Odds of a good marriage and risks of getting married

  • Thread starter Thread starter Estevao
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Regarding legal presumptions, imagine the outcry if we DIDN’T legally presume that the husband is the father. Men would be LIVID if women were automatically recognized as mothers, but they had to go through a paternity test to prove to the state that they were the father just to have basic parental rights.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Regarding legal presumptions, imagine the outcry if we DIDN’T legally presume that the husband is the father. Men would be LIVID if women were automatically recognized as mothers, but they had to go through a paternity test to prove to the state that they were the father just to have basic parental rights.
Click to expand...
Exactly! Or imagine the outcry (which already happened in the past and is the origin of this presumption) of men not being able to give all their money, their house and inheritace to a child instead men would be forced to give all their possessions and inheritance to the Government because in order to leave their money to someone other than the Government they had to go through court, do paternity test and have such a complicated process that in the end after all the money they spend in court they won’t have a penny to pass on. Or even better imagine men havingvto have the government make medical decisions for elderly men and have the government handle their assets because there are no presumptions at all anymore so well the only one left toake decisions for men in their elderly years is the government. Imagine?
 
Zzyzx road said:

“This is because in light of today’s society that makes it easy and even encourages women to blow up their marriages, the only force holding a woman to her marriage is internal to her mind, that’s it.”

I suggest reading Kay S. Hymowitz’s “Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age,” which covers the social science of divorce over the last 40 odd years.

I haven’t read the book recently, but as I recall, there are some very interesting insights there about class and marriage in modern America. At some point 40 or so years ago, there was an explosion of divorce in all classes, and then at some point, the middle class and the upper middle class wised up and stopped getting divorced as much, while working class families continued to implode.

One of the things that middle class and upper middle class people realized is that raising middle class and upper middle class children is an extraordinarily resource intensive endeavor–homework that needs supervision, driving to extracurriculars, tutoring, speech therapy, physical therapy, etc. If you are middle class and get divorced, you and your kids will very likely fall right out of the middle class because engaging in that kind of high-intensity parenting is not an individual sport. To this day, people still officially do pay lip-service to single parent families being just as good, but if you look at how the US upper middle class lives, divorce has become a shocking thing to do in that environment. (I spend a lot of time on a liberal parenting blog, and when Sandra Tsing Loh, a well-known female writer, left her husband of nearly 20 years for no particular reason, all these super liberal highly educated women were practically stoning her. It’s just not done. In fact, some people in that milieu find the fact that our family hasn’t gotten around to music lessons or seriously done sports pretty shocking.)

To get an idea of the intensity of that parenting approach, read Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”

While it is true that divorce is uncommon in that class, that doesn’t mean that men get off easy there. Women in that class do tend to expect full engagement with the parenting project from their husbands. That means long hours of work to pay for everything for the kids, help with chores, and sharing the driving and other evening parenting tasks when at home. This evening, for instance, my husband took one child to CCD while I stayed home with a sick child and a toddler, talked the sick child into doing homework and taking a bath, and put the toddler to bed. My husband grocery shopped during CCD, came home, I cleaned up after the toddler’s bedtime snack (very messy!) and then I unpacked the groceries. Meanwhile, he started supervising the sick kid’s book report she’s taking to school tomorrow. In a few minutes, I’ll put the middle child to bed and then I’ll probably put the sick oldest child to bed, too, and fit in a little laundry. This is not even a very busy night, but it’s an extremely complex operation, and I think any woman who is eager to do all of that by herself is nuts.

So, no, modern society does not encourage middle class women to blow up their marriages.
 
This is from the USCCB:
  1. Marrying as a teenager is the highest known risk factor for divorce.
    —People who marry in their teens are two to three times more likely to divorce than people who marry in their twenties or later.
  2. People are most likely to find a future marriage partner through an introduction by family, friends, or acquaintances.
  3. People who are similar in their values, backgrounds and life goals are more likely to have a successful marriage.
  4. Women have a significantly better chance of marrying if they do not become single parents before marrying.
  5. Women and men who are college-educated are more likely to marry, and less likely to divorce, than people with lower levels of education.
  6. Living together before marriage has not proved useful as a “trial marriage.”
    —People who have multiple cohabiting relationships before marriage are more likely to experience marital conflict, marital unhappiness and eventual divorce than people who do not cohabit before marriage.
  7. Marriage helps people to generate income and wealth.
  8. People who are married are more likely to have emotionally and physically satisfying sex lives than single people or those who live together.
  9. People whose parents divorced are slightly less likely to marry. They are much more likely to divorce when they do marry.
  10. For large segments of the population, the risk of divorce is far below fifty percent.
    —The risk of divorce is far below fifty percent for educated people going into their first marriage, and lower still for people who wait to marry at least until their mid-twenties, haven’t lived with many different partners prior to marriage, or are strongly religious and marry someone of the same faith.
foryourmarriage.org/ten-important-research-findings-on-marriage/
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Regarding legal presumptions, imagine the outcry if we DIDN’T legally presume that the husband is the father. Men would be LIVID if women were automatically recognized as mothers, but they had to go through a paternity test to prove to the state that they were the father just to have basic parental rights.
Click to expand...
I think he is referring to the fact that a husband only has 2 years to challenge paternity. So a wife could technically lie for 2 years and after the 2nd birthday the husband has no recourse.
 
chefmomster2,

That was very helpful and thorough. It’s nice to have all of that compiled in one place.
 
