A Guide to the Restoration of Marriage

[JimG]

Can marriage really be restored?

“Why do modern men and women have so much difficult attracting one another, when both are happier together?”

Rachel Lu addresses the question.

 

[MarcoPolo]

To the author’s point, it is in shambles because the modern person denies the unique value in the other sex, which, ironically, has already positioned them to dismiss any argument in the article.

I also think the matter of contraception cannot be overlooked and the prophecies of Paul VI’s Humana Vitae, as well as the matter of women now earning the majority of higher educational degrees, many with career-oriented purviews who see a husband as not only unnecessary, but as an obstacle.

 

[JimG]

To the author’s point, it is in shambles because the modern person denies the unique value in the other sex, which, ironically, has already positioned them to dismiss any argument in the article.

I also think the matter of contraception cannot be overlooked and the prophecies of Paul VI’s Humana Vitae, as well as the matter of women now earning the majority of higher educational degrees, many with career-oriented purviews who see a husband as not only unnecessary, but as an obstacle.

Yes, it’s a problem, I think, because people generally now tend to treat the two sexes as if they were the same. They are not, of course. But they are complementary.

But I think that many would like to rediscover the true value of the opposite sex, and yes, to be married. To quote the author: “We still want what biology makes it rational for us to want, and our efforts to talk ourselves out of that have been less successful than we might hope.”

 

[Murmurs]

I also think the matter of contraception cannot be overlooked and the prophecies of Paul VI’s Humana Vitae, as well as the matter of women now earning the majority of higher educational degrees, many with career-oriented purviews who see a husband as not only unnecessary, but as an obstacle.

Are educated women a problem?

 

[JimG]

I was reading some of the comments below Rachel Lu’s article. One of the commenters, Cody, says this: “I read a study saying that 25% of millennials will never marry. I think it’s going to be closer to 33% Our culture has taken so many millennials hostage that they don’t see the point or have lost hope. There’s a movement called MGTOW, men going their own way. It means that men pretty much reject any romantic relationship with women. It’s pretty sad.”

He also recounts a nice story from his grandma. But I find it hard to believe that anyone is really happy to see marriage go extinct.

 

[JimG]

Are educated women a problem?

Education is not the problem. Maybe the problem is choosing a career first and marriage later, if at all, with the biological clock ticking all the while. Marriage delayed becomes marriage foregone.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Education is not the problem. Maybe the problem is choosing a career first and marriage later, if at all, with the biological clock ticking all the while. Marriage delayed becomes marriage foregone.

Except the numbers don’t support that. College educated women are much more likely to marry and stay married than their high school graduate counterparts. They postpone having children, but their children are much more likely to be raised in a two parent home than children of high school graduates.

There are big problems with how men and women relate to one another, but those problems don’t have anything to do with education or career choice.

 

[Xantippe]

I also think the matter of contraception cannot be overlooked and the prophecies of Paul VI’s Humana Vitae, as well as the matter of women now earning the majority of higher educational degrees, many with career-oriented purviews who see a husband as not only unnecessary, but as an obstacle.

Bear in mind that in the US, educated women do not bear children outside marriage as often as less educated women and educated women are better at staying married.

“College graduates tend to wait longer than non-graduates to have children. About half of women in their late 20s and early 30s have children, but among women with bachelor’s degrees, it’s only about one in three. But college-educated women who do decide to have children in their 20s are nearly all married: 90 percent, versus about 36 percent for college educated women without children in the same age range. Young college graduates, in other words, still see marriage as something close to a requirement for raising children; that suggests that when they decide they’re ready for children, they’ll get married, too.”

“In a 2010 Pew survey, 45 percent of respondents with at most a high school diploma agreed that “marriage is becoming obsolete,” versus just 27 percent of college graduates. The survey results suggest the division is primarily along socioeconomic lines: There was a similar split by income, while the divisions by race, political orientation and even age were significantly smaller.”

“In its report last week, Pew suggested that one reason for falling marriage rates is the decline in employment among young men. That may also help explain the education gap in marriage. Put simply, men without jobs are much less likely to get married, and men without a college degree are much less likely to get jobs.”

