The Married Will Soon Be the Minority(nytimes.com) |
The Married Will Soon Be the Minority(nytimes.com) |
Add to this the fact that to get out of the institution of marriage; two lawyers are needed, both paid for--generally--by the working spouse. The minute children are in the mix divorce becomes more of a nightmare.
I forgot to add the involvement of the judicial system with its clogged calendars and burdensome discovery procedures.
It is no surprise at all that people avoid marriage.
Not at all.
It's based on the belief that children are the responsibility of both parents. If the children live with one parent it is therefore believed that the other parent should still contribute to the costs, which sounds fair and sensible to me.
> Add to this the fact that to get out of the institution of marriage; two lawyers are needed
The same lawyer cannot represent opposed parties for obvious reasons...
It comes back down with more kids, but generally couple should stay single here till they want/are expecting kids. Being childless married couple hurts financially pretty badly for no reason.
"Therefore, examine whoever binds forever".
It doesn't fit the modern world at all. It was designed when people tended farms and raised a brood of children. We have new needs and lifestyles now.
It has increasingly less place in the world as lines between gender roles continue to blur.
African marriage, according to her, was based on what amounted to economic stability: 2 people share the cost and maintenance burden of a house, food, ... If one partner was ill, there was a guarantee the other would provide support. Children would need care early on, but added extra economic output when they became older. All of this required a long term commitment, as breaking up a marriage would condemn everyone involved to poverty. Love or even friendship were a nice bonus, but not required as long as partners could live and work together (in the most literal sense). Even something as parents abusing their children was not as bad as the children not having parents and die in the streets, besides, pressure of the local society should deal with the worst abuse.
Western mariage was based only love. We got rich enough to have the possibility for 1 person to pay and maintain house, food, ... Children can get economic support from a broken up marriage, even if the emotional impact of a breakup is extremely damaging to them. As a result, the basic stability requirements simply aren't there.
This means mariage does not require long term commitment, it provides long term commitment.
While I do not fully subscribe to this view, this woman certainly changed how I look at a marriage.
Africa is a big place. That sounds more like west or south Africa. For instance, the north-east (Egypt and the Mediterranean countries) have a much more middle eastern view of the institution. And even within southern Africa, there is great disparity between rich an poor. Much of the economic certainty professed falls away with African people from more wealthy backgrounds. It is likely overinclusive so call these "African" views of marriage, rather they are the views of some particular African economic and social groups. Other groups have other ideas, some of them much more similar to western notions.
I heard a random radio interview somewhere in the 1990's as a teenager, started really listening only in the middle of it, and by then the introduction phase was over. I never really knew who the interviewed person was, if she was famous for anything, ... It's just that what she told stuck.
Needless to say: plenty of chance for miscommunications, errors in representation are my own.
Without that unpaid, keen, trustworthy workforce, raising children is much, much harder. You either have to rely on paid (very expensive), and variably-trustworthy professional childcare, or put something like 50-60 hours a week of childcare. I'm talking about everything other than normal working hours, where typically children are at school or nursery etc.
Soo... this extra pressure is enough I think to bust a marriage with children (it seems that parental separation rates are increasing, with or without marriage), or to put couples off having them in the first place - in which case the utility of a marriage in a secular world is much lower. In the UK for instance, next to none.
But it is a scary endeavour with no practical upside, high financial cost and absurd legal risk.
Why would I get married? Love? You can love without marriage.
If marriage is to prove you love someone then I don’t think I want to bother loving anyone.
There's tax incentives and you become each other's medical proxy, among other things.
>high financial cost
The paperwork is cheap. Weddings are as expensive as you make them.
>absurd legal risk
That's true, divorces are expensive.
That’s not universal, it’s not the case in Sweden for instance as far as I can make out.
But, the rest of what you said is true.
Though it’s unlikely that both partners who want to get married would want to forego a wedding ceremony.
Wedding creates additional bonds. I didn't expect it, but it did. You want to have strong bonds in marriage, the more the better, because tough times will inevitably come. Bonds can be created in other ways (ie intense adventure experiences together), but they are different. It also covers things when SHTF - visits in hospitals, inheritance etc.
