In my second post on Last One Down the Aisle Wins, I shared a chart on the effects of age at marriage on divorce rates from the NCHS:
The basic relationship between a woman’s age at the time of marriage and her likelihood of divorcing is fairly well known. However, what is seldom discussed is why this is the case. The standard assumption is that women who wait longer are more mature, better able to pick a husband they can remain faithful to, and more ready for marriage. Also, women who attend college generally marry a bit later, and college attendance correlates strongly with IQ, which has a very strong correlation with divorce. Undoubtedly there is some truth to these reasons, but there is something else very important going on. A woman’s likelihood of divorcing in any given year is highly correlated to her age. Young women in the peak of their sexual marketplace power are far more likely to divorce than older women are. I shared the chart below for the UK in a previous post:
Note how aside from the very youngest age brackets, a woman in the UK’s likelihood of divorcing correlates strongly with her perceived ability to remarry. The UK under 20 and 20-24 age brackets are perplexing, because they defy conventional wisdom on very young marriage, the US data on early marriage divorce rates, as well as expectations based on the sexual marketplace. With this in mind, I suspect that women who marry that young in the UK are bucking the trend enough that they are a much more dedicated group regarding marriage. The last chart was just a snapshot in time, but the basic effect has been remarkably stable in the UK for as far back as data is available:
Leaving aside the volatile under 20 age bracket, the lines almost never cross. The only change is that the 20-24 year old bracket has moved between being the most likely to divorce, the second most likely to divorce, and the third most likely to divorce. But the trend for women starting in their late 20s has always been the same; the older they are, the less likely they are to divorce. This has remained the case even as the age of first marriage has continued to grow. This isn’t simply about divorces occurring in the very beginning of marriage. There is a much stronger pattern involved here.
Until just recently I’ve had to speculate on what this same pattern would look like for the US. I have yet to find anyone who splits the US data out this way, but just this week I found the missing component I needed to roll my own chart:
The chart above combines data from the 2009 spreadsheet from the US Census (all races) on the percentage of women by age bracket who were married, with the data on divorces by age in 2009 from Table 2 in this recent census paper.* Notice that while US divorce rates are significantly higher than UK divorce rates across the board, the same basic pattern we saw in the UK data exists in the US data minus the unexpected behavior for younger age brackets.
Taken together, this data soundly disproves the apex fallacy regarding divorce. The common belief that divorce rates are driven by men discarding older wives for a younger model simply doesn’t fit with the data. This is reinforced when you consider that the AARP found that 66% of the divorces in middle age were initiated by women (figure 2 on page 15). This fits with the historical trends of women of all ages initiating divorce, as shown in page 3 of this paper. Even in middle age women are still the ones driving divorce rates. The myth of the unloyal husband dumping his hapless wife once he feels it is to his advantage is generally just that (a myth). This won’t stop women from pointing over and over again to the rare case they know of in the media or in person where this has occurred, but in the scheme of things this is clearly an outlier. Across age ranges divorce is being driven by women, and the likelihood of a couple divorcing in any given year tracks very strongly with whether the wife feels it would be to her advantage not to keep her promise.
*The specific rates for each group in the US chart may not be exact. The figures in Table 2 from the new report on the total number of women in each age bracket vary slightly from the figures in the 2009 census report. This appears to be due to the nature of the sampling they did. Also, table 2 shows slightly different numbers of women and men divorcing and marrying in the same year. This would be expected when looking at different age brackets, but not the overall figures. At any rate, the differences aren’t large so the data still appears to be generally valid. Lastly, using the figures in Table 2 I calculated the overall rate of divorce per 1,000 married women in the US in 2009 at 19. This other source calculates it at 16.4 for the same year, however that report omits data from California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota.
Update: The National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University used ACS data to calculate divorce rates by age in the US for 2010. Their calculations are nearly identical to my own above. Also note that the ACS is a more complete data source than the one the National Marriage project uses, which explains the differences in overall divorce rate calculations referenced above. See this post for more information.
Regarding the under-20 divorce rates, I would expect a relatively low divorce rate simply because a woman that young probably hasn’t been married very long – most likely less than two years. She probably hasn’t had enough time to
get boredbecome disillusioned with her husband.Why are the US rates higher? Dunno – could simply be that the numbers are relatively small so there will be a lot of statistical noise.
