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Who are these "elites" saying "marriage doesn't matter?" Like literally I've never heard an economic or educational elite talk in a disparaging way about marri

Who are these "elites" saying "marriage doesn't matter?" Like literally I've never heard an economic or educational elite talk in a disparaging way about marriage in my entire life of living and working among them. The absolute most I've herd in that direction are things like "People shouldn't feel like they need to get married if they don't want to" and "people should be supported if they want to leave an abusive marriage."

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
I don't know if I count as educational elite, but I have a few degrees, so does my wife, and we have talked disparagingly about marriage in the past. My gripe is that marriage, as an institution, ought to evolve to meet the people's changing needs, and by codifying it, the government locks in features (like the assumptions about gender or money or about who gets to make medical choices of certain kinds) which might then later fail to match up with how the people are living. So it's not that I think it's irrelevant, it's just that I think it could serve us better if we kept a cleaner divide between what we practice socially and what we legislate. Whatever it is that you might need a reference to marriage for in the law, instead create separate decoupled systems for handling those things. More flexible that way. We weren't going to bother with the marriage paperwork, because who cares what the state thinks. But then we did our taxes both ways and decided to swallow our pride and take the money.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I used to think similarly to you, but now I realize that between my wife and I (4 graduate degrees between the two of us so maybe we are in a similar boat) what really matters is that we pattern our life on the concept of traditional marriage we inherited from the past generations rather than put a confused modern spin on it. I think the point of this article is that marriage works surprisingly (to a modern expectation) well. If you take everything out of it, then maybe the benefits would get stripped as well.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I don't disagree that traditional marriage works. Despite all attempts to reject tradition, we've ended up living a pretty traditional married life. We wouldn't have ended up here if it wasn't a stable equilibrium. But I think the following are equally valid explanations for the results: > Marriage is good, actually. > Society treats unmarried women poorly, so much so that it damages their health. It would be interesting to see if the results replicate with a sample of men.
    - bluefirebrand 4y ago
      > Society treats unmarried women poorly, so much so that it damages their health I think we might live in different universes. What my observations are right now is that many women are choosing to remain single because they are thriving just fine without a man in their lives. Unmarried Men are turning into incels who are bitter, angry at the world and they are unquestionably socially damaged and ostracized. Perhaps I'm struggling to see past my own perspective here though.
      - jfowief 4y ago
        Of course it's the women who often have unrealistic standards and much less of a drive to find a mate, for basic evolutionary reasons found in the vast majority of sexually reproducing animals.
      - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        When we got married, we didn't tell anybody. We had already been living like we were married for years, so it was just a tax thing. A year or so later, my wife decided she wanted to have a party and make a big deal about it--the primary driver for this decision was that she noticed that her female co-workers weren't treating her like a professional, and she suspected it was because they didn't see her as really married. I didn't press the issue, we had a party, it was great. But apparently, women treat unmarried women differently in professional contexts. Also, men do. Also, the IRS does. Also, parents do. Do nurses without a family end up working different hours? There are a lot of factors. I'm just saying that it's really difficult to sort out whether being married helped these women because it's so great, or whether not being married harmed the other ones because they were treated poorly in ways we don't understand.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  I don't think this constitutes denigration of marriage. Its just totally normal reflection about the institution and its role in and interaction with the state. It doesn't sound like you actively preached to people that they "shouldn't get married" and that marriage qua marriage is bad.
est31 4y ago
If you take "people with college degrees" as elites, you can see two things documented in surveys: a) way less people with college degrees think that marriage is important if a couple has children together than people without college degrees (25% vs 31% in 2020). This holds also when you ask them whether marriage is important for life partners (31% vs 42% in 2020). All this while b) people with college degrees have higher ratios of marriages than people without. a) https://news.gallup.com/poll/316223/fewer-say-important-parents-married.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/316223/fewer-say-important-pare... b) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/14/as-u-s-marriage-rate-hovers-at-50-education-gap-in-marital-status-widens/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/14/as-u-s-marr...
- ryandrake 4y ago
  More than half of working age adults have college degrees. I wouldn’t call that a satisfying definition of “elite”. When I think of the elite I’m thinking heads of state, CEOs, and leaders of the arts and sciences. Not a rando marketing manager with an English degree.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  Right, but this difference in opinion hardly constitutes an active denigration of marriage. And this survey result actually undermines the idea that marriage decline is _because of_ elite opinion that marriage isn't important: the classes with the highest rates of divorce and unmarried parenting actually believe marriage is _more important_ than those with the lowest. Gee, I wonder if there is a material, economic, explanation for the stability of various family structures in different classes?

