Divorce is an excuse for hedonism.
Can be, but for mature and established people it takes real will to restart from zero
The Divorce Colony (2015)
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Compare poor Asian Americans, who have very low divorce rates (similar to rich Asians), to poor whites, who have very high divorce rates. Poor Asian kids have double or triple the chance of becoming upper middle class as adults compared to poor whites. I'm not pro-divorce, but it's difficult to isolate just one variable here. There are numerous other cultural differences.
But attitudes about family are the thing Mormons and various Asian groups have in common, while diverging on most other respects.
“Various Asian groups” don’t have attitudes about family in common with even each other. Do you think Koreans and Filipinos (for example) think about family the same way?
Being the child of a first generation migrant seems to be good for social mobility. Being part of a exclusive clique with entrenched access to elite power might help too. Probably there are many factors.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
But attitudes about family are the thing Mormons and various Asian groups have in common, while diverging on most other respects.
“Various Asian groups” don’t have attitudes about family in common with even each other. Do you think Koreans and Filipinos (for example) think about family the same way? Being the child of a first generation migrant seems to be good for social mobility. Being part of a exclusive clique with entrenched access to elite power might help too. Probably there are many factors.
Divorce is illegal in the Philippines, and South Korea doesn’t have unilateral no-fault divorce. I’m Bangladeshi, and my in laws include Taiwanese and Filipino families. Pretty much the only thing we have in common culturally is norms around marriage and divorce, and familial obligation.
And Mormons don’t have “entrenched access to exclusive power.” They’re a persecuted minority that was driven to the arid desert and managed to turn it into a thriving place.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
An unamicable divorce can certainly be bad, but don't under-estimate how bad it is for a child to grow up in a marriage where both partners hate each other, but can't leave. Forcing marriage seems like a terrible way to achieve the same thing.
This is something Americans say, but we have empirical data that it’s not true. Compare poor Asian Americans, who have very low divorce rates (similar to rich Asians), to poor whites, who have very high divorce rates. Poor Asian kids have double or triple the chance of becoming upper middle class as adults compared to poor whites. Mormons, another group that emphasizes family stability, also have much higher economic…
> As Charlie Munger used to say: figure out what works and then do it.
I don't think that "upward social mobility" should be our only metric.
> But imagine you’re in a third world village, and at the edge of survival to begin with. Your mom and dad are “no longer in love.” Dad leaves, and the mom and kids starve to death immediately. That’s why most traditional societies have strong norms against divorce.
Most traditional societies don't have nuclear families, with 2.4 children and only two adults to raise them in the suburbs outside of a large city.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something Americans say, but we have empirical data that it’s not true. Compare poor Asian Americans, who have very low divorce rates (similar to rich Asians), to poor whites, who have very high divorce rates. Poor Asian kids have double or triple the chance of becoming upper middle class as adults compared to poor whites. Mormons, another group that emphasizes family stability, also have much higher economic…
> As Charlie Munger used to say: figure out what works and then do it. I don't think that "upward social mobility" should be our only metric. > But imagine you’re in a third world village, and at the edge of survival to begin with. Your mom and dad are “no longer in love.” Dad leaves, and the mom and kids starve to death immediately. That’s why most traditional societies have strong norms against divorce. Most tradit…
Children of divorce do worse on a wide range of wellbeing metrics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/ (“Nearly three decades of research evaluating the impact of family structure on the health and well-being of children demonstrates that children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic well-being. Pediatricians and society should promote the family structure that has the best chance of producing healthy children. The best scientific literature to date suggests that, with the exception of parents faced with unresolvable marital violence, children fare better when parents work at maintaining the marriage.”)
Life is full of trade offs. No need to delude yourself into thinking divorce, in the typical case, isn’t a trade off between your well being and your kid’s.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#46Divorce is an excuse for hedonism.
> Divorce is an excuse for hedonism. Sometimes? Absolutely. All the time? No. Depressingly often, it is to escape a person and relationship they desperately need to be free of. I know and am related to several people who are divorced. It was not hedonism that drove the proceedings, but exasperation and pain. EDIT after further consideration: And even if it is - so what? What business of that is yours?
> EDIT after further consideration: And even if it is - so what? What business of that is yours?
Family policy creates externalities in society. As Lee Kuan Yew said in Singapore: Political_positions_of_Lee_Kuan_Yew (“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters–who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use.”).
That’s coded as an “Asian” view, but until quite recently it was also the “American” view. The prosperous society in which we live, which was already in place by the mid-20th century, is the product of a mindset where it was taken for granted that state governments have plenary authority to regulate the “health, safety, welfare, and morals” of the people.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#47Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something Americans say, but we have empirical data that it’s not true. Compare poor Asian Americans, who have very low divorce rates (similar to rich Asians), to poor whites, who have very high divorce rates. Poor Asian kids have double or triple the chance of becoming upper middle class as adults compared to poor whites. Mormons, another group that emphasizes family stability, also have much higher economic…
> As Charlie Munger used to say: figure out what works and then do it. I don't think that "upward social mobility" should be our only metric. > But imagine you’re in a third world village, and at the edge of survival to begin with. Your mom and dad are “no longer in love.” Dad leaves, and the mom and kids starve to death immediately. That’s why most traditional societies have strong norms against divorce. Most tradit…
I'm not aware of any traditional society which does not have a nuclear family at its core. Hence why marriage is such a big deal in traditional societies. Living close to the extended family or having close relations with other neighbors doesn't mean the core isn't a nuclear family. The only places where nuclear families are not that important are in primitive tribes.