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How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

nytimes.com

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Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#61

Post by leggomylibro »

Wow, this hasn't been up very long and I think the discussion here could already use some more empathy. Looking at marriage as an institution is maybe not the best way to approach the issues that people are going to try and bring up in this sort of discussion. How about this recent piece from The Atlantic, "Love in the Time of Individualism"?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/love-in-t...

It seems two-pronged, to me. And people are gonna feel aggrieved, probably rightly to some degree, no matter which side they wind up on. For women, men are frustratingly even LESS likely to commit and stick around for any length of time these days:

“It’s not that love is dead, but the sexual incentives for men to sacrifice and commit have largely dissolved, spelling a more confusing and circuitous path to commitment and marriage than earlier eras.”

And for men, the numbers are simply massively against you and you're facing a huge time investment simply to meet one single person who probably won't even like you that much - why would you bother?:

"Popular dating apps put women in the position of gatekeeping, whether deliberately or not. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a smartphone will swipe right on basically everyone. This forces women to be choosier about who they say yes to. Even if they also swipe with abandon, they end up with more matches to sort through—yet more gatekeeping."

So tl;dr, we're all (not) screwed. Of course, these sorts of pieces tend to focus on traditional heterosexual relationships, so this all might dissolve (maybe into similar or totally different issues) with LGBTQ relationships; I don't pretend to know.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#62

Post by javajocky »

vlunkr wrote: post #39
mlrtime wrote: post #3

Many men are understanding that marriage is a no win situation. You find yourself working your entire life to support your wife and family only to have a high percentage of ending in divorce. Your assets will be taken from you and you will be lucky if you get 50% custody. If you do not wand children there is no point in getting married.

A high percent end in divorce, sure, but it's not like you're playing a slot machine. If you and your partner are committed you can more than likely beat the odds. This is incredibly cynical. I'm pretty happy to work to support people that I love. It might be easier in some ways to be single, but it's not a "no win situation."

But that's not true -- it's actually fairly low. (see posts above).

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#63

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

tomp wrote: post #36
njharman wrote: post #24

> “Women don’t want to take a risk on somebody who’s not going to be able to provide anything,” That's such a fucked up sexist thought. It says woman are in control of marriage, what men want is irrelevant. And that the role of men is provider. Men belong at work and women belong in the kitchen, is that it?

> Men belong at work and women belong in the kitchen, is that it? No, it's just describing the reality that it matters to women how much a man earns. See the last graph in the second section of this article: https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-onli...

Yup. There are definite physical[1] and psychological[2] differences between the sexes that lead to different mating strategies[3]. We can bemoan the inequalities that exist with that structure, but it doesn't change the fact that men and women are different in many ways.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mating_strategies

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#64

Post by rayiner »

thriftwy wrote: post #29
mfoy_ wrote: post #7

To quote Alec Baldwin's character, Ellerby, from The Departed : "Marriage is an important part of getting ahead; lets people know you're not a homo. Married guy seems more stable. People see the ring, they think 'at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch'. Ladies see the ring, they know immediately you must have some cash or your cock must work." A touch on the homophobic and misogynistic side, but it seems rele…

Once marrying becomes an unfortunate choice, it starts to signal the opposite. "This guy is so desperate he had to marry "

The recent trend has been the opposite: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/marriage-is-fo.... Since 1970, marriage rates for men at the top of the income distribution have dropped less than 10%. For men in the bottom quartile, it has dropped 35%.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#65

Post by dpark »

kop316 wrote: post #8

I wonder if this is also due to the high cost of the actual marriage ceremony. A (cheap) engagement ring can cost over $1000, and can easily jump to $5-10K. Then a traditional ceremony can easily be over $10K, with no upper bound on how expensive it is. This was the cause of me no longer being with an ex, they were already in debt $80k from school, but still wanted a ceremony that could have easily cost $40K. I had n…

> they were already in debt $80k from school, but still wanted a ceremony that could have easily cost $40K

In fairness, "working class" people are usually not asking for $40k wedding ceremonies (or carrying $80k in student loan debt). This sounds like a valid reason for you to not want to marry your Ex, but I don't think this is a significant contributing factor for most working-class people, who don't generally plan absurdly lavish ceremonies.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#66

Post by msla »

mfoy_ wrote: post #51
thriftwy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once marrying becomes an unfortunate choice, it starts to signal the opposite. "This guy is so desperate he had to marry "

That frame of mind implies that marriage is something women want and something men do not want. Why? It sounds like you're making some weird assumptions about sex-positivity, child-rearing, or finances.

