All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.

And I don't make a habit of pointing out women's smaller stature to call them vulnerable?? Wtf

It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.

Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.

Which would completely ignore the economic imbalance I was talking about, which occurs during the marriage.

> It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?

Like I said, making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many, while the kids are young and childcare is expensive. There’s no reason why that has to be the woman but the data shows that the vast majority of the time it is.

Even if one party earns less, I don't see how "vulnerable" that would make them if it was prior to meeting the other person.

The topic was couples/cohabitation/marriage, not the economics of child rearing. The concerns you raise would be equally applicable where the parents have nothing to do with each other. There is truth in what you are saying, but it is an entirely different topic. How to deal with the child is a negotiation that takes place around the child, not around a romantic relationship (or lack thereof).

In the romantic relationship, there is no realistic situation where one party ends up with all the money unless one is being 'stupid'. But any of us can be stupid. I could willing give you all my money now and there would be no good legal recourse if I decide it was a bad idea later. The only reason we have these ideas is due to the historical idea that women need protection because they are unable to make decisions for themselves.

This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.

The original topic and comment are about men. It is possible boys have a different reason, but it wouldn't be applicable to the discussion taking place anyway. However, "girl problems" does still seem like a likely candidate for that group as well. Most children don't have much else to worry about. We, generally speaking, try to doe everything we can to shield them from reality.

It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot predict the future so the experiences of others is all one has.

Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/health/publications/health...

And in here, you will find:

     Men die by suicide at about 3 times the rate of women. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among men and boys aged 15 to 34.

Alternatively, the accused could both do a confession in front of a judge 4 separate times but they can retract this confession at any time and avoid any punishment.

Your Islamophobia is showing a bit too much.

If they choose to get together and through the democratic process of whatever county, city, or state they live in decide to implement laws that they believe are beneficial to them then the democratic process is working as its intended.

Islam, as written in the Quran and the authentic ahadith, will never force anyone, including non-Muslims, to practice any part of the Muslim faith.

Sharia law actually has some good ideas in it. I think we should investigate Islamic banking and see if any of it would improve our economies. Because charging interest is forbidden in Islam, many of them do mortgages as a rent to own system instead, which leaves the bank on the hook if the house value crashes, instead of the buyer, so banks don't give out stupidly big mortgages that you might not want to pay back.

I wonder why.

If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.

I think pandora's box is open never to be shut again on the conversation if we're the same or different.

---------

[1] particularly in the endocrine system, though in other parts too² including the nervous system

[2] it isn't just emotional matters and related coping mechanisms: heart attacks often manifest differently in women, or if not that then the signs are often misdiagnosed, for instance

[3] either for talking about specific detailed differences, or for identifying people in terms of their identity & phycological makeup more generally

no controversy of this in chimps.

no magical evolutionary moment when they became the same in humans.

biologists know this. sociologists start with an unfounded null assumption.

The status quo of "sexual liberation" doesn't do much to mitigate this difference. We no longer live in a monogamous society.

Have you ever spoken with a woman?

Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.

Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.

We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.

The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.

That this expression has become the root of an industry of exploitation (divorce proceedings are a big circus) is clear. Rights are not a constant. They have to be expressed.

Like in vows, maybe.

There is a very big spectrum of actual rights being manifest in a greater or lesser degree in the world - the free, free world - but on the other hand, it results freedom, not free food.

Folks still have to find a way to work together to feed each other, on top of those rights.

Two people having sex with each other should probably just form a contract before they do it, and then both have 50/50 responsibility from that point forward - the fact that this is 'not normal' is a cultural thing.

I don’t even get how I am supposed to hold my partner to the same standards I would hold a close male friend/family member. If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately. I have found just using the old adage “happy wife happy life” is most effective, but isn’t that inherently disrespectful? Like “I can’t reason with this person but if I upset them it’s gonna go poorly for me so I better let them have their way!”. The only way my relationship survives is if I have a bit of internalized misogyny and hold her to a different standard than I do myself or another man.

Conservative men rights advocates find such proposition insulting to men. It is not a manly men job.

