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The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

nytimes.com

81–90 of 98 posts

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#81
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is historically far and away most common social structure around the world, although obviously there is a vast amount of variety.

I'm doubtful of that. Homosexuality was very normalized in the ancient western world, but it looked very different then modern conceptions. How many people do you know recently that used marriage to secure an economic/political alliance? Pretty common among elites historically, almost unheard of today.

> I'm doubtful of that. Homosexuality was very normalized in the ancient western world, but it looked very different then modern conceptions.

Indeed... most of what modern day LGBTQ+ activists conceive of as homosexuality in the ancient world is just close male friendship.

Half the things people claim were instances of 'homosexuality' in ancient literature are just men fooling around. There are very few instances of men (or women) actually forming stable social structures with commitment in the absence of marriage to the opposite sex.

Ultimately, our confusion in this regard is due to the fact that so few men have actual friends. I sometimes go out 1-on-1 with my male friends to restaurants (often fancy ones). It's a guys night. We're all married with kids. And yet, oftentimes, people will think we're dating or something. It's weird. FFS, I went with my father to a nice restaurant, and they thought we were married. Something has gone very wrong with how we conceive of men being friends, which makes sense, because so few men have any (which probably explains the rise of homosexuality as well).

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#82
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually western countries will be taken over by Muslims and non white Christians and we will have normal social structures again. This is not a pejorative. As an immigrant, I think this will be great.

I hope very much that doesn’t happen. That’s not pejorative.

I understand that white people would find this scary, and I honest to goodness hope that the majority of white people in this country go back to having some semblance of a successful culture, but I don't see that happening in the white culture at large, so we will have to take what we get.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#83
post #66
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually western countries will be taken over by Muslims and non white Christians and we will have normal social structures again. This is not a pejorative. As an immigrant, I think this will be great.

Personally I am hopeing for nano-tech and neovictorians, but that is just me. We can make marriage attractive again, if we make divoce very, very hard or very, very easy. What we have now is in between and that helps nobody.

Divorce can't be easy because it often involves children, which are not easy. They are the reality check on life.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is historically far and away most common social structure around the world, although obviously there is a vast amount of variety.

Okay, but we still have monogamous long-term relationships between straight men and women as the norm, in terms of what is most common. Those haven't gone away. We've just become more accepting of people who don't fit the standard mold. So it sounds like anyone clamoring for a return to historical norms is actually clamoring for a return to bigotry: returning to treating gay people like garbage, for example, and deny…

> returning to treating gay people like garbage, for example, and denying their relationships legal rights.

A lot of what gay people claim is treating them 'like garbage' is just the natural limitation of a homosexual relationship.

For example, not being able to rent a womb is not being treated like garbage. No one has been allowed to do that for most of history, and most straight people can't do that. Not being allowed to rent wombs is just not being allowed to being what amounts to a slaveholder.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're speaking about the United States's the (relatively small) tax gains, they only become advantageous for a marriage between a stay at a non-earning stay at home spouse and a high-earning breadwinner. Any other paring creates a tax penalty.

How so? It’s a progressive bracket both ways? Wouldn’t you want your spouse to earn more income, regardless of 30% tax?

You're forgetting about FICA/Social Security which can be as high as 12.4% of AGI for every dollar earned below $150k or thereabouts. A stay-at-home spouse doesn't pay social security but nonetheless benefits from it (and in certain states, can do so tax free) upon retirement or death of the breadwinner. That's not a discount available to an individual taxpayer or a double-income household.

Filing as married allows for higher tax exemptions, in many cases around double the individual tax exemptions. For a high earning breadwinner this is as much as twice the "normal" buffer of untaxed income for investment before incurring a phase-out. If both spouses were high earning there wouldn't be much of a difference between the average exemption per spouse and the exemption provided to an individual taxpayer. Sometimes it's even less than if each spouse had filed seperately.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#86
post #35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should you be forced by the state to pay your ex that is no longer a part of your life? It's a form of indentured servitude, sometimes granted to someone that you hate or that hates you.

It makes sense if your ex stayed out of the workplace during your relationship to take care of children and the home.

Well then now that you’re divorced you need to go find a job. Sure it may not pay as well as it might have but you had the pleasure of staying at home and spending time with the kids. Why is the working person the only one punished in this situation?

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the assertion that family was ever non-transactional. Even the ways families begin, either through monogamous marriage or wedlock, require that one person select (or be arranged to accept) one partner with which to copulate. People engage in a transitional analysis anytime they ask themselves "is it worth it?". And that's more often then you seem to imply. Aside from that, I agree that Huxley was righ…

Absolutely, married partners have a transactional relationship. I wasn't clear enough that I was referring more to the parent child relationship, which, although you could say is also transactional ("I pay for college and you study hard in return") it is mostly unidirectional in terms of investment.

I doubt your claim that it is unidirectional or nontransactional. I would argue throughout the ages the parent-child relationship has been both bidirectional and transactional with plenty of hidden gotchas and a power imbalance to top it off.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#88

Getting into an institution with no easy way out discourages entry in the first place. Alimony has no place in a society where men and women are equal; child support is based on the paradigm of a traditional stay at home mom who never worked and who will never work, taking numbers from Kentucky(!?) in the late 50's, early 60's as a base and slowly increasing from there. Add to this the fact that to get out of the ins…

> child support is based on the paradigm of a traditional stay at home mom who never worked and who will never work, Not at all. It's based on the belief that children are the responsibility of both parents. If the children live with one parent it is therefore believed that the other parent should still contribute to the costs, which sounds fair and sensible to me. > Add to this the fact that to get out of the instit…

Child support should not exist at all, for similar reasons why someone who steals your car should not demand payments for maintenance, instead they should return what they stole and go to jail. Should be a political topic indeed.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#89
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> child support is based on the paradigm of a traditional stay at home mom who never worked and who will never work, Not at all. It's based on the belief that children are the responsibility of both parents. If the children live with one parent it is therefore believed that the other parent should still contribute to the costs, which sounds fair and sensible to me. > Add to this the fact that to get out of the instit…

Child support is not legally required to be used on the child.

Hence the increasing reluctance for men to get involved in the ridiculousness.

Re: The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

#90
post #9

Alimony is stupid. Child support without the man having a say in abortion is even more stupid.

Why is alimony stupid? I haven't really heard any good arguments against it.

Because women routinely abuse them. The way out of marriage for them should only be to leave everything behind, children including, and to get a job.
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