6 ms·

I'm supposed no one has mentioned the - sort of - deterioration in our relationships. back in the day it used to be a lot easier for two people up meet, fall in

I'm supposed no one has mentioned the - sort of - deterioration in our relationships. back in the day it used to be a lot easier for two people up meet, fall in love, get married and have kids. I'm not saying that there weren't any forced marriages, but that's not my point. In the age of tinder we are exposed to more and more people and possibilities. So basically it seems like the average Joe and Betty keep holding off for the perfect mate, when chances are they already rejected them. I'm just observing that the typical meets are decreasing rapidly and could be to, at least partially, blame.

deleted 7y ago
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liveoneggs 7y ago
get off tinder and get on to eharmony with a profile like "I'm interested in getting married" then see what happens
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  Do people actually do this?
  - liveoneggs 7y ago
    of course they do. It's the entire point of that website as far as I can tell. a friend of mine did something similar and was married inside of two years.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
randomdata 7y ago
More to the point, there is a curious social stigma around having children before you enter your 30s that has developed. The idea that you should "play the field" is part of it, but I'm not sure that tells the whole story. There seems to have been a concerted effort to reduce pregnancies among younger women. In fact, programs like "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom", which follow young mothers in their teens and 20s, were, according to their creator, meant as a "cautionary tale" to reduce pregnancy rates. In modern culture, "rural hick" even conjures up images of a young mother. Not the image most want to portray, which is a powerful social tool. Equally curious, once you enter your 30s all of a sudden the social norms flip to "why haven't you had children yet?", "the clock is ticking", etc. However, once you are in your 30s, there are some rather hard limits to how many children you can practically have.
- pjc50 7y ago
  As others have said, having children very early is unsafe, and it's a demanding job that requires emotional maturity to do well. Having children before you have economic independence is also a very bad idea. But your 20s are also critical from a career point of view. Women still have to fight a lot of prejudice from employers, which translates into trying to show commitment to career by delaying children. The UK now has a very soft "two child policy": you won't normally get paid child benefit for children beyond two. The US has a ludicrous healthcare system where simply giving birth can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Also, they don't call it labour for nothing: it's a physically demanding, uncomfortable process.
- jcater 7y ago
  Not only are there hard limits, but at age 35, suddenly it’s considered a “geriatric pregnancy”. The risk of complications go up.
- watwut 7y ago
  Pregnancies at 16 have very real health risks and 16 years old are not ready to be parents yet, not ready to be independent either. There is nothing curious or odd about the end.
- wasdfff 7y ago
  I think its less stigma but economic realities that are driving this. People have too much debt and not enough income and are too early in their careers in their 20s to comfortably take time off to have a kid or pay for childcare.
  - randomdata 7y ago
    > People have too much debt For what? Less than half of Americans, aged 25-34, have a post secondary education. Less than half of Americans in the same age range own a home. The same age group are much more likely to reject car ownership than generations past. Outside of those purchases, it is not common for young people to take on debt. You no doubt describe a minority, but the majority aren't putting any effort into picking up the slack. Birth rates are falling in all walks of life. > not enough income Or too much income? There is a very strong correlation between being poor and having more children. At the extreme, the women of Niger have over 7 children each, on average. Even the least paid people in America are living like kings in comparison to the people of Niger. But even within America, the reason the "rural hick" is oft associated with young mothers is because rural areas tend to be poorer and poorer people are more likely to have more children. > are too early in their careers in their 20s to comfortably take time off to have a kid While the average reader on HN is certainly career driven, most people are not. "You need to focus on your career" is a line that has been used to deter 20-somethings from having children. I'm not sure that is the same as them actually focusing on their career. Most people simply find what work is available to them, trudge through the day, and then go home as soon as possible to not have to think about work again until tomorrow.
ForrestN 7y ago
Have you seen any data to support this? I'm not convinced it's true, based on my own experience. It seems to me like what's changed is the range of possibilities for women, who can now more easily pursue educational and professional ambitions rather than settling down right away. There has also been a striking decrease in the social stigma of being a single "older" woman, which used to be seen as reflecting a woman's desirability. In my subjective opinion, things have gotten better in this sense, rather than worse. But it's kind of pointless to say so without any kind of study, because my own experience is limited and distorted by my unique perspective.
- conmarap 7y ago
  I don't have tangible information, but what I'm referring to is what I know from experience in my social circle. Maybe, as you say, my perspective is distorted in some way. However, 15 years ago if you wanted to meet someone you had to go out and talk to people, which is hard and you're more open to hearing someone out. Today you open an app and swipe into oblivion and no one seems good enough. I've heard many people say that; both men and women. I've had people show me perfectly nice looking people they met through online dating and they either swiped right or rejected them after one date because they weren't good enough. And again, it's important to marry someone you want to marry and not marry just because you're getting older or for the sake of it. Those marriages, more often than not, end in divorce. But I see a lot of people either using Tinder as a way to get as many one night stands as possible, or swiping away looking for someone perfect who they'll never find. I also know people who developed severe depression because they were on the receiving end of perpetuated ghosting. I am, by no means, saying that online dating hasn't worked for people, but it just seems like it's done more harm than it's done good.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  This might suffice as supporting data: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35535424 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35535424 There are a lot of interesting things here, although some (like that first graph) are rather subtle. In particular, I'd point everyone to the graph over time of where straight Americans met their partners. To my eye, it has three distinctive elements. First, finding romance at a traditional "third place" has been almost completely destroyed. Meeting a partner through family, neighbors, church, or college shows an undulation in the sixties, followed by a sharp downturn in the last decade. Second, meeting partners through work or friends has ceased to be a replacement. The decline in e.g. church meetings was thoroughly offset by professional and social meetings until the mid-nineties, but those meeting sources have been declining since. Third, the spike in online meetings, and the s-curve in bar/club meetings. Crucially, this happens after meetings through friends and coworkers flatline; they aren't just being displaced by online dating, they stopped prior to that explosion. Alongside all of those patterns, we can add the rising age of first marriage, the lowering frequency of sex (overall and within relationships), the rising gap in sexual intent versus outcome in both men and women (i.e. how much less sex people are having than they want), and the gap between intended and actual family size. A lot of the most obvious relationship shifts over the last ~70 years seem clearly good, and seem to benefit the people I know. But the data overwhelmingly suggests that people are forming relationships later and with more difficulty, with outcomes further from what they intend.
ausbah 7y ago
Isn't the opposite true? That in the age of Tinder, meeting people is easier than ever - and so it should be more likely for someone to also fall in love with someone. I don't see how the limited dating pools of the past provide any advantage on this front. It doesn't make sense to me that people today would "hold out for the perfect mate" when exposed to a larger dating pool - my thinking would be that when people have met someone they have a good relationship with they will settle down. I also don't buy the idea that someone has already "rejected someone when meeting them for the first time, if they weren't interested they wouldn't have gone on the date.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Tinder only works for a subset of the population due to human behavior. Women largely select for traits that are a proxy for alpha status. The same applies to all online dating. There is a paradox of choice going on where there is so much available that everyone ratchets up their minimum requirements.
- conmarap 7y ago
  The bottomline is that I've seen it happen in real life, to people in my social circle and family. I wrote a reply to another comment that addressed something similar. The best way I can create a correlation in the real world is this way: If you go to a restaurant with 20 choices it takes people much longer to order something as opposed to a restaurant that can fit their menu on one page. It's some psychological paradox, or research, that I can't remember. Someone actually replied with a TED talk that touches on this matter.
bumby 7y ago
Your Tinder comment made me think of Barry Schwartz and his "paradox of choice" where too much choice ultimately leads to more unhappiness because it sets the expectation that, will all these options, we should expect to find 'perfect' https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...
- conmarap 7y ago
  Thank you for linking this.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

