If marriage is nothing more than a legal contract - which sadly for many people it is, then why even bother making vows such as "until death do us part"? All for show? Why not just put a time-clause for when the contract expires so that you can decide whether to sign a new one? A highly utilitarian, and in my opinion, tragically sad view of marriage, but that is essentially what it has become for many people.
Divorce is a positive resolution to a terrible relationship. Death isn't a positive resolution to cancer.
Divorce is only negative if we don't condition on the existence of a terrible relationship.
Two things are accurate at the same time:
- A marriage turning into a terrible relationship is a negative outcome.
- Divorce as a reaction to a marriage turning sour is a positive outcome, since we've conditioned on that development and it's now a sunk cost.
- Fixing a marriage which is turning into a terrible relationship is a better outcome than divorce. In this way, divorce is a bad outcome, the same way as coming in second in Jeopardy and winning $2000 is a bad outcome compared to coming in first and winning (say) $10 000.
It seems weird to say "well you signed some papers, so it's extremely valuable that you're together for some legal purposes rather then happy".
The point of repairing a relationship is to remember that you once were happy and can be again by correcting behaviors and the like. But it seems bizarre to assume that's assured - it's even more bizarre to think it would be wrong to acknowledge that maybe you'd only wind up content but not happy, and so a separation is still preferable.
Or that actually you'd be happier alone then with someone else, but not exactly miserable if you were still with them etc.
Not "only". A positive relationship that's ruined by outside factors/factions, for example, might end in divorce.
A relationship that benefits both people but has been mismanaged (ignorance, inexperience, etc.), might end in divorce.
Isn't the point of the OP in part that just by the biological accident of having female offspring one might become more likely to be divorced; that strongly implies that divorce isn't always down to inherent aspects of the relationship.
To those who say life has inherent value, death is not positive, no matter the pain it may relieve. To those who say marriage has inherent value, divorce is not positive, no matter the pain it may relieve.
To turn your argument back on you: Death as a reaction to health/life turning sour is a positive outcome, since we've conditioned on that development and it's now a sunk cost.
I happen to think that both life and marriage are inherently valuable and worth sacrificing for and holding on to, and for similar reasons.
not sure about that.
If people thought of marriage as nothing but a legal contract, likely to be broken, and acted rationally then I expect they wouldn’t bother at all: the benefits aren’t particularly great while the risks are large.
I think we probably mostly agree with our own opinions but perhaps disagree on the opinions of others.
I read it as people taking that step in a relationship without much thought because that's what society has conditioned us to believe is normal and then divorcing like breaking-up.
Marriage brings specific legal and financial benefits, depending on the country (married couples tax allowances, spousal rights to pensions and inheritance etc, spousal privilege in court, visa/residency rights, child custody rights).
As these benefits have reduced over a few decades, the number of marriages has gone down (at least in the West?). I don't think that's a coincidence.
You don't need a legal marriage to share a loving and fulfilling life together with a partner. But, if you do share a loving and fulfilling life together, marriage might benefit you for one or more of the above reasons.
Clearly civil mariage is just a contact, whose main purpose is the divorce (at least in my country - France - divorce is the main benefit of marriage). And as far as I know there is no commitment for it to last for life, but just until the end of the contract.
...what? Are you saying French people intentionally get married in order to reap benefits of divorce?
For example if they have kids and one of the parent stops working to raise the kids, divorce will make sure that person is not left without anything.
There is another civil union (the PACS) and as far as I know the main (and maybe only) differences is that PACS do not get divorce (you can part much more quickly, each party just get their own stuff and that's it) and something related to ineritance taxes. So that's the main reasons why people marry I guess :)
To be fair, I'll add that it's also not legal to marry religiously if you are not married civilly, so some people probably get married civilly just to be able to marry religiously.
It isn't the divorce which creates those rights, it is the marriage. The divorce rules only make it so that those rights are not abruptly suppressed after the dissolution of the marriage.
If you are married for some years in a state without common law marriage and then get divorced, you are probably due some of the house value, for example, even if it was in your husband's name. And one of the cars, and so on.
The same couple, not married, might have to sue to get one of the two cars and might not get any value from the house, even though they helped save for the down payment.
And there are lots of little things like that.
What if your analogy is right and marriage is really not healthy in the first place? At least it cannot work for all people?
>If marriage is nothing more than a legal contract - which sadly for many people it is, then why even bother making vows such as "until death do us part"?