“According to the Current Population Survey, more than 20 percent of men ages 25 to 34 with a high school diploma are out of work, versus 10 percent of young men with a college degree. And when they do have jobs, less-educated men earn less and are more likely to be laid off.”

“Three decades later, the divorce rate for Americans without a college degree has doubled, to about 20 percent. But the divorce rate for Americans with a bachelor’s degree has held more or less steady.10 Once again, a similar pattern exists by income, with the divorce rate rising much less for more affluent families than for poorer ones.”

fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead-yet/

 

[Xantippe]

Except the numbers don’t support that. College educated women are much more likely to marry and stay married than their high school graduate counterparts. They postpone having children, but their children are much more likely to be raised in a two parent home than children of high school graduates.

There are big problems with how men and women relate to one another, but those problems don’t have anything to do with education or career choice.

Right.

At least not women’s education and career choices.

The economic issues are also huge.

“Among U.S. adults age 18 to 24, 40 percent of men and 32 percent of women were living with parents in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s a historic high. At no time since the Census Bureau first started collecting this data in 1960 has the share of young men living at home been so high or the gap between men and women residing there been so wide.”

fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/men-are-more-likely-to-live-with-their-folks/

Mom and dad’s 3BR/2BA home is not the greatest place to bring your bride home to and raise your young family in. DIL + MIL + one kitchen = trouble.

 

[Xantippe]

I can’t track down the stats right now, but I remember seeing recently a stat that said that college educated US women are now marrying EARLIER than high school graduates. In any case, education and career are not keeping women from being able to get married–to the contrary, education and career are often what enable contemporary US women to marry and have children within wedlock.

If the average US woman is marrying at 27 now, that is ample time for a bachelor’s degree and five years in the workforce. (But I can see how a graduate degree would be more of a problem.)

One monkey wrench in the stats is that older brides may be especially prompt in trying to start a family while younger brides may not be in such a big hurry. (I was 22 when my husband and I got married, which is on the young side these days, but 27 before our first child was born. Had we gotten married later, we would not have waited as long.)

 

[mh2007]

The stats reflect a fundamental problem in modern U.S. culture. Namely, the disintegration of family formation. I attribute much of what is happening to an inherent fault in materialism and the U.S. economy. You don’t see this happening nearly on the same scale in other countries or cultures. They are happy to have 3 generations living under one roof.

There were times in this country that the same was true. And there still are pockets. One thing the Hispanic culture brings to the U.S. - in spite of all the negative media regarding immigration, is a very strong family unit. People who are not from large families don’t understand this…but there is nothing like family values. There is love and a bond far better than material junk, which doesn’t last anyway. Love is more enduring. After all, God is love.

Right.

At least not women’s education and career choices.

The economic issues are also huge.

“Among U.S. adults age 18 to 24, 40 percent of men and 32 percent of women were living with parents in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s a historic high. At no time since the Census Bureau first started collecting this data in 1960 has the share of young men living at home been so high or the gap between men and women residing there been so wide.”

fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/men-are-more-likely-to-live-with-their-folks/

Mom and dad’s 3BR/2BA home is not the greatest place to bring your bride home to and raise your young family in. DIL + MIL + one kitchen = trouble.

 

[Walking_Home]

Except the numbers don’t support that. College educated women are much more likely to marry and stay married than their high school graduate counterparts. They postpone having children, but their children are much more likely to be raised in a two parent home than children of high school graduates.

There are big problems with how men and women relate to one another, but those problems don’t have anything to do with education or career choice.

---

Yes.

 

[Xantippe]

QUOTE=mh2007;13160132]The stats reflect a fundamental problem in modern U.S. culture. Namely, the disintegration of family formation. I attribute much of what is happening to an inherent fault in materialism and the U.S. economy. You don’t see this happening nearly on the same scale in other countries or cultures. They are happy to have 3 generations living under one roof.

There were times in this country that the same was true. And there still are pockets. One thing the Hispanic culture brings to the U.S. - in spite of all the negative media regarding immigration, is a very strong family unit. People who are not from large families don’t understand this…but there is nothing like family values. There is love and a bond far better than material junk, which doesn’t last anyway. Love is more enduring. After all, God is love.

