Posted on 09/28/2014 7:11:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The anecdotal evidence that Americans are remaining single longer into their lives has more and more data backing it up. No longer is it merely the musings of worried relatives hoping to see that young man or woman in their life find a spouse. According to a recent story over at Bloomberg—Is Everybody Single?—we’ve reached a statistical, verifiable relationship tipping point as a society; one with far-reaching implications.
Single Americans make up more than half of the adult population for the first time since the government began compiling such statistics in 1976.
Some 124.6 million Americans were single in August, 50.2 percent of those who were 16 years or older, according to data used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly job-market report. That percentage had been hovering just below 50 percent since about the beginning of 2013 before edging above it in July and August. In 1976, it was 37.4 percent and has been trending upward since.
The initial gut-reaction to such news from most fellow Millennials I know is typically something akin to, “So what? I’m living my life and there’s nothing wrong with being single.”
But I would say let’s not jump right to the internalizing of perceived judgments here. Let’s take a step back and think through some of the consequences—intended or otherwise—of a society and culture that is increasingly dominated by single people. Economist Edward Yardeni authored the report in question and reminded its readers that the rise in the percentage of single Americans has very definite “…implications for our economy, society, and politics.”
Singles, particularly younger ones, are more likely to rent than to own their dwellings. Never-married young singles are less likely to have children and previously married older ones, many of whom have adult children, are unlikely to have young kids, Yardeni wrote. That will influence how much money they spend and what they buy.
One of the motivating factors behind the advancement of any civilization—and especially ours—has been the desire to leave a better world for one’s children and grandchildren. With more Americans staying single later into life, the amount of children they do end up having is considerably less than even a few decades ago.
When you are single you are less likely to save and invest your money. Your purchasing habits are very different and the industries that grow are less likely to be manufacturing and product-based and more likely to be entertainment and consumption-based. Single people want to spend their money on new apps for their smart phone (built in Asia) more so than for better housing or infrastructure.
Politically, folks who can’t be bothered to start and look after their families are more likely to turn to the government to solve their problems so that they can focus on sampling local microbrews and keeping up their compelling Instagram accounts. The pounding of the “income inequality” drum is a popular tactic by many politicians, but rarely do they share the contextual data that reveals a big reason for the jump in income inequality is the rise of singleness (because single people don’t usually make as much as a married couple can).
In my opinion, none of this is good for country or culture. As I wrote in an Acculturated piece last year, the lowering of the bar for what is expected of men in particular is a set-back, not a liberation. I spent my 20’s having fun with friends and taking the sight-seers tour through college and graduate school before meeting my wife and realizing I had been nothing short of selfish to wait so long. Of course I had many wonderful experiences and memories during those years, and marriage is not some magical contract you agree to enter that suddenly makes you a better, wiser person. And my point here is not to make someone feel worse about their current relationship status than they already do.
But a nation of single people is not translating into a bunch of folks who have more time to mentor kids or serve their community. It’s a lot of video games and children who wish both parents had stuck around. Out-of-wedlock birth rates have skyrocketed along with the rise of singleness and studies show that the number one predictor of poverty (and time spent in jail) is whether or not the person came from a single parent home.
Marriage does not fix your problems, but it most certainly begins a maturation process that accelerates with the introduction of children into the couple’s lives together. Society needs strong families to flourish. The economy needs consumers who aren’t singularly concerned with “having a good time.” The inner-workings of a free society necessitate concerned citizens who are willing to show up to everything from a PTA meeting to the voting booth on Election Day in order that we might hold those we lend power to in check.
Being married and having a family inspires citizens to care about the world around them (and not solely about saving whales and whatever Jon Stewart said was important that night).
Please permit me to ask a candid question:
Why would you do it again?
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/j-matt-barber/flash-christians-actually-far-less-likely-divorce
It leads to the demands the government saddles the future generations with a tremendous amount of debt, after all, they aren’t going to have any offspring to suffer the consequences from it.
you have to be wise to get married and stay married.
but wisdom does not come naturally to most.
It has to be taught and retaught and retaught again and again.
The structures for doing that are not extant in the society as they once were.
Yup...I am divorced now after a four year long divorce process after 19 years of marriage. The X could have done far better had she taken my original offer but she wanted to make it bitter. I’ll be out of debt in three years or so. In the meantime, have a good woman in my life and I would not mind marriage with her at all. We share the same goals, have the same faith and same ambitions.
Divorce sucks. The only real winners are the attorneys.
It depends on who you’re sampling. They’ve been throwing around the 50% statistic for 35 years. I think it’s been radically increasing. Where I work, the number of people that have a divorce under their belt is WAY higher than those who don’t. I have a 50 year old co-worker whose girlfriend broke it off with him because he wouldn’t marry. His explanation: “I’ve had two divorces and I just don’t have another one in me.”
Too expensive.
Well, that’s nice to know.
I got married at the age of 35, and only because I found the woman that I thought I never would (we’ve been married for 9 years now).
I joined the Navy at 18. I did that for 6 years. Then I went to college for 5 years to get an engineering degree. I had zero social life in the Navy because I was at sea A LOT. In college, I sure wasn’t stable. (Went to school full-time and worked half-time, and those jobs were crap.) I became an engineer at 30, met my wife at 33, married at 35.