It could be a legal contract with such timing: “until death” why not? Wasn’t it always has been like this by definition?
>All for show? If contract is not taken seriously then any contract become ‘for show’
>Why not just put a time-clause for when the contract expires so that you can decide whether to sign a new one?
Because it would make it opposite to what it meant to represent? Anyway, why to bother if many people consider it breakable at any moment already? Much more comfortable for those who do not intend to keep own promises.
>A highly utilitarian, and in my opinion, tragically sad view of marriage, but that is essentially what it has become for many people.
Has become? What if it always has been like this by design And many attempts to make it something else have failed?
I would say the most sensible thing is simply the mutual declaration for the sake of administrivia, that until any of the members of a marriage say otherwise, we all are married. The only reason to even have the document is just for things like power of attorney. Who shall be considered a legal guardian responsible for a child, who is allowed to make decisions for another while they are incapacitated, etc. And the expiration date is "until further notice".
I don't think you have a right to call that sort of family sad or "tragic".
That's actually incredibly insulting, even abusive when it's embedded in policy that everyone has to live under.
Just imagine if I called your family sad and tragic. Even if I used hard unavoidable data to back up the judgement.
Everyone doesn't have to "live under" it, you don't have to get married.
I suspect having Mummy and Daddy being together "until further notice" would have disastrous impacts on children's sense of permanence and development.
While obviously not that consistent, as a kid I perfectly accepted that logic. If I try to place myself in that same mindset, I think I’d find the definition of “marriage is together until further notice” far more concerning than knowing some divorced parents.
The end of a marriage (where both participants continue living) and a cancer death, are not comparable.
Your "if you're not going to stay in a bad marriage until you physically die, what's the point of marriage?" viewpoint where marriage is permanent xor utilitarian is a false dichotomy.
Divorce doesn't mean that the participants failed, or that they entered into the marriage simply out of utility.
But you wouldn't say "amputating a leg is a healthy end to having legs" because for most leg havers, there are better outcomes.
In the same vein, I'd say "divorce is a healthy end to a bad marriage" but not "divorce is a healthy end to marriages in general".
In other words, I think it’s reasonable to say that divorce is a healthy way to end a marriage, because if it ended in divorce, then by definition, at least one party thought it needed to, making it a bad marriage.
On the contrary, by their own measure, it is a failure. No one gets married anticipating or wanting a divorce. Everyone wants it to last forever.
That's why the comment you responded to suggested a time-bounded contract. Which no one wants.
Have you ever gone through a divorce? Mine was amicable, but even then it was the worst thing I've ever experienced.
Many enter marriages very optimistically and with a limited view of what it will become. People change, learn more about themselves and their partners, and kids are a powerful dynamic adding a lot of stress and needs. I don't think it's constructive to judge any divorce without having lived through that relationship first.
That's true but nobody was arguing that. The disagreement wasn't about whether they are failures (a description) but whether they failed (an action). I would say they definitely failed.
I think the existence of reasonable precautions such as prenuptial agreements indicates that this statement is false: many people enter into a marriage with the full knowledge that it may end before the death of one of the partners (presumably contrary to their desire at the time). I think that counts as "anticipating".
Heinlein put it well: "We always marry strangers."
Only 5% of all married couples in the United States got married with a prenup. The fact that signing a prenup is so completely in everyone's interest and the fact that only 5% of marriages have them proves my point - no one is anticipating or looking forward to their own divorce.
Heinlein put it well: "We always marry strangers."
He was married 3 times. I'd be willing to bet he had 2 of those divorces behind him when he wrote that.
When my spouse and I got married, we had basically no assets of note. (Drafting and) Signing a prenup would have been in the interest of our lawyers, but not our interest.
That’s one in twenty.
Most middle class folks I am sure don't fall in third bucket; and a lot of them are just doing 9-5 jobs, probably not doing something which can drive them like say most of the big entrepreneurs or researchers seem to be.
So that leaves love, which would become kind of very important to give their life a meaning. Marriage being a vow to have that love lasting throughout seems special. I am in late 20s, and even though I would want to do something great, the strive to find someone compatible with me seems to weigh on my mind more these days.
Do you have any evidence of this? As someone from a Muslim country, my family universally has stayed in bad marriages. My wife, an American, has a family rife with divorce. (Not just her parents, but the whole community. Many people don’t really realize this—among those with college degrees, almost 80% of marriages will last 20+ years. But among those with just a high school diploma, it’s just 40%. In lower middle class communities, kids with parents who are divorced are the norm.)
