5 ms·

The Decline of marriage?

19 points by trustfundbaby 16y ago

bobf 16y ago
It seems interesting that they identify people as moving from historically marrying for "financial stability" towards marrying for love, yet divorce rates have increased. Although it is perhaps slightly counterintuitive, I think it actually makes a lot of sense. If you are relying on a spouse for financial stability, you are more likely to stick it out through the hard times of a marriage. Love is a bit more fickle.
- seiji 16y ago
  There's a Bullshit episode where Penn "argues that free trade and economic interdependence are the best means to achieve peace." He brings up an example of hating Teller, but never hurting him because there's no money to be made as a single stunt magician.
- oldgregg 16y ago
  Financial stability vs. love is a false dichotomy. You could also say that shift is from Community & Family Commitment to Emotionally Driven Radical Autonomy. Read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam or look at what "love" marriages are doing in India. In the 60's everyone was casting off (often shitty) cultural restraints, but it was an overcorrection that was almost completely narcissistic. Suddenly you have no fault divorce and a culture that increasingly doesn't view that as a problem. Fast forward 40 years and my generation is largely self-serving paxil-popping automatons. :-) Facebook brings us together but it ultimately doesn't make us really sacrifice for each other. That's an infinitely harder problem that technology will probably never solve.
duck 16y ago
The share of births to unmarried women has risen dramatically over the past half century, from 5% in 1960 to 41% in 2008. There are notable differences by race: Among black women giving birth in 2008, 72% were unmarried. This compares with 53% of Hispanic women giving birth and 29% of white women. That blew me away... I would of never guessed it was that high.
- Qz 16y ago
  Where have you been the past fifty years?
- sokoloff 16y ago
  Similarly (though sort of in the opposite direction), I was shocked to see that 32% of respondents reported that "Premarital sex is wrong" I would have expected about half of that, at most.
steveklabnik 16y ago
I don't plan on getting married, unless a few key things come up. One big one is insurance, the second is hospital visitation rights, and the third is tax benefits. Other than that, I think it's pretty archaic. Also note I don't want children... that might affect such things, too.
- tptacek 16y ago
  In what sense is marriage "archaic"? The bond of family is unlike any other bond. Friendships, business partnerships, strategic alliances, romances, all of them are transient in ways that family is not. But the family you're born with is a happenstance. Apart from marriage and adoption, what other discretionary act allows two adults to create a new, deliberate familial bond? I don't want to get too "no true Scotsman" about this; I accept that there is divorce (partly because we've embraced divorce as a culture, partly because we've embraced casual marriage as a culture, and yes, partly because as a society we have rightly grown out of practices that secured marriage, such as single-income households) and failed marriage. But marriage as a concept has a clear, practical value. It's more challenging to realize the concept in 2010 than it was in 1910, but that doesn't mean the concept itself is outdated.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    I guess I just don't feel the need for such an actual act. Take my current situation: I've been seeing this girl for about three years now, it's my third 2+ year relationship, and it's going exceptionally well. We live together, we have a joint bank account... why bother getting married? It doesn't change the way that either of us feel about each other. Not only that, but marriage implies a few things about our relationship that are simply not true. The only value it actually holds is getting certain benefits from organizations that are still structured around the idea that a man and a woman end up loving each other very much, and decided to be together forever. That's the concept I'm talking about when I mean it's 'outdated,' I think that the vast majority of relationships won't actually last forever, nor should they.
    - tptacek 16y ago
michaelchisari 16y ago
I don't particularly care for the institution of marriage, although I will say that I think weddings are tons of fun, and the only issue I have with the decline in marriages is that I don't get to go to very many of them.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  The loss of another socially acceptable reason to drink in public is always a sad occurrence.
  - eru 16y ago
    You should move to Europe.
  - pjscott 16y ago
    Have you considered celebrating obscure holidays? I know some Americans who celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day just because it gives them an excuse to have a party and burn someone in effigy. If you get some friends on board and act like what you're doing is perfectly normal, you probably won't be hassled about drinking in public. Everyone will assume that you're supposed to be doing whatever it is you're doing.
    - tyrmored 16y ago
      Hell, if you can get enough like-minded friends into it, just make up your own holiday.
  - igrekel 16y ago
    Not to mention an excellent occasion to meet girls you'd otherwise never see in a bar or a club. They are wearing their nice clothes and took good attention to look good, you often even have an occasion to get them to dance.
hasenj 16y ago
I'm not really surprised all that much. Having moved from the middle east to north america, the culture is so different that I'm surprised marriage is still practiced over here. Marriage is mostly a social construct but a large part of it is also religious in nature. In large part it serves to conserve the tradition and culture of society or a community. As social relationships become less centered on family bonds, marriage will weaken. And as western societies become less and less religious, there's less motivation for any couple to get married. This is not even unintentional. I think at the heart of the feminist movement lies a belief that marriage is a tool devised by society to control women, or something of that sort.
- igrekel 16y ago
  Marriage is also a contract and way to make the relationship official or public. It also make sense in that perspective to invite many people and to publish the information to make sure everyone is aware of this commitment. I find it always funny when unmarried couples with children are looking for a legal contract of some kind to ensure things are official between them in case something bad happens. They just see marriage as the complicated traditional thing that (they feel) is supposed to be forever. It doesn't have to be.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    Marriage is a legal contract you often can't negotiate, and even if you can and do (pre-nup) you come off looking like an ass. As a contract, it's even subject to retroactive changes (politicians changing laws). The way incentives are set up now, there is simply no way I would enter into a marriage in most western countries. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want a means of committing to a legal contract to make things official; it's just the terms of the default contract that I disagree with.
    - igrekel 16y ago
      There are still laws covering unmarried couples living together with or without children. You are not out of reach of the law changing because you are not married. If you have no contract, you'll get the default anyways, its just more trouble. I don't know about where you are but there are a few different standard terms of marriage even without drafting your own custom contract. The situation is just less clear and more trouble in case things go bad if you are not married... and I don't mean divorce or separation, I also mean death, being incapacitated, stuck in a foreign country etc. And that is not even when children are involved.
djcapelis 16y ago
Not just this, but I've noticed a lot of my friends that are married are in open marriages, which seems to be the trend I've noticed more than marrying less.
maukdaddy 16y ago
This is the saddest comment thread I've read on HN. I had no idea geeks were so against marriage.
duck 16y ago
Marriage, like many things include software, is only as good as the foundation that it is built on. I have no doubt that my wife and I will ever get a divorce. It just isn't an option. I've seen others who hold the same belief and through very hard times they don't change when it comes to that... and in the end their marriage is even better than before. I've seen the same with us as well. I have no problem if people don't want to get married, but if you do, I wish more couples would discuss that before they get hitched.

