Sorry for the imprecise language, rereading what I wrote it was hard to navigate.
Somewhat difficult concept under discussion.
The actual relevance of this to an individual who knows that correlation is not causation is negligible because the study was ill designed.
Among a cohort of people who all know and hang out and talk with each other that are the same age, grew up together, etc - people from the same culture - are the less promiscuous ones less likely to experience divorce? Who knows? They didn't answer that question.
If you are thinking of cohabitation with a gal before or as an alternative to getting married ‘early’, does your decision to do it make it more or less likely that you will eventually divorce? Who knows? They didn't answer that question.
And yet the entire premise of the article, and much of the discussion; is that they DID show data, one way or the other, towards answering those questions. They did not.
Correlation is not causation. All they showed is that people from cultures who do not sleep around and do not cohabitate before marriage - also do not often divorce. That is because there is a cultural stigma to so doing among their culture.
The question I want answered is how do we go about re-stigmatizing ANYTHING in the era of self-esteem, where there are no winners or losers and everyone gets a trophy for participation?
Because I prefer a culture where you call a spade a damn little shovel, and things have a stigma! Our Republic was designed for a moral and educated people, not an Idiocracy!
I'd like to know that, too. In my opinion, a start would be to attached the financial consequences of behavior to the persons engaging in the behavior. It might not be "moral stigma," but it would be "getting hungry and need to pay some rent."