Divorces are expensive if people make them expensive when going down revenge rabbit hole. It can be as simple as 2 signatures on 1 paper and that's it. Choosing spouse is the most important choice in life and tons of folks don't do wise choices in this, with results all around. With kids divorce becomes more complex, but then even without marriage its complex depending on local laws.
Do you think that not getting rewarded for being unmarried is more of a problem than children being raised in a single-parent household?
Now that I say it though, divorces are such major trauma that perhaps the tail risk counterbalances that benefit. I guess still not, but it's less clear.
I didn’t really find that’s the case. I think that’s the perception, but it wasn’t that hard to meet nice, educated people looking for actual relationships on the various dating apps I once used. The failure rate has got to be much less than the failure rate out of all the potential partners one meets naturally.
If anything, dating apps are equalizers. They don’t require you to break into a clique in any activity where you might try to naturally meet people.
This is not a pejorative. As an immigrant, I think this will be great.
It's a form of indentured servitude, sometimes granted to someone that you hate or that hates you.
Since the industrial revolution the role of marriage and the structure of marriage has been slowly shifting. Most notably to be more equal,but also to be less mandatory
Maybe marriage just makes sense in an agricultural society, and doesn't make sense in an industrialized or knowledge-based society
Lust will be viewed as socially acceptable and sexual intercourse will be seen as the central requirement of life.
People will become addicted to intoxicating drinks and drugs.
Rulers will become unreasonable: they will levy taxes unfairly.
Rulers will no longer see it as their duty to promote spirituality, or to protect their subjects: they will become a danger to the world.
Avarice and wrath will be common. Humans will openly display animosity towards each other.
People will have thoughts of murder with no justification and will see nothing wrong in that.
Gurus will no longer be respected and their students will attempt to injure them.
Weather and environment will degrade with time and frequent and unpredictable rainfalls will happen. Earthquakes will be common.
The powerful people will dominate the poor people.
All the human beings will declare themselves as gods or boon given by gods and make it as a business instead of teachings.
Everything except the last one is the norm already. I'm curious what a society of self-proclaimed gods looks like.
We want to get rid of these traditional contracts, but we are not prepared to make all the necessary changes in the society.
It goes into detail on how much we expect from our spouses, and how these expectations put pressure on a marriage. Couples who are able to get all of these benefits are super happy, but for many couples it's prudent to realize that historically we've not expected so many things from our spousal relationships. This realization allows couples to adjust their expectations for what a marriage is supposed to provide, and give them permission to have some of their social or other needs met by friends/colleagues/etc.
1: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584531641/when-did-marriage-b...
So Millenials, from what I can gather, are much more willing to be naturally skeptical of the pitch of marriage and wait it out. I myself view it as more of a partnership, entailing legal details (such as taxes and ownership) and a personal, non-religious commitment. Religion has also fallen out of favor, reducing the push to marry, at least in the faith. This also contributes to the newer generations living together longer before marriage, which prevents both marriages and divorces at the same time and certainly delays marriages. Lastly, there’s the finances. Millenials and Gen Z are slammed with rising costs, taxes, debt, one “lifetime” economic crisis after another, and more. All of this contributes to delays in and distractions to “settling down”. I simply don’t understand how I would have felt comfortable marrying in my 20s or even done it. I wasn’t prepared and couldn’t afford stable life and also moved a lot between school, graduate school, and finding a job that didn’t suck, all of which slows meeting people.
There are some financial benefits to marrying, if the marriage sticks, but I think those don't away the sheer pressure newer generations are under.
Every married generation would have encouraged the next one to get married, it's not suddenly a thing the baby boomers started doing.
I am not familiar with the publication source, but I found this reiterating a similar perspective. It's not a controversial one despite being overlooked.
https://psmag.com/ideas/what-we-can-learn-from-the-dramatic-...
Aside from that, I agree that Huxley was right
Does this basically translate to, "we'll judge the shit out of any non-traditional family again"?
What do you consider "normal"?
I’m all for that :)
We can make marriage attractive again, if we make divoce very, very hard or very, very easy. What we have now is in between and that helps nobody.
Are Earthquakes truly more common now?
