The Married Will Soon Be the Minority
nytimes.comGetting into an institution with no easy way out discourages entry in the first place. Alimony has no place in a society where men and women are equal; child support is based on the paradigm of a traditional stay at home mom who never worked and who will never work, taking numbers from Kentucky(!?) in the late 50's, early 60's as a base and slowly increasing from there.
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.
> child support is based on the paradigm of a traditional stay at home mom who never worked and who will never work,
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...
Child support is not legally required to be used on the child.
Hence the increasing reluctance for men to get involved in the ridiculousness.
It doesn’t help that in America taxes penalize you significantly for it if both spouses work
Same in Switzerland.. and in same vein (probably as in US too), many parts of the country are inaccessible for living due to costs if there is only 1 spouse working (unless in top 1% of the income bracket, but even then it can be tricky).
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.
No doubt the things you mention make marriage less attractive, but I think it's also worth noting that more and more young couples are choosing not to have children. I suspect, based on my own experience and that of friends, that this is a big factor in decisions not to marry. Why get hitched if you're not planning to start a family?
Fertility has been steadily dropping since long ago throughout industrialization; the boom since the 50's are an anomaly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Birth_Rates.svg https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...
That's a feature of marriage.
"Therefore, examine whoever binds forever".
Maybe it's time to try out those term-limited renewable contract marriages that appeared in a lot of classic scifi.
Islam has those since forever - nikah mut'ah. One way to sleep around ie while traveling and not get into troubles with quran.
not all of islam
Perhaps it shouldn't be.
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.
Then don't marry. Monogamy is still the dominant lifestyle form. It's also a safety if children are involved.
> Then don't marry.
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.
>What about people with partners that are non-citizens? I know a lot of people in that situation, myself included.
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.
> people with partners that are non-citizens?
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...
> We're not having many of these now. Population growth is now driven mostly by immigration.
Suggested correction: We're not having many of these now in this <country name>
To put it more simply - marriage was created for a man and a woman who were both fulfilling strict social expectation of their gender. Man would hunt for food & protect the tribe, which eventually turned into work a 9-5 job and earn money. Woman would manage the house, cook food, raise kids.
It has increasingly less place in the world as lines between gender roles continue to blur.
I disagree. Throughout most of history, people lived in extended families, and only recently (starting from 1900s) has it become nuclearized for most of the people.
A radio interview years ago with a woman from Africa compared African and western mariages. She basically claimed the Western and African view of a mariage was different to the point of incompatibility, and wondered what the hell we were doing.
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.
>> a woman from Africa compared African and western mariages.
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.
That's probably me simplifying and misremembering.
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.
One thing that's massively changed, at least in my corner of the world (various bits of Europe) is that grandparents used to be much more involved in raising children. Nowadays, they are more commonly uninterested, living far away, or lack the past societal norm pressure. EDIT: Or are older, as they themselves had children later than past generations, and therefore less able to help.
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.
My ex wanted to get married and I was keen on the idea.
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.
>no practical upside
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.
If you're speaking about the United States's the (relatively small) tax gains, they only become advantageous for a marriage between a stay at a non-earning stay at home spouse and a high-earning breadwinner. Any other paring creates a tax penalty.
How so? It’s a progressive bracket both ways? Wouldn’t you want your spouse to earn more income, regardless of 30% tax?
You're forgetting about FICA/Social Security which can be as high as 12.4% of AGI for every dollar earned below $150k or thereabouts. A stay-at-home spouse doesn't pay social security but nonetheless benefits from it (and in certain states, can do so tax free) upon retirement or death of the breadwinner. That's not a discount available to an individual taxpayer or a double-income household.
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.
> There's tax incentives
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.
I was 50-50, but wedding surprisingly ended up one of the nicest experiences of my life, and there is plenty to compete for that spot. People tend to forget its not for the couple but for everybody else.
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.
As expected, the article says nothing of single-parent households. It mentions the black people that don't get married being disadvantaged but fails to mention that a majority of black children are raised in single-parent households.
Do you think that not getting rewarded for being unmarried is more of a problem than children being raised in a single-parent household?
I certainly agree that parents being married is a bonus for the child. Apart from any strictly emotional considerations, married parents form a more stable platform for care and support during childhood. The fact that splitting up is so inconvenient probably keeps parents together through bigger disagreements than unmarried parents.