It’s not clear to me which one is better for the parents. But unhappy parents seems superior to divorced ones for the kids. The financial and structural disruption on kids from divorce is massive. It’s not just individual, it’s the whole community. In the lower middle class communities where my wife’s family is from, divorce is the norm. And I can see kids suffering from the disruption, and wanting stability, but having no role models and no guidance because most people around them are divorced.
This is obviously anecdotal. I’d be curious to see data—to my knowledge this hasn’t been studied rigorously. To me, the notion that “divorce is a fine outcome for marriage” is something that is counter intuitive enough to require some evidence.
Some relationships absolutely cause less destruction by ending. Some provide sufficiently despite great flaws.
My culture (and that of like 3/4 of the world’s population) says that’s a bad thing for kids and society as a whole. I used to think westerners were enlightened and had the right idea on allowing and encouraging individual freedom in this area, but now I think they’ve got it wrong. And it’s hard to really know without focusing on what’s been the aggregate effect.
But if they can't get along, I'm sure it's terrible. Just like if the parents stay together?
I find it hard to imagine a child growing up in a house with two parents who treat each other like shit is worse off than one with a single parent, but who knows?
Look, I’m not talking about abusive marriages. For people without a college degree, 60% of marriages will end before the kids are independent and in their own two feet. Most of those don’t involve involve abuse.
> but do people get into that much financial trouble from divorce usually?
Yes. For the average middle class family, having to split into two households is incredibly financially disruptive. Most middle class couples aren’t in a position where one person can take over the housing payment alone. That means moving, potentially changing schools, etc. And there’s a ton of other shared expenses that each parent now has to pay separately.
> What about child support?
For a non-college educated man making the median $36,000 a year, child support here in Maryland works out to $567 per month. That doesn’t come close to offsetting the support of the other householder.
Median household income in my county is $80,000/year. That’s a bit under $5,300 month take home for a married couple. Which is fine—you can buy a 4BR house here in a good school district for $1,450 per month in mortgage. But no way the couple can afford to keep the house if they get divorced. Rent alone in a studio will be $750/month. (Like most normal places, it’s much more expensive to rent here than buy.) Even if the spouse moving out lives like a pauper that’s realistically a $1,500/month hole in the budget few families can cover. So Dad moves into a studio, mom and the kids move into a cheap 2BR, and you’re paying like $1,750 month for housing (total) because you’ve given up the cost advantages of home ownership. And say there is another $750 in new non-shared expenses. So that’s $1,000/month that’s no longer there that was going towards savings/college/enrichment activities, etc. They’ve traded a 4BR house in a nice suburb for two households that are struggling to get by and have no margin. If they’re lucky, the kids got to stay in the same school district, but they’ve probably been taken away from their neighborhood friends. This happened my step siblings in law recently. It’s extremely shitty.
Divorced parents are vastly superior to unhappy parents for the happiness and outcomes of the children.
How is this even a question, never the less the most upvoted comment?
No, divorce is not a healthy end to a marriage.
It's unfair to expect two humans to remain compatible their entire lives. We evolve massively. A person i would have married at 18 is not the same i'd marry now.
Which isn't to say that difficulty should be met with break ups. Rather, it's to say that some marriages should end. Both parties would be better off. Other marriages would be better served to have problems met, worked through, and the couple made stronger as a result.
It is a healthy end. If it's a bad marriage.
People don't just become incompatible. Something went badly wrong for that to happen. It's increasingly common nowadays - nuclear families tend to be more atomized, rather than integrated into an extended family, which increases the stress on the relationship, and many people simply don't prioritize their marriage, but instead their career, kids, or lifestyle. And of course, the modern social environment is more full of distractions and temptations than ever.
For example, if one or both of them prioritize their careers over their marriage, and spend no more than an hour or two a day even in the other's presence, let alone quality time, for years on end, because they're busy at work or with something else...it's entirely predictable that they grow apart. That was the failure. They chose economics or the corporate ladder or an app that's changing the world or...over their marriage.
To you. But not so for many people, i imagine. I think the rate of divorce in America would suggest otherwise. Not to say that those are all healthy individuals, but that description sounds like a very religious-centric outlook on an often secular behavior.
