The spike in divorces starting in the 1970s can be largely attributed to the woman's liberation movement and is most likely a historic anomaly in the long term view.
>“Two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women,” said William Doherty, a marriage therapist and professor of family social science at University of Minnesota, “so when you’re talking about changes in divorce rates, in many ways you’re talking about changes in women’s expectations.”
>In the 1950s and 1960s, marriage was about a breadwinner husband and a homemaker wife, who both needed the other’s contributions to the household but didn’t necessarily spend much time together. In the 1970s, all that changed.
>Ultimately, a long view is likely to show that the rapid rise in divorce during the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly. It occurred at the same time as a new feminist movement, which caused social and economic upheaval. Today, society has adapted, and the divorce rate has declined again.
>If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot).
That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced.
Furthermore, people like the GP act like marriage and divorce is just a diceroll. However, you can do many, many things to decrease your likelihood of divorcing. Openly communicating about expectations before marriage is one of them.
> If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot).
"Nearly two-thirds" is, let's say, 60% success rate. Which means 40% failure rate. Which is exactly in the middle of the 30-50% window I mentioned (the fact that it's a window speaks to the effect that all these other variables can have on it).
Again, that's across all cohorts, with significant variation by education, income, and age... which is why high-level statistics like that are horribly misleading: it doesn't tell the whole story by a mile.
"That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced." Like by a lot! I assume if you are on hacker news you are at least two of the three.
But, yes, people who eschew marriage specifically to make breaking up easy are bad candidates for a successful marriage, almost by definition.
(I married someone who previously went through a divorce)
> But, yes, people who eschew marriage specifically to make breaking up easy are bad candidates for a successful marriage, almost by definition.
And people who don't eschew marriage ostensibly because they are ideal non-eschewing candidates still experience a prreeetty significant failure rate, despite apparently never imagining the possibility at inception.
You know who has a 0% divorce rate? People who eschew marriage. Exactly by definition.
To quote WarGames, "The only winning move is not to play."
You're defending driving a car with a 30% serious-accident rate while I choose to bike... Think about it.
It's not misleading. It's undetailed/undecomposed.
Which is to say, yes, there are some people for which it is on the high end, and other people for which it is on the low end.
But the best evidence I've seen puts the bell-curve window at 30-50%. When you wish to talk about the institution in generalities, you cannot help but describe it according to all its participants. I'm talking about marriage, not white college-educated late marriage or third marriage or single-parent prior to marriage. You would be arguably somewhat correct in attacking generalities (in general). It's debatable. But that is the bound of what we are discussing.
In my case, the stats don't look great. If we take the best possible chance of divorce of 10% (and that is being really optimistic) and double that for an ADHD diagnosis (see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your-attenti...) we get 20%. I would not drive a car with a 20% chance of a serious accident, therefore I opt out of a 20% chance to contribute to a $50 billion dollar divorce industry and losing half (or more) of the net worth I have worked hard to accrue in a legal system that is biased against me.
Why are you in a romantic relationship at all then? Non-marriage romantic relationships have a -MUCH- higher failure rate. At least be ideologically consistent.
You should probably just break up with your girlfriend now because you have some very serious commitment issues.
Why is your thinking so binary? (Also, false dichotomy fallacy.) Have you been so brainwashed by the all-consuming institution that you have become blind to any other option? I have no issues with commitment, just this institution and its unreasonable expectations of lifetime commitment or else. Especially makes less sense if you don't have kids.
That won't work very well. You register for multiple classes at once, not just one. Which class(es) you register for are dependent on when the other classes you registered for are scheduled. It's hard to get a schedule with classes that don't overlap if you are uncertain if you'd get a seat in a couple classes.
The title of the article is "To Stay in Love, Sign on the Dotted Line," but there's absolutely nothing in it that supports the title. All it is is about an unmarried woman whose been in a relationship for only 3 years saying a scheduled conversations and paper an pen (or keyboard in this case) helps her have relationship communication.
The title should really be "communication is helpful for my new relationship."
It's misguided at best to conclude every couple should create this sort of formal contract. Every couple communicates differently.
Precisely. I kept waiting for a paragraph beginning: "and now, ten years into our marriage..."
