5 ms·

Nope. Statistically, having children before you get married is much more likely to result in worse outcomes. Maybe cause and effect is inverted, but maybe the b

Nope. Statistically, having children before you get married is much more likely to result in worse outcomes. Maybe cause and effect is inverted, but maybe the better option is to not run a social experiment in fatherless children as we have been doing for the past couple of decades with absolutely no research to suggest that it can result in positive outcomes and loads of data to show that it's almost definitely can't result in positive outcomes.

piva00 1y ago
Those are just statistics describing what happens, not why it happens. Why does having children before getting married creates worse outcomes? Can individuals or society do something about the qualitative aspect of it? Quantifying something doesn't explain it, it just... Quantifies it, deeper inspection is needed to understand what the statistics says. You are prescribing what needs to be done based on something that is, ultimately, descriptive.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  Do we have any data whatsoever that would support the claim that whether you are married before having children has no impact on your life outcome or the life outcomes of your children?
  - piva00 1y ago
    I don't think you understood my comment, I will spell it out: data by itself just quantifies, doesn't qualify. It doesn't qualify why marrying before having children is better, it just states that, for some reason, the outcomes are better. Now you need to do the qualitative research to understand what are the causes for it, it could be that marriage is a signal for stable relationships, in that case marrying doesn't matter but a stable relationship does (which is quite self-obvious, it's just an example). Marriage could also have tax implications in some countries, which in turn could help the average to better outcomes, so on and so forth. The data on this is enveloping much more than just "marriage" as a virtue, or any other moral aspect of it, you are using the data to imply that marriage is virtuous and is the cause for better outcomes which doesn't hold by just quantification... It's blindness by statistics, it's quite common when ascribing data as the sole truth. Data can guide you to investigate other aspects that will qualify why the data shows what it shows.
    - flanked-evergl 1y ago
      These things I named correlate to better outcomes, we have nothing that indicates that not doing these things generate similar favourable outcomes … but we should continue to tell people that it's not necessary for them to do these things to have good outcomes as we have not done enough qualitative research to know what almost all of our forefathers have known, and it's best that people experiment more and see if maybe the right combination of unemployment, promiscuity and lack of education could not create equally good outcomes for them. I have unfortunately not spent enough time at a university to follow this line of reasoning. Must be wild to be able to follow it. I'm of the yokel type that thinks if all data and tradition we have shows something works, then it's probably best to do the thing that works instead of trying things that we have no reason to think would work. But in line with tradition, the underclasses in the west has always been the favourite laboratory for the cultural elites in the west.
      - piva00 1y ago
        > These things I named correlate to better outcomes, we have nothing that indicates that not doing these things generate similar favourable outcomes Exactly, they correlate but there's nothing saying that just because traditionally it has correlated it means that getting married is the reason for it. Traditionally only marriage was accepted as the means to form a family, even up to this day people will be shunned by their families for having kids out of wedlock, even in a loving relationship, don't you think being shunned by grandparents would also cause worse outcomes? Considering that some of these being shunned are also of younger age, less support from family members would mean worse outcomes. Your data doesn't even discriminate about age groups, it's a blanket statement "marriage leads to better outcomes", leading to the question (which you could find data for): which groups? Are there other parameters/aspects that lead to better outcomes which are correlating with marriage rates? What about marriage exactly is causing better outcomes? It's not marriage itself since a lot of marriages end in divorce or an unhealthy home environment, so what is it? Those are the insights that data can lead you into. Your take is just to do whatever has been done because it's been working, without even questioning why it might work, and what can be done to lead to better outcomes without requiring marriage. > but we should continue to tell people that it's not necessary for them to do these things to have good outcomes as we have not done enough qualitative research to know what almost all of our forefathers have known, and it's best that people experiment more and see if maybe the right combination of unemployment, promiscuity and lack of education could not create equally good outcomes for them. This is just moral grandstanding without substance, the world changes, traditions change (the tradition of marriage used to be about property, changing ownership of a woman from her father to her husband, for example), just blind belief in traditions is, at best, ignorant, and at worst produces this bigoted worldview. You'd do much better if you believed in traditions while also questioning the "whys" behind it, at least to understand better why some tradition you believe might have created better outcomes, and how those processes can be applied outside of your tradition. That is, if you are a good person and want everyone else to also have a better life even if living outside of what your view of morality is, and not only living life the way your morality prescribes to because that's, supposedly, the only way.
darkwater 1y ago
I don't think you need to run any experiment. Being married or not is just signing a paper. What matters is if the couple live together and in harmony. You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common. That's why I'm saying you have cause and effect in the wrong order: children issues are tied to one or both parents not caring about them, and a symptom of that was having children before marriage, when marriage was "the only way" to a family. Nowadays things are different, and you can totally be a functional family without signing any contract on paper.
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  "Nowadays things are different" but is the modern way better??? or people just don't want to be held accountable if things go south in traditional way????
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    Not my downvote but I do usually see things going south in a traditional way more as a consequence of tradition itself of some kind, overcoming the better judgement it would have required to avoid such a fate.
    - tonyhart7 1y ago
      but you can apply the same thing to modern way, both are have cons here
      - fuzzfactor 1y ago
        Right. Modern ways can easily be worse with effects never before contemplated.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  > Being married or not is just signing a paper. If we ignore almost all of human history save for the past 50 years, then yes. If we redefine marriage to not mean what most humans that have ever used the word meant by it, then yes. But why would we do these things? If you call all relations between two human beings marriage, you gain nothing, you just lose a word. Marriage is a covenant between two people, a man and a woman, with God, and incidentally, this covenant, not a piece of paper, it's also a precondition for two people to live together and in harmony. It's a commitment by both people to focus not on themselves, but on the family unit and the wellbeing of that family unit. > You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common. Children of married parents still have better outcomes, and the lower income people are, the bigger the advantage of having married parents are.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
latexr 1y ago
Statistics without context can be misleading. It’s reasonable to assume that the cause is the prior situation which lead to it, not the act itself. Picture two scenarios: 1. A loving unmarried couple, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or child bearing, lives in an affluent neighbourhood, in a rich country, have steady incomes, and decide to have a child. After ten years they decide “I love you so much. I don’t need a piece of paper to prove that, but let’s get married. It’ll be a great opportunity to connect our friends and family, and it’ll give us some legal and financial protection when one of us dies”. 2. In a poor neighbourhood, a woman who was mistreated all her life marries her high school sweetheart, who turn out to be abusive. He not only beats her, he rapes her regularly. Like too many victims of domestic violence, she’s afraid to move away. Eventually she becomes pregnant and has the child against her will. Which of those do would produce the better outcome? Being fatherless isn’t in itself the issue, but everything which came before to reach that point might be. There is a huge difference between not having a father because he abandoned you, or because he died, or because your mother as a single affluent woman with the means to do so decided to do in-vitro fertilisation. I highly recommend “New Family Values”, by Andrew Solomon, to get a feeling for the different types of families which work. It goes way beyond “one mother, one father, married”. https://andrewsolomon.com/books/new-family-values-audiobook/ https://andrewsolomon.com/books/new-family-values-audiobook/
- programmarchy 1y ago
  An analogy Statement: Statistically, seatbelts reduce the chances you’ll die in a car accident. You: But, what if your car crashes into a lake and you get trapped underwater?
  - darkwater 1y ago
    Wait, what? An analogy to your not-a-correct-analogy: Statement: Statistically, richer people die less in a car accident. You (or GP): get rich and survive car accidents!
- mainecoder 1y ago
  Proof by analogy is fraud" - Bjarne Stroustrup Yes; page 692 of TC++PL. A good analogy is an excellent way of illustrating an idea, but far too often such analogies are not accompanied by solid reasoning, data, etc