The “odds” just don’t matter. They are for a generalized group that you may not match at all.

I preferred to reinforce the odds that MY marriage would succeed.

–I married a Catholic man.
–I married a man who shared my belief that we were called to a lifetime HAPPY marriage and we were both willing to go to counseling or to do whatever was necessary should we ever have problems we couldn’t solve on our own.
–We married after graduating from college.
–We had good jobs,
–We waited until our mid-twenties to marry.
–It was the first marriage for each of us.
–We agreed on birth control BEFORE we were married- NFP
–We were lifelong practicing Catholics.
–We continued to faithfully worship after our marriage.
–We agreed on raising our children as faithful Catholics.
–We were active in our church.
–We came from divorce-free families. (Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.)
–We were introduced by friends who knew us both well.
–We came from similar backgrounds.
–We agreed ahead on “division-of-labor and responsibility” issues.
–We agreed on long-term goals and aspirations- children, advanced degrees, a home, etc.
–We had no children before marriage.
–We did not live together or have sex before marriage by mutual consent.
–We agreed to NEVER yell, use obscenities, call names, etc. when arguing. We still don’t!
–We continued to work on our communication skills, spiritual lives, and individual needs.
–We respected each other.
–We dated for 2 years before we married.
–WE LOVED EACH OTHER!!!

I had some advantages that you did not, such as coming from a home of happily married parents, but many, many of the other things I mentioned (or the gazillion more I could have listed) are available for anyone! Rather than worrying about the odds that you will fail, concentrate on buttressing your relationship to guarantee its future!

BTW, We have been married 31-1/2 years and wouldn’t have it any other way! 😃
 
chefmomster2,

That’s also very helpful.

I’d add that good premarital counseling is actually very helpful, as there are a lot of issues that need to be discussed that couples might not think to talk about. The six month wait for a wedding that’s normal for Catholics in the US is also helpful.

I’d add that I think it’s a great idea to do a personal finance course together, have a very clear idea of one’s intended’s finances and money management habits, and work together on budgeting and goal-setting, even before getting married. My husband and I have been doing a monthly budget meeting for nearly the last 7 years, and I find it quite indispensable. By doing a monthly budget meeting and sticking to the agreement, it’s possible to almost entirely eliminate money arguments.
 
Estevao said:
Thanks guys. I will definitely think about marriage if I don’t see myself capable of being a priest. One of the reasons I don’t think I’m called to that is because I don’t come from a Catholic family, so I imagine I wouldn’t even have family to keep me company as a priest, let alone a wife.
Click to expand...
As the thewanderer mentioned, marriage or the priesthood aren’t your only options. You can certainly live out your Christianity as a single man. Nothing wrong with that!

OTOH, if you *want *to get married, and are worried about financial repercussions from divorce, these stats may appease your if you’re not against marrying a career woman:

reuters.com/article/2012/05/10/us-divorce-women-alimony-idUSBRE8490YW20120510
“More than half, 56 percent, of divorce lawyers across the United States have seen an increase in mothers paying child support in the last three years and 47 percent have noted a hike in the number of women paying alimony, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers”
Click to expand...
The courts are probably less biased than you might think, and are in fact following economic gender trends.
 
I don’t worry over all the surveys and statistics. Anyone who finds someone they love and feels confident in is still taking a risk bacause the person they marry now won’t be the person they are in 20 years. People change over time. Maybe the key is finding someone who’s flexible about change who knows. I never founds someone it’s a question I never had to ask myself. :rolleyes:
 
I read most of the thread, but not all, and didn’t see a mention that those who practice NFP have an almost non-existent divorce rate. So many things affect these statistics, that they’re really meaningful only in giving some pointers on what produces better marriages.

As others have pointed out, many of the assumptions are just wrong.

I am female, yes, I filed for divorce, and it was legally no fault. But I have my doubts many divorces are really no fault. Mine certainly wasn’t. I filed after 20 years of lies, deceit, other women, emotional affairs, at least one one night stand that potentially exposed me and the children born afterward to diseases–a danger I was never told about; probably other physical affairs, but I’ll never know; credit cards and massive debt so bad I believe we would have lost the house, and which he lied to me about (I was told we were debt free, and he went out of his way to hide those credit cards), and, if that’s not enough, 20+ years of emotional and verbal abuse, cutting me down, criticism, yelling, threats of physical violence, and making it clear I wasn’t wanted or welcome or liked among his family, friends, and co-workers.

