new order of the day that runs through all social interaction for men from work, to education, and now even flying on a plane are taking a picture of your kid. Would this cause anger if we profiled all women in such ways? Then why is it so wrong for Good Men to begin to stand up for themselves when they are being profiled in such ways, guilt by dogmatic assumption?
This is where we are heading and it’s not just here in America anymore. It is world wide and so is the men’s movement now. Ignore it if you want, blame men if you like, but running from America is not going to isolate you from it as it will hit you there. In fact, it’s already begun.
You are a good woman, Kim. Of that I have no doubt, but so too am I a good man and not some evil woman hating knuckle dragger. Get over that conditioning, wake up or do not, but guys like me are the last hope of ending this war that we have gong on here.
Believe it or not. That is up to you, but at least examine the reality. Bury your head or open your eyes. Your choice, but that choice is only two-fold: part of the problem or part of the cure.
Take care.
Watch and examine the reality of just the opposite of what you have been conditioned to see. It’s not misogyny, but misanthropy.
https://youtu.be/HeVKCj9_-Xc
Kim,
Here is another, a female voice, a voice of innocence seeing what is transpiring, and why yet another lie that only men who cannot get a date are MRAs. There are more and more good women joining that movement because they see clearly what is transpiring.
This is how feminism is influencing our kids and training them to disrespect men. This is a psychology course turned into a feminist hate class. Watch, especially at around 5 minutes in to the reaction to the one male that shared his story of domestic violence and then ask yourself why men shut down, why there are no services for them, and why we portray violence against men in the media as funny.
This is a great example of everything that I’ve spoken about here.
I usually do not stoop to defending myself, Kim, but I will tell you this. I’m not an angry man and none of this angers me. What it does is break my freeking heart.
Anyway, Best to you.
Take care.
https://youtu.be/FgKsniZ4N9k
It’s not just in USA.
The marriage rate in Sweden was about 5.5 per 1000 people during 2014, which is even lower than in the graph in the article. And I Think it’s in the same ballpark for most North-European countries.
So don’t make the mistake to assume this is isolated to USA.
DJ and Jules
And what about this hypotheses that this ?
Study find that use of pornography makes marriage unappealing to men.
I think it may be some truth in that,
http://www.westernjournalism.com/shocking-new-study-finds-link-pornography-declining-marriage-rates/
Let’s follow the chain of logic: If easy access to pornography now allows men access to sexual gratification without a partner, and consequently they opt out of marriage, that must mean that the promise of sexual gratification was the primary incentive to marry. They were NOT getting the love, respect, emotional support, security and belonging that marriage supposedly brings. But in marriage, men are still expected to be the providers: financially (by and large it’s still true), and of love, respect, emotional support, security and belonging. And there’s a very strong possibility that he’ll have to continue to be the financial provider after she’s decided to end the marriage.
Thus, pornography has offered men a different, better option to escape from the bad deal of their oppressive gender role. In exchange for lower quality of sexual gratification, they can choose to shuck off the burden of providing (without reciprocity), and to live his life more on his own terms. That sounds familiar.
It sounds like men’s liberation.
Good point. Maybe it is as the focus seems to be on getting men to marry, not actual male happiness in marriage.
Jonathan G
Yes the promise of sexual gratification was and is some men the primary incentive for marriage. You will find the same all over the world I think, wether they have on wife or several …
Times are changing .
Will the end of marriage be the end of family or will the institution of family continue or be replaced by something totally new?
Where I live family is not that mportant any longer, nor is religion. The majority of young people do not get married but cohabite , with a variety of contracts that replaced the marriage contract,even though women still get more protection,rights and security with a marriage contract lots choose cohabitation and their own contracts.
Community , neighbors, networks of different kinds, the persons you work together with every day seems to matter far more than family.
To have a good family is fantastic I am sure , but fortunately there are other other alternatives.
@KIM,
“To have a good family is fantastic I am sure , but fortunately there are other other alternatives.”
Yes, the alternatives are what men are seeking. But, porn and wanking are not good alternatives. Just another form of self destructive behavior.
@ KIM
There may be some truth to that. If marriage is the goal, we have to ask why. If it’s simply population growth for economic viability (some one had calculated the number of people needing to work to support a retired person, but I don’t remember the number), couldn’t robots and animation address a lot of that? Maybe marriage itself is unnecessary.
If men are not getting married, I’d suspect that it’s because it doesn’t support their self interest. They see little return on investment or even a negative return. The solution would be to create an environment where men see a benefit to getting married. Shaming them by telling them they are fulfilling their social obligation won’t work especially when they also get signals that women and families don’t actually need them.
