6 ms·

The Married Will Soon Be the Minority

45 points by jor-el 5y ago

haspoken 5y ago
https://archive.md/vTWHM https://archive.md/vTWHM
akomtu 5y ago
"People will no longer get married and will live with each other just for sexual pleasure." - taken from the Wikipedia page about kali yuga. There are many more entertaining observations there: Lust will be viewed as socially acceptable and sexual intercourse will be seen as the central requirement of life. People will become addicted to intoxicating drinks and drugs. Rulers will become unreasonable: they will levy taxes unfairly. Rulers will no longer see it as their duty to promote spirituality, or to protect their subjects: they will become a danger to the world. Avarice and wrath will be common. Humans will openly display animosity towards each other. People will have thoughts of murder with no justification and will see nothing wrong in that. Gurus will no longer be respected and their students will attempt to injure them. Weather and environment will degrade with time and frequent and unpredictable rainfalls will happen. Earthquakes will be common. The powerful people will dominate the poor people. All the human beings will declare themselves as gods or boon given by gods and make it as a business instead of teachings. Everything except the last one is the norm already. I'm curious what a society of self-proclaimed gods looks like.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  This just sounds like standard "last days" apocalyptic religious claptrap. Likelihood of dying by violence is lower in developed countries now than the historical norm. Forms of bigotry on average seem to be way down, acceptance of those different from you is up. People's morals have mostly gotten better, not worse. There are still problems -- climate change is the big one that's potentially actually apocalyptic -- but for the most part humanity is prospering.
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  > All the human beings will declare themselves as gods or boon given by gods and make it as a business instead of teachings. I mean that is a perfect description of LinkedIn and Instagram to some extent.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    You could apply something generic like that to all kinds of things. It's like a horoscope. Like, think about what it's saying: "people will be full of themselves". Do you really think this is the first time in history people have thought that about others?
    - cscurmudgeon 5y ago
      > You could apply something generic like that to all kinds of things. It's like a horoscope. You can apply that to your statement too.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    It's not a perfect example of that at all. I use Instagram, I don't think I'm a god, or that god has anything to do with it.
  - adammunich 5y ago
    omg
- bamboozled 5y ago
  People in Ancient Rome (for example) were into all those types of things way more than the society I live in now. Don't really see the connection. Are Earthquakes truly more common now?
  - weikju 5y ago
    I had a look at the Wikipedia page and it turns out that this age of sin started around 3000 BC and will last another 426,000 years give or take a few centuries . So, conveniently it encompasses all known history and imaginable future of our civilization
    - bamboozled 5y ago
      Got me there...
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  Also from the Kali Yuga Wikipedia page: > Lasting for 432,000 years (1,200 divine years), Kali Yuga began 5,122 years ago and has 426,878 years left as of 2021 CE.
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
  Ok, monkey.
dijit 5y ago
My ex wanted to get married and I was keen on the idea. But it is a scary endeavour with no practical upside, high financial cost and absurd legal risk. Why would I get married? Love? You can love without marriage. If marriage is to prove you love someone then I don’t think I want to bother loving anyone.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  >no practical upside There's tax incentives and you become each other's medical proxy, among other things. >high financial cost The paperwork is cheap. Weddings are as expensive as you make them. >absurd legal risk That's true, divorces are expensive.
  - dijit 5y ago
    > There's tax incentives That’s not universal, it’s not the case in Sweden for instance as far as I can make out. But, the rest of what you said is true. Though it’s unlikely that both partners who want to get married would want to forego a wedding ceremony.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    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.
    - throwoutway 5y ago
      How so? It’s a progressive bracket both ways? Wouldn’t you want your spouse to earn more income, regardless of 30% tax?
      - Dracophoenix 5y ago
        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.
bawolff 5y ago
My understanding is that the agricultural revolution played a major role in the traditional version monogamous marriage becoming "standard". Since the industrial revolution the role of marriage and the structure of marriage has been slowly shifting. Most notably to be more equal,but also to be less mandatory Maybe marriage just makes sense in an agricultural society, and doesn't make sense in an industrialized or knowledge-based society
stunt 5y ago
I understand why this is happening, but some of it is going to be unfair for women today. Raising a child still has more toll on mothers. They lose job and growth opportunity which has a long lasting impact on their future. They are still under paid comparing to men. We want to get rid of these traditional contracts, but we are not prepared to make all the necessary changes in the society.
HKH2 5y ago
As expected, the article says nothing of single-parent households. It mentions the black people that don't get married being disadvantaged but fails to mention that a majority of black children are raised in single-parent households. Do you think that not getting rewarded for being unmarried is more of a problem than children being raised in a single-parent household?
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  I certainly agree that parents being married is a bonus for the child. Apart from any strictly emotional considerations, married parents form a more stable platform for care and support during childhood. The fact that splitting up is so inconvenient probably keeps parents together through bigger disagreements than unmarried parents. Now that I say it though, divorces are such major trauma that perhaps the tail risk counterbalances that benefit. I guess still not, but it's less clear.