One thing that I saw that really put me off marriage: my friends were all hen-pecked to death. At parties and dinner outings, all the women would talk about is how stupid and bumbling their husbands were. The guys were constantly interrupted by their wives when talking with, “Blah blah blah, can you talk about something besides engineering and sports? Nobody wants to hear that.” To hear the women talk they know everything, do everything, and keep everything running in spite of their bumbling idiot husbands. Yeah, all the husband does is bring in $120,000/year. The husband is nothing but an ATM machine and just another one of the kids at home.
I really believe that the marriage rate is indirectly proportional to the arrogance of women as a whole. My wife isn’t like that, she’s the notable exception in my circle of friends.
The proximate cause of extended bachelorhood is understandable for anyone who has raised dogs. If you raise a puppy without frequently providing it interaction with other dogs, by the time it is adult, it will still want to mate, but will see other dogs as “the enemy”.
It will not have any way of relating to them.
Children are much the same. Adults set two priorities for children: that their time be occupied to the point where the children are exhausted and have no free time; and that their children are too busy to interact with children of the opposite gender.
Parents assume that their children get this interaction “in school and in church”. But they do not, because they are kept busy doing other things.
There is NO social system in the US for children to interact in a safe, chaperoned environment, where the purpose of the place is cross gender interaction, not anything else.
Instead, after segregation until age 18, suddenly children are supposed to spontaneously date, get married, get jobs, have children and mortgage a home.
With the extra added bonus of being deeply in debt from their school loans.
Not going to happen. And it is not happening all over the place.
The real icing on the cake is the entertainment industry doing its level best to portray marriage as a life destroying, energy sucking, miserable monster, that takes away all fun, and leaves the couple hating each other and wanting to divorce, so they can make other people miserable as well. (insert laugh track here)
there's a strange man in the park watching the childrenand
there's a strange woman in the park watching the children).
Shouldn't you be thanking their parents who sacrificed them on that alter of selfishness?
Is there an inheritance problem if you marry?
Remember way back then, Lucille Ball acted this way abut Ricky Ricardo too.
Wouldn't it be easier (i.e., less complicated), entering retirement, purchasing a retirement home, collecting one's pension, and - much later - moving to the nursing home, making out one's Will, etc. as a married couple?
Regards,
What we see is the result of the 24/7 marketing of “evil” to the children on MSM and through the public “education” institutions and getting women away from their young children—and destroying the home. They are conditioning children to have a certain “worldview” (white males are oppressive and evil; dumb women are homemakers; white males are stupid—so they discard the ideology of our brilliant Founding Fathers. Culture demeans Virtue and elevates Vice and embeds it intentionally into children.
Edward Bernays perfected “conditioning” in early 1900s, and used psychology to force concepts tied to emotions, on the masses (herd instinct). He created methods for people to discard Reason and become addicts and consumers all by controlling the “perceptions” of the masses-—by pictures, music, photos.
The Leftists have been controlling Language (Words) for one hundred years and as the Marxists and Wittgenstein knew in 1900: He who controls the Language controls the worldview of the masses.
Amish don’t grow up with our “worldview” because they don’t allow the minds of their children to be poisoned and directed to irrational, unnatural evil.
Faith is natural and you can’t eject it from human beings—it always exists..... so some “faith” is taught and inculcated into every child by the minute he can use his senses. The “faith” being forced on children in America is Marxism—a collective “group think” to destroy Christian Ethics which created Individual Natural Rights from God. (Christianity is incompatible with Marxism).
Marxism is the worldview that Common Core and all the curricula since the 60s has been pumping into heads of children, and MSM since Archie Bunker:
Wikipedias explanation of BRAVE NEW WORLD by Huxley....
” In his future world, recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to the World State, sex is a social activity, rather than a means of reproduction (sex is encouraged from early childhood). The few women who can reproduce are conditioned to use birth control, even wearing a “Malthusian belt” (which resembles a bandolier and holds “the regulation supply of contraceptives”) as a popular fashion accessory. The maxim “everyone belongs to everyone else” is repeated often, and the idea of a “family” is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension.”
Marxism is the total dehumanization of Man—it eliminates Free Will and Choice and controls every single thought and idea put into everyone. It removes all elements which make man above animal (image of God) so that the person can be eliminated by the State.
No biological connection can exist because people will “feel” more “loyalty” to relatives-—and you can’t have unequal anything. The concept of Mother and Father needs to be erased along with ALL natural instincts in children. Girls are conditioned to kill their own genetic offspring and hate males—and males are taught to kill females (combat) and to treat them as “equal”-—to destroy that Christian concept which created Romance and Chivalry and Individualism and ownership—private property concepts. Everything is communal—even sex and children.
Do we spend the next twenty years preaching at the young to get married and have kids? Or do we sit back and recognize that our country is no more and spend more time looking after our families and friends and less time caring about what happens to Amerika?
My 80+ mother-in-law married a new beau a couple years ago, even though Social Security incentivizes seniors to stay single. Her new husband, a Texas cowboy she knew in high school, didn’t want his 8-year-old great-granddaughter to think that living in sin was OK.
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