Anyway, the overall point is well made – it’s women who drive divorce rates (is this really a surprise? Women have always been the ones who choose mates), and they make their choices based on what they think their options are.
The danger of the EPL industry is that it gives women at the right side of those curves an inaccurate picture of their options. It tries to convince them they still have the relatively high SMV of their youth, when in reality age has taken it’s toll. Why does the EPL industry do this? I don’t think the folks pushing it are really setting out to make women unhappy and bitter – I think they’re just trying to sell snake oil, flattery and “empowerment” baloney flavored snake oil.
Excellent analysis!
@Jack Amok
This makes intuitive sense, but it isn’t something I’ve seen in the data. When you look at charts showing the probability of divorce for each year after marriage, there isn’t a grace period before divorce starts kicking in. The second chart on this post is an example of how this looks.
Edit: Looking at this some more it appears this may in fact be the case. Here is a chart from the NCHS/CDC paper Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States in 2002:
That chart (fig 18, Probability that the first marriage breaks up…” seems to show the old “7 year itch” syndrome: a higher rate of divorce between years 5 and 10 of marriage (though oddly enough, the Non-Hispanic White line seems to have a steady slope, no real rate changes).
[D: Looking at it again I noticed that the scale is off. It shows the same distance between 0 and 1 years as between 1 and 3, 5 to 10, etc. This probably accounts for the appearance of a grace period as well as the 7 year itch.]
So, um, what exactly is the ideal age to get married? [if there even is such a thing…]
I plan to marry my boyfriend within the next few years [probably when I’m 21] but whenever I tell older women [like, 30-something women] they try to convince me getting married in my early 20’s is a bad idea.
“You’re so young, why would you want to get married?”
My boyfriend is a wonderful young man; there’s really no reason for me to delay marrying him. I mean, why do so many women consider cohabiting alright, but frown upon marriage?
Weren’t you searching for a guy just a month ago? I’m all for marriage, but there’s something to be said for giving a relationship a little time…
The ‘why would you want to get married’ is from people who see marriage as death. For them, it usually ends up that way. There’s no reason that marriage has to be an end to what you enjoy. You can travel, explore, go to school, whatever while married – you just can’t sleep with other people. I think people who think marrying young is death are showing their cards.
I think there is something to be said for giving it a couple years when you’re young, as a lot of people change quite a bit quite quickly in the university-ish years.
But statistically speaking, it’s the super-youngs that have issues – the teenage marriages. Once you hit twenty, far more marriages last, and even more that married in the 22-25 range.
Many women (/people) consider cohabiting all right but don’t want to marry because cohabitation has a no-problem escape route. Although they still have to divide the house/dog/kids/bank accounts, at least they don’t have to go around calling themselves ‘divorced’ after a cohabitation breakup. It’s also a lot less seeming of commitment without the paper.
Many people today have an extremely messed up view of commitment “So I have two small children with this guy but I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to marriage…”
The ‘why would you want to get married’ is from people who see marriage as death. For them, it usually ends up that way. There’s no reason that marriage has to be an end to what you enjoy. You can travel, explore, go to school, whatever while married – you just can’t sleep with other people. I think people who think marrying young is death are showing their cards.
I think it’s also the loss of personal freedom — apart from sleeping with other people. Marriage involves a million compromises. That is a part of the deal and, on balance, a good one as it tends to sand down selfishness if it is working properly. But that’s also daunting for many, for understandable, if selfish reasons. Not having to deal with someone else if you want to sleep in till 12, or stay up till 3, or hop off on a whim to someplace or whatever can be daunting for people who are young and value their independence. It’s not just about sleeping with people, but the reasons are similarly selfish in nature, at bottom (although our culture is loathe to call it out as such).
Muslims?
Weren’t you searching for a guy just a month ago? I’m all for marriage, but there’s something to be said for giving a relationship a little time…
No, that was like four months ago [back in April]. I’ve been dating my boyfriend for about three months. And my boyfriend had been a platonic guyfriend so I’ve known him for a lot longer than three months.