rich_sasha 5y ago
One thing that's massively changed, at least in my corner of the world (various bits of Europe) is that grandparents used to be much more involved in raising children. Nowadays, they are more commonly uninterested, living far away, or lack the past societal norm pressure. EDIT: Or are older, as they themselves had children later than past generations, and therefore less able to help. Without that unpaid, keen, trustworthy workforce, raising children is much, much harder. You either have to rely on paid (very expensive), and variably-trustworthy professional childcare, or put something like 50-60 hours a week of childcare. I'm talking about everything other than normal working hours, where typically children are at school or nursery etc. Soo... this extra pressure is enough I think to bust a marriage with children (it seems that parental separation rates are increasing, with or without marriage), or to put couples off having them in the first place - in which case the utility of a marriage in a secular world is much lower. In the UK for instance, next to none.
taylodl 5y ago
Getting married was the single best decision I ever made in my life. 30+ years later and now we have three grown children, 1 of whom is married, another is getting married next year, and the third is still in college. I think the fact people look at marriage as a transactional arrangement is a sad commentary on modern society, but at least it explains why the arts are dying: people don't do anything for love or beauty any longer, it's all for the almighty dollar. It's truly sad.
pcbro141 5y ago
Interesting times ahead. Especially for Gen Z and younger, who rely heavily on dating apps instead of going out to meet new potential partners. Dating apps which are highly ineffective at actually generating relationships for most people (particularly for straight males). I predict Gen Z birth rate will be less than 1 per woman, but this might not be a problem for Western economies for now as Western countries can just increase immigration.
- bmitc 5y ago
  > Dating apps which are highly ineffective at actually generating relationships for most people (particularly for straight males). I didn’t really find that’s the case. I think that’s the perception, but it wasn’t that hard to meet nice, educated people looking for actual relationships on the various dating apps I once used. The failure rate has got to be much less than the failure rate out of all the potential partners one meets naturally. If anything, dating apps are equalizers. They don’t require you to break into a clique in any activity where you might try to naturally meet people.
  - thirdlamp 5y ago
    The incentive for dating apps is towards one night stands. If a relationship is formed on their platform they lose 2 customers and their revenue.
    - bmitc 5y ago
      That's not at all true for all dating apps and their users. I used apps nearly exclusively geared towards and users who were looking for standard dates and relationships with long term horizons. The model for these apps is to get new or returning users under subscription. Apps and/or users targeting the short term are easily avoided.
- adammunich 5y ago
  I like how gender is now considered a spectrum
- 5y ago
bmitc 5y ago
My thoughts are that most of the problems, like most things, stem from the Baby Boomer generation, the generation that likes to pin everything on Millennials and Gen Z now, which stemmed from their prior generations. It was Baby Boomers who divorced more than any other and yet pitched this idealized, fairytale version of marriages. Well, Millenials can see that doesn’t work, because they have first hand experience. So Millenials, from what I can gather, are much more willing to be naturally skeptical of the pitch of marriage and wait it out. I myself view it as more of a partnership, entailing legal details (such as taxes and ownership) and a personal, non-religious commitment. Religion has also fallen out of favor, reducing the push to marry, at least in the faith. This also contributes to the newer generations living together longer before marriage, which prevents both marriages and divorces at the same time and certainly delays marriages. Lastly, there’s the finances. Millenials and Gen Z are slammed with rising costs, taxes, debt, one “lifetime” economic crisis after another, and more. All of this contributes to delays in and distractions to “settling down”. I simply don’t understand how I would have felt comfortable marrying in my 20s or even done it. I wasn’t prepared and couldn’t afford stable life and also moved a lot between school, graduate school, and finding a job that didn’t suck, all of which slows meeting people. There are some financial benefits to marrying, if the marriage sticks, but I think those don't away the sheer pressure newer generations are under.
- ramblerman 5y ago
  the concept of marriage stems from long before the baby boomers, and long before it was a "fiscal" thing. Every married generation would have encouraged the next one to get married, it's not suddenly a thing the baby boomers started doing.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    You missed my point, and I didn't say that. I feel that generation highlighted the traps and reality of marriage, making subsequent generations wary. It's a fact that Baby Boomers have the highest generational divorce rate and actually continue to divorce, even in old age. I am not familiar with the publication source, but I found this reiterating a similar perspective. It's not a controversial one despite being overlooked. https://psmag.com/ideas/what-we-can-learn-from-the-dramatic-dip-in-divorce-among-millennials https://psmag.com/ideas/what-we-can-learn-from-the-dramatic-...
pseingatl 5y ago
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 institution of marriage; two lawyers are needed, both paid for--generally--by the working spouse. The minute children are in the mix divorce becomes more of a nightmare. I forgot to add the involvement of the judicial system with its clogged calendars and burdensome discovery procedures. It is no surprise at all that people avoid marriage.
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  It doesn’t help that in America taxes penalize you significantly for it if both spouses work