Men in those positions are mocked by supposedly pro-male groups

> If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately.

Why are you dating someone like that? Genuine question. I dont know ANY woman that cries that often. Not a single one.

Maybe be wise and break up.

People chafe against things like DEI as arbitrary favoritism completely failing to note that yes, this policy is meant to promote equality, not to represent it. In the case of promoting female stem workers you might say it’s a policy designed to give women equal-ish access to the job market by way of giving them preferential treatment in hiring, to counteract biases of men favoring men during that process.

The ideal outcome of any policy like this is that once the systemic inequity is resolved, the policy can be retired.

> If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.

This framing of the issue puts the discussion down an awkward rhetorical path that is difficult to recover from.

What if it doesn't matter whether someone looks or acts different; but it matters how society treats them and the outcomes that they face.

Black chess pieces and white chess pieces are superficially, trivially distinct. Yet, the player with the white pieces wins 52% to 56% of the time.

I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.

I’m guessing you don’t have a uterus, am I right? A man doesn’t end up pregnant if the condom breaks. So don’t lecture us about your “bad faith arguments” when you’re making one.

Trying to interpret your comment in the best way possible, I'd say that my viewpoint is that it matters more how society treats a pregnant woman and the man that impregnated her, rather than the fact that the woman got pregnant and the man didn't.

It's probably best for laws to be dynamic to how cultural norms evolve regarding impregnation, which means unfortunately for hyperrational technocrats, it's best to pay attention to outcomes rather than focus on things like "man" and "woman". An unwed woman getting pregnant in 1940 USA is much different than an unwed woman getting pregnant in 2026 USA, for example.

Certainly women have have nine months of hard work men spared. On the other hand it is not a very big par of a lifetime. A man can end up with more work and responsibility long term.

My ex carried our kids for 9 months. I did a lot to support her but I agree that does not compare with the constant physical impact of pregnancy.

Once they were born we were pretty much equal parents bar breastfeeding/expressing. As they got older I became the primary parent because she was just not good with older kids. By the time each was seven or eight I was the primary parent. By the time they were eight or nine I was home educating them I has also the sole earner. When the younger one was a teenager I divorced and became a single parent. You really think 9 months of pregnancy outweighs all that?

Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.

Maybe men don't have supports until it's rock bottom or too late.

At the same time I don't think there's many men who beleive think the standard of supporting women, and children, early and often, should never be reduced or changed. Maybe it could be expanded.

The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.

That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.

As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.

>2 years

Kids need their Dads, and Dads have to be strong as hell for them, even still, in this modern world. I am super glad to have gotten my two giant oafs into adulthood well enough to be surfing the wonders the world has in store for them both .. but yeah, you'll get your ass kicked. Be a kick ass Dad, then.

The most important thing is that your son knows you're there for him as he grows up. Maybe keep a journal, don't stop writing important things to him, notes and ideas from his Dad, for him to read when he gets his own agency over things.

How is it possible? Well, theoretically it's not. The order I got and subsequent denial of modification blatantly violate state law and appealate precedent. But it's all procedural. The standard for the underlying opinion of the judge is that if there is one fact to support that opinion then the ruling is upheld.

So I could have appealed and won. But then I go back to the same judge that doesn't think my kid should have any contact with me and all she has to do is find one fact to support that.

More often a custody order is just a piece of paper. The primary parent can screw with visitation easily and it takes time and money to go to court. The original divorce cost me $100k, another contempt motion $7k, and the failed modification $20k.

Custody ends for Father's when they give up. I gave up unusually early (which royally pissed off the judge) and this is my punishment.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/divorce/famil...

Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.

There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);

You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.

California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.

But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court

You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *

https://www.wgslawfirm.com/family-law/divorce-mediation/2025...

That's not some "oh, we live together, and under old-timey understandings that means we're married" requirement. That's publicly making a pattern of referring to each other as your spouses, often including at least some public documentation. Common law marriage is much more about protecting people who failed to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's when registering their marriage than it is about surprising a breakup partner with divorce precedings.