Yes, there was plenty of fault. I did everything in my power to start the upward process. I asked him to go to counseling. He only went after one of the ‘girlfriends’ mothers got involved and threatened him with a restraining order if he didn’t get marriage counseling! :eek: (Should have told me all I needed to know about how serious he was.) We went to Retrouvaille and two counselors. I told him repeatedly that the nastiness needed to stop. I got counseling myself. THREE priests advised me this was not a marriage.

NONE of that was worth trying to prove in divorce court. It would have cost untold thousands and achieved absolutely nothing. When he started helping himself to money out of MY personal bank account–the only safety net we had–I filed for legal protection.

But LEGALLY, it’s still ‘no fault.’ Morally, that’s a load of malarkey. There was plenty of fault, and he was given ample opportunity to change his ways.

Child Support: I know the amount he pays for six kids is painful to him. But
  1. He helped produce those kids, and
  2. the full child support doesn’t even pay the mortgage, let alone feed them or put clothes on their back, pay the water and electric bill, or anything else. No, I work many hours each day to provide the rest for them and myself.
Alimony:

I state this as a fact, not out of anger or bitterness. (I actually take it as a compliment, it’s true, and the fact is, XH did need to have some money left to live on himself; I don’t begrudge him that.) But the FACT is, alimony is not automatic. I was married to him for 23 years, from the time I was 20. I gave up a full time career those entire 23 years because it mattered a great deal to him to be the provider for his family and it mattered to both of us for a parent to be available for and home with the kids. So in my mid 40s, never having had a full time job in my life, with 9 kids and 6 of them still at home, I was deemed able to take care of myself. No alimony. Not even temporary.

Again–I’m resourceful and educated, and I am taking care of myself. But the fact remains that even after a 23 year marriage and never having had a full time job, there was no alimony. It is not automatic.
 
The moral of the story to me is:

Yes, I know there are women out there who will dump the best husband in the world and take terrible advantage of him. Yes, it happens.

BUT…choose wisely, look closely at character, and be the best husband and man you can be, treating your wife with love and respect, and those statistics become meaningless.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Regarding legal presumptions, imagine the outcry if we DIDN’T legally presume that the husband is the father. Men would be LIVID if women were automatically recognized as mothers, but they had to go through a paternity test to prove to the state that they were the father just to have basic parental rights.
Click to expand...
BlueEyedLady: Do you ever post on Jezebel or Feministing?
 
eeriechallenge said:
BlueEyedLady: Do you ever post on Jezebel or Feministing?
Click to expand...
No. Actually, both make me shudder for various reasons, though no offense to you or anyone else who may enjoy them. They just aren’t my bag. I also don’t do reddit. Interestingly, the only places you’ll find me commenting on the internet are CAF and Facebook. I used to be active on a wedding website too, but it’s less fun after the wedding.
 
holyrood said:
I read most of the thread, but not all, and didn’t see a mention that those who practice NFP have an almost non-existent divorce rate.
Click to expand...
But that has nothing to do with practicing NFP. In fact, NFP is simply information, and information in an of itself does nothing for a marriage.

It’s the morality that underlies the NFP that makes a marriage successful or not. Does anyone believe that immoral atheists “practicing NFP” are going to have a nonexistent divorce rate?
 
TheWarriorMonk said:

“But that has nothing to do with practicing NFP. In fact, NFP is simply information, and information in an of itself does nothing for a marriage. It’s the morality that underlies the NFP that makes a marriage successful or not. Does anyone believe that immoral atheists “practicing NFP” are going to have a nonexistent divorce rate?”

Actually, my feeling is that just being the sort of family that can commit to any sort of routine (whether a family dinner or church on Sunday or violin practice or soccer practice) is meaningful. There may be some special value in having the sort of ideals of marriage that lead one to practice NFP, but just doing “something” (regardless of what the something is) often has positive effects.
 
Xantippe said:
Actually, my feeling is that just being the sort of family that can commit to any sort of routine (whether a family dinner or church on Sunday or violin practice or soccer practice) is meaningful. There may be some special value in having the sort of ideals of marriage that lead one to practice NFP, but just doing “something” (regardless of what the something is) often has positive effects.
Click to expand...
You don’t think it has more to do with the fact that practitioners of NFP follow a religion that strictly forbids divorce?
 
I don’t know about NFP specifically, but you’ll notice that there are a lot of studies that say, you’ll get much better kids if you a) have dinner together b) put them in sports c) have them take violin lessons, etc. I’m sure you’ve seen all those articles.

I think that in many cases, it’s not the specific item, but being willing and able to take trouble that does the job. There might even be an effect of that sort with regard to marriage–people who are willing to take the trouble to get legally married are more likely to be the sort of people who will take the trouble to have a good relationship with their spouse.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top