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

I don't know if I count as educational elite, but I have a few degrees, so does my wife, and we have talked disparagingly about marriage in the past. My gripe is that marriage, as an institution, ought to evolve to meet the people's changing needs, and by codifying it, the government locks in features (like the assumptions about gender or money or about who gets to make medical choices of certain kinds) which might then later fail to match up with how the people are living. So it's not that I think it's irrelevant, it's just that I think it could serve us better if we kept a cleaner divide between what we practice socially and what we legislate. Whatever it is that you might need a reference to marriage for in the law, instead create separate decoupled systems for handling those things. More flexible that way. We weren't going to bother with the marriage paperwork, because who cares what the state thinks. But then we did our taxes both ways and decided to swallow our pride and take the money.

xyzelement 4y ago
I used to think similarly to you, but now I realize that between my wife and I (4 graduate degrees between the two of us so maybe we are in a similar boat) what really matters is that we pattern our life on the concept of traditional marriage we inherited from the past generations rather than put a confused modern spin on it. I think the point of this article is that marriage works surprisingly (to a modern expectation) well. If you take everything out of it, then maybe the benefits would get stripped as well.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I don't disagree that traditional marriage works. Despite all attempts to reject tradition, we've ended up living a pretty traditional married life. We wouldn't have ended up here if it wasn't a stable equilibrium. But I think the following are equally valid explanations for the results: > Marriage is good, actually. > Society treats unmarried women poorly, so much so that it damages their health. It would be interesting to see if the results replicate with a sample of men.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    > Society treats unmarried women poorly, so much so that it damages their health I think we might live in different universes. What my observations are right now is that many women are choosing to remain single because they are thriving just fine without a man in their lives. Unmarried Men are turning into incels who are bitter, angry at the world and they are unquestionably socially damaged and ostracized. Perhaps I'm struggling to see past my own perspective here though.
    - jfowief 4y ago
      Of course it's the women who often have unrealistic standards and much less of a drive to find a mate, for basic evolutionary reasons found in the vast majority of sexually reproducing animals.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      When we got married, we didn't tell anybody. We had already been living like we were married for years, so it was just a tax thing. A year or so later, my wife decided she wanted to have a party and make a big deal about it--the primary driver for this decision was that she noticed that her female co-workers weren't treating her like a professional, and she suspected it was because they didn't see her as really married. I didn't press the issue, we had a party, it was great. But apparently, women treat unmarried women differently in professional contexts. Also, men do. Also, the IRS does. Also, parents do. Do nurses without a family end up working different hours? There are a lot of factors. I'm just saying that it's really difficult to sort out whether being married helped these women because it's so great, or whether not being married harmed the other ones because they were treated poorly in ways we don't understand.
nathan_compton 4y ago
I don't think this constitutes denigration of marriage. Its just totally normal reflection about the institution and its role in and interaction with the state. It doesn't sound like you actively preached to people that they "shouldn't get married" and that marriage qua marriage is bad.

est31 4y ago

If you take "people with college degrees" as elites, you can see two things documented in surveys: a) way less people with college degrees think that marriage is important if a couple has children together than people without college degrees (25% vs 31% in 2020). This holds also when you ask them whether marriage is important for life partners (31% vs 42% in 2020). All this while b) people with college degrees have higher ratios of marriages than people without. a) https://news.gallup.com/poll/316223/fewer-say-important-parents-married.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/316223/fewer-say-important-pare... b) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/14/as-u-s-marriage-rate-hovers-at-50-education-gap-in-marital-status-widens/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/14/as-u-s-marr...

ryandrake 4y ago
More than half of working age adults have college degrees. I wouldn’t call that a satisfying definition of “elite”. When I think of the elite I’m thinking heads of state, CEOs, and leaders of the arts and sciences. Not a rando marketing manager with an English degree.
nathan_compton 4y ago
Right, but this difference in opinion hardly constitutes an active denigration of marriage. And this survey result actually undermines the idea that marriage decline is _because of_ elite opinion that marriage isn't important: the classes with the highest rates of divorce and unmarried parenting actually believe marriage is _more important_ than those with the lowest. Gee, I wonder if there is a material, economic, explanation for the stability of various family structures in different classes?