The Marriage Strike
- From: "MCP" <gf010w5035@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 05:52:29 GMT
http://www.mattweeks.com/strike.htm
By Matthew Weeks
For those of you who know me in real life, this will not come as a surprise,
but I have no designs on ever getting married. Now, it appears I am not
alone in my disposition.
"Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's Attitudes About Sex, Dating and
Marriage," a study released by researchers Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David
Popenoe of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, concludes
that men are, indeed, more apprehensive about getting married than before.
"The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in
our nation's history," Mr. Popenoe remarked in the Washington Times. "If
this trend of men waiting to marry continues, it is likely to clash with the
timing of marriage and childbearing for the many young women who hope to
marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with
declining fertility," he continued. You know this is a collegiate study when
an examination of a trend that is affecting men is used to fret about the
state of women.
The study contains several possible explanations for this phenomenon, based
on interviews with 60 single men, 25 to 33, who live in four parts of the
country. While that level of measurement certainly is not statistically
significant enough to reflect any kind of a national trend, responses
generally revolved around the possibilities of suffering huge losses if the
marriage ends in divorce. ("An ex-wife will take you for all you've got" and
"men have more to lose financially than women" were common
refrains, the study reports.)
To humor the study's results for a few minutes, let's examine whether or not
these young men's concerns are justified. If we accept the old feminist
argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is undeniable that --
given the current state of the nation's family courts -- divorce is slavery
for men.
Take a hypothetical husband who marries and has two children. There is a 50
percent likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight
years, and if it does, the odds are 2-1 it will be the wife who initiates
the divorce. It may not matter that the man was a decent husband. The
reality of the situation is that few divorces are initiated over abuse or
because the man has already abandoned the family. Nor is adultery cited as a
factor by divorcing women appreciably more than by divorcing men.
The new trend that has taken hold of the court system is what as known as
the "no fault" divorce, in which the filing party needs only to cite their
general discontent with the marriage in order to be granted a hearing. Women
initiate these unilateral divorces-on-demand 3 times as often as men.
While the courts may grant the former spouses joint legal custody, the odds
are nearly 40 to 1 of the wife winning physical custody. Overnight, the
husband, accustomed to seeing his kids every day and being an integral part
of their lives, will now be lucky if he is allowed to see them even one day
out of the week.
Once the couple is divorced, odds are at least even that the wife will
interfere with the husband's visitation rights. Three-quarters of divorced
men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and
40 percent of mothers studied admitted that they had done so, and that they
had generally acted out of spite or in order to punish their exes.
Then, of course, there is the issue of financial losses due to court-imposed
payments. In the end (99 times out of 100), the wife will keep most of the
couple's assets and --if they jointly own one -- the house. The husband will
need to set up a new residence and pay at least a third of his take-home pay
to his ex in child support, on top of whatever alimony payments the courts
impose upon him. These can run as high as another third of his income. (Add
the cost of taxes to that and the man gets to keep exactly 13% of his
take-home pay -- he'd better pray that's enough to keep him alive.)
But as bad as all of this is, it would still make our hypothetical man one
of the lucky ones. After all, he could be one of those fathers who cannot
see his children at all because his ex has made a false accusation of
domestic violence, child abuse, or child molestation. Or a father who can
only see his own children under supervised visitation or in nightmarish
visitation centers where dads are treated like criminals.
He could be one of those fathers whose ex has moved their children hundreds
or thousands of miles away, in violation of court orders, which courts often
do not enforce. He could be one of those fathers who tears up his life and
career again and again in order to follow his children, only to have his
ex-wife continually move them.
He could be one of the fathers who has lost his job, seen his income drop,
or suffered a disabling injury, only to have child support arrearages and
interest pile up to create a mountain of debt which he could never hope to
pay off. Or a father who is forced to pay 70 percent or 80 percent of his
income in child support because the court has imputed an unrealistic income
to him. Or a dad who suffers from one of the child support enforcement
system's endless and difficult to correct errors, or who is jailed because
he cannot keep up with his payments. Or a dad who reaches old age
impoverished because he lost everything he had in a divorce when he was
middle-aged and did not have the time and the opportunity to earn it back.
Our imaginary man might consider himself lucky if he knew what his life
could have been.
Over five million divorced men in America are currently experiencing the
situation I just outlined. Without a doubt, their stories and experiences
are heard by unmarried men. Can anyone truly blame the men for having
apprehension? They stand to gain little and lose everything they've worked
for in their entire lives should they "take the plunge", so to speak.
So ladies, if you have a problem with this, speak to your feminist brethren.
This is the legacy which they have left behind. By erasing the stigma of
premarital sex and encouraging physical liberation, they have eliminated one
of the most powerful incentives in history for men to tie the knot. By
advocating government as a surrogate husband in the case of single
motherhood, they have eliminated the disincentive for women to file for
divorce. And through decades of litigious activism, they have given rise to
the bloated and intrusive family court system and stacked it so egregiously
against the men of this country that it now appears they are subconsciously
engaging in what could be called a "marriage strike", preferring to play the
odds rather than assume a massively disproportionate amount of risk.
As for the men, make no mistake, they are slowly beginning to realize that
the power is now in their favor. They have more and more perfectly
legitimate reasons for remaining unmarried every day. Given a choice between
not marrying one's lady friend -- assuming no risk whatsoever and still
having the historical benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.)
available to them, or marrying the woman and having a 50-50 chance of their
lives being utterly destroyed should the woman so much as be "unhappy" with
the marriage, the decision is a no-brainer. What women perceive as a "fear
of commitment" is really nothing more than a pragmatic assessment of the
odds facing men in the prospect of a marriage.
Therefore, the trends evident in this study are not much of a surprise. I
would wager that if the study were conducted nationally, similar results
would be produced. Of course, such a study would invariably seek to address
the grievances of the dejected single women of the country. My advice to
them would be simple: offer to sign a prenuptial agreement that outlines the
exact terms of a possible divorce: how assets would be divided, how any
alimony and child support would be handled, and other vital elements that
may be causing apprehension. And don't be insulted if your potential mate
asks you to sign one, or if he desires terms that will be equitable to him.
No matter how strong your love may be for one another, the demand for
eligible bachelors willing to commit to marriage is currently exceeding the
supply, and if you won't sign it, odds are that there's another woman out
there who will.
NOTE: Statistics in this article (and, in effect, much of its text) are
drawn from Glenn Sacks and Diana Thompson's Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed of
7/5/2002 entitled: "A Marriage Strike Emerges as Men Decide Not to Risk
Loss"
.
- Prev by Date: Steve Sailer and the Simpsons on male ingenuity
- Next by Date: Re: Steve Sailer and the Simpsons on male ingenuity
- Previous by thread: Steve Sailer and the Simpsons on male ingenuity
- Next by thread: Re: Is a Werewolf a boy or a girl?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