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.
Interesting times ahead. Especially for Gen Z and younger, who rely heavily on dating apps instead of going out to meet new potential partners. Dating apps which are highly ineffective at actually generating relationships for most people (particularly for straight males). I predict Gen Z birth rate will be less than 1 per woman, but this might not be a problem for Western economies for now as Western countries can just increase immigration.
> Dating apps which are highly ineffective at actually generating relationships for most people (particularly for straight males).
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.
The incentive for dating apps is towards one night stands. If a relationship is formed on their platform they lose 2 customers and their revenue.
That's not at all true for all dating apps and their users. I used apps nearly exclusively geared towards and users who were looking for standard dates and relationships with long term horizons. The model for these apps is to get new or returning users under subscription. Apps and/or users targeting the short term are easily avoided.
Birth rates have been falling for decades at this point. Pretty much since the industrial revolution. Dating apps are new. Hard to blame birth rates on them.
I like how gender is now considered a spectrum
Eventually western countries will be taken over by Muslims and non white Christians and we will have normal social structures again.
This is not a pejorative. As an immigrant, I think this will be great.
> we will have normal social structures again.
Does this basically translate to, "we'll judge the shit out of any non-traditional family again"?
I'm not sure what a 'non-traditional' family is. It has nothing to do with judgement, just a return to a culture that produces success, including in the form of a culture that can reproduce itself. Cultures that fail to do such things and transmit their beliefs on to the next generation are doomed to fail, which is why the vast majority of extant cultures that have survived several thousands of years, typically mainly celebrate the kinds of families naturally lead to children and provide a proper environment for child-rearing.
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.
> we will have normal social structures again.
What do you consider "normal"?
Monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is historically far and away most common social structure around the world, although obviously there is a vast amount of variety.
Okay, but we still have monogamous long-term relationships between straight men and women as the norm, in terms of what is most common. Those haven't gone away.
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.
> 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.
Monogamous for whom? Muslims hardly revere monogamy, though they draw the line at tetragamy for most.
While Islam permits up to four wives, the vast majority of Muslim men have only one.
For the vast majority of history, the vast majority of muslim men have only had at most one wife.
I'm doubtful of that. Homosexuality was very normalized in the ancient western world, but it looked very different then modern conceptions.
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.
> I'm doubtful of that. Homosexuality was very normalized in the ancient western world, but it looked very different then modern conceptions.
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).
As a white Christian male, I’ve often had the thought that Hispanic immigration into the US, being largely practicing Catholics, could very well trigger a turn toward more traditional values in this country.
I’m all for that :)
Personally I am hopeing for nano-tech and neovictorians, but that is just me.
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.
Divorce can't be easy because it often involves children, which are not easy. They are the reality check on life.
We can make it as easy as what happens when you aren't married and split up.
Right, we should do something like require fathers to pay support to their children, and become involved in visitation rights should the parties request it.
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.
I hope very much that doesn’t happen. That’s not pejorative.
I understand that white people would find this scary, and I honest to goodness hope that the majority of white people in this country go back to having some semblance of a successful culture, but I don't see that happening in the white culture at large, so we will have to take what we get.
Alimony is stupid. Child support without the man having a say in abortion is even more stupid.
Why is alimony stupid? I haven't really heard any good arguments against it.
You don't think the idea of having to support a spouse as if they were incapacitated or a child for years after you've gone your separate ways absurd? In a society where supposedly, both men and women are equal to boot? And the base justification being little more than that you happened to have lived together for a time as partners.
It's a really strange way to run an insurance program. A portion of your salary goes to mandatory unemployment insurance in Germany. If alimony was fair it would be charged the same way on married people and paid by both parties.
Why should you be forced by the state to pay your ex that is no longer a part of your life?
It's a form of indentured servitude, sometimes granted to someone that you hate or that hates you.
It makes sense if your ex stayed out of the workplace during your relationship to take care of children and the home.
Well then now that you’re divorced you need to go find a job. Sure it may not pay as well as it might have but you had the pleasure of staying at home and spending time with the kids. Why is the working person the only one punished in this situation?
And if there are no children and both partners work?
