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The Decline of Marriage

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Re: The Decline of Marriage

#11

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

debacle wrote: post #7
gorkonsine wrote: post #5

Wow, this article isn't scientific at all, in the least. >As mentioned in the previous essay, single parenthood correlates with a number of social maladies. >The best environment for these children is a home with their biological mother and father. Marriage is statistically the best way to ensure these environments for children. Healthy marriages create stable families. Stable families create strong and safe communit…

> Citations needed There are studies that show that single parent homes correlate with certain social outcomes. The next dozen leaps, however, are way out there or patently false.

Yes, It is all confounded by the heritability of all mental traits. I suspect the offspring of single women who use sperm donors (who are screened heavily for proxies of genetic quality, such height, facial symmetry and educational attainment) are more successful then the offspring of married couples on average. I don't know if anyone has looked into it though.

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#13

Post by Djvacto »

mercutio2 wrote: post #9
gorkonsine wrote: post #5

Wow, this article isn't scientific at all, in the least. >As mentioned in the previous essay, single parenthood correlates with a number of social maladies. >The best environment for these children is a home with their biological mother and father. Marriage is statistically the best way to ensure these environments for children. Healthy marriages create stable families. Stable families create strong and safe communit…

I’m with you on almost everything, I happen to agree communal and/or polyamorous parenting is great (no sarcasm, kids raised this way are great); but when do you think universal female suffrage happened in the U.S.? The 19th amendment was ratified in 1920. Are you implying there was some kind of poll tax or equivalent suppression of the female vote until the 60s?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/...

I think ~50 years ago referred more to this type of thing, while stuff like voting rights was just included since it's relevant to the struggle as a whole.

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#14

Post by Brendinooo »

wuschel wrote: post #6

The article is a PR piece for " Keiyaku Kekkon ", a japanese marriage partner startup. I quickly read through the text - and wondered what I had learned. It does not present any interesting conclusions, or back its statements with data. Here is the exec summary of the startup's business model: "Keiyaku Kekkon is a marriage-focused dating website with a twist. The name is Japanese and literally means "Contract Marriag…

>The most important fact motivating this essay is simply that the vast majority of adults want to get married and have children. This suggests that the reduction in marriage rates reflects not a conscious choice but rather people running into various obstacles preventing them from finding a partner.

Thanks to the parent comment we know that this is self-serving to a certain extent since they they're selling a solution to the problem.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting point to make. It's one thing if people don't want marriage and reject it as such, something else if they do want to get married and don't/can't make it happen. Do they truly want marriage in the sense of what it's traditionally meant - exclusive and permanent, but externalities mentioned in the article hinder it from happening?

Or do people just want a big party when they're young and a friend when they're old, and attach "marriage" to the sentiment?

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#15

Post by zzalpha »

If you're curious about actual data, and not just a bunch of unsupported claims, Pew has a nice little paper they published back in 2014 on this topic:

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-am...

To my eyes, this is purely a data driven analysis and doesn't spend a lot of time moralizing on the topic.

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#16

Post by JBReefer »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #2

Natural selection will take care of this eventually, either genetically or memeticly. I suspect the outcome will not be as happy as what the traditions we flouted provided. The birth rate is likely the most telling critique of western society. Our revealed preference is our civilization is not worth perpetuating. As of now only those who deliberately desire children and those unable to follow the instructions on the…

As a corollary, based on population growth rates/disparities between birth rates, people are going to be very surprised how quickly Mormonism rises. They're basically the only chunk of native born Americans that have a birth rates above replacement, and it's a LOT above replacement.

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#17

Post by renegadesensei »

Cool to see I got some comments! Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I'm an expat programmer living in Tokyo and Keiyaku Kekkon is a side project of mine. Got the idea from watching a Japanese drama actually. I'll probably do a "Show HN" eventually. It's still in alpha and kind of buggy. Making websites isn't really my specialty so this project was a cool learning experience.

It's like midnight here and I'm going to bed, but feel free to leave questions or contact me if you want to know more about anything. Peace!

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#18

Post by refurb »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #11
debacle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citations needed There are studies that show that single parent homes correlate with certain social outcomes. The next dozen leaps, however, are way out there or patently false.

Yes, It is all confounded by the heritability of all mental traits. I suspect the offspring of single women who use sperm donors (who are screened heavily for proxies of genetic quality, such height, facial symmetry and educational attainment) are more successful then the offspring of married couples on average. I don't know if anyone has looked into it though.

I think you're putting too much emphasis in heritability rather than the impact of childhood on mental states.

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#19

Post by alva »

gorkonsine wrote: post #5

Wow, this article isn't scientific at all, in the least. >As mentioned in the previous essay, single parenthood correlates with a number of social maladies. >The best environment for these children is a home with their biological mother and father. Marriage is statistically the best way to ensure these environments for children. Healthy marriages create stable families. Stable families create strong and safe communit…

> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings

If you want to accelerate western societal collapse, this is the way to do it. What would likely occur is the richest will have a large number of wives and children causing huge amount of tension and unrest in a society.

The problems this causes are likely why monogamy is such a strong factor in the major world religions. Societies in which there is a massive imbalance in the opportunity to have offspring is ripe for turmoil.

Re: The Decline of Marriage

#20

Post by mercutio2 »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #10
gorkonsine wrote: post #5

Wow, this article isn't scientific at all, in the least. >As mentioned in the previous essay, single parenthood correlates with a number of social maladies. >The best environment for these children is a home with their biological mother and father. Marriage is statistically the best way to ensure these environments for children. Healthy marriages create stable families. Stable families create strong and safe communit…

I'm almost certain widespread polyamory will degenerate into polygamy approximately instantaneously.

Your “widespread” modifier gets you off the hook, who can say how social contract adjustments play out when they go mainstream.

But the polyamory community doesn’t look anything like polygamy. Like, not at all. More like polyandry, but most polyamorous folks I know have a single primary (and that primary lasts way longer than the average married couple, in my personal experience) and the rest of the business sees women finding multiple partners much more easily than men.

But it’s a complicated and open scene, YMMV.

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