liveoneggs 7y ago

get off tinder and get on to eharmony with a profile like "I'm interested in getting married" then see what happens

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
Do people actually do this?
- liveoneggs 7y ago
  of course they do. It's the entire point of that website as far as I can tell. a friend of mine did something similar and was married inside of two years.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

randomdata 7y ago

More to the point, there is a curious social stigma around having children before you enter your 30s that has developed. The idea that you should "play the field" is part of it, but I'm not sure that tells the whole story. There seems to have been a concerted effort to reduce pregnancies among younger women. In fact, programs like "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom", which follow young mothers in their teens and 20s, were, according to their creator, meant as a "cautionary tale" to reduce pregnancy rates. In modern culture, "rural hick" even conjures up images of a young mother. Not the image most want to portray, which is a powerful social tool. Equally curious, once you enter your 30s all of a sudden the social norms flip to "why haven't you had children yet?", "the clock is ticking", etc. However, once you are in your 30s, there are some rather hard limits to how many children you can practically have.

pjc50 7y ago
As others have said, having children very early is unsafe, and it's a demanding job that requires emotional maturity to do well. Having children before you have economic independence is also a very bad idea. But your 20s are also critical from a career point of view. Women still have to fight a lot of prejudice from employers, which translates into trying to show commitment to career by delaying children. The UK now has a very soft "two child policy": you won't normally get paid child benefit for children beyond two. The US has a ludicrous healthcare system where simply giving birth can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Also, they don't call it labour for nothing: it's a physically demanding, uncomfortable process.
jcater 7y ago
Not only are there hard limits, but at age 35, suddenly it’s considered a “geriatric pregnancy”. The risk of complications go up.
watwut 7y ago
Pregnancies at 16 have very real health risks and 16 years old are not ready to be parents yet, not ready to be independent either. There is nothing curious or odd about the end.
wasdfff 7y ago
I think its less stigma but economic realities that are driving this. People have too much debt and not enough income and are too early in their careers in their 20s to comfortably take time off to have a kid or pay for childcare.
- randomdata 7y ago
  > People have too much debt For what? Less than half of Americans, aged 25-34, have a post secondary education. Less than half of Americans in the same age range own a home. The same age group are much more likely to reject car ownership than generations past. Outside of those purchases, it is not common for young people to take on debt. You no doubt describe a minority, but the majority aren't putting any effort into picking up the slack. Birth rates are falling in all walks of life. > not enough income Or too much income? There is a very strong correlation between being poor and having more children. At the extreme, the women of Niger have over 7 children each, on average. Even the least paid people in America are living like kings in comparison to the people of Niger. But even within America, the reason the "rural hick" is oft associated with young mothers is because rural areas tend to be poorer and poorer people are more likely to have more children. > are too early in their careers in their 20s to comfortably take time off to have a kid While the average reader on HN is certainly career driven, most people are not. "You need to focus on your career" is a line that has been used to deter 20-somethings from having children. I'm not sure that is the same as them actually focusing on their career. Most people simply find what work is available to them, trudge through the day, and then go home as soon as possible to not have to think about work again until tomorrow.

