A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married • Hacker News Board

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#181

Post by wonderwonder » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

doctorwho42 wrote: post #79

wonderwonder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does OP's idea of success have any affect on you living out your idea of success? If you want to stay in your town with your family and friends have at it. If OP wants to make $10 million, then more power to him. He will probably provide jobs to support a dozen people living out your version of success. For everyone to work, there have to be people that want to build and achieve great financial wealth because tho…

Because our society is interdependent. In the case of housing, there has been a growing trend over the past decades of owning more than one home. In that case, to do that you undoubtedly affect people who just want to have a family and comfortable life socializing in their community because you force the price of houses to go up and house stock to become limited, which also forces people to rent ... And to make your…

Of course, supply and demand. There is no viable alternative though. If there are 10 houses and 15 people want them, whoever is willing to pay the most gets them. Otherwise how would we determine who gets them? Government? You would suddenly find that the decision makers family all have homes followed by people willing to pay bribes followed by everyone else.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#182

Post by Freedom2 » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

drumhead wrote: post #163

hospitalJail wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have gotten close with some female engineers, and until recently they never mentioned their dating preferences. They were explaining how a night went down "I didn't want to approach them, he wasn't that tall, but she insisted so we did anyway. He was kind of cute until he took off his hat. His friend was country and I love country." They explain the night, how they went to different tables and had different drinks.…

The "3 Sixes", 6-pack, 6 feet tall and 6 figure salary, any two of those three tend to give you a very good chance of success.

What's a fun fact is that most HN commenters fit all three of those criteria!

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#183

Post by jstarfish » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

hospitalJail wrote: post #115

wonderwonder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not the initiator I am talking about, its the person getting hit on. Imagine having to deal with that all the time. I liken it to telemarketers. I get 4 a day sometimes, eventually I just tell them to F off in my moment of weakness because I am trying to just have focus time. Eventually the person being hit on every day will hit a breaking point and be rude, then she is labeled a bitch by that person and every ti…

This is almost entirely in your head. Just to be clear, I'm not saying to interrupt someone mid-run or talk to someone focused with ear-buds in. If someone is leaving the gym, you can say 'hey got a sec?', If they answer 'no', that is their answer. (Also, people who put makeup and tight pants on for the gym, are looking to be hit on. The people trying to be ignored, will put 0 effort into their appearance and will ha…

> Even if you miss these signs, the worst thing that is going to happen is that you are turned down and they wasted 5 minutes.

I'm not at all in the same camp as the other commenter (it's clear where their allegiances lie) but you really are in the wrong here.

You have no idea how frequently these seeming-innocuous conversations turn verbally or physically violent when the initiator feels spurned.

This is provable! Try it sometime-- play catfish on a dating app and see for yourself.

> "Hey, can I have a second of your time?"

> "No, sorry, I'm in a hurry." [Or just don't respond.]

> "Fucking worthless bitch..."

There's no need for it. That's not interrupting someone's precious time. If in-person, the woman is going to see this guy again in some context, knowing she pissed him off. She sees him as a threat, and he sees her as a source of humiliation. This creates a hostile situation for both.

I've directly investigated enough histrionic cases to believe "you were asking for it" is absolutely a thing for cluster-B types (sometimes even literally, in fucking print), but am telling you the makeup, clothing and demeanor are not deterrents. Women could look like aloof genderless homeless blobs and still get harassed. It's just a hostile world out there.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#184

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:19 PM UTC

_2z1p wrote: post #95

I think a lot of men are starting to do the cost benefit analysis of marriage. If everything goes well you can buy a lovely house in the suburbs, raise 2.5 kids, grow old together with your wife and live happily ever after. If it goes wrong she takes your kids and half your assets immediately, followed by several years of child support and possibly alimony.

I don't actually totally disagree with this in part, but the emphasis is ridiculous. After all this time, despite a few decades of feminism, on the whole it's still women and children that have the most to lose out of a bad marriage, not men.

Shitty marriage settlements for men exist, but it is is in large part a re-balancing of an inequity that existed for time immemorial before that: a woman marries some guy, gets pregnant, and she and her kids become dependant on him and some combination of the following happens: a) leaves her, with kid, destitute b) abuses her c) abuses kid d) makes her miserable. It happened for probably millennia. It still happens. Men always held the power in marriage relationships by violence and/or by cultural convention and or by economic power.

I think the status quo sucks but you can see how family law got to where it is. I think it's going to take a couple generations for this to get sorted out.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#185

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #178

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense, the boom didn't end because of the end of the gold standard, it was in decline long before that. Sounds like cryptobros politics.

