The article implies these men aren't even getting to the stage where they can make the decision on whether it's beneficial.

"Dorn and his colleagues find that when towns and counties lose manufacturing jobs, fertility and marriage rates among young adults go down, too. Unmarried births and the share of children living in single-parent homes go up. Meanwhile, places with higher manufacturing employment have a bigger wage gap between men and women, and a higher marriage rate."

It seems clear which way the cause and effect goes from that.

That's so true. When you're not married, you can decide one day you want to quit, and that's it, the end of the story. When you're married, you need to prepare to lose money. And why? The only reason is because you signed a piece of paper. It's a very bleak perspective.

This is strengthened by culture: look how the marriage is presented in the movies, for example. The woman is anxious if he's going to propose, then he has to buy a very expensive ring just to propose, then she is extremely happy as if she won a lottery (not because he loves her, but because he decided to marry).

  there are a lot of potential negatives [...]
  Why in the world is tying all of your assets
  [...] a thing?

This started making much more sense to me when I noticed that, among my friends, 95% of people who get married have a baby within 12 months.

Once you think of "get married and have a baby" as a single atomic decision, all the "downsides" of marriage are overshadowed by the _inherent_ downsides to having children.

Marriages are difficult to get out of? Well, children are almost impossible to dispose of. Marriages can be personally costly? Children will take up a lot of time and money, no matter how rich you are. Marriages can involve one partner shouldering more than half the burden? Well, a man can't breastfeed a newborn at 4am no matter how much he wants to. And so on.

  pitching the idea of marriage minus mixing
  finances, [...] resulted in hours of crying.

The discussion might go more productively if you approach it from a different angle: Start by deciding if you want children together; then discuss the things that follow from that.

AFAIK marriage does give enormous significant breaks in most western societies.

If you are referring to tax incentives, then in the US it depends on the variance in income and children:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/16/upshot/marria...

High income couples are actually penalized, and even worse off once they have a child!

Does it? I'm about to get married in the UK and I cannot name a single break that we will get while married. I think you can transfer some of your tax-free allowance to your spouse, but only if one of you makes less than 10k/year, so with both of us working there is no benefit here.

It's slightly easier to get a large loan or mortgage as a married couple, but it's not exactly impossible if you just live together as partners.

The way I see it, it's an absolutely enormous expense with almost zero financial/economical benefit for us. I love my partner and want to get married because I think that's the right thing to do, but if I looked at it outside of the "romantic/traditional" angle, there is absolutely no reason to get married.

In the UK, the most important benefits are - sadly - to do with death. If you die intestate, then the presumption is that everything is left to your spouse. Similarly with your pension, a premature death would see the pension transfer automatically to the person you married. That's not always the case with partners.

You also benefit from spousal privilege, meaning you can't be compelled to testify against the other. Although, depending on your criminal inclinations, that may not be a strong reason to get married!

Wait a few more generations for Western birth rates to plummet and you'll start seeing more breaks. It feels good to know that even the most intimate aspects of your life are actually controlled by society through elected/selected governments.

Until the divorce, then men get wrecked financially most of the time, losing houses, half the money, forced to pay alimony.

Adding to that, the new generation more often than not grew up with divorced parents. This kind of sets the precedent in the young males mind that marriage is not good if it turns sour, and that the "in good as in bad times until death do us part" is just completely meaningless babble.

Looking at my friends there's a pattern, a man who loses his job long term becomes divorced quite quickly. So there's no added safety for the man and no economic incentive (or even a disincentive, not sure how bad it really looks for men losing everything in court).

You pay alimony only if you expected women to give up work for marriage.

In practice it's very difficult to prove you didn't. So even if she lost her job for unrelated causes or simply quit against your wishes, juries tend to concede alimony unless you make disproportionate efforts to produce proof.

You also pay off she says, "I don't want to work." Considering that it's illegal (as it should be) to force your spouse to work (or stay at home), your point is irrelevant.

It is relevant, because in majority of marriages in USA both partners work. Stay at home women, especially stay at home women without small child at home are minority among married women.

You all make it sound as if stay at home women was the norm, but it is not the case.

with enormous liabilities - http://www.realworlddivorce.com/

No tax breaks in the UK, haven’t been in a looooong time, with the sole exception of inheritance

Yep - if one of you doesn't work(or earns less than about 11k/year) - and only if the other partner earns less than 45k/year! - you get to take 230 quid off your tax bill. I wouldn't call it an "enormous significant break".

It might in the US. I haven't noticed any difference here in Sweden. The only practical differences involve inheritance and child custody in the event of my wife dying.

Absolutely zero benefits for men? Wow. You sure don't have anything like my marriage. I got a woman who is a joy to be with for the rest of my life. 27 years later, and she's still a joy. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her then, and I still do now.

Now, you could argue that I could have gotten the same deal without marriage, just living with her for. But first, I could not have gotten that deal - not with her. It was marriage or nothing. And second, I didn't want just living together either. I wanted the real thing, with the commitment. I wanted to commit to her, not just to an institution or a tradition.