Mr. Right versus Mr. Right Now

[Xantippe]

Also, come to think of it–if divorce is the magical money machine for women that the manosphere believes it is and women are just dying to divorce for cash and prizes, why do women wait so darned long these days to get married?

You’d think women would be wanting to get married right away, so they can start getting that sweet divorce cash as soon as possible from as many guys as possible.

The way women go about it these days, it’s almost as if women are actually mostly trying to marry the right person and have a stable, solid family and a life-long marriage.

Naaah, couldn’t be.

 

[starshiptrooper]

1. The 50% divorce rate is pure mythology.

huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/divorce-rate-declining-_n_6256956.html

“In fact, a new piece in the New York Times’ data blog Upshot suggests that the divorce rate has actually been dropping for some time now. Looking at the numbers, the Times suggests the high divorce rate of the late 1970s and early 1980s may have just been a “historical anomaly,” rather than a trend.”

Well, the Red Pill has been around for quite awhile now, marriage rates have been declining which means less divorce, and the Sexodus is in full swing. breitbart.com/london/2014/12/04/the-sexodus-part-1-the-men-giving-up-on-women-and-checking-out-of-society/

1. Also, as we’ve discussed previously, demographics matter a lot with regard to divorce in the US–education, income, age, the age gap between the spouses, religious affiliation and degree of practice, time dating before proposal, length of engagement, it being a second or third marriage–they all have effects on the divorce rate.

Of course the fact that women face few consequences has nothing to do with it right?

1. Divorce is expensive and frequently causes bankruptcy. Child support is small in comparison to normal middle class expenses. Children are expensive to raise. Married mothers typically make a lot less money than married fathers or childless women. Hence, single motherhood in the US typically means poverty, especially when there are multiple children.

I will make sure to tell my coworker this. He pays child support for 2 kids and has to work 2 fulltime jobs and is in the Navy Reserve just to make ends meet. He also lives in a low tier apartment with a roommate. The wise man learns from watching other people screw up.

There are huge incentives to make the best of one’s marriage if one is a middle class woman with children that one cares about (and bear in mind that doing the Best Thing for one’s children is pretty much a religion in the middle class in the US).

There is also plenty of “You go girl!” and lionization of single mothers to counter that.

I suggest reading this:

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/real-divorce-information/

Very nice but it fails to address Title IV which dictates that the more money the state extracts in child support, the bigger the amount of Federal aid they receive. Given that men usually make more money, judges have a conflict of interest since the authority they represent has a financial stake in the outcome. That does not even account for the social bias against men raising kids. My cousin had a battle royale in court over custody despite the fact that mommy was a druggy with no steady job. All she had to do was teach the kid the magic words, “I do not feel safe at his house,” and she got shared custody and child support.

1. I can’t say for sure why close age is better for marital longevity, but here are some possibilities: a more shared outlook on life, more closely matched goals (for example, they both want 2.0 kids and a house starting now), similar level of maturity, similar energy level, more compatible friend groups, etc.

The simple answer is the inability to obtain better opportunities. I know guys in their 30’s who have better options than me. I see far fewer women in their 30’s in relationships with younger men.

1. I would caution you about the 70% figure. Filing divorce may or may not have anything to do with guilt for causing the divorce. If there are children that needed to be cared for and the husband has stopped financially supporting the family within marriage (which happens), divorce with child support may be chosen as a legal avenue for getting financial support for the children.

More likely to get custody, child support, alimony, and you are telling me it is just a bunch of oppressed women thinking of their children… Right.

1. The hypergamy stuff is stupid and doesn’t really reflect middle class life.

Eggs are expensive. Sperm is cheap. It has been this way for millions of years. Do you think a few years of Feminist theory are going to overcome biology and instincts with millions of years behind them?

I don’t think that the only thing keeping my 90-year-old grandma with my 94-year-old grandpa is that Michael Phelps isn’t answering her phone calls…

She came of age when the big bad patriarchy was still in force and before the craziness of the 60’s and the 70’s.

I’m a 41-year-old woman. I’ve been washing my husband’s socks for the last 18 years. I have a pretty good idea from listening to other women talk about their husbands that the grass isn’t any greener over there.

We have discussed this before, Socrates (I read other philosophers besides Ayn Rand, your name did not register until now) apparently looks like James Bond and makes an upper middle class income. You would have a hard time finding better or even equal.