piva00 1y ago

Those are just statistics describing what happens, not why it happens. Why does having children before getting married creates worse outcomes? Can individuals or society do something about the qualitative aspect of it? Quantifying something doesn't explain it, it just... Quantifies it, deeper inspection is needed to understand what the statistics says. You are prescribing what needs to be done based on something that is, ultimately, descriptive.

flanked-evergl 1y ago
Do we have any data whatsoever that would support the claim that whether you are married before having children has no impact on your life outcome or the life outcomes of your children?
- piva00 1y ago
  I don't think you understood my comment, I will spell it out: data by itself just quantifies, doesn't qualify. It doesn't qualify why marrying before having children is better, it just states that, for some reason, the outcomes are better. Now you need to do the qualitative research to understand what are the causes for it, it could be that marriage is a signal for stable relationships, in that case marrying doesn't matter but a stable relationship does (which is quite self-obvious, it's just an example). Marriage could also have tax implications in some countries, which in turn could help the average to better outcomes, so on and so forth. The data on this is enveloping much more than just "marriage" as a virtue, or any other moral aspect of it, you are using the data to imply that marriage is virtuous and is the cause for better outcomes which doesn't hold by just quantification... It's blindness by statistics, it's quite common when ascribing data as the sole truth. Data can guide you to investigate other aspects that will qualify why the data shows what it shows.
  - flanked-evergl 1y ago
    These things I named correlate to better outcomes, we have nothing that indicates that not doing these things generate similar favourable outcomes … but we should continue to tell people that it's not necessary for them to do these things to have good outcomes as we have not done enough qualitative research to know what almost all of our forefathers have known, and it's best that people experiment more and see if maybe the right combination of unemployment, promiscuity and lack of education could not create equally good outcomes for them. I have unfortunately not spent enough time at a university to follow this line of reasoning. Must be wild to be able to follow it. I'm of the yokel type that thinks if all data and tradition we have shows something works, then it's probably best to do the thing that works instead of trying things that we have no reason to think would work. But in line with tradition, the underclasses in the west has always been the favourite laboratory for the cultural elites in the west.
    - piva00 1y ago
      > These things I named correlate to better outcomes, we have nothing that indicates that not doing these things generate similar favourable outcomes Exactly, they correlate but there's nothing saying that just because traditionally it has correlated it means that getting married is the reason for it. Traditionally only marriage was accepted as the means to form a family, even up to this day people will be shunned by their families for having kids out of wedlock, even in a loving relationship, don't you think being shunned by grandparents would also cause worse outcomes? Considering that some of these being shunned are also of younger age, less support from family members would mean worse outcomes. Your data doesn't even discriminate about age groups, it's a blanket statement "marriage leads to better outcomes", leading to the question (which you could find data for): which groups? Are there other parameters/aspects that lead to better outcomes which are correlating with marriage rates? What about marriage exactly is causing better outcomes? It's not marriage itself since a lot of marriages end in divorce or an unhealthy home environment, so what is it? Those are the insights that data can lead you into. Your take is just to do whatever has been done because it's been working, without even questioning why it might work, and what can be done to lead to better outcomes without requiring marriage. > but we should continue to tell people that it's not necessary for them to do these things to have good outcomes as we have not done enough qualitative research to know what almost all of our forefathers have known, and it's best that people experiment more and see if maybe the right combination of unemployment, promiscuity and lack of education could not create equally good outcomes for them. This is just moral grandstanding without substance, the world changes, traditions change (the tradition of marriage used to be about property, changing ownership of a woman from her father to her husband, for example), just blind belief in traditions is, at best, ignorant, and at worst produces this bigoted worldview. You'd do much better if you believed in traditions while also questioning the "whys" behind it, at least to understand better why some tradition you believe might have created better outcomes, and how those processes can be applied outside of your tradition. That is, if you are a good person and want everyone else to also have a better life even if living outside of what your view of morality is, and not only living life the way your morality prescribes to because that's, supposedly, the only way.

