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Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

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Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#131

Post by tomp »

ethanbond wrote: post #64
MollyR wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why men tie their identity to employment so much. Is it because society expects them to be providers, and ridicules men who don't ?

I'd assume so. As much as HN likes to ridicule the notion of "the patriarchy," this is a component of it that's awfully harmful to men.

HN ridicules the notion of patriarchy because the word itself implies it's somehow men's fault. Which it isn't. Social toles are enforced by most of the society, so we might as well call it "matriarchy", but that would piss feminists off, so we don't.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#132

Post by tomp »

zaroth wrote: post #72
Gustomaximus wrote: post #43

Whenever someone I know is breaking up I ask, "Money or sex?". It's always one of these reasons.

Yeah, I've heard this before from recent divorcees. But in a more stricter form of; marriages end in divorce when the wife doesn't get enough money or the man doesn't get enough sex. Horribly stereotypical, sexist, and crude but does seem to aptly describe the proximate cause of many divorces.

I can see "stereotypical", but why "sexist"?

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#133

Post by DominikR »

foxylad wrote: post #75
antisthenes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interest lies in why is the baseline so high in the first place? 2.5%/y sounds like an unacceptable risk , considering how devastating divorce is for men by design (in the USA, at least)

Good question, but I'm not sure why you included the gender distinction. Do you think divorce is less devastating for women, or that risk of divorce is more of a factor for men?

It depends on the legal framework of the country you live in, but generally in the West I'd answer the question with no, at least from a financial perspective.

For example in the EU country I live in I'd have to pay 40% of my net income to my ex-wife even if there are no children and there was no fault (from a legal perspective) on my side for the divorce.

Considering that 40% of my net income is much more than even 100% of the average males income the risks of marriage by far outweigh the benefits for many men in my financial situation.

I realise of course that many women end up having to deal with financial issues after divorce because not every women can attract a husband with a high income and also women on average, regardless of education, devote less time to their careers compared to men (many choose to work part time to optimise for more time with children) which impacts their own income.

But the fact still remains that within the current legal framework a wife can decide at will to turn her husband into a revenue stream for life, doesn't matter how the conduct of both parties was.

She gets the real estate they've been living in, even if her husband owned it before marriage, she gets the children and in many Western countries she can even prevent her husband from seeing his children without having to face any penalties.

Does that kind of contract sound fair to you?

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#134

Post by gozur88 »

zaroth wrote: post #123
gozur88 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. No relationship is roses all the time, and cheaters will eventually find an excuse to cheat.

I think "cheaters gonna cheat" is overly reductive and crass. The point is that if most marriages are unable to deal with infidelity, then most marriages will fail. But the divorce rate has been declining for some time now, perhaps due to more modern approaches to human fallibility. Again, this has nothing at all to do with excusing an affair, or abdicating responsibility. It's really examining and appreciating that…

>I think "cheaters gonna cheat" is overly reductive and crass.

I disagree, obviously. It's trendy to expect people are merely the sum of their circumstances, and that they'll cheat if a and b and c are true. I don't believe it. People with character don't cheat on their spouses. It's really that simple. You can be a marriage with "very serious challenges" and not cheat, even when the opportunities are all around. Millions of people do it.

>...and perhaps it's a sign of strength, dare I say health, in a marriage that it can continue on after an affair rather than collapsing at the mere thought.

Yes, the "mere thought" and action of the ultimate betrayal. I'm not buying it. Whatever they say, people who stay together after an affair are making a calculation. It's for the kids, or it's over money, or the cheated-on spouse is afraid to be alone. Oh, sign me up.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#135

Post by tomp »

bdrool wrote: post #48
mjevans wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view it as the study went looking for X, and to it's surprise didn't see X, but happened to see statistical significance in Y. However the study did not have the scope to determine why Y occurred. I think the most likely thing that changed over time is Z: the first wave(s) of feminism began to liberate females from the traditional limitations of roles in society. However the true from of feminism is a recognition a…

> Men haven't had that liberation; a large part of society still believes in specific roles and responsibilities for men that coupled females are (at their option) exempted from. It's probably going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. As it stands right now, women have nearly all the power in heterosexual relationships, so they are able to see to it that progress is made in removing their own shackles while…

> As it stands right now, women have nearly all the power in heterosexual relationships

Huh? Why do you think so? I guess legally, after marriage, they do have more power (on average), but not in all cases and much less before marriage.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#136

Post by icebraining »

zaroth wrote: post #120
moseandre wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are simplifying to wage garnishing. Probably the parent comment is intimating things like loss of socioeconomic position due to the divorce. If marriages are financially unequal in many cases, fundamentally, then divorce shows that too. But the consequences are like, how well you fare after versus before... the schoolteacher and the banker divorce, and which can maintain the social connections?