19 points by trustfundbaby 16y ago

bobf 16y ago

It seems interesting that they identify people as moving from historically marrying for "financial stability" towards marrying for love, yet divorce rates have increased. Although it is perhaps slightly counterintuitive, I think it actually makes a lot of sense. If you are relying on a spouse for financial stability, you are more likely to stick it out through the hard times of a marriage. Love is a bit more fickle.

seiji 16y ago
There's a Bullshit episode where Penn "argues that free trade and economic interdependence are the best means to achieve peace." He brings up an example of hating Teller, but never hurting him because there's no money to be made as a single stunt magician.
oldgregg 16y ago
Financial stability vs. love is a false dichotomy. You could also say that shift is from Community & Family Commitment to Emotionally Driven Radical Autonomy. Read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam or look at what "love" marriages are doing in India. In the 60's everyone was casting off (often shitty) cultural restraints, but it was an overcorrection that was almost completely narcissistic. Suddenly you have no fault divorce and a culture that increasingly doesn't view that as a problem. Fast forward 40 years and my generation is largely self-serving paxil-popping automatons. :-) Facebook brings us together but it ultimately doesn't make us really sacrifice for each other. That's an infinitely harder problem that technology will probably never solve.

duck 16y ago

The share of births to unmarried women has risen dramatically over the past half century, from 5% in 1960 to 41% in 2008. There are notable differences by race: Among black women giving birth in 2008, 72% were unmarried. This compares with 53% of Hispanic women giving birth and 29% of white women. That blew me away... I would of never guessed it was that high.

Qz 16y ago
Where have you been the past fifty years?
sokoloff 16y ago
Similarly (though sort of in the opposite direction), I was shocked to see that 32% of respondents reported that "Premarital sex is wrong" I would have expected about half of that, at most.

steveklabnik 16y ago

I don't plan on getting married, unless a few key things come up. One big one is insurance, the second is hospital visitation rights, and the third is tax benefits. Other than that, I think it's pretty archaic. Also note I don't want children... that might affect such things, too.