darkwater 1y ago

I don't think you need to run any experiment. Being married or not is just signing a paper. What matters is if the couple live together and in harmony. You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common. That's why I'm saying you have cause and effect in the wrong order: children issues are tied to one or both parents not caring about them, and a symptom of that was having children before marriage, when marriage was "the only way" to a family. Nowadays things are different, and you can totally be a functional family without signing any contract on paper.

tonyhart7 1y ago
"Nowadays things are different" but is the modern way better??? or people just don't want to be held accountable if things go south in traditional way????
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  Not my downvote but I do usually see things going south in a traditional way more as a consequence of tradition itself of some kind, overcoming the better judgement it would have required to avoid such a fate.
  - tonyhart7 1y ago
    but you can apply the same thing to modern way, both are have cons here
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      Right. Modern ways can easily be worse with effects never before contemplated.
flanked-evergl 1y ago
> Being married or not is just signing a paper. If we ignore almost all of human history save for the past 50 years, then yes. If we redefine marriage to not mean what most humans that have ever used the word meant by it, then yes. But why would we do these things? If you call all relations between two human beings marriage, you gain nothing, you just lose a word. Marriage is a covenant between two people, a man and a woman, with God, and incidentally, this covenant, not a piece of paper, it's also a precondition for two people to live together and in harmony. It's a commitment by both people to focus not on themselves, but on the family unit and the wellbeing of that family unit. > You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common. Children of married parents still have better outcomes, and the lower income people are, the bigger the advantage of having married parents are.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

latexr 1y ago

Statistics without context can be misleading. It’s reasonable to assume that the cause is the prior situation which lead to it, not the act itself. Picture two scenarios: 1. A loving unmarried couple, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or child bearing, lives in an affluent neighbourhood, in a rich country, have steady incomes, and decide to have a child. After ten years they decide “I love you so much. I don’t need a piece of paper to prove that, but let’s get married. It’ll be a great opportunity to connect our friends and family, and it’ll give us some legal and financial protection when one of us dies”. 2. In a poor neighbourhood, a woman who was mistreated all her life marries her high school sweetheart, who turn out to be abusive. He not only beats her, he rapes her regularly. Like too many victims of domestic violence, she’s afraid to move away. Eventually she becomes pregnant and has the child against her will. Which of those do would produce the better outcome? Being fatherless isn’t in itself the issue, but everything which came before to reach that point might be. There is a huge difference between not having a father because he abandoned you, or because he died, or because your mother as a single affluent woman with the means to do so decided to do in-vitro fertilisation. I highly recommend “New Family Values”, by Andrew Solomon, to get a feeling for the different types of families which work. It goes way beyond “one mother, one father, married”. https://andrewsolomon.com/books/new-family-values-audiobook/ https://andrewsolomon.com/books/new-family-values-audiobook/

programmarchy 1y ago
An analogy Statement: Statistically, seatbelts reduce the chances you’ll die in a car accident. You: But, what if your car crashes into a lake and you get trapped underwater?
- darkwater 1y ago
  Wait, what? An analogy to your not-a-correct-analogy: Statement: Statistically, richer people die less in a car accident. You (or GP): get rich and survive car accidents!
mainecoder 1y ago
Proof by analogy is fraud" - Bjarne Stroustrup Yes; page 692 of TC++PL. A good analogy is an excellent way of illustrating an idea, but far too often such analogies are not accompanied by solid reasoning, data, etc