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    Same in Switzerland.. and in same vein (probably as in US too), many parts of the country are inaccessible for living due to costs if there is only 1 spouse working (unless in top 1% of the income bracket, but even then it can be tricky). It comes back down with more kids, but generally couple should stay single here till they want/are expecting kids. Being childless married couple hurts financially pretty badly for no reason.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  No doubt the things you mention make marriage less attractive, but I think it's also worth noting that more and more young couples are choosing not to have children. I suspect, based on my own experience and that of friends, that this is a big factor in decisions not to marry. Why get hitched if you're not planning to start a family?
  - alterego2 5y ago
    The things he mentions are likely contributing to the decision not to have children as well. You must pay child support regardless of whether you're married, and divorce is way easier without children.
gremloni 5y ago
Alimony is stupid. Child support without the man having a say in abortion is even more stupid.
- lancepioch 5y ago
  Why is alimony stupid? I haven't really heard any good arguments against it.
  - echelon 5y ago
    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.
    - Thlom 5y ago
      It makes sense if your ex stayed out of the workplace during your relationship to take care of children and the home.
      - echelon 5y ago
        And if there are no children and both partners work?
      - gremloni 5y ago
        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?
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      Alimony is useful in a context where wages are sufficient for one parent to stay at home full-time. Part of the reason it seems so out of place today is that as a society we've let average wages stagnate so far that living on one wage is impossible for most couples.
hyperman1 5y ago
A radio interview years ago with a woman from Africa compared African and western mariages. She basically claimed the Western and African view of a mariage was different to the point of incompatibility, and wondered what the hell we were doing. African marriage, according to her, was based on what amounted to economic stability: 2 people share the cost and maintenance burden of a house, food, ... If one partner was ill, there was a guarantee the other would provide support. Children would need care early on, but added extra economic output when they became older. All of this required a long term commitment, as breaking up a marriage would condemn everyone involved to poverty. Love or even friendship were a nice bonus, but not required as long as partners could live and work together (in the most literal sense). Even something as parents abusing their children was not as bad as the children not having parents and die in the streets, besides, pressure of the local society should deal with the worst abuse. Western mariage was based only love. We got rich enough to have the possibility for 1 person to pay and maintain house, food, ... Children can get economic support from a broken up marriage, even if the emotional impact of a breakup is extremely damaging to them. As a result, the basic stability requirements simply aren't there. This means mariage does not require long term commitment, it provides long term commitment. While I do not fully subscribe to this view, this woman certainly changed how I look at a marriage.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> a woman from Africa compared African and western mariages. Africa is a big place. That sounds more like west or south Africa. For instance, the north-east (Egypt and the Mediterranean countries) have a much more middle eastern view of the institution. And even within southern Africa, there is great disparity between rich an poor. Much of the economic certainty professed falls away with African people from more wealthy backgrounds. It is likely overinclusive so call these "African" views of marriage, rather they are the views of some particular African economic and social groups. Other groups have other ideas, some of them much more similar to western notions.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    That's probably me simplifying and misremembering. I heard a random radio interview somewhere in the 1990's as a teenager, started really listening only in the middle of it, and by then the introduction phase was over. I never really knew who the interviewed person was, if she was famous for anything, ... It's just that what she told stuck. Needless to say: plenty of chance for miscommunications, errors in representation are my own.
gnicholas 5y ago
I'd highly recommend the Hidden Brain podcast When Did Marriage Become So Hard?. [1] It goes into detail on how much we expect from our spouses, and how these expectations put pressure on a marriage. Couples who are able to get all of these benefits are super happy, but for many couples it's prudent to realize that historically we've not expected so many things from our spousal relationships. This realization allows couples to adjust their expectations for what a marriage is supposed to provide, and give them permission to have some of their social or other needs met by friends/colleagues/etc. 1: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584531641/when-did-marriage-become-so-hard https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584531641/when-did-marriage-b...
dsq 5y ago
The family being the only remaining non-transactional long-term social construct in moden society, it is not surprising that both marriage and child bearing are anachronistic and have been falling for the past decades. Eventually, a combination of surrogate childbirth (and perhaps evetually 'true' SF-style in-vitro bottle babies) and professional parenting, either private or State-sponsored, will be the primary way to raise the next generations of producers and consumers. It is sometimes tiring how prophetic British SF writers of the 1930's were.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  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 right
  - dsq 5y ago
    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.
    - alexvoda 5y ago
      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.
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      That’s not how I view my marriage, though I readily admit that there are a wide range of views. I see marriage not as a transaction, but as a promise. I promised to love and support my wife, unconditionally. It’s not “if you do this, I’ll do that in return” - it’s “I promise to do this, regardless of your future actions”.

