from Hacker News

The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

by jor-el on 10/21/21, 4:18 AM with 93 comments

• by pseingatl on 10/21/21, 6:23 AM

  Getting 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.

• by hyperman1 on 10/21/21, 7:47 AM

  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.

• by rich_sasha on 10/21/21, 12:17 PM

  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.

• by dijit on 10/21/21, 7:17 AM

  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.

• by HKH2 on 10/21/21, 10:55 AM

  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?

• by pcbro141 on 10/21/21, 5:46 AM

  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.

• by gremloni on 10/21/21, 6:57 AM

  Alimony is stupid. Child support without the man having a say in abortion is even more stupid.

• by bawolff on 10/21/21, 8:14 AM

  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

• by akomtu on 10/21/21, 6:55 AM

  "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.

• by stunt on 10/21/21, 9:03 AM

  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.

• by gnicholas on 10/21/21, 8:08 AM

  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...

• by taylodl on 10/21/21, 3:07 PM

  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.

• by haspoken on 10/23/21, 5:48 AM

  https://archive.md/vTWHM

• by bmitc on 10/21/21, 6:12 AM

  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.

• by dsq on 10/21/21, 8:45 AM

  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.