 

[starshiptrooper]

Also, come to think of it–if divorce is the magical money machine for women that the manosphere believes it is and women are just dying to divorce for cash and prizes, why do women wait so darned long these days to get married?

You’d think women would be wanting to get married right away, so they can start getting that sweet divorce cash as soon as possible from as many guys as possible.

Because fewer and fewer men want to get married. Even setting aside divorce law, you still have VAWA, the mixed and unfair social expectations of men, affirmative consent laws becoming the standard, the fact that women make the sole decision about abortion yet can still collect child support (her body, her choice, his wallet).

The way women go about it these days, it’s almost as if women are actually mostly trying to marry the right person and have a stable, solid family and a life-long marriage.

Naaah, couldn’t be.

Yet they initiate 70% of all divorces.

 

[ThePCWife]

Reduced fertility at 40 isn;t the same as full blown menopause at 38 though. That being the case the woman in the OP probably had fertility issues before that.

I’m 47. I’m probably not very fertile, but I haven;t reached menopause yet.

The healthy range is 40-55. Some women lose a couple years and others have a couple. But the reduced fertility is significantly reduced, enough that it’s kind of weird that people behave as though it’s, well, not a reduction at all. Most of my family tree has no problem getting pregnant and carrying (sometimes double digits worth of) babies until the mid30s and is done by 40, sometimes a bit earlier. The OP may have been perfectly normally fertile and just never had a chance to give it a whirl. Nothing about her remarks on the matter suggests anything other than being on the lower end of normal fertility.

 

[Xantippe]

SST,

1. Less marriage means less divorce because there are fewer marginal people getting married than there were 50 years ago. The current pool of people getting married is socioeconomically a stronger pool of people. Contemporary American marriage is very middle class and very focused on childrearing.
2. The stats on child support are easy to look up–the average child support payment is very small–$430 a month in 2010.

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

Of course it’s hard to pay, but it’s a small fraction of the real cost of raising children in a middle class home. That wouldn’t even cover childcare for one child in most parts of the country.

That amount is, as The Practical Conservative pointed out, a car payment, not a mortgage payment.

Meanwhile, at my house, something like 75-80% of our very comfortable income goes to kid stuff. That sounds crazy, but it’s not–our three kids are 60% of the population of the household and we spend a lot on school tuition and college savings.

1. Eh, the lionization of single mothers is largely fueled by pity. Middle class mothers don’t want to do that themselves. But, if they find themselves in a marriage where the husband doesn’t contribute substantially either financially or with help around the house, single motherhood is not going to sound that bad.

The number of college-educated women that have babies out of wedlock is tiny compared to the population at large.

“Only 12 percent of births by college graduates are to unmarried women.”

theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/getting-married-later-is-great-for-college-educated-women/274040/

Middle class parenthood is a demanding team sport, and anybody who shows up to play short a man is going to find it really hard to play effectively.

1. Men who fight for custody have a really, really good shot at getting it, but very few do, as custody arrangements tend to be made without a court fight.

"According to DivorcePeers.com, the majority of child custody cases are not decided by the courts.

"In 51 percent of custody cases, both parents agreed — on their own — that mom become the custodial parent.
"In 29 percent of custody cases, the decision was made without any third party involvement.
"In 11 percent of custody cases, the decision for mom to have custody was made during mediation.
"In 5 percent of custody cases, the issue was resolved after a custody evaluation.
"Only 4 percent of custody cases went to trial and of that 4 percent, only 1.5 percent completed custody litigation.
“In other words, 91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system.”

slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/men_s_rights_recognized_the_pro_father_evolution_of_divorce_and_paternity.html

“According to one of the most thorough surveys of child custody outcomes, which looked at Wisconsin between 1996 and 2007, the percentage of divorce cases in which the mother got sole custody dropped from 60.4 to 45.7 percent while the percentage of equal shared custody cases, in just that decade, doubled from 15.8 to 30.5. And a recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers shows a rapid increase in mothers paying child support.”

1. You are aware, I hope, that married mothers are a much more affluent group than divorced and single mothers?

What is the financial incentive to throw that away for $430 a month?

Woohoo!

1. OK–maybe grandma grew up in the good old days. What about my mom? She’s a Boomer and was a young adult in the late 1960s. Is she just staying with my dad because Michael Phelps won’t take her calls?

