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Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

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Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#171

Post by saiya-jin »

ghusto wrote: post #112
denton-scratch wrote: post #107

Marriage is a legal construct; it can provide a level of security (and fairness) that isn't otherwise accessible. But as the laws change, the benefits change too. I think men marry in the hope of binding their partner; fat chance. Marriage gives the partner a claim on a big chunk of the man's assets, so it incentivizes women to divorce their husbands. The great majority of divorces are initiated by the wife. I'm not…

It's mad, no? When I ask people point blank why they're getting married, they just stare at me. Obviously part of that is because I'm being autistically rude in asking such a questions, but I haven't heard any compelling answers either.

Well if you ask such an autistic question (given that I am responding to a adult person and not some small kid who doesn't have a clue about actual life), don't expect much, it clearly signalizes that you are either taking a piss or are so immature there is no point even discussing it. Its a bit like asking why do you like color blue, mature adults don't ask that and for kids you can say anything or nothing, same result.

But I'll bite - if you decide to settle down with a partner you match with very well on tons of actually important stuff, including how your future together could look like while lacking any significant (yet known) drawbacks, and you want to raise kid(s) together, then the question is why not. Without the kids part, less reasons but why not.

The inexperienced people (in my case immature kids/teens, I've answered similar but better formed question couple of times already) think its just a paper signed, and contractual obligations stemming from it. Far from it, at least for us. It changed our relationship, for the better, made it stronger and not only due to longer cancellation procedure. Do I have some peer-reviewed study for that? Of course not, just my personal 2 cents.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#172

Post by pixl97 »

xattt wrote: post #46
Retric wrote: post #2

Is it that marriage itself is beneficial or that people capable of maintaining a relationship make better parents? Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example. So I think we need to look at widows or something to control for those kinds of issues.

Why not both? All people, kids and adults, have a finite level of emotional and mental energy that they have to “dispense” in everyday life. If you are a couple that’s dealing with marital strife, this is emotional overhead that gets diverted to dealing with that instead of your kids. Same goes for kids. A child that’s struggling to comprehend why parents decided to leave each other will be using that emotional energ…

>This is not taking into account the divorce process is costly,

When parties choose not to fight, it's not near as costly. This said there is a new set of costs incurred in creating and managing two households in most cases.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#173

Post by em-bee »

denton-scratch wrote: post #142
em-bee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what happened in those 15 years? i don't think that your partner married you with the goal of taking your assets. if that was the case i doubt the marriages would have lasted 15 years.

No, you're quite right; I wasn't taken for a sucker. I think they ended because of the legal implications of marriage; I think the relationships would have survived, if there hadn't been contracts. In fact, they've both survived; I'm now friends with both exes. But the contracts caused us all a lot of damage. [Edit] I'm all for people having the same rights regardless of who their partner is. I'm fine with "equal mar…

the contracts caused us all a lot of damage

could you elaborate on that, if it is possible to do so without revealing personal details? maybe in contrast what you see as a difference in the relationships of religious minded people?

the only thing i can think of is open relationships without a commitment to each other. but even there i don't think that the contract itself would be the problem but different expectations of each partner. the problem of the contract is that it wouldn't be aligned with those expectations.

marriage is for people who want to commit to each other. divorce happens when that commitment is no longer a priority.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#174

Post by briHass »

kibwen wrote: post #6

> Kearney says she's not advocating that children live in a household filled with marital tension or where parents are unhappy or mistreating each other. Then what is the proposed solution? Pointing out the problem is the easy part. But if you want more people to be married, and if they're currently choosing not to get married, then you need to either force them to get married against their will (institutionalized sh…

The other option, which was the one traditionally used, is strong social pressure favoring marriage and stigmas against divorce. We can recognize that it's an unfortunate reality that will occur, while still not normalizing or glorifying it.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#175

Post by andyjohnson0 »

chomp wrote: post #20
Retric wrote: post #2

Is it that marriage itself is beneficial or that people capable of maintaining a relationship make better parents? Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example. So I think we need to look at widows or something to control for those kinds of issues.