In this framing, i'd argue that the liability of marriage should be thought of as "until death", but still. Sometimes the person you become is not something to be accepted nor desired by your loved ones. So who is to blame?
Do you change who you are? Or does your loved one change what they love? Sometimes both are unfair questions.
I think they have a point.
It's of course not healthy to end a healthy relationship. But hey, water is wet.
But parents aren't just two people. Life outcomes for the children of divorced parents are significantly worse than for children whose parents remain together.
Yes, they still are. And parents that stay together in an unhealthy relationship can do more harm to their children than separating.
But as for the life outcomes of divorced children? That's quantifiable and the data simply disagree with you.
"The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children" (Amato & Irving, 2005), even has in it's introduction:
"Available research suggests that these associations are partly spurious (due to selection effects) and partly due to the stress associated with marital disruption."
But on the other hand, upper-middle-class Hacker Newsers who got divorced because they were "unfulfilled" probably shouldn't point to extreme cases of abuse and neglect to justify their decision, either.
All things being equal, people in this latter category should try to work it out. (Nobody disputes that there are extreme environments for which divorce is the only option.)
Finally, as always, we are talking about averages. Sociology doesn't have a proof-by-counterexample. If I say, "poverty leads to worse outcomes for kids" it's not a legitimate response to say, "there are some wealthy kids who do bad and some poor kids who do well, so you're wrong."
We're always talking about averages.
I think it’s not so much people take it lightly, as that they have no idea of what they are getting into and what kind of work a modern marriage involves.
Simple counterexample: the USSR's views on gay marriage.
It would be useful for me that I have some way to assign certain rights relating to me, to someone else.
I am not married, but I have been living with someone for 12 years, and neither of us has plans to change.
But legally, I don't know what happens when one of us meets a misfortune and the other needs to speak for us. Luckily in our case, we both have plenty of other blood relatives all alive and reachable and all on good terms with each other.
So, if say I am incapacitated, and some functionary at a hospital won't accept my partners decision about what to do, both my partner and the functionary can reach several other generally accepted proxies in the form of my mother, my brother, and even more cousins. My partner will be able to say what to do only slightly indirectly if not directly.
And we both have our own jobs with insurance and retirement savings so neither of us really needs to be legally acknowledged to receive benefits like military death benefits or retirements etc.
So for us we can pretty much get away with having NOT addressed these issues.
But they are real issues that generally should be addressed. A legal document on the books would provide a clean path to resolve a lot of potentially messy situations. What if our families didn't all like or respect each other? What if one or both of us had no known and/or reachable bood relatives? What if one of us actually needed to be recognized as a claimant on the others insurance or retirement or property like a house?
Probably a lot of such things could just as well be handled with legal documents other than marriages. Like if I take a job that has spouse insurance benefits, that could just as well be whoever I want to write on that form, rather than having it be determined by my marriage document.
But it would still be useful to have a catch-all document that expresses my wishes in any situation not handled elsewhere.
Says who? Every country I've lived in has provisions for ending marriages, so clearly it's not the only path.
>It's right there in the vows.
What vows? Nobody in my family is religious, none of us made any claims about being together until death. And even then, lots of religions allow for divorce, even some sects of Christianity...
In many cultures people make wedding vows about staying married until one of you dies.
I think the distinction should be socio-cultural: if you don’t accept that this civil union is “till death do us part”, then by definition it shouldn’t be marriage - it’s a civil union. All the same benefits of marriage with none of the cultural components.
It's not my responsibility to advertise my belief system to you.
The state shouldn't be in the business of certifying christenings or bar mitzvahs, nor should it be in the business of marriage for the same exact reasons.
> Nobody in my family is religious
point is out of place (because whether the family is religious seems to have little relevance)
I am divorced, and got married in my country outside the church. Wether we like it or not, it was literally a contract. An officer of the court was there, read the 'contract' which states our data, the legal parts of it (prenup, how assets were after marriage, etc), and the legal responsibilities. There was nothing there about 'until the end' or the likes.
I'm not sure how it is in other countries, and I am from a very catholic country, but most people don't realize that marriage is the contract that is governed by the government's law and not any vows or whatever the priest says in church. It is a contract and parties to that contract are allowed to change their mind and divorce (break contract).
It sounds horribly complicated. How do assets and dependents get treated? How does a will work? An inheritance?
Eg You marry for 5 years, and at 4.9 a relative leaves an inheritance. The executors get to work at 5.1 years. Where does the money go?