I have a few issues with that:

1. You see essentially the same issues in other developed countries, if not more so. See, for example Italy–the average first time Italian newlywed man is almost 34 years old, while the average first time Italian bride is almost 31.
2. Mexico has virtually identical age at first marriage to the US. US men marry for the first time on average at 29 and Mexican men marry for the first time at…29. US women marry for the first time at 27 and Mexican women marry for the first time at 26.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_at_first_marriage

Brazil also has very similar numbers–28 and 26.

1. Three-generational living with an adult child bringing a spouse to live in the family home isn’t that traditional in the US. This is a somewhat controversial subject, but it appears that the nuclear family is surprisingly old in English culture. See here:

"Combing through English parish records and other demographic sources, historians like Peter Laslett and Alan MacFarlane discovered that the nuclear family—a mother, father and child(ren) in a “simple house,” as Laslett put it—was the dominant arrangement in England stretching back to the thirteenth century.

“Rather than remaining in or marrying into the family home, as was the case in Southern Europe and many parts of Asia and the Middle East, young couples in England were expected to establish their own household. That meant that men and women married later than in other parts of the world, only after they had saved enough money to set up an independent home. By the time they were ready to tie the knot, their own parents were often deceased, making multi-generational households a relative rarity.”

family-studies.org/the-real-roots-of-the-nuclear-family/

1. A lot of times, newlyweds need some space and privacy to work out issues in their new marriage. There are often newlywed fights that it is really important that the young couple work out ALONE, without helpful (name removed by moderator)ut from her dad or his mom.
2. It’s really hard for two adult women to share a kitchen. My sister and her husband and their baby lived with his parents in Western Europe, but they had an entirely separate floor in a big house and the European in-laws put in a small second kitchen for my sister. That arrangement has made it possible for them to live together for long stretches of time.
3. As you can see from reading CAF, a major cause of marital strife is difficulty in detaching from the family of origin. It’s hard to untie mom’s apron strings or stop being daddy’s little princess when you share a home with mom and dad.
4. There are often cultural issues that make cohabitation with parents trickier. I’m ethnically WASP. My husband is from a Central European emigre family. On the one hand, my husband’s family is way more helpful to adult children than mine is, but on the other hand, my family gives us much more space and autonomy. One week with my in-laws (maybe a week and a half) is my outer limit. It is often easier to have a loving, harmonious relationship with extended family from a safe distance.
5. Some parents (or adult children) are simply toxic.
6. Some people are very difficult to share living space with. In our family, we have one set of parents with hoarder tendencies (on any given day, 90% of the fridge is full of rotting food). Meanwhile, on the other side of the family, crumbs are vacuumed up almost before they hit the ground.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Are educated women a problem?

Of course not.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Except the numbers don’t support that. College educated women are much more likely to marry and stay married than their high school graduate counterparts. They postpone having children, but their children are much more likely to be raised in a two parent home than children of high school graduates.

Is that a change in the tide in recent years? This study from 2002 says at least women who go to college (at least in Britain) are less likely to marry. The study claims that education “gave women increased earning power and therefore more choice about whether or not to get a partner’”

From the perspective of whatever studies you have in mind, what is the educated woman’s higher motive, over the less-educated woman’s, to get married?

 

[bitterhope]

Just want to mention that the statistic saying Mexicans tend to marry for the first time in their mid twenties I find very deceptive. My husband is from Mexico and we have lived there together off and on for several years. The trend in the cities may be toward the mid twenties with upper middle class/rich families, but the majority of the people in small towns, rural areas, and the poorer families (in other words almost everybody) everywhere marry at much younger ages. In a small town if a person is unmarried at 25 it is assumed they will never marry. In Mexico a couple can choose to marry in the Church or Protestant or other religious ceremony or civilly or both. Poorer families tend to marry religiously only because a civil marriage serves mainly the purpose of property separation in case of a divorce or for inheritance purposes. Poor families have no interest in that since for the most part they own nothing or very little. My inlaws were married in the Church only for over 30 years. They finally opted for a civil marriage only because my mother in law needed to register for an ID. If you go by their date of recognized first marriage, my inlaws were both in their 50’s, but they had been married in the church since they were 19 (FIL) and 21 (MIL). At the time of their Church wedding, MIL was considered older but she had to finish raising her sisters before she married. Their parents died when they were very young. Many couples in Mexico do not get civilly married until it is needed for some sort of registration with the government so that statistic is really useless. It is not unusual for couples in Mexico to just not get married at all in larger areas and just live together, but that is still not the norm in most rural areas. Usually that happens in rural areas/small towns when a couple had a Church wedding and then separates from their spouse and decides to “marry” someone else. Technically the first couple was never married because the civil government didn’t recognize it so no divorce was necessary, but the Church won’t marry the second couple because it views the first marriage as binding. Often times the second couple never officially married at all, or if they do it is done civilly and is counted as the “first marriage” for both parties. It gets messy and complicated when people start talking marriage statistics in Mexico and I’m pretty sure it is far from the only country that these issues apply to. It’s really not helpful when trying to compare the US to these other places.

