Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by corethree » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 8:11 AM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #296

corethree wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes hyper individuality is part of it. The other part of it is gender equality. For most of human civilization genders were not equal so both sexes evolved traits that are also unequal. The most glaring trait responsible for lack of marriage is female hypergamy. Previously women being of generally unequal/lower status then men and overall a smaller pool of candidates (no online dating) would be forced to be more egal…

There are a metric shit ton of assumptions in here that I’m not sure are true. The truth of the matter is that women tend to work together and men… not so much. Once you see the whole picture, I can see how you can see the world through such a perverse lens. Sadly, I’m about to hop off the train, but if someone replies that they are interested, I’ll provide a writup that will surprise you.

None of what I said is assumed. It's well defined theories of human behavior from both evolutionary psychology and anthropology.

I am simply regurgitating academic facts. This is markedly different from "assumptions."

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

#302

Post by meheleventyone » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 8:13 AM UTC

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…

Even the problem is misidentified. Marriage is only a proxy for the things that are important. That’s important to identifying a solution as you get boneheaded solutions like ‘give men more power over women so they can’t leave marriages’. Rather than the entirely sensible ones you mention.

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

#303

Post by janalsncm » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 8:36 AM UTC

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.

There’s also the financial benefits of having two adults sharing responsibility under one roof. Switching every weekend doesn’t scale.

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

#304

Post by skissane » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 9:17 AM UTC

mvncleaninst wrote: post #207

These types of articles are doing the opposite of what they're trying to do. How exactly is framing marriage in purely economic terms supposed to encourage marriage? How is reducing people down to an income stream, a college diploma, genitalia, etc going to encourage marriage? Take this for example: > not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic sec…

> It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other...

> The tone of this article: it reads like it was written by a sociopath

The mediaeval Catholic philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas argued [0] that the primary purpose of marriage is for the good of children, by giving them certainty about their own paternity. A long way from modern ideas about “marriage for love” or “compatibility”-but I don’t think it it is sociopathic

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5041.htm#article1 - that is the Supplement to the Summa so not written by Aquinas himself, rather written by his students after his death - although it is believed to be based on their notes and recollections of his lectures

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

#305

Post by zarzavat » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

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 not marriage that’s the issue but the punitive laws surrounding marriage in the US that actually incentivize divorce, combined with a culture that has normalized divorce. The laws and culture just don’t match up. The US has a social issue with some women using divorce for personal enrichment and neither US culture nor law penalizes this behavior.

In many countries people who get divorced unnecessary are subject to social stigmatization. This stigma seems to be a necessary ingredient of a successful marriage culture, and the loss of it is why marriage in the US has stopped working.

Marriage in the US is essentially Russian roulette with your finances, although the odds of losing are a lot worse.

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

#306

Post by cthalupa » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 9:34 AM UTC

I'm not really seeing any argument in the article that this is causation vs. correlation. I know there have been studies done on this, but even anecdotally, from the people I am aware of via Facebook, friends of friends, etc., the ones that are married or even just stable in their careers and life in general are all childless minus a few, whereas the ones that have had more turbulent lives have much higher rates of having children.

My reading of the situation is that if you are born into a disadvantaged household, you are going to struggle to get ahead because of how the system works. I don't think marriage is going to suddenly solve that or make a significant impact - the people I know where the father isn't in the picture, their situation wouldn't be any better if he was, and for some, the situation would be worse.

I suppose the book might do more to prove out a causal link but the reasoning in the article doesn't inspire enough confidence for me to chance investing the time reading it.

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

#307

Post by andyjohnson0 » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 9:40 AM UTC

laurencerowe wrote: post #240

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I suspect this is a result of the tax system in the US which is structured in a way that strongly incentivises parents into marriage. Europe generally taxes incomes individually and offers parental leave to help when one of the parents is out of the workforce with a baby. In the US there's just the pooling of tax allowances. For dual income households in very high cost of living areas though you need to balance the b…

So in your view they're going from cohabiting to marriage to separated/divorced, rather than cohabiting to separated? In that case it seems more likely to me (non-US person) that cultural factors are pushing people towards marriage, rather than purely financial considerations.

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

#308

Post by andyjohnson0 » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 9:41 AM UTC

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #184

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, I'm also curious. Another commenter in this thread blames individualism and inability to cope with minor incompatibilities but I wonder if it's really true.

Those seem too universal to affect the US more than Europe.

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

#309

Post by circlefavshape » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 10:05 AM UTC

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.

Once you get beyond a certain age if you mention your girlfriend in conversation people will assume she's some young thing you left your wife for. Marriage means you avoid this awkward situation

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

#310

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 10:19 AM UTC

ergl wrote: post #297

As someone from Europe, I can't understand the inability of mainstream US culture and media to disentangle marriage from long term stable relationships. Take this paragraph from the article: > More women are deciding to have children and also remain single. Almost half of all babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019, a dramatic increase since 1960, when only 5% of births were to unmarried mothers.…

"In my opinion looking into what's driving that difference between couples in the US and Europe would be worth a discussion on its own."

The problem is especially acute in the underclass, and American underclass differs a lot from European underclass.

For example, a lot of the Western European poor are Muslims (in countries that keep the relevant statistics, Muslim immigrants and their descendants tend to score below average on income and educational outcomes), who are nevertheless socially very conservative and don't tend to have kids out of wedlock. Having kids out of wedlock is much more typical among secular Europeans, including highly educated ones.

In the US, the trend leaders when it comes to having kids out of wedlock are the poorest parts of the population, mostly blacks, where "unmarried" and "unpartnered" tend to go hand-in-hand.