The Marriage Strike - Why are men reluctant to marry?

Radiofree West Hartford ^ | August 13, 2003 | Wendy McElroy

[ddodd3329]

Why do fewer people marry?

According to a 1999 National Vital Statistics Report from the CDC, 7.4 per 1,000 Americans married in 1998. From 1990 to 1995, the marriage rate dropped from 9.8 to 7.6. Different sources render other statistics but the trend remains sharply downward.

There is never a single or comprehensive explanation for complex phenomena that are rooted deeply in human psychology. Non-marriage is a particularly difficult issue to address because, as a recent paper from Rutgers University entitled "Why Men Won't Commit" explains, official sources are scarce. "The federal government issues thousands of reports on nearly every dimension of American life. ... But it provides no annual index or report on the state of marriage." Much of the discussion of the motives surrounding non-marriage must be anecdotal, therefore, relying on statistics to provide framework and perspective.

In examining reasons for the current decline of marriage, one question usually receives short shrift. Why are men reluctant to marry?

The Rutgers report -- admittedly based on a small sample -- found ten prevalent reasons. The first three:

They can get sex without marriage;

They can enjoy "a wife" through cohabitation; and,

They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks.

As a critic of anti-male bias in the family courts, the reasons I hear most frequently from non-marrying men are fear of financial devastation in divorce and of losing meaningful contact with children afterward. (Such feedback is anecdotal evidence but, when you hear the same response over a period of years from several hundred different sources, it becomes prudent to listen.)

In a similar vein, the Rutgers report finds: "Many men also fear the financial consequences of divorce. They say that their financial assets are better protected if they cohabit rather than marry. They fear that an ex-wife will 'take you for all you've got' and that 'men have more to lose financially than women' from a divorce."

Increasingly, men are stating their reasons for not marrying on the Internet. In an article entitled "The Marriage Strike," Matthew Weeks expresses a sentiment common to such sites, "If we accept the old feminist argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is undeniable that -- given the current state of the nation's family courts -- divorce is slavery for men."

Weeks provides the math. One in two marriages will fail with the wife being twice as likely to initiate the proceedings on grounds of "general discontent" -- the minimum requirement of no-fault divorce. The odds of the woman receiving custody of children are overwhelming, with many fathers effectively being denied visitation. The wife usually keeps the "family" assets and, perhaps, receives alimony as well as child support. Many men confront continuing poverty to pay for the former marriage.

>>>Continued<<<

[xrp]

Many of my friends are telling me that Latino women are absolutely wonderful.

I highly suspect that they are right. I cannot get a woman here in Atlanta to show me any interest (and I am in shape with a good career, whether it be at work, a bar, a show, a church or whatever. I just completed a business trip to south Florida (Miami area) and a LOT of the Latina beauties were checking me out! I mean thoroughly! I hadn't had that since high school 13 years ago. Given the opportunity, I might try to relocate and see about finding one that is serious about being a woman, a wife, a best friend and a mother.

[bulldogs]

She would rip you to shreds!

[CyberAnt]

You said, "not really", but then everything else you said totally proved my point.

If women want men to marry them - then they have to stop providing the status of "committed relationship". Which translated means - I'll sleep with you and live with you, but I won't marry you!

[Richard Kimball]

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

[Terabitten]

I've followed this thread with great interest all day, and I feel the need to opine.

I was 24, Christian, and a brand new infantry officer when I got married in 1996. I married a good Christian woman, who even worked in a church. Five years later, I was deployed to Bosnia, leaving my wife and a 11 month old baby. While I was overseas, unbeknownst to me, my wife got a boyfriend back here in the US. She picked me up at the airport on my return to the US, and on the 3 hour drive home, told me she wanted a divorce due to her complete unhappiness in the marriage. Three months later, the divorce was complete.

After the divorce was final, I found out that my ex had been having an affair -- she was able to keep that little secret from me during the divorce. I further discovered that during my deployment, she'd been using drugs, and, worst of all, not taking proper care of my baby (you medical types know what "failure to thrive" means). When I found out about these things, several months after our "no-fault" divorce, I took her to court to gain custody of my then 2 year old daughter. I had what appeared to be an airtight case: medical records, affadavits from people who had used drugs with her, the whole deal.