But it never came, since this couple isn't married and hasn't even been dating that long. Clickbait titles like this are common on the internet, but I expect better from the New York Times. This article is bereft of anything remotely newsworthy. Perhaps their new slogan should be "All the news that's fit to print, plus some vapid millennial musings".
I actually wouldn't mind it if it was an op-ed with a title such as "how I learned effective relationship communication." But with that title I am expecting something of substance.
Also saying they were drinking beers while doing it has the implication that they needed alcohol to be able to have such important conversations. Not saying that's the case, I'm saying it gives the impression.
It's also a reference to the author's article, To Fall in Love, Do This [0] which I remember as being extremely popular and shared all over social media when it was published.
Prior to the Supreme Court decision some employers (including my own) extended health insurance benefits to same sex domestic partnerships (but it was not required) but did not extend them to different sex partnerships. Since that decision my employer has ceased providing benefits for partnerships at all regardless of genders.
There's reasons folks would do this over a marriage including, like a friend of mine, simply not believing that marriage should be a thing the government should be involved in.
Yes. Ironically it was created as a "fallback position" to full-on marriage for non-straight people. For the sake of equality it had to apply to everyone of course, though. You get many of the rights of marriage such as mutual health coverage, visitation rights etc... But without all the cruft.
In what jurisdiction is this? How do you enter such a relationship? How does dissolution work in such a relationship? What sort of "cruft" does marriage have that a "domestic partnership" lack? Also does this "legal arrangement" carry over to other jurisdictions? And assuming we are talking about the US isn't "mutual health coverage" decided by the employer or plan administrator? I know Tricare does not allow sponsors to enroll non-married partners, for example.
I live in NY, USA, I don't know about other areas.
I did find this while googling the Tricare thing: "The military does not recognize Common Law marriages or domestic partners unless they are legally married." I don't know if this applies equally to same-sex and opposite-sex partners, though, but being a US vet of 4 years in the USAF, I'm not terribly surprised if that's true, although it looks like the courts are slowly coming around.
> How do you enter such a relationship?
Signing a single piece of paper at the office of your local government
> How does dissolution work in such a relationship?
You sign another single piece of paper at the office of your local government. No lawyers necessary.
> What sort of "cruft" does marriage have that a "domestic partnership" lack?
Oh, where do I begin? The history of marriage is mostly the story of men owning women. Marriage is perversely incentivized against if the male has a vastly disproportionate net worth from his would-be spouse (this is the case in my case). Marriage has a 30-50% failure rate despite the fact that 100% of people, on their wedding day, would never imagine getting a divorce in a million years (why else would you get married and toss away all future romantic options, right?)... This speaks to a certain lack of realistic behavior on the part of humans who engage in it. Marriage dissolution is biased in favor of women and especially against fathers (see this Everyday Feminism article on it http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/08/bias-against-fathers/). The difficulty of entering and escaping a marriage to begin with perversely incentivizes taking your partner for granted, being lazy about keeping up your appeal, and generally being a worse person than you'd have to be if your partner could easily escape the arrangement at any point. Enforced sexual exclusivity (as opposed to sexual exclusivity by daily choice) perversely incentivizes lust for others outside the relationship. Weddings themselves are a giant waste of money and the marriage success rate is inversely proportional to the amount spent on them. Diamonds are only valuable because of a DeBeers monopoly and marketing campaign, and until recently had a lot of blood on their hands (to be fair, though, I did get her a fat-ass diamond ring, because she wanted SOME indicator of our commitment. I acquiesced to this silly trinket, because she insisted it would make her happier. Which it did. lol.)
I am generally of the opinion that financial incentives to marry are terrible. I have a low opinion of financial incentives to begin with (despite being successful in this regard, I have always prioritized financial incentives last... perhaps an entrepreneurial privilege); an institution that is supposedly romantic should not be tainted with financial interests.
Lastly, Steph and I once started a discussion about a potential prenup in a hypothetical marriage and within 5 seconds after throwing out a single figure, we got into a fight, so I tabled it indefinitely and said let's just do a DP instead.
Anyway, I'm an engineer. Parts with anything more than a 1% failure rate get replaced. Would you drive a car that had a 30-50% chance of putting you in a serious accident? How about a medical procedure that had a 30-50% chance of maiming you? If not, then why in the name of all that is good and rational would you roll the dice on marriage?
