Who's gonna propose?!
Would you propose to these three?
And these are the girls
young America
holds up as their role models!
Who's gonna propose?!
Posted on 01/23/2007 7:11:06 AM PST by shrinkermd
THE news that 51 percent of all women live without a spouse might be enough to make you invest in cat futures.
But consider, too, the flip side: about half of all men find themselves in the same situation. As the number of people marrying has dropped off in the last 45 years, the marriage rate has declined equally for men and for women.
The stereotype has been cemented in the popular culture: the hard-charging career girl who gets her comeuppance, either violently or dying a slow death by late-night memo and Chinese takeout...
But when it comes to marriage, the two Americas aren’t divided by gender. And it’s not the career girls on the losing end. It’s their less educated manicurists or housekeepers, women who might arguably be less able to live on their own.
The emerging gulf is instead one of class — what demographers, sociologists and those who study the often depressing statistics about the wedded state call a “marriage gap” between the well-off and the less so.
Statistics show that college educated women are more likely to marry than non-college educated women — although they marry, on average, two years later.
Women with more education also are becoming less likely to divorce, or inclined to divorce, than those with less education. They are even less likely to be widowed all in all, less likely to end up alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Now, the extended family is near non-existent for most people. Friends are those you've made in the last 4-5 years, and chances are they'll all move away. Not to mention the alienation and anti-social structure of suburbia.
With the birth rate down, half of the extended family that used to be there doesn't even exist now.
I had no idea about *that*! I'm the most married woman in the country! This report is insane! (I also know that, with the wonders of modern technology, we had more contact with our husbands than ever before. IM, email, phone calls... heck, who wrote letters?) I'd love to know the *real* stats.
Looking for FReeper input on this one. At what age would you reasonably start this study? It's not unusual for any woman under 21 to not be married. (Even after that, there are a lot of long engagements - waiting until graduation and all that.)
Who's gonna propose?!
Would you propose to these three?
And these are the girls
young America
holds up as their role models!
Who's gonna propose?!
Being married in America for a male is a liability..
Especially for a white male..
America hates males, white males they despise..
Marriage ends, poor and minorities hardest hit.
Becasue of the collapse of the moral values. Getting married is no longer considered vogue, having abortion on demand with pills, and living the lifestyle of Rosie ODonnell and Madonna is the vogue.
The Christian-Judeo values are considered old hat.
Revelation predicted the fall of man, due to his faithless ways.
Not to denigrate the responses of the men here, but I am a divorced female and we also suffer from the effects of divorce. My ex-husband paid me half of the equity we had in our house, which came to only $13,000. Now the house has appreciated by at least $200,000, and he is the benefactor.
He lost interest in our 3 children while I have struggled to put them through college. He pays $2500 a year and I pay the rest. He says he can't afford more, but he owns two new cars and just put a two-car garage on the house for his new wife and step-daughter. He also bought them a new computer. By the way, he is a federal employee and now makes at least $120,000 a year.
Child support ended when the youngest turned 18 and there is no alimony because I am a nurse and it is easy for me to get a job that pays $50,000 a year.
I am not complaining, just illustrating that it works both ways. It is a matter of pride for me to put my children through college with only the pittance he pays.
In my opinion, the basic reason why our society is damaged is because we have turned our backs on God.
Exactly. I am not trying to blame either sex, but I do think feminism has negatively impacted on our modern culture.
The problem with marriage today is that it is a social contract no longer supported by society.
Men and women have a basic, animal-like biological relationship with each other, in which the prerogative of the male is to impregnate as many females as possible, and the female has a double prerogative to get both the best sperm donor available and the best provider available to help her raise her offspring. When there are many men, usually not the same man.
This kind of relationship is common in the animal kingdom.
However, as I said, this is a "basic" relationship, and far from satisfactory for men or women, or their children. And *this* is why marriage was devised.
Marriage, as a social contract, benefited a man because it was a promise from the woman that her children would be his. In turn, it benefited her, with his promise to *only* make her children, and *only* raise her children. And, of course, it strongly benefited the children.
But the flaw in marriage is that it only works well as a contract, when society as a whole *enforces* that contract. Partners in a marriage were "hands off", under penalty of law. It also has the flaw that "economic marriage", for money rather than children, invalidates the contract.
The purpose of marriage must be children, or it is not marriage.
Philosophies evolved over many years that put down marriage as "unnatural", and also "unfair", and strongly undermined it, by people who wanted a return to a more animalistic state.
And that is what they got. Which, as I said before, is "unsatisfactory" to both men and women, and their children. And glaringly obvious to everyone.
So society is now trying to replicate the social contract of marriage in the courts, and may well do so, if not as well, by giving both men and women what they want out of marriage. With this in mind, it is easy to predict what will eventually evolve.
First of all, all States require some kind of child support from males who are financially responsible for a child. This has lead to some States demanding that when a woman gives birth, she must name who she believes is the father, so that the State may pursue such support from him.
But in the future, with this information, hospitals will be required to take a DNA sample of the mother and her child from the umbilical cord, and retain it for a period of time. Then the purported father will be notified. At this time, he will then have the option of taking a DNA test himself.
1) He may take the DNA test, and if he is the father, he can assert paternity. He can also assert paternity if he is not the father, with the agreement of the mother.
2) If he takes the DNA test and discovers he is not the father, and refuses to take paternity, by law he must either end any relationship with the mother and her child completely, or he automatically assumes responsibility. He cannot have one and not the other.
3) If he refuses to take the DNA test, he may still be compelled at some time to take it by court order, to establish if he has paternity. Or he may refuse to take it and assert paternity because he trusts the mother, but it justs smooths things all around if he knows for sure.
This provides through the law and technology what was once provided through marriage. For him, that the children are his, and for her, that he no longer seeks to impregnate other women and is legally required to care for her children. And it also helps the children.
The bottom line is that we lost a great deal with the loss of marriage as a contract and institution. And while marriage is not a complete loss, only the luckiest of us will profit from it in the future. For the rest, the courts will have to pick up the slack.
And for the unhappy ones, who rejected marriage in the first place, they will continue to live like animals, and think they are more "liberated" because of it. And they and their children will continue to suffer for it, mitigated at least in part by the law.
Maybe not, but you may...
Because the man will lose over half of his stuff including his retirement savings, the woman will get the kids and the man will have to pay a rediculous amount of child support or face jail. There is no reason for a man to get married.
One mantra that I've learned to live with, but it still pisses me off:
Her paycheck is "her" money; my paycheck is "our" money.
Given todays moral values ... the same "gift" could be given by nearly any female
Oops, that should have been beneficiary, not benefactor.
1) More women lie awake nights worrying about things like this.
2) More women buy the New York Times. ;)
OH and BTW ... in Nevada the working girls are checked ... and probably safer than your typical 2AM bar floozie
OK...I agree with that......wish people in this country did have more kids.
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