The Marriage Strike: Why do fewer people marry?

Here is an interesting article I came across today. I must say that I find myself in agreement with some reasons that McElroy cites regarding men's increasing reluctance to marry or avoidance of it altogether. Thoughts?





http://www.dondodd.com/mcelroy/wendy.html


The Marriage Strike

By Wendy McElroy

August 13, 2003
Why do fewer people marry?

According to a 1999 National Vital Statistics Report from the CDC, 7.4 per 1,000 Americans married in 1998. From 1990 to 1995, the marriage rate dropped from 9.8 to 7.6. Different sources render other statistics but the trend remains sharply downward.

There is never a single or comprehensive explanation for complex phenomena that are rooted deeply in human psychology. Non-marriage is a particularly difficult issue to address because, as a recent paper from Rutgers University entitled "Why Men Won't Commit" explains, official sources are scarce. "The federal government issues thousands of reports on nearly every dimension of American life. ... But it provides no annual index or report on the state of marriage." Much of the discussion of the motives surrounding non-marriage must be anecdotal, therefore, relying on statistics to provide framework and perspective.

In examining reasons for the current decline of marriage, one question usually receives short shrift. Why are men reluctant to marry?

The Rutgers report -- admittedly based on a small sample -- found ten prevalent reasons. The first three:

They can get sex without marriage;

They can enjoy "a wife" through cohabitation; and,

They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks.

As a critic of anti-male bias in the family courts, the reasons I hear most frequently from non-marrying men are fear of financial devastation in divorce and of losing meaningful contact with children afterward. (Such feedback is anecdotal evidence but, when you hear the same response over a period of years from several hundred different sources, it becomes prudent to listen.)

In a similar vein, the Rutgers report finds: "Many men also fear the financial consequences of divorce. They say that their financial assets are better protected if they cohabit rather than marry. They fear that an ex-wife will 'take you for all you've got' and that 'men have more to lose financially than women' from a divorce."

Increasingly, men are stating their reasons for not marrying on the Internet. In an article entitled "The Marriage Strike," Matthew Weeks expresses a sentiment common to such sites, "If we accept the old feminist argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is undeniable that -- given the current state of the nation's family courts -- divorce is slavery for men."

Weeks provides the math. One in two marriages will fail with the wife being twice as likely to initiate the proceedings on grounds of "general discontent" -- the minimum requirement of no-fault divorce. The odds of the woman receiving custody of children are overwhelming, with many fathers effectively being denied visitation. The wife usually keeps the "family" assets and, perhaps, receives alimony as well as child support. Many men confront continuing poverty to pay for the former marriage.

Weeks concludes: "Over five million divorced men in America are currently experiencing the situation I just outlined. Without a doubt, their stories and experiences are heard by unmarried men. Can anyone truly blame the men for having apprehension?"

He uses what has become a new term -- at least in the mouths of men: "the marriage strike." Most of the men who go "on strike" undoubtedly do so quietly but others are making a loud political statement. For example, the Joint Parenting Association declares, "An international 'marriage strike' by men is set to continue indefinitely until Family Law is reformed to recognize that fathers love their children too."

The apprehension of men -- along with other significant factors -- is dramatically changing the face of marriage and the family. The best statistics we have indicate that, from 1960 to 2000:

The number of marriages per 1,000 unmarried women age 15-plus has declined from 73.5 to 46.5.

The number of divorces per 1,000 married women age 15-plus has risen from 9.2 to 18.9.

One impact: The presence of single women has increased remarkably -- women who must choose either to remain childless or to raise children by themselves.

The number of births per 1,000 women age 15-44 has declined from 118.0 to 67.5.

The percentage of live births to unmarried women rose from 5.3 to 33.2.

The percentage of children under 18 living with a single parent rose from 9 to 27.

Some point to the steep rise in cohabitation as causing the devastation of marriage and families. The number of unmarried adults cohabiting with the opposite sex has soared from 439,000 in 1960 to 4,736,000 in 2000. But blaming cohabitation misses the point. Why do people choose that alternative?

A significant number of men are loudly stating their reasons: anti-male bias in the current marriage law and in the family courts. Solving this piece of the "marriage crisis" is not difficult. Allow people to draw up their own private marriage contracts, without government law acting as a third party; have unbiased family courts adjudicate breaches of contracts.

If men participated equally in forging the terms of the most important commitment in their lives, perhaps they would cease to view marriage as a form of indentured servitude and divorce as slavery.