For the record I had heard this from a lawyer, not some random person.

My father's last "marriage" was like this. After several divorces he was dead set on never getting married again, made sure only his (or her) name was on any purchases, and made sure his friends knew the situation. After a messy breakup where he discovered she had been diverting money for drugs and hiding bills, her lawyer managed to convince an Alabama court to find a common law marriage. Not long after she ended going to prison for arson after setting aflame some of my father personal and real property in piques of spite. I think those felony convictions happened prior to or at least concurrent with the common law marriage proceedings.

It isn't true in California, it appears. It is true in a number of other places worldwide, Australia in particular.

Even in Australia, a de facto relationship – in which partners have a right to a property settlement upon separation – requires more than mere cohabitation of sexual/romantic partners. However, in practice, relatively few long-term cohabitating partners will be found not to be in a de facto relationship.

I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.

And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.

So there is some variability, and of course in my case it was a "happy path" scenario where both me and my ex-wife mutually wanted the divorce.

But by default you have to pay spousal support regardless of how well-off your partner is. The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially. Which is really not a contemporary point of view to make as a blanket statement.

But again, it seems weird when a male has to work 2 jobs in their 50's to send large monthly payments to a female that has a larger or equivalent net worth.

And it happens routinely. Of course, there are also a lot of men out there that just want to stiff their ex. But that doesn't mean my former example isn't happening.

And this was exactly what happened to my friends. The women who sought alimony actually earned much more. The financial burden was so tough that it turned a good hard working member of the society into almost a criminal (if you don't pay alimony, you can be even arrested for it in some countries).

This, a thousand times.

And I say that as a man who has lived in multiple countries in my lifetime, raising my family, through thick and thin.

>mens mental health

I no longer see it as a man problem, its a we problem.

I guess you missed the last part of my comment. Women are majorly incentivised legally to walk out of a marriage while being financially rewarded for it. Even if you marry the "right" woman, it doesn't guarantee she won't turn into the "wrong" woman over time. And in modern times, it doesn't take a lot for that transition especially with social media really rallying to take advantage of the legal loopholes - eg. you can cheat on your partner AND walk away with 50% of the marital wealth.

You only get to choose either:

* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50

* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50

* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old. There is a standard

Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets.

I would be really surprised if the US didnt have these options too…

Just living together, informally, is already enough for the woman to take half your assets as it's already considered `Partial Community of Property`.

I can't think of anything where Brazil is generally superior to the US in terms of law.

This should not even be an option. If you worked your ass off to acquire wealth before marriage, someone new into your life should not be entitled to that.

You can definitely make a fair argument for wealth built together as partners. That is really fair. They can even have 100% of that. But wealth accumulated before that should not even be up for discussion as there was 0 contribution from the other partner.

But you have to go out of your way to choose it.

The issue isn't assets, it's alimony. Brazil has the same issues with alimony as the U.S. does. Most modern countries do. (Asset splits are generally governed by statute and case law. Asset-related conflicts are about whether prenups are valid, or whether an asset is community/marital property subject to split. These same issues arise in Brazilian divorces.)

Also...Britney Spears and most other famous women with unfamous (or less succesful) husbands would like to weigh in on this conversation. It's not that men always get "screwed." It's simply that the more successful partner always ends up paying the other partner.

Legally, people are marrying a law in their place of residence, marriage is a contract and agreement with the government.

Through a marriage to the government's law first, two people are married in the eyes of the law.

The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.

Of course you do. As you point out, you marry the government, which is people.

> The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.

Considering that the traditional marriage process involves two people standing in front of representatives of the government and declaring promises to them it seems like it'd be a bit hard to miss? I suppose if others don't realize that government is people then they might not realize what the people in the audience are doing?

Kid takes immense toll on the body, career development and retirement savings of the woman.

Untill men could give birth to the child the truly gender neutral laws are unreachable goal.

Also men live shorter life - should their tax rate be higher?

The rest of your comment is full of non-sequiturs, and even an outright error.

If anything it should be the opposite: men spend fewer years post-retirement and thus as less of a burden on social security and pensions.