Women also have a part to play in this. I’ve been of the opinion that men would be a lot less wary of relationships if women took on more of the initial risk (emotional, financial, etc.). For myself, I know I’d be a lot more willing to wait and see where a relationship goes if I wasn’t paying for the dates. I suspect that factors into women’s thinking and that’s why you have so many complain that men rush sex. It’s not like she isn’t getting free meals, free shows, etc. anyway.
“The question is: how large will this policy shift be and how soon until it occurs? ”
When we stop dodging the real reason that marriage is begin shelved, and begin to examine the sexism and discrimination not only prevalent in marriage and reproductive law, but articles such as this that enforce such.
Marriage holds not only no benefit for men, but extremely high risk. They have no reproductive rights, and they can be forced from their homes, their children, to be indentured for up to 22 years…and it can be done on a whim.
I’ve just investigated a story of a man that spent 10 years building a “dream home” for his wife and two kids, only to be wakened off of his couch by two police officers, evicted from the family.
His wife simply moved him out, moved her boyfriend in, and it happens hundreds of times per day.
When I talk to young men, they tell me that they want no part of it, that there is no benefit to them, and it is getting worse as men get older with more then 35% of single men over the age of 30 shelving marriage entirely, and for the exact reasons I’ve mentioned.
I sat with a group of young men at a party once. These were men that had their lives together. They were educated, had their own homes, nice cars, went on vacations, generally enjoying life. They all had girlfriends, but when I asked about marriage I received a resounding no. When I asked why they pointed over to the one divorced friend, living in his mom’s basement
.
If we were to actually ask men rather then make excuses, we may reach the depth of this issues, but, as always, when it comes to awareness of men’s issues, there are far too many trees in the way.
DJ
I am on my summer holiday and I am supposed to be unplugged…..but I can not help myself.
What you say here make it sound like men and men alone are the ones that decide if there will be marriage or not. But as you well know women also play a part in all this . Women say yes or we say no ,just like men do…..
I said yes once and have said no several times. I have also proposed but he declined with the words “I dare not go through one more time”.
I think you know that women do say no to lots of men.
But look at this article that looks at this from another angle. A new model for marriage , and it is possible to see marriages as three different types. ( in America)
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/how-to-save-marriage-in-america/283732/
@ KIM,
Hello KIM! I do hope you are enjoying your summer holiday!
Thanks for the Atlantic piece. It was a nice piece to read. I think the “new” marriage referenced in this piece is really for the upper 20% of families. America’s middle class is shrinking. So, it is not something that is going to fit people who are not well educated with high incomes.
The author made reference to a book by author Charles Murray, “Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010.” This is a fabulous book. I love Charles Murray. Charles Murray’s book looks at white America and draws parallels to black America. He cites an erosion of religious values, a lack of a work ethic, and most ominous a decline of white men participating in the labor force.
You make a very good point KIM. It’s not just men who are saying NO it is also women as well. I saw a statistic recently that stated that a divorced woman was far less likely to even be interested in remarrying after divorce than a similar man. I think a lot of younger people have grown up in divorced households and seen the negative effects on each parent. The boys have seen their fathers suffer while the girls have seen their mothers suffer. Then you have children who have seen the suffering caused both parents. So, they want nothing to do with marriage.
If you are a male teenage child and have seen your father tossed out of the house and reduced to poverty….then you are going to very skeptical of marriage. My coworker’s son years ago broke off his relationship with his mother because she decided to divorce the father. Similarly, if you are a young woman who watched her mother live a totally miserable and unfulfilling life, then she is going to skeptical of getting married.
Lastly, I think we are finding women increasingly saying “No” not because they have lofty standards. Rather, women are simply demanding more of there men in terms of education, character, ambition,…I find nothing wrong with this at all. Men need to do likewise. That’s why I continue to teach and advocate that men need to always work on ourselves. We need constant growth. I cannot tell you how many women I talk to who tell me how so few men they meet can carry a decent conversation.
So, it does cut both ways as you say.
Hi Jules
Some sort of contract is needed when you set up house with someone, or plan to have children.
I liked the HIP model in the article in the Atlantic.
And I like that lots and lots of contracts to choose between. A good contract makes life better not worse.
In Europe our discussion about marriage has another focus .
The refugees , migrants from outside of Europe come to us and the wife can be a pregnant girl 11 years old married . Or still a minor with several children .
Or a man married to four women, because where he used to live this permitted,and it is not only in Muslim countries,(South Africa ..).
So how can we deal with the fact that marriage is not the same in different countries ?
Shall be split up families , when the wife is a child?