My case was thrown out of court on its ear. Why? Because I couldn't prove that anything had happened SINCE the divorce became final.

My ex wife got married to the man she had the affair with and moved several hundred miles away. I'm still Tragically Single, and only get to see my 3 year old daughter one week out of the month. Approximately 20% of my gross pay goes to child support. I also maintain health insurance on my daughter and bear all the costs of visitation (gas, etc). I had to sell my house to pay for the failed attempt to get custody of my daughter, so now I live in a small apartment, while my ex lives with her new husband in a new four bedroom home in a scenic mountain area.

So y'all tell me... why don't men want to get married? Simple. Even when we do everything right, we lose.

[Richard Kimball]

You Baptists are all alike.

[Richard Kimball]

tell that to the house framers and dry wall hangers living from the back of their '92 pickups

I don't speak spanish.

[xrp]

Ouch...

[snowstorm12]

I agree with the article about marriage being too risky these days, but I'm a female. I really don't want to be controlled by a husband for many years and end up with nothing in the end, raise his kids for him and give up a lot and then get dumped or risk being killed for my bank account or life insurance (peterson) like in the news all the time. I will make sure my husband knows if I end up dead all my money is going to my parents or brother, so it wont be incentive to kill me. I want total control of my life. Marriage is too big of a risk and there isn't much purpose for it really. I think I'm leaning more and more to just having a unmarried relationship and become a mother so if the relationship goes bad or gets chaotic I have total control of my children. Marriage is just a piece of paper anyways and I can still go to court for big child support payments if I need too, or just move away and deny the child is his or not even tell him I'm pregnant if the guy even hints at trying to take advantage of me or threatens to take my kid(s) away from me. No way will I go through pregnancy/childbirth and take care of them 24/7 just to have my kids taken away, over my dead body! If I were married then I won't even bother going to court concerning the children except for proper divorce settlement for all the work I put into raising his kids and be compensated for my time put into the marriage. If he was a mean and horrible husband or philanderer I would take him to court for full custody of the kids. I would do whatever I had to do to make sure I have total control. Too big of a risk these days to give up control to any man I'm not married to.

[RightWhale]

the number of men age 16-30 as a percentage of the population declined.

Only a couple % at most. The number staying unmarried went up by huge factors, maybe ten or 100. Not 10%, but 10 X, or 100 X.

This could change again, of course, some day when there is a shortage of people on the planet, which is not the case now. There is no shortage of people. In fact, the supply of people worldwide is growing all the time. If there is a shortage of people in your town, it is nothing but a distribution problem.

[TheDon]

Why me?

[Bonaparte]

[jim2111]: "...might be to a Christian woman who takes marriage seriously."

[tortoise]: "...even then you are taking your chances."
____________________________________________________________

Jim, listen to tortoise. He knows whereof he speaks. And Mark will be here shortly. He's been down that road.

I have a lawyer brother who has made exceptionally good income putting together "bullet proof" marriages for risk-averse men. We're talking the full monte here... all major assets, real estate, porfolios, etc. sheltered from judgment... major investigation into fiance's past, all info held on file for possible use in future court action... prenuptials that go on and on... and I'm only scratching the surface here, believe me.

There is no shortage of strategies that can be used. You can find out what parts of the country have high marriage rates and extremely low divorce rates. These will typically be in regions like the rural midwest and south. You can seek a prospective mate in churches of the most conservative cast imaginable. You can sit down and "eat a barrel of salt with her" (that could take some time, couldn't it?). There are many, many things you can do to improve your odds. But things can still go awry. It's always going to be a risk but then it always has been.

[null and void]

Sucks to be you.

I'm glad my ex is staying in this area. At least I see my kids more than once a week.

Knowing your ex, the 3 week gaps must seem like an eternity. I hope your daughter is OK, but I also know that there is NO provision under law to insure that as much as a single cent of child support ends up actually supporting the child.

Despite $1100/mo PER CHILD support, my son was out of shoes that fit. (The adopted step daughter never seems to want for new clothes).

Strangely, now that I'm unemployed and my support has been greatly reduced, my daughter still has a good supply of new clothes, and my son didn't get new shoes until I pointed out that his last pair of sandals (which I bought him) broke.