Maybe I’m overthinking it.
https://topnews.in/how-about-fixedterm-marital-contract-rene...
I don’t recall the exact numbers but even just considering how many sexual partners people have can drastically change average likelihood of eventually divorce - with virgin couples above 80% AFAIK (some overlap with religious communities likely). Even a few decades ago when survival was still pretty easy marriage had higher success rates.
The culture probably has a lot more to do with the rate of successful marriages than our safety or lifespan
There are two ways to think about this.
The first is that once your car gets too broken to repair, you should just ditch it and get a new one.
The other is that once your arm/ankle/hip/liver has problems, you should just transplant a new one instead of doing physical therapy/exercise/eating healthier/drinking less.
In my experience, marriage is much closer to the latter situation than the former.
If you're curious what those "fixes" are for the latter, see https://www.gottman.com/product/the-seven-principles-for-mak....
This is unhelpfully extending the metaphor into a straw man. It's simple enough to see the point.
In your example, your ankle is under your control - if you want to exercise it, you can. Your ankle doesn't actively sabotage your body (or if it does spread infection/etc, amputation is often used).
A marriage depends on two people working together to build a life together. If one person is not willing to put in that effort, the marriage fails.
There are, of course, many situations where divorce is not the right answer for that situation, just like there are many situations for which a hip replacement is not the right answer. But it is within the set of potential right answers across all situations. There's no sense in trying to replace what is easily repairable, and there's also no sense in spending your life trying to repair what needs to be replaced.
And it's totally possible to go through life where neither you nor anyone you know ought to get a divorce - just like it's totally possible to go through life knowing nobody who needs a hip replacement, but that is hardly evidence that the procedure is the wrong answer for everyone!
That's also the generation of people who don't go to the hospital because anything hurts. They go to the hospital 5 years later for something unrelated, when it's discovered it's 4 years too late to do anything about it.
I guess if you discount the "for better and for worse" part of the vows you take to one another....
Because marriage is intended as an act of lifetime committent to what is seen as a positive relationship, and so failing this original intent can never be a measure of success.. Preferable to 'failing' in the sense of staying in a 'failed marriage' (where the 'positive relationship' is no more positive) perhaps, but both of these are 'failures'.
For most of history marriage was property transfer, let's not pretend it's something more romantic than it is.
Failing to see how this debunks either 'lifetime committment' or 'positive relationship' which are the only logical assertions I made - I did not attempt to qualify how to ascertain 'positive'; financial benefit can also be construed as 'positive'.
Bad people don't tend to go around being bad unless they think they can get away with it. Once someone has pinky swore to dedicate their life to them, no matter what they might do, the true colors come out. I've seen it too many times, the idea does more harm than good.
Life-long good marriages exists, I hope to achieve one myself, but the silly oath doesn't help them in any way, and it makes the bad ones worse.
> Life-long good marriages exists
I'm sure you have this reconciled somehow, but it sounds contradictory to me.
Maybe if the oaths contained an "unless you become an asshole" clause, they'd be more valuable.
"Preferable to 'failing' in the sense of staying in a 'failed marriage' (where the 'positive relationship' is no more positive) perhaps, but both of these are 'failures'. "
sigh.
If you're married to someone you don't want to be married to, sure sometimes things just don't work out.
If you're a kid and your parents failed marriage is destroying your life, I don't think "sometimes things just don't work out" is the answer.
Game theory should always be asked when biology is involved. I am not sure myself on the answer, but it seems more plausible than the article's "teenage girls are annoying" theory or the speculated "son preference" theory. If there is an optimal strategy, such a strategy may result in a small biological effect which makes parents look for a new chance of reproduction once the majority of child investment is done, resulting in the statistical data that shows 20.12% becoming 20.48%.
Humans with our great variations of behaviors has both pair bonding behavior and non-pair bonding behavior, with genes that code for both. If one strategy was always superior to the other then we would have settled for it a long time ago.
(Its a law or something when talking about genes that the behavior is always a gene-enivorment interaction, and there are likely many more factors that influence pair bonding behavior).
I remembered a case of of a obstetrician impregnating multiple patients but a Google search(1) easily proved this was not an isolated case as the first few links are all separate incidents.
(1) https://www.google.com/search?q=obstetrician+used+own+sperm
As immoral as this strategy sounds I admit it is probably the most effective strategy from an investment/returns pov. It is cheaper than becoming Genghis Khan(2) and the effect is comparable.