Steve Jobs believed with all his heart that his all-fruit diet would cure his pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs is also no longer with us. Perhaps it's time to let the science and the data speak to us, instead of engaging in irrational flights of fancy. It seems to be working in every other area of life where it's applied...
I honestly think marriage should be a celebration you achieve AFTER being together for (say) 15 years. THEN you have a right to celebrate. But I don't make the rules, sadly. ;)
> Also does this "legal arrangement" carry over to other jurisdictions?
I don't know. Don't really intend to move elsewhere in the foreseeable future.
> And assuming we are talking about the US isn't "mutual health coverage" decided by the employer or plan administrator?
That's possible. It's working in our arrangement and with our jobs.
We also saw a lawyer about creating a will that mentioned each other, btw.
I'm not sure what the history of marriage has to do with civil marriage today, it's irrelevant.
You can say the same thing about relationships in general, why date someone if there's a very good you'd break up (most relationships are unsuccessful)? Why be friends with anyone when everyone will eventually die? Why get a dog when there's a 99.9% they will die before you? Why start a business when most fail? See how stupid that sounds? If we don't take risks we never get rewards.
What makes you think divorce requires lawyers? It doesn't unless the two parties can't agree. Seriously, my husband didn't have a lawyer for his divorce and neither did his ex wife. His divorce was a fill-in-the-blanks piece of paper. It was just as simple as can be, the only difference was the 7 Month waiting period. Literally, fill out a 2 page paper, judge signs off on it.
If "domestic partner" and you don't agree on your separation lawyers will have to be involved anyways. Happened to a friend of mine. Not being married didn't keep him out of court when him and his ex girlfriend didn't agree on child support and division of property. Buy a house with your girlfriend and you break up and can't agree on what to do with the house? Court. Have kids together and can't agree on custody? Court.
Medical coverage is irrelevant because employees and plan organizers decide on who their plan covers. Medical decisions can be accomplished with a living will and medical directive. Your "domestic partnership" isn't going to work outside of your city and you could get injured while travelling so you're going to need those anyways. You still need a will for inheritance... So I don't see a single benefit.
After gay marriage was legalized in all states there's exactly a -ZERO- percentage probability that the military is going to start enrolling non spouses. Guaranteed. The military is not in the business of providing benefits to people who are not even trustworthy enough to make their relationship legal.
I totally understand why someone would not want to get married. I can't understand why someone would want a fake "marriage."... but whatever.
Windsor vs the United States was based on inheritance taxes
So you are saying it someone says "I work at Uber, it's not much different than any other tech company" they will be burned at the steak?
Your rank-and-file employees are not even going to get much more than a "oh really?" when they say "I work at Uber." I used to work for a company that is pretty shady that the majority of people has a very negative opinion on, much more so than Uber. When I said I worked there to others nobody said much of note and certainly nothing like "you're a Nazi." Actually, I take that back, one person said "I could never work there" and I replied with "I can understand why you'd feel that way." That was it!
Even if someone says something, receiving some very mild criticism for holding an unpopular opinion is not the end of the world, it's called life. It's not a witch hunt and you're not some sort of victim.
Amazon's product questions are like that. It seems people get the emailed question and think a person has reached out to them, they respond "sorry i haven't used it yet", or whatever, and that fits in with the other 20 useless answers.
They don't appear to have user rating on answers, only on reviews?
The spike in divorces starting in the 1970s can be largely attributed to the woman's liberation movement and is most likely a historic anomaly in the long term view.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-...
>“Two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women,” said William Doherty, a marriage therapist and professor of family social science at University of Minnesota, “so when you’re talking about changes in divorce rates, in many ways you’re talking about changes in women’s expectations.”
>In the 1950s and 1960s, marriage was about a breadwinner husband and a homemaker wife, who both needed the other’s contributions to the household but didn’t necessarily spend much time together. In the 1970s, all that changed.
>Ultimately, a long view is likely to show that the rapid rise in divorce during the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly. It occurred at the same time as a new feminist movement, which caused social and economic upheaval. Today, society has adapted, and the divorce rate has declined again.
>If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot).
That's for the general population. As mentioned above certain populations (college educated, older, high income) are much less likely to get divorced.
Furthermore, people like the GP act like marriage and divorce is just a diceroll. However, you can do many, many things to decrease your likelihood of divorcing. Openly communicating about expectations before marriage is one of them.