1. Wait a second–in some previous discussions you seemed to be blaming women for the late age of median first marriage. Now you’re saying that they’re waiting because men are making them wait?

Which is it?

1. College educated people have children nearly all within wedlock.

Non-college educated people have a lot of children out of wedlock.

This is more of a socioeconomic thing than a mass exodus from marriage by disenchanted men. Middle class people (even very liberal ones) are generally horrified by the idea of out-of-wedlock childrearing (at least for themselves and their families).

1. Why would affirmative consent be more of a problem for a married man than a swinging bachelor? I would think that it’s the other way around.
2. Abortion and child support do not make marriage less attractive than promiscuous bachelorhood. If anything, it’s the reverse. A promiscuous bachelor is quite likely to become the father of an aborted child, whether he knows it or not–perhaps repeatedly if he has a long enough career. Likewise, children conceived outside of marriage require child support, too.

All things being equal, a married and then divorced father has a much better shot at avoiding abortion and having a relationship with his children than an unmarried father does.

As far as middle class fatherhood is concerned, marriage is really the only game in town.

1. The person who files the papers is not necessarily the person who caused the divorce.

There are dozens of different bad things that people can do to make life under the same roof with them untenable–alcoholism, drug abuse, adultery, gambling, reckless spending, untreated mental illness, etc.

 

[Xantippe]

The healthy range is 40-55. Some women lose a couple years and others have a couple. But the reduced fertility is significantly reduced, enough that it’s kind of weird that people behave as though it’s, well, not a reduction at all. Most of my family tree has no problem getting pregnant and carrying (sometimes double digits worth of) babies until the mid30s and is done by 40, sometimes a bit earlier. The OP may have been perfectly normally fertile and just never had a chance to give it a whirl. Nothing about her remarks on the matter suggests anything other than being on the lower end of normal fertility.

Case in point–Michelle Duggar had her last live birth at age 43 (if I’m doing the math correctly).

She’s an incredibly fertile woman and had 19 live children over 21 years and then it just stopped after that last live birth at 43 and then a still birth about two years later.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

The healthy range is 40-55. Some women lose a couple years and others have a couple. But the reduced fertility is significantly reduced, enough that it’s kind of weird that people behave as though it’s, well, not a reduction at all. Most of my family tree has no problem getting pregnant and carrying (sometimes double digits worth of) babies until the mid30s and is done by 40, sometimes a bit earlier. The OP may Havel been perfectly normally fertile and just never had a chance to give it a whirl. Nothing about her remarks on the matter suggests anything other than being on the lower end of normal fertility.

My point is 38 is quite young for menopause. Most women have fertility that gradually declines, so the women in the OP was probably not very fertile in her 30’s. On the other hand, I had all my children in my 30’s and at my age haven’t reached menopause. My 40s look like her 30’s just focusing on fertility.

Most women reach menopause later than 38.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Statistically, most women’s baby factories shut down a t40, give or take a couple years on either side…
But all the stories of your aunt’s cousin’s friend who had her first/eighth/third kid at 50 won’t make women’s fertility flexible and easy where they can just snap their fingers and have a pregnancy with a term baby whenever and however old they are. Babies come by God’s will and He’s directed biology to work a certain way so that conceptions leading to term babies are rare after about age 40. Not impossible, just not common and very much not to be counted on.

And that’s not counting the issue of raising infant/toddler kids when you’re old enough to be gramma but you’re mamma instead. …

Yes, babies come from God’s will and biology, but also from our cooperation with God and biology. Few women today leave their family planning entirely up to chance; most use some type of method to try to plan or avoid pregnancies.

I was born when my mom was in her 40’s. That was a pretty good indication that my own fertility and my sister’s. We had children in our 40’s also. In my circle of acquaintances, it’s not uncommon to see older moms.

As to your gramma/mamma comment, I’ll point out that older women can be quite capable of raising children. Sometimes they are the mothers; sometimes they are the grandmothers. The fear of not being able to raise a child and may be why you don’t see more older moms as many turn to contraception or sterilization. Birth control stops many women in their late 30’s and 40’s from having babies.

 

[Allegra]

. A recent study came out saying that if a woman wants at least 3 children, she has to start having them by age 23…

Huh? That doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty rare for a healthy woman to become infertile that early in life. I didn’t get married until I was 30, but I have two children already and I don’t see any sign of my equipment shutting down. I will most likely have at least one more child. I’m not sure what sort of “study” this was, but it seems like a ridiculous thing to say.

