How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege?

B) I spent two decades supporting my husband's career. When we divorced, he still had a well paid job and twenty years work experience. I was starting over from scratch and was "lucky" to get a better-than-minimum-wage job to start.

It aggravates me that the world as a whole acts like having kids and raising them is only a financial cost to men. The fact that women give birth and then take more time off for family responsibilities helps suppress the incomes of most women. Then people don't act like this is a real cost to them.

Furthermore, if you just don't want children at all, there are several viable solutions:

1) Remain celibate

2) Get a vasectomy

3) Have only homosexual sex

A lot of men seem to desire sex with women, who can then have their entire life derailed due to an unexpected pregnancy, even if they use birth control, which is not 100% reliable. And then they act like women are just overentitled and lazy for wanting compensation for the very real cost to themselves.

I'm a woman. I like sex with men. I have been celibate for more than 12 years for medical reasons. The difficulty involved in finding a man who is not just cavalierly willing to ruin my life for his convenience and then walk away makes me wonder if I will ever get laid again. That whole "sleeping with me will destroy your entire future" vibe is a distinct turn off for me.

Of course, gifts are terrible if you just don't really want more stuff in your life (I'm happy to take a pint...), and a massive exercise in value destruction, but that's beside the whole social indebtedness bit of it.

I'm really fun at Christmas.

Should it?

I mean, let's say we have a happy "leave it beaver" family with 2.2 kids, a white picket fence, a dad who works, and a mom who doesn't. Due to no fault in particular, they get divorced. They now have two households to maintain instead of one.

Why would both people deserve a "middle class lifestyle"? Their expenses have each gone up, and the total income hasn't changed. How can you split one "middle class lifestyle" into two, and obtain two of the same thing?

In most jurisdictions, child support is more than the cost of raising a child. In Canada, equalizing incomes was the goal of the latest round of child support guidelines, not "support for the child".

For a US reference, see http://www.divorcecorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/The-Ec...

> I spent two decades supporting my husband's career. When we divorced, he still had a well paid job and twenty years work experience. I was starting over from scratch and was "lucky" to get a better-than-minimum-wage job to start.

And you should get compensated for that. The question is really how much, and how long.

> It aggravates me that the world as a whole acts like having kids and raising them is only a financial cost to men.

In some sense, it is. See research on the wage gap going back to the 1960's. Never-married childless women earn about the same as never-married childless men.

Once people get married and have kids, men take on additional work to pay for their kids. Women take on less work to take care of their kids.

This means men have higher "out of pocket" costs than women do. But women pay the "opportunity cost" of raising kids. Hence alimony.

> if you just don't want children at all, there are several viable solutions:

None of those are truly viable. They're necessary conditions to not having kids. But not sufficient.

In practice, a women can name any man as the father if she wants. No paternity test is necessary in most jurisdictions, and such tests are illegal in parts of Europe! In some states, if the father is notified of such a child and doesn't contest it within 30 days, he's determined to be the father, and has no right to fight it after that.

See any number of cases where men are paying for kids they didn't even know existed, who DNA proves aren't theirs.

The guy doesn't even have to have sex with her. If your girlfriend's room-mate sneaks into the room at night, grabs the used condom, and impregnates herself, well, as the man, you pay for 18 years. No choice, or you go to jail.

> That whole "sleeping with me will destroy your entire future" vibe is a distinct turn off for me.

As it is for men. The reality is that women hold essentially all control over reproduction. Women can choose to get pregnant, and can force any man to pay for their choices, for the next 18 years. At the threat of jail, losing jobs, passport, drivers license, etc.

It is entirely rational to be wary of such side-effects.

The point here is that while your choices have cost you, men don't have some magical happy land of money, cigars, whisky, and bro-hugs. There are costs and benefits to the choices made by both sexes.

Women take on more work too, it is just not paid work. Mothers, whether they have a paid job or not, tend to be chronically short of sleep. Full time moms spend about 60 hours per week on household chores. Working moms spend about 40 hours per week.

I am aware that there are two sides to this story and men have their own concerns. But, the open hostility towards women you are displaying is something I felt a need to give a little pushback to. This is an overwhelmingly male forum. Such comments are often wildly upvoted and cheered on. It does not help bridge the gap. It just deepens the "war of the sexes."

But, I should probably disengage. Your pattern of comments here looks pretty toxic to me. Probably no good will come of engaging you further.