The ‘why would you want to get married’ is from people who see marriage as death. For them, it usually ends up that way. There’s no reason that marriage has to be an end to what you enjoy. You can travel, explore, go to school, whatever while married – you just can’t sleep with other people. I think people who think marrying young is death are showing their cards.
I’ve noticed a lot of women treat marriage like it’s a mandatory task. Instead of being a sacred lifelong bond with the man they love, they reduce marriage to being the relationship equivalent of waiting on line at the DMV.
I think there is something to be said for giving it a couple years when you’re young, as a lot of people change quite a bit quite quickly in the university-ish years. But statistically speaking, it’s the super-youngs that have issues – the teenage marriages. Once you hit twenty, far more marriages last, and even more that married in the 22-25 range.
My boyfriend is entering his late 20’s; he wants to settle down with me. If my boyfriend was the same age as me, I’d want to wait.
I think it’s also the loss of personal freedom — apart from sleeping with other people. Marriage involves a million compromises. That is a part of the deal and, on balance, a good one as it tends to sand down selfishness if it is working properly. But that’s also daunting for many, for understandable, if selfish reasons. Not having to deal with someone else if you want to sleep in till 12, or stay up till 3, or hop off on a whim to someplace or whatever can be daunting for people who are young and value their independence. It’s not just about sleeping with people, but the reasons are similarly selfish in nature, at bottom (although our culture is loathe to call it out as such).
And that is why love is such a critical component to a successful marriage.
When you love someone, you gladly make those small sacrifices. There’s no resentment because you know they would do the same for you.
Hmmm. I wonder how the data for US divorces would look if one were to dis-aggregate the 15-24 divorce data into “under 20” and “20-24” categories.
Would it more mirror the UK data, rather than be clumped all together into a big spike that says “don’t marry under 25?”.
Good post, D.
I think you may be interested in the conclusions of an English Statistician, who I recently read about. I’m sorry I can’t link it, (even is I can find it again) but he has been doing some number crunching. He decided (effectively) that a woman’s MMV ends at 46 and a man’s at 60. and starting from the age of 16 deduced that the ideal age for a woman to marry is 27 and a man 32. Now, that intuitively feels absolutely right to me, although of course there is no one right combination. That suggests to me that sixteen year olds can marry but if you are a sixty year old man, your ideal woman will be forty-six. Below sixteen is too young: Above the two upper limits, pointless.
Would it be pointless above the limits, or simply unlikely?
I don’t see in that a suggestion that if you at a 62-year old woman or a 70-year old man in love that there’s no reason to get married (and it happens occasionally) – just that if you’re a 62-year old single woman, you probably shouldn’t expect any likelihood of marrying.
@Kai
I suggested that marrying above 46 for a woman and 60 for a man was pointless; the point being that the woman will be too old to bear children and the man will be suffering a loss of libido/earningpower. That was all I meant to imply, as I assume the Statistician did.
My own mother told me she could never see the point of marrying unless one were to have children (perhaps that Dalrock is where I get it from) – yet no one would have regarded her as anything less than very traditional!
In comments to Dalrock’s previous post, there was a link to a WSJ article where the
spinster“situationally infertile” woman said “I’m guilty of that kind of conventional thinking as well. For too long, I believed that having a husband was what made you ready for a child.”Well, the conventional thinking is right. The first step to proving you’re mature enough to be a responsible mother (in a grown-up, civilized fashion) is to prove you’re mature enough to be a responsible wife. What does a responsible wife do? Well, she pair-bonds with her husband to create the nucleus of a new family, and puts the happiness and success of that new family ahead of her own, purely selfish desires. Part of that of course involves picking a husband who will contribute to the family too, a responsible guy and not another bad-boy drummer/bikerat/playah/cad from the carousel.
Your boyfriend would want to wait too if he was your age (and maybe wouldn’t end up marrying you either). Guys are interested in marriage from 17-21, and again from 27-32 (plus or minus a year on either side…). From 21 to 27, most guys really aren’t all that interested in marriage. Maybe it’s a subconscious understanding that their SMV hasn’t peaked yet and they’ll do better if they wait.
