The high marriage rates of the 1950s are not coming back. Returning marriage rates to their 1970 level would lower the child-poverty rate by a fifth. This omission may be deliberate: Democrats are reluctant to offend unmarried women, 60% of whom voted for the party’s candidates in 2014.

chavelah · 2015-01-22T01:52:07+00:00

I'm almost insanely pro-marriage, but just returning marriage rates to previous levels would not fix the problem. We'd also have to return to the 1970 levels of living-wage jobs, household debt, educational excellence, parental discipline, religiousity, divorce... it's a multifaceted issue, is all I'm sayin.'

Frittern · 2015-01-21T23:39:41+00:00

Oh there is a growing consensus on how fucked all these kids are going to be..It's Just that people are so locked into rhetoric over evidence they cannot acknowledge the truth even as they read the grave statistics..In the end there just going to double down on the male blaming and try to shame men back onto the plantation..It's not going to work but Just like henpecking it's an addicting compulsive habit.. they cant stop themselves even when they recognizes the harm it's causing..

Men are shit that is the culturally ingrained fact at this point. As a individual man you need to hit your I don't give a fuck rock moment and recognize and accept your own inner shittyness. Only then can you stop apologizing for being a man ie:shit and stop prostrating yourself ,mewling and begging for approval and acceptance of the Divine vagina..

YetAnotherCommenter · 2015-01-22T03:11:07+00:00

A debate about marriage should begin by acknowledging that the high rates of the 1950s and 1960s were a peak rather than the norm. The marriage rate in America has only recently dipped below where it was at the end of the 19th century, according to Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University.

This is a very good point. A lot of the features of the 1950s/60s lifestyle (we all know the clichés) were very much historical novelties. Marriage rates and the establishment of the nuclear family as the "core" family model for society (previously in the Anglosphere, and even today in the Mediterranean world, the extended family is more common) were new, and at least in part the result of government policy.

The research I have seen shows that the important factor which determines a child's outcomes is access to parents; two parent families (of any sex combination) provide better outcomes than single parent families. I'd suspect that extended families would provide sufficient parental surrogates (uncles/aunts/grandparents/etc) to result in children from extended families having similar outcomes to two-parent families.

Note also how a lot of the pressures of the male role get magnified by the nuclear family; extra responsibility and thus hyperagency.

And we can't pine for the 50s. We can't get rid of the sexual revolution, we can't try and prohibit exit from marriage, we can't turn back the clock. Nor should we necessarily want to.

2Fast2Fuhrer · 2015-01-22T08:37:43+00:00

As far as single parenthood (which is almost synonymous with single motherhood in our society) goes, it seems to be something that's shockingly bad for the parent, the child, and society at large. And yet it's something that's so jealously subsidized and incentivized by our welfare and social systems. Why a government would make it cheaper to commit social and personal suicide, I don't know, but it annoys me that for all of the help single parents receive from the government, as a single young male, I get essentially nothing. That's unfair.

Niketi · 2015-01-22T11:49:11+00:00

The systematic persecution of fathers in the family courts creating the scourge of single motherhood is perhaps the greatest plight on our society today. Though I have no doubt that men will continue to be blamed for the consequences of their own persecution.

61% of all child abuse is committed by biological mothers.
25% of all child abuse is committed by natural fathers.¹
79.6% of custodial mothers receive a support award.
29.9% of custodial fathers receive a support award.
46.9% of non-custodial mothers totally default on support.
26.9% of non-custodial fathers totally default on support.
20.0% of non-custodial mothers pay support at some level.
61.0% of non-custodial fathers pay support at some level.
66.2% of single custodial mothers work less than full-time.
10.2% of single custodial fathers work less than full-time.
7.0% of single custodial mothers work more than 44 hours weekly.
24.5% of single custodial fathers work more than 44 hours weekly.
46.2% of single custodial mothers receive public assistance.
20.8% of single custodial fathers receive public assistance.²
90.2% of fathers with joint custody pay all the support due.
79.1% of fathers with visitation privileges pay all the support due.
44.5% of fathers with no visitation pay all the support due.
37.9% of fathers are denied any visitation .
66.0% of all support not paid by non-custodial fathers is due to inability to pay.³

50% of mothers see no value in the father's continued contact with his children.⁴

40% of mothers reported that they had interfered with the father's visitation to punish their ex-spouse.⁵

63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.⁶
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.⁷
80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes.⁸
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.⁹
70% of juveniles in state operated institutions come from fatherless homes.¹⁰
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home.¹¹

Translated, this means that children from a fatherless home are:

5 times more likely to commit suicide
32 times more likely to run away
20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
14 times more likely to commit rape
9 times more likely to drop out of school
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances
9 times more likely to end up in a state operated institution
20 times more likely to end up in prison

¹ Statistical Source: Current DHHS report on nationwide Child Abuse ² Statistical Source: Technical Analysis Paper No. 42 - U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services - Office of Income Security Policy ³ Statistical Source: 1988 Census "Child Support and Alimony: 1989 Series P-60, No. 173 p. 6-7. and U.S. General Accounting Office Report" GAO/HRD-92-39FS January, 1992 ⁴ "Surviving the Breakup" by Joan Berlin Kelly ⁵ "Frequency of Visitation...." by Stanford Braver, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry ⁶ U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census ⁷ Center for Disease Control ⁸ Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14, p. 403-26 ⁹ National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools ¹⁰ U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report Sept., 1988 ¹¹ Fulton County Georgia jail populations & Texas Dept. of Corrections, 1992

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jo939 · 2015-01-22T09:00:17+00:00

Good, at least society can now admit there might be a problem. We may convince ourselves that women are becoming more free, or we can realize that we've made it too easy to fail for men. Either way, modern marriage is a sham.

adidasimwearing · 2015-01-22T20:15:42+00:00

I'm never getting married again. I simply cannot afford to. I watched an attorney slice up my pre-marital agreement as though I never had one. I'm done. Color me sour as fuck.

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