Here's another way to think of it...The economics of a marriage are just this: two people promising to be equals. The man and woman give to each other everything they have; economic, socioeconomic, mind, body, and soul. There is perfect economy in this Union. After such a union is dissolved, from one perspective both have lost half of everything. Both are a fraction of what they once were. The loss is staggering -- d…

It's not chivalry. The concept of alimony is a recognition that house keeping and child rearing is work too, even if not a job, that the stay-at-home spouse performs for the benefit of both parties. It's essentially unemployment benefits owed by the marriage as an association.

Now, implementations vary, it's often hard to know facts about the life of the marriage and there are certainly many biases affecting judgment, but the core idea is definitively feminist: fixing an injustice that overwhelmingly affects women in a gender-equitable way (both men and women should get alimony if they fulfill the conditions).

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#137

Post by tomp »

toyg wrote: post #41
mjevans wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view it as the study went looking for X, and to it's surprise didn't see X, but happened to see statistical significance in Y. However the study did not have the scope to determine why Y occurred. I think the most likely thing that changed over time is Z: the first wave(s) of feminism began to liberate females from the traditional limitations of roles in society. However the true from of feminism is a recognition a…

> Men haven't had that liberation Liberation from what? The "burden to provide" comes with a lot of benefits, and I know I wouldn't trade them all for "liberated" homesteading. In many ways, what you call "the true form of feminism" for men is just a long way down, a fall from grace, in the same way as Enlightenment was for aristocrats. It's not surprising that most turkeys refuse to vote for Christmas.

I'm the opposite, I'd rather stay at home with family than build a career, given the choice.

But feminism never cared for that. They only tried to make women more like men, implying that men are better, a position I cannot agree with.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#138

Post by twelve40 »

anonbiocoward wrote: post #106
acangiano wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly I wonder if the other side of the coin isn't that wives tend to respect their husbands less when these earn less than they do. It could be because it violates a social norm caused by society's gender role expectations. Research found that even employed men who earn a bit less than their wives are affected by higher divorce rate. So we can cast these me…

> it violates a social norm This story hit me pretty hard. While I was in medical school, my wife's family, especially her mother, routinely encouraged her to divorce me. We had two small kids, and I had gone on job interviews and seen the offers I was getting without a graduate degree, despite a BS in physics and 7 years of experience. It was obvious to everyone that medical school was the right course of action in…

Wow, it must have been such a pain going through all that! Good job handling the pressure, hope it only gets better from then on.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#139

Post by tomp »

DominikR wrote: post #45

I don't know what the laws are in the US regarding divorce but there's an astonishing imbalance in favour of women in many EU countries that causes marriages to be an unacceptable risk for me and many other men. You can get divorced for no cause (no infidelity, financials are fine and you didn't do anything else wrong) and you'll be forced to hand over 40% of your net income to your ex-wife for the rest of your life.…

> I'm fine with women leaving for no cause (it's her business) and also with financially supporting children (as probably most men are)

I'm not OK with that. I would wnt to keep shared custody of children (or full custody if she doesn't want it), and share the financial burden equally. But that option is often forcibly denied to men...

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#140

Post by faddat »

drumdance wrote: post #33
rhino369 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the average for all marriages, but certain groups account for a disproportionate amount of divorces. The rate is a lot lower if you take out groups like that: under 20 when married, shotgun weddings, the already divorced, poorly educated, etc. IIRC, latinos who marry under the age 18 have an 80% 5-year divorce rate. I'd heard people say a 20% lifetime chance of divorce if you are a middle class, educated, non-di…

I've seen similar numbers. I'd be curious to see how becoming an entrepreneur affects this. Practically every entrepreneur I know over the age of 40 has divorced.

Entrepeneurship killed a significant relationship of mine. It was entirely about money, she felt that I should continue to pursue my former profession, which provided meager, but stable income.

I was thinking about her and my future, which would require more than meager, stable income could provide.

Society hates entrepreneurship and that is why it is not a popular track: you need really thick skin to pursue it.

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