__________________
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Leo Tolstoy

20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!
Isaiah 5:20-21

I'd add to that the fact that this entire culture, everything from the entertainment industry right down to the tax laws, are anti-family and anti-marriage.

We reward people for staying single, or we make it seem glamorous and exciting----and we punish them for getting married. Once they are married, we make it just as difficult for them as we can.

We make sure that homes are priced way out of the newlywed's range; we make sure that one or both spouses must work 60 to 70-hour weeks to make ends meet and have absolutely no time for each other or their relationship at all; we make sure that having children is prohibitively expensive; and we make sure that married couples are portrayed as unflatteringly as possible, with TV shows like Married With Children, as opposed to other TV shows like Fidelity Challenge (or whatever that thing was called).

We make sure our economy is so structured that it's extremely difficult to provide for a child, and ridiculously easy to abort one.

We make sure that every citizen knows early on that the only important person in America is George Washington Looking A Bit Green----everybody else means nothing. Husbands, wives, children, parents---all totally unimportant, as are their needs, problems, dreams, hopes, and relationships. You got problems at home, tough. That's your problem. You need to be here at the office, to help me acquire more of the Almighty Dollar.

*shrug* The only amazing thing is that only one in two marriages in this country end in divorce........

That was an outstanding post Wolseley! In my own humble opinion, your remarks concerning the negative impact of the current culture on marriage and family is right on the mark!

__________________
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Leo Tolstoy

20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!
Isaiah 5:20-21

Im anti-marriage for all of the reason sited above. Great argument. You know Im 23 and every married person I know is miserable. Once you get married its all about making sure your kids dreams can come true. If you havent completed your goals in life by that time its all over for you. If you can have all the benefits of marriage without giving up your own ambitions and without loosing all your money in the almost certain divorce (60% even in the church) then why would any sane person want to do it?

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the fault isnt with teh culture or any industry but with the people themselves.

people seem to think that marriage is somehow easy and fun
it's not
you have an arguement with your roommate you dont have to seem em again for hours if you dont want to
you have an arugement with your spouse, well hiding doesnt help that.

id personally say that its a good thing that less people are getting married because this means that less of them will go to divorce court 5 years down the road to see how to split the kids

How do we reward people for staying single?

Why should we reward, or punish, at all? THe govt has no business encouraging, or discouraging, marriage.

1. Again - why should newlyweds get a break on housing, at the expense of single people? Or at teh expense of anyone else for that matter?

2. The need to work has more to do with the fact that the earning power of the average American worker has stood practically still for 30 or 40 years, while the increase of wealth at the top has accelerated dramatically;

3. Having kids - why should anyone pay for this, except the couple who want kids? I've never understood why people who decide to reproduce deserve a handout from society. Shouldn't they take responsibility for their choice, and plan ahead?

Ever hear of the "marriage penalty" in the current tax system?
I disagree. No culture has long survived once the basic family unit has been destroyed. Healthy marriages, healthy families, healthy homes mean a healthy nation.
Leaving aside for the moment the fact that married couples are likely to have children and need more room, and single people are not, who said anything about anybody getting a break over anybody? All I said was that housing is usually priced way out of a newlywed's reach. Again, if we're going to encourage a healthy social structure through marriage (which I again repeat is a good idea), then it seems to me that housing could be just a tad more attainable for young married couples.

Besides, think of all that great property tax they'd have to pay. There's incentive right there to make sure they get a house of their own, the sooner, the better. Dollars, dollars, dollars!
I agree. So what do we do to change it? I personally am highly in favor of a white-collar union, with every office worker in the country simply telling management, "No, we won't. We are not going to work 70 hours a week, we are not going to carry pagers, we are not going to be on call. When we leave the office, our time is our own." Remember: corporate executives will take whatever they can get until somebody stomps on their fingers and says, "That's enough."
Ask this same question of the Europeans in about 25 years.

Assuming there are any Europeans left, that is. They aren't having children, you know---too expensive, and society doesn't support them in having children. The Muslim immigrants in Europe, on the other hand, have a very tight tribal-type structure that firmly encourages children and sees them as a blessing from God---and they are having plenty. For every native European woman in Europe with one or no children, there is a Muslim immigrant woman in Europe with anywhere from five to eight children.

Do the math. Within a century, Europe will be a Muslim, Middle Eastern society; native Europeans will be a distinct minority, and some branches may even be assimilated and die out completely.

