This is a misleading article in the following sense: the implication is "here are these seven surprising factors that are correlated with successful marriages". Except, in recent decades US divorce rates have bifurcated into two groups — well educated, affluent people who get married later and have lower divorce rates, and less well-off people who have a higher divorce rate. Given this one fact, most of the factors in the article are completely unsurprising. For example, it would be surprising if going on a honeymoon was not correlated positively with a successful marriage given that it is positively correlated with income.
What makes for a stable marriage?
121–130 of 142 posts
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I agree that commitment has value. But the standard view promulgated my many religions (and expressed in some of the comments here) that marriage should be almost non-negotiably for life takes this WAY too far. I don't know where the balance is, but I am positive that it is nowhere near where tradition places it.
> But the standard view promulgated my many religions (and expressed in some of the comments here) that marriage should be almost non-negotiably for life takes this WAY too far. It depends on what you think is the purpose of marriage. The traditional view you're questioning is that marriage is a very serious contract that is never to be broken (usually with a few exceptions, like infidelity or abuse). I suspect this…
On the "cultural momentum" of marriage, it varies a lot from one region to the other. For example in Canada, between Ontario and Quebec (in Canada), these 2009 stats are pretty interesting:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/84f0210x/2009000/t006-eng.htm
In short, in Quebec today, less than half of kids born are from non-married parents. Marriage is seen by many as irrelevant, bureaucratic, peer-pressure consumerist obligation. According to QC civil law, once a couple has a kid, they have the same legal obligations to the kid as a married couple (i.e. contributing to supporting the kid in a way proportional to their revenue/salary). As the tacky government slogans like to remind us.. "in a couple one day, parents always" i.e. marriage has little relevance.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#123This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower d…
Notice that the article isn't even claiming anything about "happy" marriages. The article is solely about divorce rates. It's not "missing the point," you're just looking for a point that the author of this article never intended to make.
The article's title is "What makes for a stable marriage?". I think most reasonable people would agree that lack of divorce does not make "a stable marriage", so yes, the article is missing the point as declared by its title. Can I construct definitions for all these things that make the article self-consistent? Sure. But that's not very useful in the real world, which is what I mean by "missing the point".
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the standard view promulgated my many religions (and expressed in some of the comments here) that marriage should be almost non-negotiably for life takes this WAY too far. It depends on what you think is the purpose of marriage. The traditional view you're questioning is that marriage is a very serious contract that is never to be broken (usually with a few exceptions, like infidelity or abuse). I suspect this…
On the "cultural momentum" of marriage, it varies a lot from one region to the other. For example in Canada, between Ontario and Quebec (in Canada), these 2009 stats are pretty interesting: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/84f0210x/2009000/t006-eng.htm In short, in Quebec today, less than half of kids born are from non-married parents. Marriage is seen by many as irrelevant, bureaucratic, peer-pressure consumerist obliga…
I think you mean that in Quebec more than half of kids born are from non-married parents.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notice that the article isn't even claiming anything about "happy" marriages. The article is solely about divorce rates. It's not "missing the point," you're just looking for a point that the author of this article never intended to make.
The article's title is "What makes for a stable marriage?". I think most reasonable people would agree that lack of divorce does not make "a stable marriage", so yes, the article is missing the point as declared by its title. Can I construct definitions for all these things that make the article self-consistent? Sure. But that's not very useful in the real world, which is what I mean by "missing the point".
I guess I'm either an unreasonable person, or in the minority of reasonable people. To me, "stable" does not imply happy; it merely means unlikely to change or collapse. A "stable building," for example, would be one that is structurally sound, not one that houses wholesome activities or makes people happy.
