Whenever this topic comes up, men completely ignore the influence of No-Fault Divorce, which allowed men to trade in their aging housewives for younger models. Do you remember the phrase “Trophy Wife?” Men have contributed to this greatly. It wasn’t just feminism that convinced women to go out and earn their own keep. It was fear that they’d be discarded once they were middle-aged.
Sure, women went out and had children with multiple fathers because they were afraid a husband they never had was going to discard them in their middle age in order to trade them in for younger model, using No-Fault Divorce.
I will pin a lot of the blame on Hugh Hefner and his “Playboy Philosophy”.
I don't know of a time when successful men were able to dump their wives for cheap. I've never seen it in my lifetime. Women earning a salary/having a career is fine. Both of my big sisters are doctors. The problems are 1) when women prioritize career over finding a mate and let their youth slip away in the process because obviously men have always greatly prized youth in a potential wife and 2)while men have no problem marrying a woman with less education or who earns far less than he does, women have a huge problem with that. So the more educated a woman gets and the more she earns, the more potential husbands she rules out.
Yes its great and all if the above description doesn't fit you and/or doesn't fit your friends. Those are anecdotes. In a large majority of cases, those descriptions DO fit. Thus the decline of marriage in the last couple generations.
...at the cost of half their savings, being kicked out of their homes, child custody routinely being awarded to the mothers, alimony, etc.
And remember: Women are overwhelmingly the ones filing for divorce.
Do you remember the phrase “Trophy Wife?” Men have contributed to this greatly.
You are guilty of the "Apex Fallacy!" Not "men" have contributed to that - rather, the top 10% of men have contributed to it. The vast majority of men do not aspire to acquiring a "Trophy Wife" (usually because they are ordinary joes who are capable of realistically estimating their own SMV and who thus can be content with an average woman; hypergamy is an exclusively female failing).
It wasn’t just feminism that convinced women to go out and earn their own keep. It was fear that they’d be discarded once they were middle-aged.
Again: Women are overwhelmingly responsible for filing for divorce. If anyone has anything to fear, then it's the men.
Regards,
“It wasn’t just feminism that convinced women to go out and earn their own keep. It was fear that they’d be discarded once they were middle-aged.”
I think you’re right APLady, though it’s only a co-factor along with feminism.
Like everything else, it was a shift in thinking and in behavior that had never occurred in the past. The question is why.
The behavior of men changed. They became more willing to leave their wives. Why did they not do this in previous centuries?
It all has to do with the effects of turning from God. Men didn’t leave their wives because their faith in God kept them on the straight and narrow.