(2) https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-ha...
"R-selectors" have many offspring, investing fairly litle in each one. K-selectors have a few offspring, but invest a lot of time/resources in caring for each. There's a bit more to it than that--and the theory has needed some adjustment, but...
I think the original comment was referring to divorce being a better outcome in a failed relationship. There are a lot of failed relationships that continue to raise their kids in a disfunctional way and that is not good. A couple who divorces and are on good terms afterwards when raisig their children is way healthier.
In those cases, is the tragedy that the marriage ended, or would the tragedy be if it remained?
Who wants to have a dysfunctional marriage? That seems like a bad ending too
So we can add ‘dysfunctional marriage’ to divorce as undesirable outcomes of marriage
People evolve and so too should marriages.
Lol.
Also, realize that people don’t generally get to a divorce by talking things out and figuring divorce is the only option. Even if they do talk things out it’s usually only after divorce is inevitable.
Is this often the outcome of divorce? I imagine that spending more time apart should reduce the total volume of conflict
A marriage is an enterprise two people join in together, and then go through life doing the really important work of raising children and supporting each other.
Ideally this is accompanied by deep love and passion etc. Short of that, it's done with deep mutual commitment and appreciation of the other person and the work you're doing together.
Way shittier down the line are relationships plagued with resentment and mistrust, that in my experience have more to do with what the people bring into the relationship than their partner (basically: if both people are sane and enter thoughtfully into the marriage, you should not end up here.)
Once you're in that mode, where you don't have it together to work it out and grow together, sure divorce is happier than eternal rancor and abuse, but it's super-down the line.
I think this is important to understand because once you do, you're much more thoughtful about what you're getting into in the first place. I guess it's easier said for me because I married in my later 30s and had the life experience and introspection to know what I want and need and to appreciate my wife (who is different than me in ways that a less mature version of me might resent rather than appreciate)
This might be a bit of a trope, but it is at this exact moment that some couples have kids (like my parents did).
Having not been born yet, that was not very down the line from my point of view at all.
I created a new account in case this gets indexed somewhere. I am in my 30s and my own parents are still married, but they should have gotten divorced a long time ago. They never did, "because of the kids" and it pains me. They are fucking miserable. I have not seen them lovingly kiss each other in at least 3 decades (I only remember once when I was a toddler). They do not have intercourse of any kind, sleep in separate bedrooms, fight constantly, my dad has been having affairs (unsure if my mom knows about them, I doubt it would change anything if she did), all because they are too ashamed to get divorced, and at this point, they're too old to do it.
Of course looking in from the outside they seem like a happy couple - always went to social functions together, etc. But on the inside, definitely not. I always wonder once you take out the marriages that end in divorce, how many of the ones left are like my parents - happy on the outside, fucking miserable on the inside. In my own experience, the vast majority of friends' parents have been divorced, sometimes multiple times, and I already have friends my age who were married and divorced.
Needless to say, I am in no rush to get married, even in my 30s. I do have relationships when it's right, but I don't let society tell me if or when I should be getting married, if ever. It's way too big a risk to my personal happiness.
There’s value in knowing who’s going to care for you when you get cancer, even if there’s a lot of animosity now.
It's a bit of a provocative way of saying things, but I am surprised at how conservative (in the social sense, not political) the other comments are, defending traditional family values and arguing that divorce is always a failure
Divorce can _absolutely_ be a healthy outcome to a marriage. If your marriage doesn't work after a time, the healthy option is to stop it. You can argue that you should try to "save your marriage"... but if neither you or your partner really wants to, why would you have this duty to try and salvage it rather than move on? At least if you don't have kids, as divorce tends to have bad impact on them apparently, although I think it's mostly because they're brought up in a society that teaches that divorce is failure and that a family is a mom and a dad.
Of course nobody is saying that divorce is "the most healthy" outcome, it's just "pretty healthy" in a whole range of situation, though not all. And there's divorce and divorce: sometimes it involves incredible drama, fighting and stress (not very healthy, although staying married probably would be worse in this case), and sometimes it's smooth, shake hands and go your own way.
Anecdotally: my parents divorced when I was ~15. It was smooth as far as I could see, although I imagine that unfun things happened that led to this. It made absolutely no difference to me, and I saw them bloom and be happier than I ever saw them: my father went from being a 9-5 robot to doing sports, be involved in local associations and take an unexpected interest in african art. My mom started doing photography and developped a passion for dance. I entirely credit their divorce for how much happier and interesting they got!