Shall we permit men to remain being married to four women , and they all refuse to have a job but wants to be stay at home wife and the man also need economic support for his “life style”.
Jules here is another interesting article about the fact of marriage and divorce in America .For some groups the divorce rate is LOW
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html
@ KIM,
Yes, overall the divorce rate is in fact declining. But, when we get behind the numbers, we see that the top 20% of households (by income) marriage rates are still stable AND divorce rate both low and stable.
This group tends to be much better educated and better informed about marriage. They also tend to marry much later in life. Statistic show the later one marries in life the less likely one is to divorce. Here in America getting married in your 20 increases your chance of divorce by 30% or so.
But, this marriage and divorce statistic for the top 20% is no different than say the unemployment rate, savings rate, etc. It’s much better. Also, there is much more to lose at that level as well should one seek a divorce.
So, in sum I think the HIP marriage is far more suitable for this group than the masses. Personally, I would rather remain single than go the HIP marriage route. It has zero appeal to me. But, I am much older and not considering remarrying.
Cheers!
Sorry about Orlando.
Some sort of contract is needed when you set up house with someone, or plan to have children.
yes, but that contract needs to be balanced. you’d not buy a car that the former own could take back at any time without your consent or refund would you? Then how could you expect a man to do that with such a life altering decision of marriage?
If a man and women marry, have kids, parental choice is off the table, but custody and support need to be balanced if divorced.
The entire thing could be settled with mandatory joint legal and physical custody.
Feminist biased article, kim, that ignores a great many realities and interjects a great deal of conjecture.
When speaking of college educated parents it purposely avoids the education gap and that our boys only make up 30% of our college grads, which is a forthcoming roadblock that, in and of itself, deconstructs the entire notion. She also dismisses the middle and lower class that make up over 80% of marriages, that are and always have been the foundation for marriage, and that foundation is cracking.
She is also being a bit deceptive in stating that women are also saying no. In the 20s, both men and women are holding off on marriage. For women it is second to career, but for men it is well down on the list. She also fails to state that it changes for women in the mid twenties, but not for men until around age 29. She also does not focus on the fact that, after 30 the priorities change for women, but grow stronger for men as upwards of 35% of men over 30 are putting marriage completely off the table (Helen Smith, Men on strike).
She also dodges the real issue citing “male role” as the reason men are not marrying and attempts to perpetuate the need for a role reversal, leaving men as the stay at home dad. That is agenda driven, and it avoids even a mention of the fact that it is not “male role”, but the glaring imbalance of power in marriage.
I was initially surprised that she did not cite the misnomer that upwards of 90% of men want to get married, but She is speaking about men, bit I’d imagine never has spoken to them, but just citing other studies about men. It may have also been her undoing because although so many men want to be married, the other side of that is their insistence that they will not until things change. Helen Smith actually spoke to men, listened to them, cited surveys from men. There in lies the difference.
In the past they tried to, as I’m sure the older guys will remember, cite such “facts” that men live longer, are happier, are healthier in marriage. All have been debunked, so now they are cherry picking any data that can be molded to support their assertion.
It’s a game, an attempt to justify feminism while ignoring the glaring problem they’ve created by greedily attempting to both deconstruct the male role of power in society while still maintaining the power of women in marriage…and using an old feminist mind trick by speaking of stay at home dads or the changing role of dads as a show that men are acquiescing when it is nothing of the sort.
Women did not begin to excel in the workforce until they dismantled the male power structure, and men will not return to marriage until we dismantle the female power structure there. Just as we did with men in society, we need to strip women of their power in marriage. Until then we will see argument after argument about how the sky is pink rather than blue while the problem continues to perpetuate itself until it hits critical mass. Situation normal.
@ DJ..
I think this sums it from the male perspective,
http://suzannevenker.com/commentary/why-men-wont-marry-you/
Nail on the head, Jules.
I find it hard to trust you DJ .
You have told us that you are a happily married man, “as happy as a pig in mud”. to use your own word.
Still you applaud when other do not want to get married ,maybe because you see this the best strategy to change society.
You have taken on the role of the mentor of young men, and guide them away from even wanting to get married and start a family while you yourself enjoy the bliss of marriage……hmmmm.
And while you write a lot about fathers ,the importance of fatherhood, you seem to teach young men not be take on any responsibility for children and the woman they have children with.
Maybe I get you wrong but this seems to me to not so sincere .
I am not at worried about the decline in marriage. And the young men that think this is a good way to punish women they will meet their own fate as aging men without a family.
You do not need to get married to start a family,have children and a partner.
So life will go on as before also when many men and woman prefer not to get married.
