Falling marriage rates signifies a cultural shift that hurts our children and economy

[Funky Kong]

Love is temporary and quickly morphs into familiarity and reliance.

Why do you speak in terms of absolute truths on a subject that is clearly not objective and has many shades of grey and psychological/social/economic variables to account for?

[Deleted]

I think the most morally consistent position should be that children belong to themselves, but with an incomplete set of rights that increases as they age up to adulthood; many decisions that would normally be reserved for an individual instead have to be made by parents.

The positions that children "belong" to parents, community, or the state are all morally reprehensible to me.

Persons are not property, it is false to say they can be owned by another is false.

I think that children always have the full rights of any person, otherwise saying that they are for everyone always is meaningless.

Those rights however are held in trust by the parents of the child until they reach such an age that they are able to enact them themselves or in a situation where the parents can be shown to be acting against that child's interests. At that point it would be right for other individuals/society as a whole to step in to make sure the rights of he child are upheld.

[Lylandra]

Sadly, I think this is about right. The average quality of women is so low that there just isn't that much incentive for quite a few men to bother committing. No one really wants to marry an obese feminist that's been around the ol' cock carousel a couple dozen times, which means that by their mid-20s, a significant number of American women are effectively unmarriageable. Young men aren't a particularly impressive group either. Combine this with the tendency people have to not see their own failures and the lower half of the marriage market is extremely low value and not that many people are willing to settle for that low value.

Or it could be the other way round, really. That women nowadays have so much security and souvereignty over their own lives that they don't need to get married or are considered old virgins by their communities by the time they hit that magical 30 years of age. Most often, we don't need a provider, we need a partner who's on equal terms with us.

I've been living with my partner happily for 10 years before marriage. Wanted to make sure we're both financially independent and got our degrees.

(and yeah, in my eyes the average woman is much more attractive AND less often obese than the average man. And I say this as a woman.)

[The One Percent]

Men who get married are fools.

[Shakari]

How many world leaders aren't married?

Think that proves the point tbh. but the post is quite correct.

[Deleted]

When people learn that marriage and relationships are about being selfless, and putting their partners needs ahead of their own, maybe we could see a change. Until then, the number of people getting married will continue to drop. A successful relationship is not about what you are getting out of it.

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Sorry, but the west doesn't have a monopoly on the "cultural cult" of marriage, if that's even a thing. Last i checked it started long before those two countries did.

No such thing as being selfless in a healthy relationship.

[Rennadrel]

That's feminism for ya

It's more a failure on the whole system itself. Why get married? You lose half your shit if you get divorced. Most of the time you lose your rights as a parent if you have children. The system favors women unless the woman is deemed unfit to have custody of children. How is that an incentive for men?

[SirBeef]

Do you have a link to any studies showing this? There wasn't one in that article.

No he doesn't. Studie I have seen show the most important thing a kid needs is a safe welcoming home with support form the heads of the household whether they be m/f, m/m, f/m or single parent. There is no link to a non nuclear family structure and failure or crime or anything negative. I mean the LBGT community has a lower divorce rate than traditional marriages.

[Deleted]

No he doesn't. Studie I have seen show the most important thing a kid needs is a safe welcoming home with support form the heads of the household whether they be m/f, m/m, f/m or single parent. There is no link to a non nuclear family structure and failure or crime or anything negative. I mean the LBGT community has a lower divorce rate than traditional marriages.

For most countries, the number of gay marriages is 0
Of those, 0% end up with divorces.

Math checks out.

[Spectral]

Or it could be the other way round, really. That women nowadays have so much security and souvereignty over their own lives that they don't need to get married or are considered old virgins by their communities by the time they hit that magical 30 years of age. Most often, we don't need a provider, we need a partner who's on equal terms with us.

I've been living with my partner happily for 10 years before marriage. Wanted to make sure we're both financially independent and got our degrees.

(and yeah, in my eyes the average woman is much more attractive AND less often obese than the average man. And I say this as a woman.)

The obesity rates are broadly similar across gender.

The notion that people are perfectly happy without solid, lifelong partners strikes me as obviously wrong. If this trend were conducive to happiness, we wouldn't be dosing tens of millions of Americans with SSRIs to overcome their sadness and chemically castrate them.

I don't disagree that modern men are a trainwreck as well. As mentioned, the sheer number of people that no one would actually want to marry cuts both ways.

[Tennis]

Men who get married are fools.

Were your parents married?

[Malkiah]

The notion that people are perfectly happy without solid, lifelong partners strikes me as obviously wrong.

this is one of those things where so many people on MMO champion completely fail the most basic of intellectual standards:
when a thing is subjective, just because you feel it doesn't make it objective.

if you've been infused throughout your life with the taught belief that a solid lifelong partner is required for happiness, and if you took that on and held it in yourself as a core value, then yes absolutely a solid lifelong partner would be required for you to be happy and that would be a very real and legitimate requirement for you as an individual.
but suggesting that it's some kind of inherent aspect of the human species, and that anyone feels otherwise is an aberration or wrong, is so utterly stupid and completely wrong that it defies even basic logical sense and goes straight to being childishly hilarious.

If this trend were conducive to happiness, we wouldn't be dosing tens of millions of Americans with SSRIs to overcome their sadness and chemically castrate them.

... by that logic, you could just as easily blame depression on a lack of listening to the radio, which is also on the decline.

[Tennis]

Does being a world leader somehow make them immune from being imbeciles?

They're successful people are they not? Are they in their mom's basement arguing on the internet and wasting away? Nope they're out there running the world.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

Am I too late? Have the MGTOW losers shown up yet to try and convince us they've sworn off women to avoid the nasty truth that women of any kind of attractiveness swore them off ages ago?

[Sky High]

oh god, I guess it was only a matter of time before tenn started bashing us over the head with baby boomer level "oh these millennials and their crappy economy! not settling down and having kids when it's not financially possible, the nerve!" tripe on the rest of us, surprised it didn't happen sooner.

[Tennis]

oh god, I guess it was only a matter of time before tenn started bashing us over the head with baby boomer level "oh these millennials and their crappy economy! not settling down and having kids when it's not financially possible, the nerve!" tripe on the rest of us, surprised it didn't happen sooner.

Are you married?

[Sky High]

Are you married?

not that it's any of your business but no, not exactly in a rush.

[Independent voter]

There are fewer divorces now that 30 years ago.

Back in the old days people would die by the time they hit 30 so you have time to get tired of them. 50 years of marriage was a really, really rare thing and now it happens all the time.

[Mistame]

Am I too late? Have the MGTOW losers shown up yet to try and convince us they've sworn off women to avoid the nasty truth that women of any kind of attractiveness swore them off ages ago?

The irony of calling someone who makes different life choices a "loser".

[ArguesWithStrangers]

In these modern times, any man willing to get married is an imbecile. There is no upside whatsoever.

except longer lifespan, better overall health, higher economic productivity and higher rates of happiness, self-worth, and pretty much every other measure of quality of life in every sociological study that has addressed the matter, ever. But yeah, keep on telling yourself otherwise. I'm sure you'll have plenty of other sad slobs to hang out with and reminisce about your "glory days" when you're no even looking enough to even pull the slutty, damaged, leave behind chicks you find at the bar.

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The irony of calling someone who makes different life choices a "loser".

I don't think you understand the word irony. Now you're free to make different life choices. You're even free to try and defend them. Calling someone a loser however is not ironic in of itself, but rather requires that the person saying it demonstrate that status in some other way. Now is it being a dick, sure, but that's not the accusation you're making.