What should we learn from this? That the higher the SMV a woman has, the higher the probability she will hypergamously attempt to trade up either in the SM or MM. The charts Dalrock has posted empirically demonstrate this. What does this imply for LTR/marriage from the man’s point of view?
* Men who wish to marry should screen women carefully to weed out the carousel riders,
those with poor impulse control, etc. and the same is true for LTR’s.
* A man should not marry a woman who is not clearly in love with him
* Men should consciously learn Game in order to have tools to keep her attraction high
even when she’s hearing “the whispers” (as well as to keep the relationship on an even keel).
What else?
Your boyfriend would want to wait too if he was your age (and maybe wouldn’t end up marrying you either). Guys are interested in marriage from 17-21, and again from 27-32 (plus or minus a year on either side…). From 21 to 27, most guys really aren’t all that interested in marriage. Maybe it’s a subconscious understanding that their SMV hasn’t peaked yet and they’ll do better if they wait.
My boyfriend falls in the 27-32 age bracket. He never considered marriage in his early and mid twenties because he was too busy. His wait is understandable; those tend to be very hectic years.
What does a responsible wife do? Well, she pair-bonds with her husband to create the nucleus of a new family, and puts the happiness and success of that new family ahead of her own, purely selfish desires.
A wife that truly loves her husband will automatically disregards those selfish desires; the power of love is a humbling force.
However; I think a lot of women these days are afraid to do those things [as opposed to being too selfish to do those thinks]. Feminism is all about telling women “you don’t need a man to be happy” – meanwhile, genuine love is about admitting that your life wouldn’t be complete without your significant other; admitting that you need a man in your life.
When I tell older women that I love my boyfriend, they look at me like I’m insane, or foolish. [I’m sure these women also hate Taylor Swift love songs. I think Ms. Swift best captures the mindset of a young woman in love].
…I feel like love these days is considered something to be ashamed of; a childish notion. Like, I’d get taken more seriously if I told older women my boyfriend was a casual fuck buddy [instead of being the love of my life].
Maybe young marriages would be more successful if they weren’t so stigmatized.
Butterfly Flower:
“Maybe young marriages would be more successful if they weren’t so stigmatized”.
True. The hyper-puritanical and self-righteous attitudes in our culture do a lot to discourage marriage. In fact, it’s been strongly advocated by some MRA’s (convincingly too) that feministic female empowerment and anglo-puritanism are direct outgrowths of one another. Notice how all these ‘trad’ proponents of marriage immediately balk when the ‘age question’ enters into it? Don’t give up your grrrrl power so soon, Dearie! LOL
Here’s a sampling of some records from my family tree. No divorces among these numbers. They speak for themselves:
Woman’s Age at Marriage (Number of Children):
18 (2)
19 (3)
16 (6)
22 (11)
19 (9)
16 (12)
29 (5)
27 (6)
21 (9)
15 (7)
Dalrock:
The whole issue of age misses the point completely. Divorces are happening because women are incentivized to have them. In a culture where men are not valued as husbands and seen only as sperm donors and sources of child-support, (otherwise men are expendable);divorce is going to happen in large numbers. (LOL, remember the ‘Boring Loyal Dudes’?)
Women divorce because, not only is there no consequences for them to do it, it actually provides them with a ‘golden parachute’ in the form of alimony. Taught from childhood that marriage is ‘enslaving’ and that ‘all men are pigs’—just how do expect them to behave? The fact that women end relationships 90% of the time (including marriage) is proof positive of their contempt for monogamy.
A wife that truly loves her husband will automatically disregards those selfish desires; the power of love is a humbling force.
However; I think a lot of women these days are afraid to do those things [as opposed to being too selfish to do those thinks]. Feminism is all about telling women “you don’t need a man to be happy” – meanwhile, genuine love is about admitting that your life wouldn’t be complete without your significant other; admitting that you need a man in your life.
That’s true, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, remember?
When I tell older women that I love my boyfriend, they look at me like I’m insane, or foolish.
Who are these women? I’ve never experienced that, although I have experienced women trying to find faults with my bf where none existed and I proceeded to tell them to screw off.
Like, I’d get taken more seriously if I told older women my boyfriend was a casual fuck buddy
Well, they’re just jealous, so don’t listen to them.