As a political strategy for social change I see is a nothing else than displaced aggression .
“I find it hard to trust you DJ .
You have told us that you are a happily married man, “as happy as a pig in mud”. to use your own word. Still you applaud when other do not want to get married ,maybe because you see this the best strategy to change society.”
Then don’t trust me. I don’t ask you to trust me, Kim, just ask the men I speak to…and they get it.
I got lucky. When we met, she had more to lose then I did, I was broke, bankrupt from my previous adventures in the family court system of the great state of Massachusetts (a cheating, drug addicted wife that used the full force of the family court system to burn through our life savings and toss us into bankruptcy).
There will never be kids involved so the family courts are mooted. She works, so there is no risk to me in our situation, but more than that, she proved her metal by taking far greater risk the I, and she showed it again in the way she defied the courts to allow her ex to have full access to the kids while taking far less from him that was awarded,
I’ve eliminated the risk that I speak of. We are married under God, but the only reason that we married legally is to protect our assets and to insure that we would keep the government out of our estate so that it would go freely to our (her biological) children.
I am not at all against marriage. I’m against the inequality of power in marriage. If I ever lost her, I too would never marry again unless that power structure changed. If I were young, I’d not go there at all unless the power structure changed..
“You have taken on the role of the mentor of young men, and guide them away from even wanting to get married and start a family while you yourself enjoy the bliss of marriage……hmmmm.”
Again, I’m not here to have you judge me, and I do not guide anyone. I just speak the truth and validate their concerns. I do not enjoy the “bliss of marriage” I enjoy the bliss of a good woman. Marriage is a necessary evil so as to protect our assets. She knows that and so do I.
“And while you write a lot about fathers, the importance of fatherhood, you seem to teach young men not be take on any responsibility for children and the woman they have children with. Maybe I get you wrong but this seems to me to not so sincere.”
I’ve never said that. I believe that men need to fight for their rights to be fathers so that women cannot exile them from their children while draining their wallet. That is what the family court system allows to be done to men, but I do so with the assumption that the man in question is a father by choice, not by oppressive dictate. That is the glaring difference.
What I am against is the notion that a man should be subjected to a women’s whims if he is not ready to have children, especially since our young single men are now on more responsibility for birth control then our girls.
In our country a single woman can abort, or she can walk into any medical facility (in 46 states), any adoption agency and simply give the child up with no further obligation, especially to the single father.
is that to be construed as a woman failing to take responsibility, or her choice? Do we strip the power of choice for women because 2 million abort each year, that some give up their children to adoption, or just with men because men now seek such choice, choice that would ebb the one sided power structure?
Do you believe that to be fair? Do you believe that its just ok for a 14 year old male rape victim to be subjugated to paying child support to his rapist because a child ensued? That is our law today, and that is what is happening to our boys. if we would not stand for such injustices for women then we cannot stand for them for men.
I simply argue that, as a matter of discriminatory law that right must be also granted to men. If that leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths, then perhaps we need to rethink the entire situation.
It is hypocritical to assert that men are “not taking responsibility for children” when we experience over 2 million abortions each year, when 85% of men are exiled from the home by women.
My question is whether you are being sincere here when you come at me with such accusations.
“I am not at worried about the decline in marriage. And the young men that think this is a good way to punish women they will meet their own fate as aging men without a family. You do not need to get married to start a family, have children and a partner. So life will go on as before also when many men and woman prefer not to get married. As a political strategy for social change I see is a nothing else than displaced aggression.”
You see it as punishing women. I see it as protecting men. How does a man not getting married punish women if you believe that women do not want to get married either? I’m not sure I understand that question, but the anger here seems to be with you and not me. Are you threatened by true equality? Perhaps I had you figured wrong?
@ KIM
I think the criticism is unwarranted. My cousin joined the U.S. Navy, spent 20 years in the reserves, went to college and took up computer programming. He’d go on to make $100 / hr., buy up a ton of Microsoft stock. He owns 3 houses now. Sometimes he works sometimes he doesn’t. He doesn’t care. He’s financially stable.
He has a son and daughter, who he put through college. Instead of paying for their college, should he have told them to join the U.S. military since it worked out great for him. He has a pension, it paid for his school, helped him buy his first home, etc. or because he had the money and loved his children, pay for their school because it would be a better way for them. His children are extremely financially successful.
Things could work out fine for people, but they still realize that there may be better ways for others with less risk. Could my cousin’s children gone into the military and been just as successful? Certainly, they could have also come back maimed or not at all. If D.J. has reasons to s suggest a particular man or men in general seek happiness in a certain way or warns against a course of action, look at the reasons.