Odd how the one that is genetically related to me gets to wear his sister's hand-me-downs...

[null and void]

Because you're there!

[meyer]

I once was slapped for holding a door open for my date. She said it was an insult to her and I had better apologize.

I hope you went to the men's room and never returned. :)

[fish hawk]

My uncle has a friend that is getting married for the forth time. My uncle asked him why??? He said , well Charlie, you have to admit all three of my wives were good house keepers. Yep, all three of them kept the houses.

[FreedomAvatar]

It's the Oprah-ization of American women. "You go, girl!". And they do.

[Mat_Helm]

Because society has lost faith. There are few men and women of honor. Money, wealth, and power of personal freedom over responsibility have convinced selfish people to allow abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and the decline of the family. The results are desturbed children shooting up their schools, deadly diseases killing the sexual permissive and deviant in society, young people throwing away healthy babies in dumpsters, and the ACLU removing God and morals from a nation founded on christian ethics and principals. The corruption is so bad that even a mainsteam demonination such as the Anglican church elects a divorced man who lives with his homosexual lover in an openly gay relationship as a church bishop a week after the Pope and the Cahtolic Church condem gay marriage. How ironic that at the time marriage is on the decline gay marriage is on the rise. Christ said that in the end people would be as bad as in the time of Noah and giving and taking in marriage. We have reached that time.

[tortoise]

If women want men to marry them - then they have to stop providing the status of "committed relationship".

Nope, you completely missed the important point. The way things currently work is a consequence of social economics in the current environment. What you are suggesting is that people change their behavior, which is really a platitude. You can't dictate the behavior of a specific system -- it is what it is -- and actions within a system are punished or rewarded as a function of the rules of that system.

People don't change their fundamental behavioral calculus, the environment changes and people adapt their actions to the environment as the social economics shift according to their fundamental behavioral calculus. Under the current environment the equilibrium point is to do exactly what a lot of people are doing now: committed co-habitation. Women can no more decree that things happen a certain way in a relationship by fiat than they can break the laws of thermodynamics by fiat. The system isn't governed by wishes, and the actual outcome is always something that is consistent with the rules of the system.

Woman can change the dynamics of the system by demanding marriage, but they probably won't get the result they were looking for under the current environment. The equilibrium point in that scenario is that men avoid relationships with women altogether (I'm sure the gay lobby would love that, heh). Nope, if you want men to marry women (and vice versa), you have to modify the environment so that marriage is a stable equilibrium point in the social calculus. It currently is not a stable equilibrium point and no amount of handwringing and "oughts" will change this.

[Syncro]

...but I haven't found a woman who has a clue as to what constitutes a good relationship.
They'd rather have a guy that treats them like dirt, cheats on them, and leaves them, than a guy like me who will treat her like a queen, love her like she was the only woman on earth, and will do what it takes to make things work, no matter what.

It is sad what has happened to women your age and a little younger these days.

They will seek out a man just like you and seem like they have the same love and commitment.
I haven't figured out what happens, but they seem to be self-destructive. After finding the "perfect" mate years later some seem to not appreciate the love and commitment and then find the same kind of man and do it again. Because deep inside they really do want a good man like you.

If they stay self-absorbed and vain they will destroy the next relationship.

Perhaps some learn when they see they are very unhappy with the superficial attention of several men, but others become flirtatiously promiscuous and get unhappier and unhappier while at the same time maintaining an undetectable ( to most casual observers and the men they get interested in them) facade.

Those that don't recoginize wake-up calls end up giving up everything seeming held dear to them for their own vain (fleeting) pleasures.

It seems men are always seen as the ones that won't commit. And that would say after sex "that was fantastic I am not used to it being that good" and then make it clear they want someone else next.

The tables have turned and although I don't believe men should have sex just for sex's sake, women taking on the same trait is sad indeed. Anyone male or female who operates on that level does not have much self-respect.

Be careful.

Some women do become single because a man has treated them badly or does not love them anymore. But some leave relationships or marriages (or are forced out) because of their own selfish actions.

If you are lucky enough to find a woman who believes you are the man she was made for it may be a good idea to see how she treated the last man in her life. (No matter how sincere she seems if she starts treating you like that there's yer wake-up-call :>)

Some seem to go into the MAC-attack phase and never come out of it...