Or just making assumptions about how well single women get on in life, which is, in turn, an assumption about how well women do in the workforce.

If a woman's best life strategy is to get married so she doesn't have to take in laundry or become a shopgirl or take some similar low-pay/low-status job, marriage becomes seen as something the man is roped into, because men can (presumably) do just fine for themselves on their own, and, perhaps, are better off financially without "The Little Woman" to support.

Dual-income households destroy that pretty well, but notice how universal such thinking was in the pop culture of the 1940s and 1950s.

It's one more example of how all social effects are interrelated: It's hard to be sex-positive if the common STDs are effectively incurable, or require chemotherapy (vide mercury treatment for syphilis) to even attempt to cure. It's impossible to have same-sex marriage if your legal system has coverture, which means a marriage is a union of the husband and wife into the legal personality of the husband. It's impossible to take a modern view of marriage as something which can be put off if fully one half of the population depends on it to have a good life.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#67

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

mlrtime wrote: post #3

Many men are understanding that marriage is a no win situation. You find yourself working your entire life to support your wife and family only to have a high percentage of ending in divorce. Your assets will be taken from you and you will be lucky if you get 50% custody. If you do not wand children there is no point in getting married.

Did you guys read the article?

All the Hacker News comments seem to think the Marriage is going down because its not a good deal for high net worth me. This might be true, but was not the point of the story at all.

Marriage is declining among the middle/lower classes. Its women who don't want to marry a man who doesn't have a job that are causing the rate to change.

This does reinforce the cynical point, that in marriage men are only there to supply funds, but the rich men who are opting out are not doing it at a high enough rate to matter.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#68

Post by thriftwy »

mfoy_ wrote: post #51
thriftwy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once marrying becomes an unfortunate choice, it starts to signal the opposite. "This guy is so desperate he had to marry "

That frame of mind implies that marriage is something women want and something men do not want. Why? It sounds like you're making some weird assumptions about sex-positivity, child-rearing, or finances.

As the article implies and also is said in comments, a lot of additional burden were placed on men in marriage. That could easily lead for many marriage to become "toxic assets" - i.e. you would be better without one.

Disclaimer: I am happily married.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#69

Post by cachemiss »

javajocky wrote: post #62
vlunkr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high percent end in divorce, sure, but it's not like you're playing a slot machine. If you and your partner are committed you can more than likely beat the odds. This is incredibly cynical. I'm pretty happy to work to support people that I love. It might be easier in some ways to be single, but it's not a "no win situation."

But that's not true -- it's actually fairly low. (see posts above).

Correct, there's relatively easy ways to de-risk things. My wife and I dated for 3.5 years and lived together for 2 before we got married. We are in a high income bracket, and both of us thought quite a bit about the person we wanted to married, and made sure we had good conflict resolution skills, respect for each other. We agreed on kids, religion , money and sex (make sure you agree on these or you are going to have a bad time).

Chances of our marriage ending are very low according to the statistics. People always view marriage as this binary thing where you are either being completely and utterly scientific about things, or you are just being naive and jumping in. I love/d my wife deeply when we got married, but I was also aware of her flaws and my own. If you don't have any empathy or like living your life for yourself, don't get married (and probably don't date), it won't end well for you.

Re: How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

#70

Post by hnaccy »

g00gler wrote: post #54
mlrtime wrote: post #3

Many men are understanding that marriage is a no win situation. You find yourself working your entire life to support your wife and family only to have a high percentage of ending in divorce. Your assets will be taken from you and you will be lucky if you get 50% custody. If you do not wand children there is no point in getting married.

Not necessarily true. I think that's an outdated, albeit mainstream, approach to marriage. It should be more like forming an LLC wherein you make a partnership agreement. Called a prenuptial agreement in the US, I assume it's more popular amongst the wealthy. I'd want a solid contract wherein there would be no alimony, separate finances, and rational child support meaning no, you don't get X percentage of my income,…

I believe judges can throw prenups out.
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