45 points by jor-el 5y ago

https://archive.md/vTWHM https://archive.md/vTWHM

"People will no longer get married and will live with each other just for sexual pleasure." - taken from the Wikipedia page about kali yuga. There are many more entertaining observations there: Lust will be viewed as socially acceptable and sexual intercourse will be seen as the central requirement of life. People will become addicted to intoxicating drinks and drugs. Rulers will become unreasonable: they will levy taxes unfairly. Rulers will no longer see it as their duty to promote spirituality, or to protect their subjects: they will become a danger to the world. Avarice and wrath will be common. Humans will openly display animosity towards each other. People will have thoughts of murder with no justification and will see nothing wrong in that. Gurus will no longer be respected and their students will attempt to injure them. Weather and environment will degrade with time and frequent and unpredictable rainfalls will happen. Earthquakes will be common. The powerful people will dominate the poor people. All the human beings will declare themselves as gods or boon given by gods and make it as a business instead of teachings. Everything except the last one is the norm already. I'm curious what a society of self-proclaimed gods looks like.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
This just sounds like standard "last days" apocalyptic religious claptrap. Likelihood of dying by violence is lower in developed countries now than the historical norm. Forms of bigotry on average seem to be way down, acceptance of those different from you is up. People's morals have mostly gotten better, not worse. There are still problems -- climate change is the big one that's potentially actually apocalyptic -- but for the most part humanity is prospering.
cscurmudgeon 5y ago
> All the human beings will declare themselves as gods or boon given by gods and make it as a business instead of teachings. I mean that is a perfect description of LinkedIn and Instagram to some extent.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  You could apply something generic like that to all kinds of things. It's like a horoscope. Like, think about what it's saying: "people will be full of themselves". Do you really think this is the first time in history people have thought that about others?
  - cscurmudgeon 5y ago
    > You could apply something generic like that to all kinds of things. It's like a horoscope. You can apply that to your statement too.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  It's not a perfect example of that at all. I use Instagram, I don't think I'm a god, or that god has anything to do with it.
- adammunich 5y ago
  omg
bamboozled 5y ago
People in Ancient Rome (for example) were into all those types of things way more than the society I live in now. Don't really see the connection. Are Earthquakes truly more common now?
- weikju 5y ago
  I had a look at the Wikipedia page and it turns out that this age of sin started around 3000 BC and will last another 426,000 years give or take a few centuries . So, conveniently it encompasses all known history and imaginable future of our civilization
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    Got me there...
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Also from the Kali Yuga Wikipedia page: > Lasting for 432,000 years (1,200 divine years), Kali Yuga began 5,122 years ago and has 426,878 years left as of 2021 CE.
TheGigaChad 5y ago
Ok, monkey.

