Why American men are getting less marriageable

  there are a lot of potential negatives [...]
  Why in the world is tying all of your assets
  [...] a thing?

This started making much more sense to me when I noticed that, among my friends, 95% of people who get married have a baby within 12 months.

Once you think of "get married and have a baby" as a single atomic decision, all the "downsides" of marriage are overshadowed by the _inherent_ downsides to having children.

Marriages are difficult to get out of? Well, children are almost impossible to dispose of. Marriages can be personally costly? Children will take up a lot of time and money, no matter how rich you are. Marriages can involve one partner shouldering more than half the burden? Well, a man can't breastfeed a newborn at 4am no matter how much he wants to. And so on.

  pitching the idea of marriage minus mixing
  finances, [...] resulted in hours of crying.

The discussion might go more productively if you approach it from a different angle: Start by deciding if you want children together; then discuss the things that follow from that.

Apologies, but this is flashing "rationalization" in big bright letters. "I would so much like to, but circumstances outside my control just make it impossible".

> for men, marriage lightens the burden

No, it absolutely does not. You are now the sole breadwinner for an entire family.

See A letter to … my wife, who won’t get a job while I work myself to death:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/02/a-lette...

> leaving more time and energy for career.

Huh? How backward is that? First, the vast majority of people has jobs, not careers. Second, you have a job in order to live, you don't live in order to have a job. A job is generally something you don't really want to do, otherwise people wouldn't give you money to do it.

> Why would I want to support a man both economically and practically?

This is the truth: you don't. And the vast majority of women don't. Not because you can't, but because you don't want to. Really, really, really don't want to. Which is why the rationalizations come so thick and heavy. Anyway, the reason I am pretty confident that it is not because they can't is that every study shows that the higher the income, the less women want to support a man, despite the fact that with higher income it obviously becomes factually easier.

And in fact, when it comes to to senior dating, it becomes even more extreme. Wealthy widows with no financial concerns and no housework to speak of absolutely and adamantly refuse to consider men who have less than they. And of course, they have a million rationalizations as to why that's just not possible.

http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Broke-Olde...

> continue to erase traditional gender roles.

You go right ahead! Start erasing!

> If most of the men out there were ready...

Ahh, but of course it is the men that have to change. And change first. Should have guessed. And of course you can't actually tell if a particular man is willing to take on more house-work and child-rearing before your "consider" him, so you have set up a nice impossible barrier. "There's just nothing I can do".

The article goes into one of the issues with masculinity, that of a Provider. However, there are two other aspects that are also critically important in the marriage markets: Protector and Procreator (the 3 P's, in total). These aspects of manhood are fairly universal among cultures and throughout time (many excerpts have been studied, but more serve to prove the rule). It is important to remember that for most males manhood is a continually earned trait, whereas in females womanhood is largely inherent. This means that most males can 'loose' manhood and return to boyhood in the eyes of society. Often this is lumped into the concept of 'honor' (though things really get messy now). The article mostly focuses on the provider role and the interface with money and the decline of 'blue collar' jobs. It would be instructive to also look into the roles of protector that men may not be fulfilling (due possibly to opiod use, obesity, etc) and the procreator role as well (obesity again, other environmental sterilizers, etc) to get a full view of the problems many young people are facing.

A good introduction on the 'universal' traits of manhood can be found here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/03/31/the-3-ps-of-manhoo...

Your theory does not take into account pretty normal human psychology and biology, both male and female. No, you can not communicate away resentment over what is rationally speaking unfair situation. It will not go away when you set expectations (and actually only one of partners is in position to set expectations), those can only prevent you speak which has tendency to just bottle things up.

Yes, it feels good to be provider especially if you provide out of job you love and are successful in. It makes you feel important, capable, like you matters and so on and so forth. That is why even rich people don't want to retire all that much. Of course, you don't consider that women might like that feeling too. Or at least dislikes feeling like dependent lazy incapable freeloader - which can be her own feeling independent of what man does (meaning not caused by his bad actions).