So, conveniently it encompasses all known history and imaginable future of our civilization
Likelihood of dying by violence is lower in developed countries now than the historical norm. Forms of bigotry on average seem to be way down, acceptance of those different from you is up. People's morals have mostly gotten better, not worse.
There are still problems -- climate change is the big one that's potentially actually apocalyptic -- but for the most part humanity is prospering.
I mean that is a perfect description of LinkedIn and Instagram to some extent.
Like, think about what it's saying: "people will be full of themselves". Do you really think this is the first time in history people have thought that about others?
> Lasting for 432,000 years (1,200 divine years), Kali Yuga began 5,122 years ago and has 426,878 years left as of 2021 CE.
You can argue whether it's good or bad. Natural selection has no moral value attached to it. It's a simple matter of survival.
I see marriage not as a transaction, but as a promise. I promised to love and support my wife, unconditionally. It’s not “if you do this, I’ll do that in return” - it’s “I promise to do this, regardless of your future actions”.
Filing as married allows for higher tax exemptions, in many cases around double the individual tax exemptions. For a high earning breadwinner this is as much as twice the "normal" buffer of untaxed income for investment before incurring a phase-out. If both spouses were high earning there wouldn't be much of a difference between the average exemption per spouse and the exemption provided to an individual taxpayer. Sometimes it's even less than if each spouse had filed seperately.
You can apply that to your statement too.
What about people with partners that are non-citizens? I know a lot of people in that situation, myself included.
Double income households are penalized outside of marriage.
Marriage also shackles you to the other partners' debts. Lots of people have mountains of student debt.
Divorce, even without kids, incurs alimony and division of property. And you have to deal with expensive lawyers and the court. This is stupid if both partners have jobs.
> Monogamy is still the dominant lifestyle form.
I didn't suggest that it wasn't. I said marriage is outmoded, and the article this thread is attached to agrees.
> It's also a safety if children are involved.
We're not having many of these now. Population growth is now driven mostly by immigration.
Marry or become a citizen. Or don't, depending on where you live this may not be a problem.
>Double income households are penalized outside of marriage.
Yes, because POV from the state is that you are 2 unmarried people. If you want something that is like marriage but doesn't have the same name (ie civil union), I am all for that.
>We're not having many of these now. Population growth is now driven mostly by immigration.
Which in term leads to population decrease from the other country. So not directly a solution.
In NZ you become de-facto partner after living together for few years. Marriage has become pointless and mostly done as a token party.
So wherever you live the problem is lack of partnership laws...
Suggested correction: We're not having many of these now in this <country name>
I don't understand what you thinks happens in divorce that's so special. If an unmarried father and mother have children, then any dispute they may have regarding children that can be taken to court in a marriage can also happen to them.
We've just become more accepting of people who don't fit the standard mold. So it sounds like anyone clamoring for a return to historical norms is actually clamoring for a return to bigotry: returning to treating gay people like garbage, for example, and denying their relationships legal rights.
A lot of what gay people claim is treating them 'like garbage' is just the natural limitation of a homosexual relationship.
For example, not being able to rent a womb is not being treated like garbage. No one has been allowed to do that for most of history, and most straight people can't do that. Not being allowed to rent wombs is just not being allowed to being what amounts to a slaveholder.
How many people do you know recently that used marriage to secure an economic/political alliance? Pretty common among elites historically, almost unheard of today.
Indeed... most of what modern day LGBTQ+ activists conceive of as homosexuality in the ancient world is just close male friendship.
Half the things people claim were instances of 'homosexuality' in ancient literature are just men fooling around. There are very few instances of men (or women) actually forming stable social structures with commitment in the absence of marriage to the opposite sex.
Ultimately, our confusion in this regard is due to the fact that so few men have actual friends. I sometimes go out 1-on-1 with my male friends to restaurants (often fancy ones). It's a guys night. We're all married with kids. And yet, oftentimes, people will think we're dating or something. It's weird. FFS, I went with my father to a nice restaurant, and they thought we were married. Something has gone very wrong with how we conceive of men being friends, which makes sense, because so few men have any (which probably explains the rise of homosexuality as well).