dijit 5y ago

My ex wanted to get married and I was keen on the idea. But it is a scary endeavour with no practical upside, high financial cost and absurd legal risk. Why would I get married? Love? You can love without marriage. If marriage is to prove you love someone then I don’t think I want to bother loving anyone.

bobsmooth 5y ago
>no practical upside There's tax incentives and you become each other's medical proxy, among other things. >high financial cost The paperwork is cheap. Weddings are as expensive as you make them. >absurd legal risk That's true, divorces are expensive.
- dijit 5y ago
  > There's tax incentives That’s not universal, it’s not the case in Sweden for instance as far as I can make out. But, the rest of what you said is true. Though it’s unlikely that both partners who want to get married would want to forego a wedding ceremony.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  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.
  - throwoutway 5y ago
    How so? It’s a progressive bracket both ways? Wouldn’t you want your spouse to earn more income, regardless of 30% tax?
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      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.

bawolff 5y ago

My understanding is that the agricultural revolution played a major role in the traditional version monogamous marriage becoming "standard". Since the industrial revolution the role of marriage and the structure of marriage has been slowly shifting. Most notably to be more equal,but also to be less mandatory Maybe marriage just makes sense in an agricultural society, and doesn't make sense in an industrialized or knowledge-based society

stunt 5y ago

I understand why this is happening, but some of it is going to be unfair for women today. Raising a child still has more toll on mothers. They lose job and growth opportunity which has a long lasting impact on their future. They are still under paid comparing to men. We want to get rid of these traditional contracts, but we are not prepared to make all the necessary changes in the society.

HKH2 5y ago

As expected, the article says nothing of single-parent households. It mentions the black people that don't get married being disadvantaged but fails to mention that a majority of black children are raised in single-parent households. Do you think that not getting rewarded for being unmarried is more of a problem than children being raised in a single-parent household?

rich_sasha 5y ago
I certainly agree that parents being married is a bonus for the child. Apart from any strictly emotional considerations, married parents form a more stable platform for care and support during childhood. The fact that splitting up is so inconvenient probably keeps parents together through bigger disagreements than unmarried parents. Now that I say it though, divorces are such major trauma that perhaps the tail risk counterbalances that benefit. I guess still not, but it's less clear.

rich_sasha 5y ago

One thing that's massively changed, at least in my corner of the world (various bits of Europe) is that grandparents used to be much more involved in raising children. Nowadays, they are more commonly uninterested, living far away, or lack the past societal norm pressure. EDIT: Or are older, as they themselves had children later than past generations, and therefore less able to help. Without that unpaid, keen, trustworthy workforce, raising children is much, much harder. You either have to rely on paid (very expensive), and variably-trustworthy professional childcare, or put something like 50-60 hours a week of childcare. I'm talking about everything other than normal working hours, where typically children are at school or nursery etc. Soo... this extra pressure is enough I think to bust a marriage with children (it seems that parental separation rates are increasing, with or without marriage), or to put couples off having them in the first place - in which case the utility of a marriage in a secular world is much lower. In the UK for instance, next to none.

taylodl 5y ago

Getting married was the single best decision I ever made in my life. 30+ years later and now we have three grown children, 1 of whom is married, another is getting married next year, and the third is still in college. I think the fact people look at marriage as a transactional arrangement is a sad commentary on modern society, but at least it explains why the arts are dying: people don't do anything for love or beauty any longer, it's all for the almighty dollar. It's truly sad.