An an aside note, BF why aren’t you interested in marrying your bf if he wants to? What do you hope to accomplish and you can’t without him? Does he stand in the way of anything?
The whole issue of age misses the point completely. Divorces are happening because women are incentivized to have them…Women divorce because, not only is there no consequences for them to do it,
Au countraire, Eric. There most assuredly are consequences for women to divorce, if they do it on the backside of their value curve. That’s where the age thing comes in. A woman who divorces in her mid 30’s might get a financial windfall, but she’s doomed herself to living the rest of her life as a lonely old hag.
She was at the peak of her SMV when the landed the husband she threw away – she won’t be able to land anyone in his league, let alone better, now that she’s older with maybe a couple or three kids under her belt. For a few years, she’ll still be attractive enough for a procession of guys to pump-n-dump her, but no one she will be attracted to will be willing to marry her. By her mid-40’s the pump-n-dumps will have tapered off too, as the playah’s move on to younger, hotter bodies. From there until the end of her days, the sum total of the affection she recieves from another living creature will come from her ever-growing menagerie of cats.
Those are some consequences.
And I think the majority of women actually have at least some understanding of this. That’s why the divorce rate drops at the woman ages. Of course the Family-and-Civilization-Ruination industry tries to convince them to do it anyway, and some women are dumb enough to fall for it, but the stats show it’s not hopeless.
This is good work, and it certainly shows a correlation between the woman’s age and divorce rates, but without the corresponding data for men, you can’t conclude that women are the driver. Or am I missing something?
“Jack Amok says:
‘The whole issue of age misses the point completely. Divorces are happening because women are incentivized to have them…Women divorce because, not only is there no consequences for them to do it…’
Au countraire, Eric. There most assuredly are consequences for women to divorce, if they do it on the backside of their value curve.”
Perhaps it is more that there is the impression of no consequences. By the time they see the consequences, it’s too late. Divorced women definitely don’t try to announce the consequences they’ve suffered.
What men are interested in marriage between age 17 and 21? And where on earth do you live that you see that?
“Butterfly Flower says:
A wife that truly loves her husband will automatically disregards those selfish desires; the power of love is a humbling force.
…
When I tell older women that I love my boyfriend, they look at me like I’m insane, or foolish. [I’m sure these women also hate Taylor Swift love songs. I think Ms. Swift best captures the mindset of a young woman in love].”
Love is a great power. The intense overpowering infatuation tends to wane over time and the type of love changes to a different sort of force. Love isn’t the answer to everything, and it does still take work. Telling people that ‘love is all you need’ simply leads to people giving up when it isn’t easy anymore. People who truly love their spouses do still sometimes need to make decisions that aren’t just easy.
I agree that Taylor Swift captures the mindset of a young woman in love. Emphasis on the ‘young’. And it’s really a young woman who believes herself in love. I suspect a lot of older women deride these songs not because they don’t believe in love, but because they have had some time to recognise the difference between love and infatuation. Taylor Swift’s music very clearly captures the feelings of a very young girl who doesn’t yet know this difference. A lot of women remember feeling that way, but then also remember what happened when they grew up. (And isn’t she in her early twenties now and about time she wrote slightly more adult music?)
I think a lot of older women see a young woman head-over-heels making brash proclamations and feel some cynicism having seen that many times end up combusting instead of deepening and steadying.
True. The hyper-puritanical and self-righteous attitudes in our culture do a lot to discourage marriage. In fact, it’s been strongly advocated by some MRA’s (convincingly too) that feministic female empowerment and anglo-puritanism are direct outgrowths of one another. Notice how all these ‘trad’ proponents of marriage immediately balk when the ‘age question’ enters into it? Don’t give up your grrrrl power so soon, Dearie! LOL
Exactly! [you should make a blog; you always make astute observations]
Whenever I brought up wanting to marrying my boyfriend on the traditionalist blogosphere, the traditionalist women would insist early marriage was a bad idea. I’m too immature, he’s the wrong denomination of Christianity, you’ll probably end up leaving him. Not once was I ever told “go for it!”
It was confusing because they would all talk about how great their traditional lives are, but at the same time they would try to convince me to not follow in their footsteps.
