I'd tell my daughter to get married. It's a great deal for her.

If I had a son, hell no.

Why?

For women the 50% chance of divorce is a net win though.

That’s a rather bold claim. I’d like to see some reasoning behind it.

The oft-quoted 50% number is also questionable at best, see NYTimes [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-...

Is it a bold claim that women profit disproportionately off divorces?

http://www.realworlddivorce.com/

It’s a bold claim that getting married and divorced (vs not getting married at all) is a net win for women. Don’t move the goal posts.

Also I’m not going to read a whole book to try to figure out what point you’re trying to make with your link.

In case of divorce women are usually financial and parental winners. That was my point. The book has per-state situation and examples.

Women on average make larger financial sacrifices in marriage, taking on unpaid labor in the home rather than paid work outside the home at a much higher rate than men. In this sense they may be financial “winners” in case of divorce, to the extent that courts award them a portion of the accrued assets earned by their partner outside the home. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the unpaid labor women disproportionately do generally does not accumulate anything that can taken with them in case of separation.

Most men don’t fight for custody of their children in divorce. When they do they are almost always successful at getting at least joint custody. See e.g. WaPo [1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/myths-about-custody-...

> unpaid labor in the home

Maybe that used to be the case when divorce laws were written, but today I know very few marriages with the wife in a traditional role like that. The modern marriage has the home workload split equally and very often outsourced. Cleaning services, laundry services and food delivery are accessible and affordable while costing much less than the salary of a full time person doing those tasks and in no way worth paying for with half your assets.

So in divorce it comes down to earning potential vs spending habits. Earning potential for women is generally less than for men due to their preference for lower paying, humanist fields and their spending habits are generally higher.

That is why divorce proceedings are generally more profitable for women than the accrued assets of the single life.

> Most men don’t fight for custody of their children in divorce. When they do they are almost always successful at getting at least joint custody.

That is just not true. Couldn't read the paywalled Opinion article on WaPo but no judge will remove the mom from the kids life unless there are very good reasons (drugs etc) but they routinely consider monthly payments from men enough. Unproven allegations of abuse from the wife are often enough to remove the dad from the equation.

> but today I know very few marriages with the wife in a traditional role like that.

About 30% of married mothers don’t work outside the home, according to BLS statistics [1]. You may want to consider the possibility that the sample of people you know is very unrepresentative.

> The modern marriage has the home workload split equally and very often outsourced.

In “egalitarian” marriages where the husband and wife earn about the same amount of money, wives on average spend more than twice as much time on household chores and 40% more time on caregiving, according to Pew [2].

> Couldn't read the paywalled Opinion article on WaPo

It’s easy enough to get around the paywall to read the Opinion article from a law professor who specializes in child custody in divorce, but I guess you’d rather just continue to hold on your persecution complex.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf

[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1168961388/pew-earnings-gende...

> About 30% of married mothers don’t work outside the home

So the great majority do. That actually confirms my world view. Of course my bubble is not representative, but it turns out that it formed the most probably correct opinion. Good enough for me.

> where the husband and wife earn about the same amount of money

So hard-working women (and they need to be hard-working in order to make as much as men who still have an advantage in the workplace) are also hard working at home. The article says that is only 29% of cases though.

> you’d rather just continue to hold on your persecution complex

You gave me a paywalled article. I gave you a whole free book which you dismissed summarily. Who'd rather hold onto their preconceived ideas then?

I do thank you for the other links, I learned some facts I did not know.

> I gave you a whole free book which you dismissed summarily.

Yeah, because giving someone in a casual online conversation a whole book without even telling them what point they’re supposed to take from it is fucking stupid.