If you get all your input from non-engineering journalists, comedians, talking heads, etc, you may never encounter any differing opinions; just as if 100 years ago you'd have believed divorce is always bad from those same people, and been surprised at what engineers said about how it can be occasionally a good thing.
Relationship-wise, if you're a woman, no. Odds are if you're getting divorced as a woman past her 30s, it'll be harder for you to find a partner as opposed to when you were in your 20s (when the woman should be finding a potential husband). Especially if you're a single mother. High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids.
So, imo, divorce can be so lose-lose unless the man and woman are both past 50s. At that point, the kids are grown up and both partners are hopefully financially secure without the need of one another.
I might even venture to say that having the heart to care well for children who are not genetically your own is part of being a high quality man.
Based on the actions of my male friends and accounts I’ve read about dating as a single mom in their 30s, I assume the above is true.
Generally I agree. There are exceptions, especially if the biological father is totally out of the equation. A friend married a woman who already had a kid. Father had vanished, had no interest. He legally adopted the kid, and they had several more together, he considers them all as his own.
I feel like we just went back in time 80 years. No, women don't need to spend their 20's finding a husband. They can have also go to school, volunteer, have friends, start a career. You know - the things men can do.
> High-quality men have no desire to raise someone else's kids
What does this even mean? Let me guess - you are a high-quality man?
This comment is so backwards.
Nothing in GP's comment suggests ~that women should spend their twenties finding a husband~ (EDIT: I missed that sentence in the original comment), nor that they shouldn't do the things you just mentioned.
I don't understand how this is in any way apropos.
That is in fact exactly what the comment seems to suggest, in these lines.
> as opposed to when you were in your 20s (when the woman should be finding a potential husband
room500's response was exactly what I had in mind too, when I was reading the parent comment.
It very much feels like the GP had something specific in mind for "high-quality" that insinuates that caring for someone else's children is not a high quality thing to do.
I believe that quality is not what they are showing when they focus the comment on what women "should be doing", or if they're still seeing it as "someone else's kids".
On the matter of kids and "high quality", I made no comment on that earlier, and I make no comment now.
Women’s attractiveness starts declining in her late 20’s much faster than it does for men. We shouldn’t pretend like it doesn’t, and pretend like we don’t understand why women in their 30’s can’t find Mr. Right.
Notice that the comment never mentioned that men shouldn't divorce because they are past their 20s when they should be finding a wife.
Notice that the comment never mentions that high-quality women would never want to raise someone else's kid.
GP's comment is less valid because it is from an era where women were less-than.
> Notice that the comment never mentioned that men shouldn't divorce because they are past their 20s when they should be finding a wife.
> Notice that the comment never mentions that high-quality women would never want to raise someone else's kid.
> GP's comment is less valid because it is from an era where women were less-than.
In what world do you live in where on average older women are considered more desirable partners than older men? By and large men are attracted to looks (or they prioritize looks a lot more than other qualities) while women are attracted to a set of qualities besides looks (or they prioritize other qualities a lot more than looks).
You can argue that's sexist and old-fashioned, but that's just how attraction works. Good luck changing the world!
There is a deal of sex-based difference here: being an older mother is harmful for the mother and the child; being an older father is far, far, less so (older fathers might be better for their kids?). Young women can choose a mate from all ages of men. Young men need to choose a mate -- if they wish to procreate I mean -- from the pool of fertile and healthy younger women. Medical science has eroded a little of that difference, but it still starts to get dangerous for women to fall pregnant in their late-30s.
An example of how that difference plays out is that in a childless couple at age 50 the woman basically has no chance to have children of her own, but the male could quite reasonably be expected to be fertile for a couple more decades. Thus, if a couple are unable to procreate and the male wishes to do so, then there is a tension; a biological impetus towards them leaving their wife and finding another partner.
A divorce can be new start, and life has much more to offer than ‘choosing your mate’
It's generally considered a fact that women have a slightly (statistically) more difficult time than men to find a partner after their 20s (and the reverse is true - men have it tougher in their 20s compared to women), and GP's comment is discussing why that complicates things wrt divorce.
> Notice that the comment never mentions that high-quality women would never want to raise someone else's kid.
I think that "high quality" means that they don't want to be second best to another man/woman. Totally understandable.