Also, just look at every single chart and data point mentioned in the article. All are about one dependent variable: divorce rate. Even if there is room for reasonable disagreement about the implications of the word "stable," reading the article makes it abundantly clear which definition was intended.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#126That there are no rogue couples.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#127This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower d…
I think a lot of these metrics are really proxies for social support. Belonging to a church, having 200+ people attend your cheap wedding -- these are situations in which you know a lot of people, who might be helpful to you when the marriage gets tough. You can talk to your grandma about the three years in which she really wanted to divorce grandpa, but they stuck it out and things got much better when x happened. You can call your cousin and ask him if he can take the kids for the evening because your wife is sick and you can't deal with everyone and everything at once. You can borrow a car from your fellow choir member, or you can vent about your relationship stress or how you hate your kids that week.
Social supports smooth out money problems, health problems, and relationship problems. Money+health problems are the number one cause of divorce in America (that is, money discussions are the number one marriage stressor in the US, and health problems are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US). If your parents/church/friends/cousins can help out with a loan/childcare/outright monetary gifts when certain economic or health sh&t goes down, your marriage is more likely to survive. That's not even counting emotional support and feelings-conversations.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#128Despite good intentions, I think the article would be better off with a title like spurious correlations.
Please see http://tylervigen.com/ for more intriguing, though meaningless correlations.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#129Slightly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious why forward-thinking secular people in the west still want to get married. Historically, and still in many parts of the world, its arguably an incredibly sexist tradition that has its roots in religious and patriarchal control. In many ways it has been completely re-defined, at least in the west, and doesn't have any/many of those connotations any more - but it begs the q…
Roughly speaking, it looks to me like younger people do not want to get married, and are in fact choosing partnerships that are expected to be only semi permanent instead. The idea of traditional, permanent marriage is taking on stuffy and backward-thinking connotations. Some will still get married, even forward thinking secular people. There's a big difference between trying to build a family with someone who wants…
It is stuffy, but I wouldn't call it backward-thinking, unless mindless hedonism is what passes for forward-thinking these days. Raising children without marriage would be akin to starting a business without incorporation or contracts. Strong bonds, group loyalty, and long-term planning/character are what let man build something larger than himself.
Re: What makes for a stable marriage?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article's title is "What makes for a stable marriage?". I think most reasonable people would agree that lack of divorce does not make "a stable marriage", so yes, the article is missing the point as declared by its title. Can I construct definitions for all these things that make the article self-consistent? Sure. But that's not very useful in the real world, which is what I mean by "missing the point".
I guess I'm either an unreasonable person, or in the minority of reasonable people. To me, "stable" does not imply happy; it merely means unlikely to change or collapse. A "stable building," for example, would be one that is structurally sound, not one that houses wholesome activities or makes people happy. Also, just look at every single chart and data point mentioned in the article. All are about one dependent vari…
I'm assuming that most people are more interested in happy marriages than stable ones (at least before they've made the commitment). Now the marriage traditionalists might not. (This seems to be supported by at least one or two of the people posting here. But at the same time, one of them still mentions "happily-ever-after".) Even going back to the Declaration of Independence we see "pursuit of happiness" mentioned prominently in even those much more conservative times. Going significantly farther back than that I can start to see how "stable" might be significant, but in this day and age "happy" seems like a safe bet.
On the other side we have the word "divorce", which everyone agrees means "definitely unhappy". However, "not divorced" is definitely not a sufficient condition for "happy". The word "stable" is in the middle and can go either way. In one sense I agree it has a strong similarity to "not divorced". But in another sense, I think a lot of people read "stable marriage" as being very similar to "happy marriage". So to the extent that stable == happy, it's missing the point of the actual stats. And to the extent that stable != happy and a good proxy for not divorced, it's missing the point of what people really want out of life (and marriage).
This brings us to your response to my other comment, and there I think you're right on the money. The purpose of marriage is the main issue here. In my mind, the traditional view is synonymous with "stable" and not getting divorced. And the fact that the OP is talking about "stable" and "divorce" in the way it is suggests that the traditional view of marriage is a strong influence (although maybe my religious background is biasing me here). But none of this is very relevant if "happy" is what people are really after.