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To some degree Chesterton's fence applies here: if you don't know why a fence was put up, don't demolish it until you find out. Many taboos and instincts have

To some degree Chesterton's fence applies here: if you don't know why a fence was put up, don't demolish it until you find out. Many taboos and instincts have their roots in completely outdated utility - racism and sexism both used to serve evolutionary purposes, but stuck around LONG after they became useless. Other taboos and traditions are still useful for society today, but are somewhat under attack - like the taboo on divorce/single parenthood. Studies show that children of divorced parents have much worse outcomes than children of parents who are still together, controlling for most variables. I think there is a large chunk of society that is afraid we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so they think it's better to keep the bathwater...

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I'm quite sceptical of these studies. I don't see how you control for the fact that couples who stay together are happier on average. That's why they're still together(at least some of the time), whereas divorcees are by definition not happy together. To have a proper comparison you need to compare divorced parents to married, but miserable parents. Growing up with the latter can be just as miserable or possibly even more if it's an abusive marriage.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  You don't need to control for that. We're looking at total outcomes, not individual points; it doesn't matter how it reaches the effect. Here's a proposition: Learning to make compromises and achieve partnership with your partner and growing into it is the behavior most associated with happiness of couples. Having removed the obvious necessity of it, we've created a society with much more focus on individual wants and needs that gains less from cooperation, resulting in lower average outcomes. Absolutely, the stigma on divorce was once too high, resulting in people staying in abusive relationships too long. But people still stay in abusive relationships. We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    That's a very nice just-so story, no doubt carefully constructed to fit your world view. Now, a vague reference to "studies" and a biased just-so story might convince you but I'm far from convinced by this.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out. Do we really need to encourage happy, healthy, and successful committed partnerships? Don't most people desire that for themselves? We should probably avoid outright discouraging them, but I suspect that most people are wanting a good, happy, loving, relationship and that if they divorce it's because they didn't have one. I really don't think that it's simply a matter of most people seeing divorce as being so easy and consequence free that there's no value in putting in the effort to work things out with their spouses either. Especially not when children are involved.
    - GauntletWizard 4y ago
      Not encourage in the "rah rah, you should want this" sense, but in the "here's how to achieve this" sense - not running away is kinda key. And it's become impossible to call out bad advice in the current climate. You can call out good advice as much as you want, because it's common wisdom, but any criticism of things that have been historically looked down upon as terrible ideas because they are is "punching down".

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

I'm quite sceptical of these studies. I don't see how you control for the fact that couples who stay together are happier on average. That's why they're still together(at least some of the time), whereas divorcees are by definition not happy together. To have a proper comparison you need to compare divorced parents to married, but miserable parents. Growing up with the latter can be just as miserable or possibly even more if it's an abusive marriage.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
You don't need to control for that. We're looking at total outcomes, not individual points; it doesn't matter how it reaches the effect. Here's a proposition: Learning to make compromises and achieve partnership with your partner and growing into it is the behavior most associated with happiness of couples. Having removed the obvious necessity of it, we've created a society with much more focus on individual wants and needs that gains less from cooperation, resulting in lower average outcomes. Absolutely, the stigma on divorce was once too high, resulting in people staying in abusive relationships too long. But people still stay in abusive relationships. We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  That's a very nice just-so story, no doubt carefully constructed to fit your world view. Now, a vague reference to "studies" and a biased just-so story might convince you but I'm far from convinced by this.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out. Do we really need to encourage happy, healthy, and successful committed partnerships? Don't most people desire that for themselves? We should probably avoid outright discouraging them, but I suspect that most people are wanting a good, happy, loving, relationship and that if they divorce it's because they didn't have one. I really don't think that it's simply a matter of most people seeing divorce as being so easy and consequence free that there's no value in putting in the effort to work things out with their spouses either. Especially not when children are involved.
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    Not encourage in the "rah rah, you should want this" sense, but in the "here's how to achieve this" sense - not running away is kinda key. And it's become impossible to call out bad advice in the current climate. You can call out good advice as much as you want, because it's common wisdom, but any criticism of things that have been historically looked down upon as terrible ideas because they are is "punching down".