This doesn’t pass the universality test - would it be positive if all marriages ended in divorce?
Lots of “bad” outcomes become good given circumstances, but they are still not universally good:
“Amputation can be a positive outcome, especially if gangrene has started”
Sunlight makes you feel good, gives you vitamin D, and warms you up. Too much sunlight gives you skin cancer.
Sugar is necessary for life. Too much sugar gives you diabetes and obesity.
Water is the basic building block of life. Too much water causes electrolyte imbalances that can lead to dangerous cardiac arrythmias.
Very few good things actually do pass the universality test, which suggests that the test itself may be flawed.
If most people married just to have children and raise them, then divorced, that doesn’t seem bad in the slightest, especially given that’s the likely the original motivating force behind marriage anyway.
Isn't bankrupcy a pretty healthy outcome to a business?
Isn't death a pretty healthy outcome to life?
Isn't coup a pretty healthy outcome to a country?
Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program?
I don't know much about the other ones but segfault is definitely healthier than a buggy program being allowed to write at address 0 or continuing arithmetics after division by 0.
IIRC it took PHP quite many versions to get there (if it even has).
I remember when Firefox's crash recovery got so good, and its normal shutdown process took so long, that someone suggested that it should just crash when the user hit the exit button.
Absolutely, especially when the alternative is financial ruin because you didn’t take legal remedies available to you.
People get caught up in absolutes because they fit in a nice box, but most of the time life is messier.
I mean, since it's the inevitable end result no matter what actions one takes in their life, yes?
Pardon the snark: http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/318
>> Isn't segfault a pretty healthy outcome to program?
Found the Erlang user.
And the main issue with single parents is income/income instability (which is why there are focused benefits in many countries for single parents). As ever, an income issue gets classed as something else.
Very well could be a good idea. If the father was in jail because of some youthful drug offenses, it could very well be that he could still be a devoted and loving parent and no danger whatsoever to the child.
Divorce does not always result in single-parent households.
Divorced parents can and do remarry.
Children not encountering lies, strife, or emotional disattachment on a daily basis anymore seems a significant improvement, however.
So the alternative of having one home and more access to both parents could be better for the child even if the parents don't get along with each other well.
As I recall, I didn’t take my parents’ daily fighting, even my mom screaming and throwing things, as much to heart as some might think. I’m glad you used the word access because that’s precisely what I valued most, and the biggest loss. Second to that was the devastating financial strain (2 apartments, 2 cars, etc but same income).
Of they can be used as such.
Kind of like saying the most healthy outcome is getting fired or rage quitting. It could be but once you found the job you signed a contract for life for, retiring is the healthiest outcome.
> Kind of like saying the most healthy outcome is getting fired or rage quitting
I don't agree, a closer analogy (keeping in mind that all analogies have limits) would be to say that a _pretty_ good outcome to taking a job is to quit. Which doesn't seem particularly controversial, there's plenty of situations where quitting is a perfectly reasonable and healthy choice, even if you don't have an abusive relationship with your workplace.
People tend to associate single-parenthood as source of many problems based on statistics. But I wonder if those are simply correlation and not causation. i.e. people with certain traits are more prone to get divorced, and it could be those traits, and not divorce itself causes most other issues in their children. But it's easier to measure divorce rates than personality traits.
i guess it isn't very healthy for the kids. http://marripedia.org/effects_of_divorce_on_children_s_healt...
Perhaps ‘Outcomes for children of parents who went to marriage counselling’
Even then, couples that get counselling are probably a healthier subset of all marriages than would make for an ideal reference.
Marriage made sense when the population was sparse, the parents needed workforce, and the woman needed protection. Most of that doesn't apply today. Marriage is mostly a "reliquat" from former society's traditions.
Could be and then it would mean marriage is not ‘healthy’ in the first place? Which could be by the way.
What if it’s so by design? I mean it’s very difficult to come up with one design that works for ‘all’. Not a trivial task I would say and isn’t it destine for failure?
It's explicitly the outcome almost every married couple agrees they don't want upfront. So something has failed by that point.
It's not unhealthy in the sense that no one gets sick or physically injured I suppose?
This is definitely one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen written on here.
My parents and the parents of some of my depressed friends are not divorced, simply because divorce requires communication and a willingness to reflect upon the state of your marriage openly.
As I said, I might be biased, but I think the hidden outcome of "not legally, but emotionally divorced" makes up a significant portion of turbulent marriages.