If you however has to work long hours in job you dislike with boss that treats you like disposable dirt, pretty normal situation in bad economy, while actually capable adult person who depend on you watch tv/call with friends/does some hobby, then certain amount of resentment is absolutely normal human psychology. And this does not even have much solution, because if she starts to work, she is endangering his masculinity.

Men happen to be human, which is not the same as idealized saints with zero consideration about themselves. But also practically speaking, even this discussion has men resentful over "loosing half of his money" in case of divorce in traditional family. And past stereotypes about women are full of what is basically resentment over the above.

From the female side, in the rosy view she is allowed to do as she please - except being truly useful or achiever. It is fine to watch tv or do some home embroidery, but the real full focus on success endangers his pride and his status of provider.

The feminism of 1960 did not happened because women were going against their biology. It happened because our biology and psychology has deep build in need to be useful, do something real, not just hang around coffee whole day. In other words, adult women need to be adults and cant be happy living as children. It was first time when large enough portion of population really did not needed that much home work, did not needed to sew their own cloth, did not needed to earn money (lower classes and peasants needed that always), cooking took much less time and so did shopping. And quite a lot of them were not happy and were quite vocal about that.

They were not possessed by aliens nor on drugs. It was their psychology and biology in action, making themselves heard.

>Your theory does not take into account pretty normal human psychology and biology, both male and female. No, you can not communicate away resentment over what is rationally speaking unfair situation.

I don't really see how it is an unfair situation. Cleaning, cooking, and home chores in general aren't exactly easy. I know personally I'd definitely like to have someone at least help do those things. I wouldn't mind going to work all day helping provide for someone who was doing those things and I knew when I got home that I didn't have to worry too much about those kinds of chores. There is a reason a division of labor started among humans to begin with.

> Of course, you don't consider that women might like that feeling too.

Yes, which is why having children and helping support her husband while also potentially doing volunteer work or part time work in something she is interested in are all very good things and part of living a fulfilled life.

> Men happen to be human, which is not the same as idealized saints with zero consideration about themselves. But also practically speaking, even this discussion has men resentful over "loosing half of his money" in case of divorce in traditional family.

Yes, there is fear and resentment about losing half the life you helped build simply because she may not feel like continuing anymore. There is a reason why there weren't "no fault" divorces in the past. You actually had to have some kind of reason for getting a divorce. Now you can essentially do so on a whim, though of course the process isn't an easy one.

> From the female side, in the rosy view she is allowed to do as she please - except being truly useful or achiever.

I think that's a ridiculous notion. Caring for children is quite possibly the most important and useful job humans have. It is the reason why we create civilizations and why men go and try to provide for his family. I suppose if you don't have children there's no real reason to not try to have a career of your own. If both partners careers are going well (and thereby useful to continue pursuing) then it would make sense to hire people to help with things around the house.

>The feminism of 1960 did not happened because women were going against their biology. It happened because our biology and psychology has deep build in need to be useful

I disagree, if you want to feel useful there are lots of things to do. Charitable organizations need volunteers, houses need people to make them feel like a home. How I see it is basically men made society too easy and some women felt the need to struggle still. These women convinced other women that men were somehow evil oppressors through building this society and it is women's turn to "dominate" society. When in reality men were simply doing things to make people's lives better, and women benefitted the most.

All that said, I am not against women having careers and not being homemakers. I don't care if people in their relationships decide to have the women be the primary breadwinner. I'd just argue that you are going against how it has been for millennia and will likely have a rough time at it. If you want children there will be a decent amount of time where children will need a lot of care. If women decide to focus on their careers instead of child rearing, they will feel like bad mothers and that isn't just a result of societal expectations. The vast majority of women have very natural nurturing instincts. I think that feminism is encouraging women to go against these biological instincts with no real benefit or gain of happiness for these women.