From the article: > In the U.S., she says, unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe. Children in many of these households are more likely to experience two or three parental partnerships by age 15. Its a stability thing.

> In the U.S., she says, unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe.

Are there any theories about why this might be? The article doesn't seem to follow this up.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#176

Post by jncfhnb »

theduder99 wrote: post #152
jqpabc123 wrote: post #53

Proof that we need more "family values"; more religious conservatism? This is what a lot of people seem to believe --- people who've never bothered to look at the actual evidence --- or who refuse to accept it once they see. A detailed county by county survey of the entire country shows that the most religious and conservative parts of the country have higher divorces rates by far. Getting married in the Bible Belt a…

that study's numbers make no sense. Looks like a hit job on southern conservatives. Try this: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/divorce/divorce-statist...

Your link states that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate out of any religion.

Further, southern states do generally experience more divorce than areas like New England and CA.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#177

Post by uoaei »

unnamed76ri wrote: post #30
bloopernova wrote: post #5

America is moving the other way because all the wealth and power has been sucked up by the 0.1% and a large majority are too tired, stressed, and poor. Everything stems from this. Too much wealth tied up in the health insurance scam to switch to single payer, so people stay bound to their employment, and they can't afford time off or visits to the doctor because nothing is completely covered anymore. Too much wealth…

Everything does not stem from wealth inequality. Almost-everything wrong in US culture stems from selfishness. Which would include things you talked about. But it also includes people making selfish choices that bring about the end of their marriages (affairs, career, addictions).

Having travelled a fair bit, I can tell you that economic insecurity breeds a culture of selfishness, not the other way around. Where people are not economically precarious, there's almost no culture of trying to get one up on those around you. It's when you're scared of falling behind that you struggle so hard to keep yourself ahead.

Wealth inequality is strongly correlated but ultimately not the root cause -- it is rather precarity that causes many of our social ills.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#178

Post by pixl97 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #10
Retric wrote: post #2

Is it that marriage itself is beneficial or that people capable of maintaining a relationship make better parents? Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example. So I think we need to look at widows or something to control for those kinds of issues.

Possibly some of the poor outcomes are due to married people being more likely to be able to sustain a stable relationship. There are a lot of factors confounded with marriage, and it doesn’t seem like the author controlled for them (this is an article about a book and not a peer reviewed study). She explicitly mentioned that married couples are more likely to have a better household income and that single moms are l…

I wonder how much more we can add to this with

Divorce being more common now, but adding

Family sizes decreasing over time.

Families moving farther away and not able to support each other as readily.

Fewer friends with kids reducing the number of potential helpers with ones kids in time crunched/emergency situations.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#179

Post by toomuchtodo »

marcosdumay wrote: post #165
toomuchtodo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree with this, but it is an inconvenient truth because everyone wants to search out good policy in the domain space to improve outcomes. That is unfortunately extremely challenging, as you can't fix broken parents. You end up having to design systems to clean up the mess after kids turn into adults, because there are limited mechanisms to encourage better behavior from suboptimal parents. (did a sustaine…

> but it is an inconvenient truth because everyone wants to search out good policy in the domain space to improve outcomes Just because something defines 90% of the result, it doesn't mean you must just give-up and not work on that remaining 10%. The same applies to the luck vs. hard work problem people keep missing the point about.

Never said to give up, but be realistic about the effort to outcome improvement ratio. Universal school lunches are an easy win [1], for example. With time and resources having limits, target what provides the most value. Take care of kids until they reach escape velocity.

[1] https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/states-that-have-passed-univer...

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#180

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

soeptical wrote: post #153
Balgair wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Widows/ers would also be a good control.

Widows/ers may have some associated confounding factors

I'm sorry to be off-topic but widows/ers just hurts my eyes. Why not use a more elegant alternative, widow(er)s? Even the uglier widow(s|ers) would be better.
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