ForrestN 7y ago

Have you seen any data to support this? I'm not convinced it's true, based on my own experience. It seems to me like what's changed is the range of possibilities for women, who can now more easily pursue educational and professional ambitions rather than settling down right away. There has also been a striking decrease in the social stigma of being a single "older" woman, which used to be seen as reflecting a woman's desirability. In my subjective opinion, things have gotten better in this sense, rather than worse. But it's kind of pointless to say so without any kind of study, because my own experience is limited and distorted by my unique perspective.

conmarap 7y ago
I don't have tangible information, but what I'm referring to is what I know from experience in my social circle. Maybe, as you say, my perspective is distorted in some way. However, 15 years ago if you wanted to meet someone you had to go out and talk to people, which is hard and you're more open to hearing someone out. Today you open an app and swipe into oblivion and no one seems good enough. I've heard many people say that; both men and women. I've had people show me perfectly nice looking people they met through online dating and they either swiped right or rejected them after one date because they weren't good enough. And again, it's important to marry someone you want to marry and not marry just because you're getting older or for the sake of it. Those marriages, more often than not, end in divorce. But I see a lot of people either using Tinder as a way to get as many one night stands as possible, or swiping away looking for someone perfect who they'll never find. I also know people who developed severe depression because they were on the receiving end of perpetuated ghosting. I am, by no means, saying that online dating hasn't worked for people, but it just seems like it's done more harm than it's done good.
Bartweiss 7y ago
This might suffice as supporting data: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35535424 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35535424 There are a lot of interesting things here, although some (like that first graph) are rather subtle. In particular, I'd point everyone to the graph over time of where straight Americans met their partners. To my eye, it has three distinctive elements. First, finding romance at a traditional "third place" has been almost completely destroyed. Meeting a partner through family, neighbors, church, or college shows an undulation in the sixties, followed by a sharp downturn in the last decade. Second, meeting partners through work or friends has ceased to be a replacement. The decline in e.g. church meetings was thoroughly offset by professional and social meetings until the mid-nineties, but those meeting sources have been declining since. Third, the spike in online meetings, and the s-curve in bar/club meetings. Crucially, this happens after meetings through friends and coworkers flatline; they aren't just being displaced by online dating, they stopped prior to that explosion. Alongside all of those patterns, we can add the rising age of first marriage, the lowering frequency of sex (overall and within relationships), the rising gap in sexual intent versus outcome in both men and women (i.e. how much less sex people are having than they want), and the gap between intended and actual family size. A lot of the most obvious relationship shifts over the last ~70 years seem clearly good, and seem to benefit the people I know. But the data overwhelmingly suggests that people are forming relationships later and with more difficulty, with outcomes further from what they intend.

ausbah 7y ago

Isn't the opposite true? That in the age of Tinder, meeting people is easier than ever - and so it should be more likely for someone to also fall in love with someone. I don't see how the limited dating pools of the past provide any advantage on this front. It doesn't make sense to me that people today would "hold out for the perfect mate" when exposed to a larger dating pool - my thinking would be that when people have met someone they have a good relationship with they will settle down. I also don't buy the idea that someone has already "rejected someone when meeting them for the first time, if they weren't interested they wouldn't have gone on the date.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Tinder only works for a subset of the population due to human behavior. Women largely select for traits that are a proxy for alpha status. The same applies to all online dating. There is a paradox of choice going on where there is so much available that everyone ratchets up their minimum requirements.
conmarap 7y ago
The bottomline is that I've seen it happen in real life, to people in my social circle and family. I wrote a reply to another comment that addressed something similar. The best way I can create a correlation in the real world is this way: If you go to a restaurant with 20 choices it takes people much longer to order something as opposed to a restaurant that can fit their menu on one page. It's some psychological paradox, or research, that I can't remember. Someone actually replied with a TED talk that touches on this matter.

bumby 7y ago

Your Tinder comment made me think of Barry Schwartz and his "paradox of choice" where too much choice ultimately leads to more unhappiness because it sets the expectation that, will all these options, we should expect to find 'perfect' https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...

conmarap 7y ago
Thank you for linking this.