tptacek 16y ago
In what sense is marriage "archaic"? The bond of family is unlike any other bond. Friendships, business partnerships, strategic alliances, romances, all of them are transient in ways that family is not. But the family you're born with is a happenstance. Apart from marriage and adoption, what other discretionary act allows two adults to create a new, deliberate familial bond? I don't want to get too "no true Scotsman" about this; I accept that there is divorce (partly because we've embraced divorce as a culture, partly because we've embraced casual marriage as a culture, and yes, partly because as a society we have rightly grown out of practices that secured marriage, such as single-income households) and failed marriage. But marriage as a concept has a clear, practical value. It's more challenging to realize the concept in 2010 than it was in 1910, but that doesn't mean the concept itself is outdated.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  I guess I just don't feel the need for such an actual act. Take my current situation: I've been seeing this girl for about three years now, it's my third 2+ year relationship, and it's going exceptionally well. We live together, we have a joint bank account... why bother getting married? It doesn't change the way that either of us feel about each other. Not only that, but marriage implies a few things about our relationship that are simply not true. The only value it actually holds is getting certain benefits from organizations that are still structured around the idea that a man and a woman end up loving each other very much, and decided to be together forever. That's the concept I'm talking about when I mean it's 'outdated,' I think that the vast majority of relationships won't actually last forever, nor should they.
  - tptacek 16y ago

michaelchisari 16y ago

I don't particularly care for the institution of marriage, although I will say that I think weddings are tons of fun, and the only issue I have with the decline in marriages is that I don't get to go to very many of them.

burgerbrain 16y ago
The loss of another socially acceptable reason to drink in public is always a sad occurrence.
- eru 16y ago
  You should move to Europe.
- pjscott 16y ago
  Have you considered celebrating obscure holidays? I know some Americans who celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day just because it gives them an excuse to have a party and burn someone in effigy. If you get some friends on board and act like what you're doing is perfectly normal, you probably won't be hassled about drinking in public. Everyone will assume that you're supposed to be doing whatever it is you're doing.
  - tyrmored 16y ago
    Hell, if you can get enough like-minded friends into it, just make up your own holiday.
- igrekel 16y ago
  Not to mention an excellent occasion to meet girls you'd otherwise never see in a bar or a club. They are wearing their nice clothes and took good attention to look good, you often even have an occasion to get them to dance.

hasenj 16y ago

I'm not really surprised all that much. Having moved from the middle east to north america, the culture is so different that I'm surprised marriage is still practiced over here. Marriage is mostly a social construct but a large part of it is also religious in nature. In large part it serves to conserve the tradition and culture of society or a community. As social relationships become less centered on family bonds, marriage will weaken. And as western societies become less and less religious, there's less motivation for any couple to get married. This is not even unintentional. I think at the heart of the feminist movement lies a belief that marriage is a tool devised by society to control women, or something of that sort.

igrekel 16y ago
Marriage is also a contract and way to make the relationship official or public. It also make sense in that perspective to invite many people and to publish the information to make sure everyone is aware of this commitment. I find it always funny when unmarried couples with children are looking for a legal contract of some kind to ensure things are official between them in case something bad happens. They just see marriage as the complicated traditional thing that (they feel) is supposed to be forever. It doesn't have to be.
- barrkel 16y ago
  Marriage is a legal contract you often can't negotiate, and even if you can and do (pre-nup) you come off looking like an ass. As a contract, it's even subject to retroactive changes (politicians changing laws). The way incentives are set up now, there is simply no way I would enter into a marriage in most western countries. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want a means of committing to a legal contract to make things official; it's just the terms of the default contract that I disagree with.
  - igrekel 16y ago
    There are still laws covering unmarried couples living together with or without children. You are not out of reach of the law changing because you are not married. If you have no contract, you'll get the default anyways, its just more trouble. I don't know about where you are but there are a few different standard terms of marriage even without drafting your own custom contract. The situation is just less clear and more trouble in case things go bad if you are not married... and I don't mean divorce or separation, I also mean death, being incapacitated, stuck in a foreign country etc. And that is not even when children are involved.

djcapelis 16y ago

Not just this, but I've noticed a lot of my friends that are married are in open marriages, which seems to be the trend I've noticed more than marrying less.

maukdaddy 16y ago

This is the saddest comment thread I've read on HN. I had no idea geeks were so against marriage.

duck 16y ago

Marriage, like many things include software, is only as good as the foundation that it is built on. I have no doubt that my wife and I will ever get a divorce. It just isn't an option. I've seen others who hold the same belief and through very hard times they don't change when it comes to that... and in the end their marriage is even better than before. I've seen the same with us as well. I have no problem if people don't want to get married, but if you do, I wish more couples would discuss that before they get hitched.