 

[Xantippe]

Yes, babies come from God’s will and biology, but also from our cooperation with God and biology. Few women today leave their family planning entirely up to chance; most use some type of method to try to plan or avoid pregnancies.

I was born when my mom was in her 40’s. That was a pretty good indication that my own fertility and my sister’s. We had children in our 40’s also. In my circle of acquaintances, it’s not uncommon to see older moms.

As to your gramma/mamma comment, I’ll point out that older women can be quite capable of raising children. Sometimes they are the mothers; sometimes they are the grandmothers. **The fear of not being able to raise a child and may be why you don’t see more older moms as many turn to contraception or sterilization. **Birth control stops many women in their late 30’s and 40’s from having babies.

Well, if a woman already has children and is 40ish, presumably she has a pretty good idea how she’s managing and how well her body is functioning?

I’m an out-of-shape 41, and I certainly am not as fast and don’t have as much stamina as I did when I was having my first two children in my late 20s. This is quite visible to me when Baby Girl (age 3.5) needs to be chased or picked up and I realize–wow, this is a lot harder than it used to be. Obviously, some things are better (I have a much bigger bag of tricks), but I find myself parenting less like a mom and more like a grandma (more tricks, less brute strength, more humoring Baby Girl), as well as asking the kids for help (especially for chasing her down when she runs off). My husband (who is actually in great shape but a couple years older than me) does the same thing–we just don’t have the speed we used to and we get big kid help that was not available to us when we were doing this the first time.

But less personally, late pregnancy is actually really popular and sought after these days, often with a boost from technology.

"More women over age 40 are having children, according to a new National Vital Statistics Report from the Centers for Disease Control. Here’s how it breaks down: For women 40 to 44, the birth rate ticked up 2% from 2013 to 2014. And while the stats for those aged to 45 to 49 held steady during that timeframe, more women over 50 had babies in 2014: 743 births, compared to 677 in 2013.

“While these numbers remain relatively small—for women between 40 and 44 the rate is just 10.6 births per 1,000 women—the CDC report notes that the latest increases reflect a demographic trend that’s been going on for decades. What’s more, they come at a time when the birth rates for teens and early twenty-somethings have fallen to record lows.”

fortune.com/2016/01/14/babies-over-40/

I suspect that there are at least two different distinct groups in this discussion:

1. Women who had children earlier and are feeling not up to more past 40.
2. Women who (for whatever reason) did not have children early in life but are seizing the day now.

 

[Xantippe]

Back to that stat about 70% of divorce filings being done by women…

There’s a thread going in this forum where the husband has announced to his wife that he is planning to divorce her in two years. It seems to be more of a “guy thing” to do that–to start the ball rolling for divorce or stop supporting the family and then go into a holding pattern–not making any effort to reconcile, but also not filing any actual papers. It’s a weird, but not uncommon pattern. When my auntie’s husband left for his out-of-state sweetie (who eventually had a baby with him), while he continued to support his old family, he made no move to file for divorce for over half a decade. Finally, he divorced my aunt (right around the time the youngest child aged out of child support–surprise, surprise) and married the mother of his new kid (the new kid must have been at least a preschooler at that point).

Had my auntie divorced him, she would have technically been the one who filed papers, but she was not the one with the adulterous affair, the child out of wedlock, the out of control spending (by the time of the divorce, he’d put $80k on credit cards), or the one who moved two states away from their minor children and made very little effort to stay in touch with them.

Financially speaking, there can be a large motivation for the husband to not file. As long as there’s no divorce, there’s no legal obligation to provide a set amount of spousal support or child support every month. On the other hand, if the wife and children are not being financially supported, there is a motivation for the wife to file for divorce if only to keep food on the table.

So, I don’t think that by itself, the 70% figure tells you much. It doesn’t tell you who in the marriage has been making the bigger *** of themselves.

 

[gardenswithkids]

…But less personally, late pregnancy is actually really popular and sought after these days, often with a boost from technology.

"More women over age 40 are having children, according to a new National Vital Statistics Report from the Centers for Disease Control. Here’s how it breaks down: For women 40 to 44, the birth rate ticked up 2% from 2013 to 2014. And while the stats for those aged to 45 to 49 held steady during that timeframe, more women over 50 had babies in 2014: 743 births, compared to 677 in 2013.

