4 ms·

Marriage is actually a great financial choice for most people. If marriage rates are dropping, I'd blame our culture — the financial incentives are clearly ther

Marriage is actually a great financial choice for most people. If marriage rates are dropping, I'd blame our culture — the financial incentives are clearly there.

munk-a 5y ago
Young people get pretty bombarded by divorce horror stories - especially from pop culture. Most divorces don't go to a court and a large number are resolved entirely internally and only seek professional help for the finalization of the agreement... but there are the attention grabbing headlines of someone being left with only the shirt on his back (and like 20 mil in options) on the far side of a really bad divorce. I also think that culture does play a fair role. I was initially hesitant to marry (as a millennial) because a lot of my friends were being denied the ability to marry who they chose, so I wanted to stand with them and reject the institution. That, thankfully, has been resolved - but I can totally understand people who have mixed feelings on marriage.
- pm90 5y ago
  There have always been divorce horror stories. The systemic reasons for declining marriage rates are mostly financial. The American middle class has seen declining incomes for the past generation or so, with rising student loan payments, unaffordable housing, expensive childcare etc. You have to be making a lot of income to seriously consider having children.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Whether it is mostly financial is still being debated. Even Norway (which has orders of magnitudes more in savings per capita) has low marriage rates. Abstractly, marriage was a giant public act of consent due to the consequences of sex. Now, sex is decoupled from marriage, so the institution isn’t needed in secular culture.
lazide 5y ago
Only if you manage to avoid the often catastrophic downside risks, which are very apparent and very frequent in many industries. It's quite straightforward and convenient (in that there is an entire industry in family law serving it) to completely destroy decades of earnings and often times decades of future earnings for one or both parties. Have seen it happen, and literally half of the couples in the 'good part of town' where I used to live which was populated almost exclusively by well educated white collar professionals were either going through it/at some stage of it, or were in a clearly abusive situation that might even have benefited from doing it - as long as they didn't wait for the other party to really screw them over by pulling the trigger first and alleging abuse or whatever. A friends neighbor had been on the receiving end (along with their daughter) of literally years of verbal and emotional abuse from the wife for no apparent reason. She would go after neighbors too, if they dared to exist in her presence. Both of them were lawyers. Last time I was over there a month ago, after an hour of it, he just begged her to stop screaming in the most pitiful voice I've heard a man ever use. So she yelled at him more for being so pitiful. It's hard to really understand how terrible a prior trusted loved one can be until you've been on the other end of it. It's easy to assume it's because the other party did something wrong to deserve it too - but that is not usually the case in my experience. It's often lack of emotional regulation/healthy outlets for stress or life problems, usually reinforced by denial from the abuser. The abusee often can't figure out how to escape or feels held hostage, sometimes also by denial at their own problems or inability to cope that lead them to that state of insecurity. While marriage (the legal process) can magnify the upside, it can also dramatically magnify the downsides too, and make it MUCH MUCH harder to escape a bad situation for everyone. It's quite a shit sandwich. Always has been near as I can tell.
tiborsaas 5y ago
It's a shame to marry because of financial incentives.
- postsantum 5y ago
  Why? Marriage has always been a financial/political thing. Love marriage is a recent invention
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Depends on the culture. For example, Rome was converted (>50%) to Christianity in about two centuries due to the impact of opening Jewish family customs to the Gentiles (read: everyone not a Jew by blood) and a reformulation of what it means to love.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      Which customs?
  - tiborsaas 5y ago
    I never married anyone and certainly I would never do it for financial/political reasons. It also never crossed my mind that marrying for love makes me a modern thinker :)
q-big 5y ago
Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen. Of course you can. You can know thyself and know thy partner and have the maturity to understand what you're getting into, and the ability to commit despite that. EG: I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced, not because marriage is so easy but because we're both people who are able to work through difficulties towards a common goal. It requires self-awareness and work.
  - noisy_boy 5y ago
    Sure. However, there are plenty of not so straightforward people too who are very well aware of loopholes in our law, society and human psyche and they are happy to exploit them.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    What if you were drafted, served in a war overseas and came back with severe PTSD? For my parents generation that was a real thing that caused a lot of divorces.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Think of the tens of millions of families who last their dad in ww1 and ww2. Even that is echoing through time, because their missing influence probably impacted their Children’s success and so on.
  - toyg 5y ago
    > I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced You share this mindset with every divorced guy I know, including myself. Men just don't see it coming.