pcbro141 5y ago

Interesting times ahead. Especially for Gen Z and younger, who rely heavily on dating apps instead of going out to meet new potential partners. Dating apps which are highly ineffective at actually generating relationships for most people (particularly for straight males). I predict Gen Z birth rate will be less than 1 per woman, but this might not be a problem for Western economies for now as Western countries can just increase immigration.

bmitc 5y ago
> Dating apps which are highly ineffective at actually generating relationships for most people (particularly for straight males). I didn’t really find that’s the case. I think that’s the perception, but it wasn’t that hard to meet nice, educated people looking for actual relationships on the various dating apps I once used. The failure rate has got to be much less than the failure rate out of all the potential partners one meets naturally. If anything, dating apps are equalizers. They don’t require you to break into a clique in any activity where you might try to naturally meet people.
- thirdlamp 5y ago
  The incentive for dating apps is towards one night stands. If a relationship is formed on their platform they lose 2 customers and their revenue.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    That's not at all true for all dating apps and their users. I used apps nearly exclusively geared towards and users who were looking for standard dates and relationships with long term horizons. The model for these apps is to get new or returning users under subscription. Apps and/or users targeting the short term are easily avoided.
adammunich 5y ago
I like how gender is now considered a spectrum
5y ago

bmitc 5y ago

My thoughts are that most of the problems, like most things, stem from the Baby Boomer generation, the generation that likes to pin everything on Millennials and Gen Z now, which stemmed from their prior generations. It was Baby Boomers who divorced more than any other and yet pitched this idealized, fairytale version of marriages. Well, Millenials can see that doesn’t work, because they have first hand experience. So Millenials, from what I can gather, are much more willing to be naturally skeptical of the pitch of marriage and wait it out. I myself view it as more of a partnership, entailing legal details (such as taxes and ownership) and a personal, non-religious commitment. Religion has also fallen out of favor, reducing the push to marry, at least in the faith. This also contributes to the newer generations living together longer before marriage, which prevents both marriages and divorces at the same time and certainly delays marriages. Lastly, there’s the finances. Millenials and Gen Z are slammed with rising costs, taxes, debt, one “lifetime” economic crisis after another, and more. All of this contributes to delays in and distractions to “settling down”. I simply don’t understand how I would have felt comfortable marrying in my 20s or even done it. I wasn’t prepared and couldn’t afford stable life and also moved a lot between school, graduate school, and finding a job that didn’t suck, all of which slows meeting people. There are some financial benefits to marrying, if the marriage sticks, but I think those don't away the sheer pressure newer generations are under.

ramblerman 5y ago
the concept of marriage stems from long before the baby boomers, and long before it was a "fiscal" thing. Every married generation would have encouraged the next one to get married, it's not suddenly a thing the baby boomers started doing.
- bmitc 5y ago
  You missed my point, and I didn't say that. I feel that generation highlighted the traps and reality of marriage, making subsequent generations wary. It's a fact that Baby Boomers have the highest generational divorce rate and actually continue to divorce, even in old age. I am not familiar with the publication source, but I found this reiterating a similar perspective. It's not a controversial one despite being overlooked. https://psmag.com/ideas/what-we-can-learn-from-the-dramatic-dip-in-divorce-among-millennials https://psmag.com/ideas/what-we-can-learn-from-the-dramatic-...

pseingatl 5y ago

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 institution of marriage; two lawyers are needed, both paid for--generally--by the working spouse. The minute children are in the mix divorce becomes more of a nightmare. I forgot to add the involvement of the judicial system with its clogged calendars and burdensome discovery procedures. It is no surprise at all that people avoid marriage.

dmitrygr 5y ago
It doesn’t help that in America taxes penalize you significantly for it if both spouses work
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Same in Switzerland.. and in same vein (probably as in US too), many parts of the country are inaccessible for living due to costs if there is only 1 spouse working (unless in top 1% of the income bracket, but even then it can be tricky). It comes back down with more kids, but generally couple should stay single here till they want/are expecting kids. Being childless married couple hurts financially pretty badly for no reason.
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
No doubt the things you mention make marriage less attractive, but I think it's also worth noting that more and more young couples are choosing not to have children. I suspect, based on my own experience and that of friends, that this is a big factor in decisions not to marry. Why get hitched if you're not planning to start a family?
- alterego2 5y ago
  The things he mentions are likely contributing to the decision not to have children as well. You must pay child support regardless of whether you're married, and divorce is way easier without children.