The real question here is: what causes what? The US was living beyond its means throughout the entire time, subsidized by the other members of that system. The end of the Bretton Woods system affirmed that. How it ended? by Nixon preventing a bank run on the system because he didn't have the equivalent gold for all the currency he issued. The US was clever enough to use its economic advantage to invest in its militar…

It's ok, I'm already reading your comments out loud in a mock Lyndon LaRouche voice, and it's hilarious.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#186

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #62

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #16

Mostly just economics, is my wager. In a classic agrarian economy, having a spouse and making children works out -- more children = more hands = more work done = more food or more product to market. In a modern "pure" capitalist industrial/service economy, the economic model doesn't pay for the cost of the reproduction of the labour it depends on. So not a surprise when people do the same cost-benefit analysis for th…

> I personally knew several women in their late 30s and 40s who ended up leaving partners or leaving the dating scene because the men they were finding were not interested in or capable of being fathers. On an aggregate scale this adds up to a phenomenon. Hmm. I wonder if this flows from divorce in the previous generation. If you didn't have a father (or at least not one who was present), you may not have seen a mode…

Consider that fatherhood (and motherhood) in an agrarian focused society is a much more well-defined and constructive role than that in an industrial capitalist wage labour society.

In a farming society fathers and mothers have a lot of meaningful expertise to pass down to their children. And they work closely with their children for decades. Family time is intense and probably not exactly utopian, but intimate and constructive.

As a father to a kid in the urbanized 20th and 21st century, way less well defined and the role super confusing. My kid is unlikely to do what I'm doing. I'm out of the house at work almost all day, and they're at school. My spouse and I would live relatively separate lives, convening only after work hours. What am I supposed to be teaching my son? Most values will come from society at large not from home. How do I relate to my spouse?

It's not surprising there's a general disintegration of the family. Conservatives want to blame it on liberal values and lack of religion, but this is complete nonsense. The economic model changed, and the point of both marriage and the family changed as well. Forcing religion on your kids or getting all freaked out about family values and abortion won't fix it. The economic foundation of the whole thing is gone.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#187

Post by hoppyhoppy2 » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

mushbino wrote: post #121

dougmwne wrote: post #6

The trend of less education means less marriage is interesting. I think that tells me the root cause is that 25% of 40 year olds are not financially attractive mates. I think this speaks to a broader trend of men not being able to meet the traditional expectations of the breadwinner in an increasingly precarious economy.

the opposite is true. The higher the education, the less likely to reproduce.

but how strongly is reproduction correlated with marriage?

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#188

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #185

29athrowaway wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question here is: what causes what? The US was living beyond its means throughout the entire time, subsidized by the other members of that system. The end of the Bretton Woods system affirmed that. How it ended? by Nixon preventing a bank run on the system because he didn't have the equivalent gold for all the currency he issued. The US was clever enough to use its economic advantage to invest in its militar…

It's ok, I'm already reading your comments out loud in a mock Lyndon LaRouche voice, and it's hilarious.

Just so that you know, I did read that out loud in chicken voice.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#189

Post by pseudalopex » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #173

giraffe_lady wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most college students may be poor (is that true though?) but most poor people aren't college students. That this is the main way we think of poverty on this site is a reflection of who is here and our experiences. But it's not representative of how poverty is experienced broadly in the US.

If you don’t have any support from your parents and are working a minimum wage job then I’m pretty sure you are poor.

Do most college students have no support from parents and work minimum wage jobs?

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#190

Post by wonderwonder » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 10:39 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #132

_2z1p wrote: post #95

I think a lot of men are starting to do the cost benefit analysis of marriage. If everything goes well you can buy a lovely house in the suburbs, raise 2.5 kids, grow old together with your wife and live happily ever after. If it goes wrong she takes your kids and half your assets immediately, followed by several years of child support and possibly alimony.

I mean, you don't marry someone that is going to do that, right? It's not like you have a coin flip chance at a happy life or an unhappy divorce. You can influence the odds here. In fact, you can really stack the deck in your favor, so to speak. Sure, people lie and people change, but it's not like you have to get married after a certain amount of time. You can wait to see what the person is like at their worst and t…

Considering, ~50% of marriages end in divorce, its pretty much coin flip odds. With that said, I have always viewed marriage as a positive and consider myself happily married. Its worth the roll of the dice. You are right though, its important to invest the time to ensure you have the right partner. I was with my future wife for 6 years, owned a home together and shared a bank account before we got engaged. There were no surprises left by the time we got married.