“While these numbers remain relatively small—for women between 40 and 44 the rate is just 10.6 births per 1,000 women—the CDC report notes that the latest increases reflect a demographic trend that’s been going on for decades. What’s more, they come at a time when the birth rates for teens and early twenty-somethings have fallen to record lows.”

fortune.com/2016/01/14/babies-over-40/

I suspect that there are at least two different distinct groups in this discussion:

1. Women who had children earlier and are feeling not up to more past 40.
2. Women who (for whatever reason) did not have children early in life but are seizing the day now.

Any increase (or decrease) in the numbers of women having children is relative to how many had them previously in the year(s) one is comparing those numbers to.

There’s many factors in play. One factor, relating to the original discussion, is postponing marriage and pregnancy. Many women now spend their early 20’s and 30’s pursuing their education and careers. I don’t have the stats, but the average age of women’s first marriage and first birth is now older than it was in previous generations. Some of these women made conscious choices to postpone starting a family, others just didn’t find “Mr. Right.”

There is no guarantee that any woman will achieve pregnancy and give birth to a child at any age. When we talk about statistics, it does not predict what will be true for any one particular person. *** One ***particular older woman may be able to conceive naturally while another younger woman may not.

Generally speaking, people in our society take fertility for granted. The whole concept of “birth control” is based on the notion that one* can *control birth using means beyond just avoiding or participating in the activity that causes pregnancy. People seem to think we don’t have children when we don’t want them and then when we think we’re ready and want them we have them, just like their fertility can be turned on or off like a light switch. Attempts to artificially manipulate fertility take place in both ways: some use illicit means to avoid pregnancy, while others (maybe the same person later in life) use illicit means to achieve pregnancy. When people in our society artificially adjust their fertility, it’s very difficult to accurately say what is “normal”. Even looking at statistics on fertility and childbirth before the advent of widespread use of contraception and infertility advances won’t tell us much either, because our lifespans have increased as other medical practices changed during this same period of time.

We don’t just take fertility for granted; we take LIFE itself for granted. A woman may find her soulmate and the man of her dreams at an early age, only to find herself a widow at 22. There are no guarantees of a long life with children for any of us. Life is a precious gift.

 

[Xantippe]

Any increase (or decrease) in the numbers of women having children is relative to how many had them previously in the year(s) one is comparing those numbers to.

There’s many factors in play. One factor, relating to the original discussion, is postponing marriage and pregnancy. Many women now spend their early 20’s and 30’s pursuing their education and careers. I don’t have the stats, but the average age of women’s first marriage and first birth is now older than it was in previous generations. Some of these women made conscious choices to postpone starting a family, others just didn’t find “Mr. Right.”

There are also a lot of obstacles to early family formation.

Here’s an interesting blog post:

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/30-year-olds-in-1975-vs-2015/

It’s a comparison of 30 year olds in 1975 versus 2015.

I’ll pull out a few stats:

In 1975, 90% living on their own. In 2015, 70%

In 1975, 56% were homeowners. In 2015, 33%.

Young adults are, for whatever reason, getting a much slower economic start.

 

[Sarcelle]

There are also a lot of obstacles to early family formation.

Here’s an interesting blog post:

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/30-year-olds-in-1975-vs-2015/

It’s a comparison of 30 year olds in 1975 versus 2015.

I’ll pull out a few stats:

In 1975, 90% living on their own. In 2015, 70%

In 1975, 56% were homeowners. In 2015, 33%.

Young adults are, for whatever reason, getting a much slower economic start.

A number of factors are coming together like ingredients for a perfect storm.

Let me list them.

High divorce rates - more and more people grow up in divorced households, lacking the opportunity to witness a healthy, functioning marriage.

Economic stagnation - I do not buy the idea of a recovering economy. We are still in a recession. Gone are the factory jobs that enabled high school graduates to earn enough to support a growing family.

High student debt - with the absence of jobs that pay well for high school graduates, college education is required for the higher paying jobs.

Job uncertainty- for those lucky enough to have found good jobs, layoffs and downsizing are now all too common. For me, a layoff is not a question of if but of when. We are now in the era of temployment. There is no such thing as job security any more.

Add of all the above together and I can see why young adults are off to a slow economic start,

I would like to have my own home but for now I remain a renter. I have been lucky since I have found jobs after being laid off several times, I just had to move all over the country. Because of this owning a house is quite impractical.