My husband was 20 when we married. I was 18. My parents were slightly concerned because of our ages being “young” but not too much. It’s very common in my family to marry at those ages or even younger. My inlaws on the other hand were relieved he finally was getting married because they viewed him as “getting older” and needed to settle down with someone. Yeah, mid twenties isn’t really accurate for their country as a whole…

 

[theplummer]

I was reading some of the comments below Rachel Lu’s article. One of the commenters, Cody, says this: “I read a study saying that 25% of millennials will never marry. I think it’s going to be closer to 33% Our culture has taken so many millennials hostage that they don’t see the point or have lost hope. There’s a movement called MGTOW, men going their own way. It means that men pretty much reject any romantic relationship with women. It’s pretty sad.”

He also recounts a nice story from his grandma. But I find it hard to believe that anyone is really happy to see marriage go extinct.

There are actually many reasons the MGTOW movement is gaining popularity.

There are INCEL MGTOWS, those that decide to go MGTOW not by choice, but by society deeming them basically unfit for reproduction. In other words, they are either physically/mentally/socially incapable of attracting a mate. Those folks are "involuntarily celibate. They most likely don’t want to be, but for whatever reason, they are. So this is a coping mechanism for them to survive and an attempt at retaining their dignity.

Then there are the men that have been severely damaged by the meat grinder of the gynocentric family court system. Forces into servitude by the state, at the hands of an embittered ex wife, while she abandons him, requiring that she give him nothing in return for his servitude. This is probably the most prevalent reason for a man to take on the philosophy.

Then there are a few who realize that their entire existence is being exploited by the state/corporate capitalists that force them to enslavement to taxation/productivity/conformity.

They have decided to take on a personal philosophy that suits self over others, realizing the futility of fighting the system and have developed strategies that work for them to minimize the tyranny that is placed upon them.

The vast majority of them are secular huminist in nature, reject the thought of the supernatural, and have a simultaneous cognitive dissonance between personal autonomy and desire for governmental control mechanisms.

They will simultaneously have a deep hatred for Marxist ideologies such as social justice/affirmitive action/feminism seeking to place controls upon them, yet desire the government that places such controls upon them to come to their rescue and create government controls to save them.

Basically it’s a weird combination of self preservation and despair.

We live in a western world culture that claims all kinds of dictionary definitions spouting equality, yet in practice those same supporters of the definitions are acting quite in contrary to their own ideologies.

 

[Xantippe]

My inlaws were married in the Church only for over 30 years. They finally opted for a civil marriage only because my mother in law needed to register for an ID. If you go by their date of recognized first marriage, my inlaws were both in their 50’s, but they had been married in the church since they were 19 (FIL) and 21 (MIL). At the time of their Church wedding, MIL was considered older but she had to finish raising her sisters before she married. Their parents died when they were very young. Many couples in Mexico do not get civilly married until it is needed for some sort of registration with the government so that statistic is really useless. It is not unusual for couples in Mexico to just not get married at all in larger areas and just live together, but that is still not the norm in most rural areas. Usually that happens in rural areas/small towns when a couple had a Church wedding and then separates from their spouse and decides to “marry” someone else. Technically the first couple was never married because the civil government didn’t recognize it so no divorce was necessary, but the Church won’t marry the second couple because it views the first marriage as binding. Often times the second couple never officially married at all, or if they do it is done civilly and is counted as the “first marriage” for both parties. It gets messy and complicated when people start talking marriage statistics in Mexico and I’m pretty sure it is far from the only country that these issues apply to. It’s really not helpful when trying to compare the US to these other places.