gremloni 5y ago

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

lancepioch 5y ago
Why is alimony stupid? I haven't really heard any good arguments against it.
- echelon 5y ago
  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.
  - Thlom 5y ago
    It makes sense if your ex stayed out of the workplace during your relationship to take care of children and the home.
    - echelon 5y ago
      And if there are no children and both partners work?
    - gremloni 5y ago
      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?
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    Alimony is useful in a context where wages are sufficient for one parent to stay at home full-time. Part of the reason it seems so out of place today is that as a society we've let average wages stagnate so far that living on one wage is impossible for most couples.

hyperman1 5y ago

A radio interview years ago with a woman from Africa compared African and western mariages. She basically claimed the Western and African view of a mariage was different to the point of incompatibility, and wondered what the hell we were doing. African marriage, according to her, was based on what amounted to economic stability: 2 people share the cost and maintenance burden of a house, food, ... If one partner was ill, there was a guarantee the other would provide support. Children would need care early on, but added extra economic output when they became older. All of this required a long term commitment, as breaking up a marriage would condemn everyone involved to poverty. Love or even friendship were a nice bonus, but not required as long as partners could live and work together (in the most literal sense). Even something as parents abusing their children was not as bad as the children not having parents and die in the streets, besides, pressure of the local society should deal with the worst abuse. Western mariage was based only love. We got rich enough to have the possibility for 1 person to pay and maintain house, food, ... Children can get economic support from a broken up marriage, even if the emotional impact of a breakup is extremely damaging to them. As a result, the basic stability requirements simply aren't there. This means mariage does not require long term commitment, it provides long term commitment. While I do not fully subscribe to this view, this woman certainly changed how I look at a marriage.

sandworm101 5y ago
>> a woman from Africa compared African and western mariages. Africa is a big place. That sounds more like west or south Africa. For instance, the north-east (Egypt and the Mediterranean countries) have a much more middle eastern view of the institution. And even within southern Africa, there is great disparity between rich an poor. Much of the economic certainty professed falls away with African people from more wealthy backgrounds. It is likely overinclusive so call these "African" views of marriage, rather they are the views of some particular African economic and social groups. Other groups have other ideas, some of them much more similar to western notions.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  That's probably me simplifying and misremembering. I heard a random radio interview somewhere in the 1990's as a teenager, started really listening only in the middle of it, and by then the introduction phase was over. I never really knew who the interviewed person was, if she was famous for anything, ... It's just that what she told stuck. Needless to say: plenty of chance for miscommunications, errors in representation are my own.

gnicholas 5y ago

I'd highly recommend the Hidden Brain podcast When Did Marriage Become So Hard?. [1] It goes into detail on how much we expect from our spouses, and how these expectations put pressure on a marriage. Couples who are able to get all of these benefits are super happy, but for many couples it's prudent to realize that historically we've not expected so many things from our spousal relationships. This realization allows couples to adjust their expectations for what a marriage is supposed to provide, and give them permission to have some of their social or other needs met by friends/colleagues/etc. 1: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584531641/when-did-marriage-become-so-hard https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584531641/when-did-marriage-b...

dsq 5y ago

The family being the only remaining non-transactional long-term social construct in moden society, it is not surprising that both marriage and child bearing are anachronistic and have been falling for the past decades. Eventually, a combination of surrogate childbirth (and perhaps evetually 'true' SF-style in-vitro bottle babies) and professional parenting, either private or State-sponsored, will be the primary way to raise the next generations of producers and consumers. It is sometimes tiring how prophetic British SF writers of the 1930's were.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
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 right
- dsq 5y ago
  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.
  - alexvoda 5y ago
    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.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    That’s not how I view my marriage, though I readily admit that there are a wide range of views. I see marriage not as a transaction, but as a promise. I promised to love and support my wife, unconditionally. It’s not “if you do this, I’ll do that in return” - it’s “I promise to do this, regardless of your future actions”.