 

[gardenswithkids]

There are also a lot of obstacles to early family formation.

Here’s an interesting blog post:

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/30-year-olds-in-1975-vs-2015/

It’s a comparison of 30 year olds in 1975 versus 2015.

I’ll pull out a few stats:

In 1975, 90% living on their own. In 2015, 70%

In 1975, 56% were homeowners. In 2015, 33%.

Young adults are, for whatever reason, getting a much slower economic start.

That is interesting. However idealistic one might like to be when thinking about marriage and babies, the reality is that economics plays a* far *bigger role than many admit.

The stats on the number of 30 year olds in the labor force in 1975 vs 2015 didn’t break up the numbers, but those would be interesting to see broken into men/women and to further break women into stay-at-home mothers vs. women who don’t have children. In 1975, families often lived on one income, and it was possible to get a job that could support a family without an expensive college education. Many 30 year olds today have college debt while working at jobs that didn’t previously require a college education; (and they may be underemployed but not necessarily unemployed, so even looking at those statistics could be misleading.)

Divorce was mentioned earlier, and economics affects that too. I read something earlier today that quality to look for in a spouse to avoid divorce is “financial stability.” Financial difficulties put strain on marriages–both before and after the marriage. Before, some people post-pone marriage until they feel more secure financially and/or they may not want to marry someone else who has a lot of debt. Then, expectations of the wedding ceremony and reception following it is higher and therefore seen as more costly, so some may postpone until they’ve saved for a $30,000 extravaganza. Then once they are married, couples may face struggles, especially if they are prone to spending money that they didn’t have in the first place. Fights about money are more common when money is tight, and fights aren’t good for marriage. And if they can barely afford rent on top of paying off loans, it’s hard to think about planning for a baby. And so on, and so on.

Xanitippe–how are we going to solve all the world’s problems here on this thread? We both have children, and we’re trying to raise responsible adults. Two of my eight children are in their 20’s, and one is already married. I’m in a different economic place than I was when I was in my earlier 20’s and. Honestly, I believe that having a family can help people mature. Certainly adults without children can mature, but there’s something about the nature of parenting that helps us mature. I don’t know about you, but my husband and I made different choices because we were married with children.

 

[Xantippe]

T

The stats on the number of 30 year olds in the labor force in 1975 vs 2015 didn’t break up the numbers, but those would be interesting to see broken into men/women and to further break women into stay-at-home mothers vs. women who don’t have children. In 1975, families often lived on one income, and it was possible to get a job that could support a family without an expensive college education. Many 30 year olds today have college debt while working at jobs that didn’t previously require a college education; (and they may be underemployed but not necessarily unemployed, so even looking at those statistics could be misleading.)

Divorce was mentioned earlier, and economics affects that too. I read something earlier today that quality to look for in a spouse to avoid divorce is “financial stability.” Financial difficulties put strain on marriages–both before and after the marriage. Before, some people post-pone marriage until they feel more secure financially and/or they may not want to marry someone else who has a lot of debt. Then, expectations of the wedding ceremony and reception following it is higher and therefore seen as more costly, so some may postpone until they’ve saved for a $30,000 extravaganza. Then once they are married, couples may face struggles, especially if they are prone to spending money that they didn’t have in the first place. Fights about money are more common when money is tight, and fights aren’t good for marriage. And if they can barely afford rent on top of paying off loans, it’s hard to think about planning for a baby. And so on, and so on.

Xanitippe–how are we going to solve all the world’s problems here on this thread? We both have children, and we’re trying to raise responsible adults. Two of my eight children are in their 20’s, and one is already married. I’m in a different economic place than I was when I was in my earlier 20’s and. Honestly, I believe that having a family can help people mature. Certainly adults without children can mature, but there’s something about the nature of parenting that helps us mature. I don’t know about you, but my husband and I made different choices because we were married with children.