Alimony is useful in a context where wages are sufficient for one parent to stay at home full-time. Part of the reason it seems so out of place today is that as a society we've let average wages stagnate so far that living on one wage is impossible for most couples.
Because women routinely abuse them. The way out of marriage for them should only be to leave everything behind, children including, and to get a job.
I agree with everything except leave the children behind. That should be a decision made by the judge on who is the better parent or at least a sharing based situation.
My understanding is that the agricultural revolution played a major role in the traditional version monogamous marriage becoming "standard".
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
"People will no longer get married and will live with each other just for sexual pleasure." - taken from the Wikipedia page about kali yuga. There are many more entertaining observations there:
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.
People in Ancient Rome (for example) were into all those types of things way more than the society I live in now. Don't really see the connection.
Are Earthquakes truly more common now?
I had a look at the Wikipedia page and it turns out that this age of sin started around 3000 BC and will last another 426,000 years give or take a few centuries .
So, conveniently it encompasses all known history and imaginable future of our civilization
Got me there...
This just sounds like standard "last days" apocalyptic religious claptrap.
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.
> All the human beings will declare themselves as gods or boon given by gods and make it as a business instead of teachings.
I mean that is a perfect description of LinkedIn and Instagram to some extent.
You could apply something generic like that to all kinds of things. It's like a horoscope.
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?
> You could apply something generic like that to all kinds of things. It's like a horoscope.
You can apply that to your statement too.
It's not a perfect example of that at all. I use Instagram, I don't think I'm a god, or that god has anything to do with it.
omg
Also from the Kali Yuga Wikipedia page:
> 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.
I understand why this is happening, but some of it is going to be unfair for women today. Raising a child still has more toll on mothers. They lose job and growth opportunity which has a long lasting impact on their future. They are still under paid comparing to men.
We want to get rid of these traditional contracts, but we are not prepared to make all the necessary changes in the society.
I'd highly recommend the Hidden Brain podcast When Did Marriage Become So Hard?. [1]
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...
Getting married was the single best decision I ever made in my life. 30+ years later and now we have three grown children, 1 of whom is married, another is getting married next year, and the third is still in college. I think the fact people look at marriage as a transactional arrangement is a sad commentary on modern society, but at least it explains why the arts are dying: people don't do anything for love or beauty any longer, it's all for the almighty dollar. It's truly sad.
My thoughts are that most of the problems, like most things, stem from the Baby Boomer generation, the generation that likes to pin everything on Millennials and Gen Z now, which stemmed from their prior generations. It was Baby Boomers who divorced more than any other and yet pitched this idealized, fairytale version of marriages. Well, Millenials can see that doesn’t work, because they have first hand experience.
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.
the concept of marriage stems from long before the baby boomers, and long before it was a "fiscal" thing.
Every married generation would have encouraged the next one to get married, it's not suddenly a thing the baby boomers started doing.
You missed my point, and I didn't say that. I feel that generation highlighted the traps and reality of marriage, making subsequent generations wary. It's a fact that Baby Boomers have the highest generational divorce rate and actually continue to divorce, even in old age.
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-...
The family being the only remaining non-transactional long-term social construct in moden society, it is not surprising that both marriage and child bearing are anachronistic and have been falling for the past decades. Eventually, a combination of surrogate childbirth (and perhaps evetually 'true' SF-style in-vitro bottle babies) and professional parenting, either private or State-sponsored, will be the primary way to raise the next generations of producers and consumers. It is sometimes tiring how prophetic British SF writers of the 1930's were.
I disagree with the assertion that family was ever non-transactional. Even the ways families begin, either through monogamous marriage or wedlock, require that one person select (or be arranged to accept) one partner with which to copulate. People engage in a transitional analysis anytime they ask themselves "is it worth it?". And that's more often then you seem to imply.
Aside from that, I agree that Huxley was right
Absolutely, married partners have a transactional relationship. I wasn't clear enough that I was referring more to the parent child relationship, which, although you could say is also transactional ("I pay for college and you study hard in return") it is mostly unidirectional in terms of investment.
That’s not how I view my marriage, though I readily admit that there are a wide range of views.
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”.
I doubt your claim that it is unidirectional or nontransactional. I would argue throughout the ages the parent-child relationship has been both bidirectional and transactional with plenty of hidden gotchas and a power imbalance to top it off.