My husband was 20 when we married. I was 18. My parents were slightly concerned because of our ages being “young” but not too much. It’s very common in my family to marry at those ages or even younger. My inlaws on the other hand were relieved he finally was getting married because they viewed him as “getting older” and needed to settle down with someone. Yeah, mid twenties isn’t really accurate for their country as a whole…

Interesting.

Bear in mind, though, that

1. over half of babies born to Hispanic women in the US are out of wedlock

and

1. the stats reflect couples today, not 20 or 30 years ago.

Interestingly, I was just looking up the Mexican total fertility rate (that’s the expected number of children per woman per lifetime) and it’s 2.22. The US’s is 1.88 and Brazil’s is 1.81.

Another thing to bear in mind: the US pattern for age at first marriage over the past 100+ years somewhat resembles a V, with higher ages at the beginning of the period, very low ages at mid-century and then higher and higher ages currently. (So it’s a V with one arm that’s much higher.) But, nonetheless, it’s worth pointing out that mid-20th century young marriages were somewhat unusual, historically speaking.

Here are some ages at first marriage for the US (men first/women second):

1890 26.1/22.0
1920 24.6/21.2
1950 22.8/20.3
1980 24.7/22.0
2010 28.2/26.1

So, historically speaking, while current ages at first marriage are high (particularly for women), the 1950s/1960s were not normative for the US–that was the low point for age at first marriage in the US.

infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html

 

[pianistclare]

I also agree that Mexicans certainly don’t marry for the first time in their late 20’s.
In Mexico, you must be married by the state. Church weddings are rare, and done much later. Many “couples” don’t marry at all. We have many marriages in our parish where the grown kids are present and finally witness their parents marriage. But the fact remains, that the family unit if not actually living together, live almost next door. Neighborhoods are full of cousins, relatives by “marriage”, and close family (for generations) friends.
There is a big connection in their communities. Many here are from Jalisco. Well, they are ALL from Jalisco. They find a place that is welcoming and offers decent opportunities for employment, and they send word…and the rest follow. They find each other houses in the neighborhood to buy or rent. The realtors joke that they don’t have to work on listings in Mexican neighborhoods. They’ll have it sold as soon as you drive up to put up the sign. They’ve been waiting for one to come open. A woman in my choir lamented that her married daughter (she’s 22 with a 3 yr old) moved SO FAR away. Three miles.

In the U.S., kids hear from an early age that

1. they should go to college out of state and get away from friends and parents
2. it’s good to move away from their hometown, and pursue the bright lights and big city
3. get a job as soon as you have a license
4. move out of mom and dad’s house at 18. Not their home,. Mom and dad’s house.

We’ve pushed this since the 60’s. They got the memo. We don’t want ya. Get the heck out of dodge.
So…no free babysitting on occasion, no wisdom of mom or grandpa, fear of parents getting drained financially, everyone has to work like a dog to make ends meet, count on expensive plane tickets to visit relatives, plan on low attended weddings of cousins and siblings, plan on potentially not meeting your cousins kids. Ever.

It’s a lonely life in the U.S.
Unless you come from a culture where the whole family unit moves around together.

I don’t think it’s something that will turn around overnight. You can’t take a family that did not grow up with this model or expectation and say “hey! Here’s a thought! Let’s all move into one big house!” And live to tell the story. Yikes. Deferring to others, listening to others, and not taking advantage of others has to be part of your DNA. And it takes time to seep into our bones.

I keep seeing these images of people who go postal. They all look miserable. They’re all loners. They all feel ALONE. They pretty much are alone to their thoughts. Who’s going to check them? Who’s going to say “hey dude, that’s just wrong-thinking”.
No one. No one is engaging them on any level. People become odd when they are isolated.

 

[Xantippe]

Then there are the men that have been severely damaged by the meat grinder of the gynocentric family court system. Forces into servitude by the state, at the hands of an embittered ex wife, while she abandons him, requiring that she give him nothing in return for his servitude. This is probably the most prevalent reason for a man to take on the philosophy.

**As of 2012, the average US child support payment was $430.

census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/cb12-109.html**