1. Yeah, it was striking that labor participation is up, at the same time that home ownership is down.
2. About divorce–I’ve been thinking that divorce is going to have downstream effects on the ability of the parental generation to effectively launch adult children. They’ll be less willing and/or less able to help with college, young adult startup costs, weddings, babysitting, etc. Plus, if mom is living in a one-bedroom apartment, it’s going to be less feasible to move in with her temporarily than if she had an actual single family home with a basement…
3. About the “economic stability” stuff–I’ll add that young parenthood can lead to a collapse in standard of living for young parents.
4. Yeah, I know it does seem like all the world’s problems–but these are very complex interconnected issues, so one thing leads to another and you do eventually wind up talking about EVERYTHING.
5. I have been noting (for future reference) that it seems to be taking slightly older peers a long time to launch their 20-somethings. If one gets adult children off the family dole by 26, one is doing awesome these days. And that’s how we wind up with the median age at first marriage of 27 and 29…
6. About having children and becoming more mature–that happens a lot, but there are people that have kids and it doesn’t mature them one darn bit–they’re still every bit as selfish as when they didn’t have children, but now more people suffer from their selfishness.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

There’s many factors in play. One factor, relating to the original discussion, is postponing marriage and pregnancy. Many women now spend their early 20’s and 30’s pursuing their education and careers. I don’t have the stats, but the average age of women’s first marriage and first birth is now older than it was in previous generations.

Yes, the average age of marriage is now higher than the average age of having a first baby. This is a big problem, for obvious reasons.

But it isn’t the women who are focusing on their educations and careers who are causing this. Those women overwhelmingly do not have children out of wedlock. The problem is the women who are most likely to have children are also the least likely to marry. Marriage is becoming an extremely classist institution, and that’s really unfortunate because it’s easier to live in one house and raise kids on two low incomes than it is one. The people who would benefit the most from getting married increasingly don’t.

It would help the lower and lower middle classes to marry and marry younger (assuming a real understanding of and commitment to forever - divorce hits the lower classes a lot harder financially), while the upper middle class and up benefits from waiting. But everyone pretty much receives the same message about not throwing your life away by marrying young.

 

[mikeeh]

Huh? That doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty rare for a healthy woman to become infertile that early in life. I didn’t get married until I was 30, but I have two children already and I don’t see any sign of my equipment shutting down. I will most likely have at least one more child. I’m not sure what sort of “study” this was, but it seems like a ridiculous thing to say.

The study didn’t saying a woman would be infertile by 23. A woman’s fertile starts to decline and as she gets older it becomes harder to conceive. The study is a scientific study (see link below). Of course plenty of women get pregnant in their 30s and 40s, but not all women are the same. So to tell women in general to wait may hurt the chances of some women to become pregnant at all. I tell women to make their own choices and do as much research as possible. And do what is right for themselves.

livescience.com/51786-pregnancy-chances-age-family-size.html

 

[DarkLight]

Back to that stat about 70% of divorce filings being done by women…

There’s a thread going in this forum where the husband has announced to his wife that he is planning to divorce her in two years. It seems to be more of a “guy thing” to do that–to start the ball rolling for divorce or stop supporting the family and then go into a holding pattern–not making any effort to reconcile, but also not filing any actual papers. It’s a weird, but not uncommon pattern. When my auntie’s husband left for his out-of-state sweetie (who eventually had a baby with him), while he continued to support his old family, he made no move to file for divorce for over half a decade. Finally, he divorced my aunt (right around the time the youngest child aged out of child support–surprise, surprise) and married the mother of his new kid (the new kid must have been at least a preschooler at that point).

Had my auntie divorced him, she would have technically been the one who filed papers, but she was not the one with the adulterous affair, the child out of wedlock, the out of control spending (by the time of the divorce, he’d put $80k on credit cards), or the one who moved two states away from their minor children and made very little effort to stay in touch with them.

Financially speaking, there can be a large motivation for the husband to not file. As long as there’s no divorce, there’s no legal obligation to provide a set amount of spousal support or child support every month. On the other hand, if the wife and children are not being financially supported, there is a motivation for the wife to file for divorce if only to keep food on the table.

So, I don’t think that by itself, the 70% figure tells you much. It doesn’t tell you who in the marriage has been making the bigger *** of themselves.

I am reminded of a family I knew where the husband didn’t file for divorce - but up and moved out to live with his mistress, leaving his two small children behind for his wife to take care of. She was promptly advised to file for divorce in order to secure support for herself and the children (who he was entirely uninterested in).

 

[Xantippe]

I am reminded of a family I knew where the husband didn’t file for divorce - but up and moved out to live with his mistress, leaving his two small children behind for his wife to take care of. She was promptly advised to file for divorce in order to secure support for herself and the children (who he was entirely uninterested in).

Yep.