Marriage is actually a great financial choice for most people. If marriage rates are dropping, I'd blame our culture — the financial incentives are clearly there.

munk-a 5y ago

Young people get pretty bombarded by divorce horror stories - especially from pop culture. Most divorces don't go to a court and a large number are resolved entirely internally and only seek professional help for the finalization of the agreement... but there are the attention grabbing headlines of someone being left with only the shirt on his back (and like 20 mil in options) on the far side of a really bad divorce. I also think that culture does play a fair role. I was initially hesitant to marry (as a millennial) because a lot of my friends were being denied the ability to marry who they chose, so I wanted to stand with them and reject the institution. That, thankfully, has been resolved - but I can totally understand people who have mixed feelings on marriage.

pm90 5y ago
There have always been divorce horror stories. The systemic reasons for declining marriage rates are mostly financial. The American middle class has seen declining incomes for the past generation or so, with rising student loan payments, unaffordable housing, expensive childcare etc. You have to be making a lot of income to seriously consider having children.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Whether it is mostly financial is still being debated. Even Norway (which has orders of magnitudes more in savings per capita) has low marriage rates. Abstractly, marriage was a giant public act of consent due to the consequences of sex. Now, sex is decoupled from marriage, so the institution isn’t needed in secular culture.

lazide 5y ago

Only if you manage to avoid the often catastrophic downside risks, which are very apparent and very frequent in many industries. It's quite straightforward and convenient (in that there is an entire industry in family law serving it) to completely destroy decades of earnings and often times decades of future earnings for one or both parties. Have seen it happen, and literally half of the couples in the 'good part of town' where I used to live which was populated almost exclusively by well educated white collar professionals were either going through it/at some stage of it, or were in a clearly abusive situation that might even have benefited from doing it - as long as they didn't wait for the other party to really screw them over by pulling the trigger first and alleging abuse or whatever. A friends neighbor had been on the receiving end (along with their daughter) of literally years of verbal and emotional abuse from the wife for no apparent reason. She would go after neighbors too, if they dared to exist in her presence. Both of them were lawyers. Last time I was over there a month ago, after an hour of it, he just begged her to stop screaming in the most pitiful voice I've heard a man ever use. So she yelled at him more for being so pitiful. It's hard to really understand how terrible a prior trusted loved one can be until you've been on the other end of it. It's easy to assume it's because the other party did something wrong to deserve it too - but that is not usually the case in my experience. It's often lack of emotional regulation/healthy outlets for stress or life problems, usually reinforced by denial from the abuser. The abusee often can't figure out how to escape or feels held hostage, sometimes also by denial at their own problems or inability to cope that lead them to that state of insecurity. While marriage (the legal process) can magnify the upside, it can also dramatically magnify the downsides too, and make it MUCH MUCH harder to escape a bad situation for everyone. It's quite a shit sandwich. Always has been near as I can tell.

tiborsaas 5y ago

It's a shame to marry because of financial incentives.

postsantum 5y ago
Why? Marriage has always been a financial/political thing. Love marriage is a recent invention
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Depends on the culture. For example, Rome was converted (>50%) to Christianity in about two centuries due to the impact of opening Jewish family customs to the Gentiles (read: everyone not a Jew by blood) and a reformulation of what it means to love.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Which customs?
- tiborsaas 5y ago
  I never married anyone and certainly I would never do it for financial/political reasons. It also never crossed my mind that marrying for love makes me a modern thinker :)

q-big 5y ago

Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen.

xyzelement 5y ago
> Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen. Of course you can. You can know thyself and know thy partner and have the maturity to understand what you're getting into, and the ability to commit despite that. EG: I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced, not because marriage is so easy but because we're both people who are able to work through difficulties towards a common goal. It requires self-awareness and work.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  Sure. However, there are plenty of not so straightforward people too who are very well aware of loopholes in our law, society and human psyche and they are happy to exploit them.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  What if you were drafted, served in a war overseas and came back with severe PTSD? For my parents generation that was a real thing that caused a lot of divorces.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Think of the tens of millions of families who last their dad in ww1 and ww2. Even that is echoing through time, because their missing influence probably impacted their Children’s success and so on.
- toyg 5y ago
  > I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced You share this mindset with every divorced guy I know, including myself. Men just don't see it coming.