So the answer to your question is, if a society wants to survive, then it needs to support the idea of the members of the society having children. If they don't, then the society commits demographic suicide and it ceases to exist, being overrun, conquered, or supplanted by another society.

So basically straining the planet's resources to the breaking point is the only way to survive as a culture? The Reverend Malthus is chuckling in his grave. The only viable way to have an American-level lifestyle for everyone is to slow population growth or stop in entirely. That is fact. The world can't even support the current number people alive at American levels.

So will everywhere become a bunch of starving muslims? No. Those tight-knit societies will begin to disintigrate eventually. Judism did, Christianity did, Hinduism did. The birth rate will slow as the people get more money. Though Muslim culture has a strange way of circumventing that, by placing massive restrictions on women.

Anyway, on the subject of marriage, honestly I'm very scared of divorce. I've heard a lot of horror stories, and I've never really heard of the father getting custody. Corperate greed also places a huge strain on marriages, since it is hard for a family to get by on one paycheck.

Yeah. It's not in the tax law anymore. Moreover, it's offset by tax breaks that married couples get, that singles do not.

Circular nonsense.

1. You're obviously unaware that historically, the govt hasn't had a hand in marriages in the first place. It didnt' get involved until the late 1800s and 1900s. Are you saying that society wasn't stable until the 20th century? That during the preceding centuries, there weren't stable families, countries and societies?

2. Your claim is large and grandiose - and unsupported. So using historical examples, cite specific countries and societies that prove your point.

1. Then they should have planned for that, right? I mean, you *do* believe in personal responsibility, don't you?

2. People "need" a lot of things - why should that translate into a subsidy to help them out, especially when others are paying for it?

And again - so what? Why should newlyweds immiedately move into home ownership? Newlyweds have been renting for decades - or centuries. Home ownership is a relatively new thing. If you look back in history, most people did not own their homes. So I"m somewhat at a loss as to why you think that 20 year old kids who get married, without any real education or long-term work experience, should suddenly be granted a huge freebie like home ownership?

And again - the social structure has done just fine for hundreds or thousands of years, without the govt "encouraging" or subsidizing anything. People getting together, marrying, having kids - that is behavior that wouldl naturally occur anyhow. The govt doesn't have to encourage it at all.

And of course, if you really gave a flying leap about home affordability, you might focus your energy on the real culprit - stagnation of real earning power for the middle and lower class in this country. That

You don't know much about economics, do you? Take a $100,000 home. How do you expect a person making $12/hour to afford that? In order to make home ownership affordable for 20 year old newlywed kids, that means the rest of society would have to subsidize heavily.

Moreover, the couple would be paying property taxes on the assessed value of the house - on the $100,000 - which would eat up HALF of the $24,000 annual salary that they would earn from their $12/hour job. Clue phone for you - people who are young, just starting out, without any job skills, or any signficant work experience, do not yet deserve to be able to buy a house. They haven't established the work history, or the credit history, for such a monumental purchase. Why is renting unacceptable to you?

You want to do something about it? Don't elect Republicans. While the middle class and lower class have stagnated, or lost earning power, the Republicans continue to champion the upper class, and especialy the super-rich.

Well, in the first place, that's wrong. Europe will continue to exist and grow. Some countries are at ZPG - zero population growth - but not all of them. Moreover, Europe is one of the most family-friendly places in te world. In Norway, for example, new mothers get all kinds of benefits, up to one year off with pay, the fathers get time off as well, etc.

Secondly, your analysis is flawed. It isn't that Europeans don't want children. It's that couples don't feel the need to have children to guarantee their safety in old age, and women don't feel the need to have children to prove their societal worth. Those are good things.

Society always gaining more people isn't necessarily a good thing. I don't know why you think that zero growth, or even negative growth, is detrimental. Europe is very crowded. It wouldn't hurt them at all to have zero or negative population growth for several decades.

Except that European Community immigration rules aren't exactly "open doors" to everyone. You can't just walk in. You're sounding more like anti-muslim hysteria, as opposed to a real concern about population loss in Europe.

Um, I don't believe any of this. If you think it's that obvious, then you "do the math" and show it to me.


Utter nonsense. That isn't an answer; it's an right-wing populist ideology. You sound like Pat Buchanan; afraid of foreigners and wanting women to have more white babies so we can "catch up".

You're entitled to your views. I don't happen to agree.

Good evening.