Also, the hyper-puritanical traditionalists spend a lot of time trying to convince young women sex is evil. Sex isn’t an activity to do with someone you love; it’s a mutually hated but necessary marital task. Uh, no. That type of attitude just sounds like a bad marriage waiting to happen; “Jesus wants you to deny your husband!” *facepalm*
Anyway, I’ve noticed that depending on an individual’s definition of traditionalism – it could actually be a worse deal for men.
I’m supposed to be a good little submissive wife, sit around all day doing housework while my [future] husband works long hours being the traditional male provider. I’m just a feeble minded woman, my [future] husband is the leader, he’s the only person capable of making important household decisions.
Traditionalists expect men to do everything ; to the point I think it’s best for men to be suspicious of women who follow extreme forms of traditionalism. I mean, if a woman advocates an ideology that involves “women are stupid and incompetent, men should do all the difficult work” – it might just mean said woman wants men to do everything for her.
& then I wonder if traditionalists are actually advocating young women to not marry for love. I mean, they emphasize a man’s material qualities, but downplay sexual attraction/chemistry. If a man can’t provide a woman with a traditional lifestyle, than he’s considered unworthy.
Eric, do you have any links to articles about traditionalism being a form of feminism? For awhile I thought I was a traditionalist but I never could agree with all of its teachings. I feel like expecting my future husband to do everything while I sit around looking pretty is quite heartless; not to mention just as bad as a typical feminists sense of entitlement. […there has to be some-sort of happy medium between extreme traditionalism and extreme feminist]
@Jonathan
Both competing theories assume the age of the woman is the driving factor in divorce. Feminists assume it is men discarding older wives, and Game predicts that women would be more prone to want to divorce when their market value is higher/options appear better. Is there another theory you have in mind which would be based on the age of the husband?
> Is there another theory you have in mind which would be based on the age of the husband?
No theory, but I’m curious what the graphs for men would look like; are young women more likely to divorce, or is this true of all young people?
Perhaps it is more that there is the impression of no consequences. By the time they see the consequences, it’s too late. Divorced women definitely don’t try to announce the consequences they’ve suffered.
I agree there are a bunch of people trying to foster the impression that there are no consequences. But I think the decline in divorce rates as women age shows that women have at least some grasp of the brutal truth. Maybe not always a strong enough grasp – it would be a good idea if society reinforced the truth instead of trying to obscure it – but the foundation is there.
What men are interested in marriage between age 17 and 21? And where on earth do you live that you see that?
Oh, it’s purely relative. Many men (but no where near as many as 10 years later) that age are willing to marry, but don’t have much in the way of opportunities. By the time a guy gets to his mid-20’s, he has more opportunities, but is busy with other stuff. By the time he’s around 30, his opportunity and interest finally line up. 3 out of every 4 men who ever get married get married (for the first time) within 3 years of their 30th birthday.
The myth of the apex divorce stays alive because women will always cast themselves in the role of the victim no matter how bogus or preposterous. The same goes for the number of women filing divorce v. men, female on male abuse, false abuse / rape accusations, or female hypergamy. If it does not look good for women, no matter how you spin it, it gets swept under the rug. You can read the MSM or troll liberal / feminist websites all day long and you will not see hide or hair on any objective reading of these subjects; ever.
While some of this is purely tactical I think a good measure of it is psychological. Women can go much deeper into denial than men in some ways. My wife is a psychologist who has done a lot of alcohol / drug counseling. She vastly prefers working with men. The reason being is that women, in general, tend to be much less likely to fess up. The same goes for women who abuse children (and probably men). That is a hard enough job when dealing with people who want to heal but you cannot do anything until the patient is ready to admit reality. I fully realize that there are male pathological liars as well but they are a minority and despised whereas their female counter parts see to always get a pass.
The hyper-puritanical and self-righteous attitudes in our culture do a lot to discourage marriage. In fact, it’s been strongly advocated by some MRA’s (convincingly too) that feministic female empowerment and anglo-puritanism are direct outgrowths of one another.
Untrue -> http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2010/05/revealing-political-profiles.html
I find it baffling how people call women whom advocate rape allegations, careerdom, traditional marriage as oppression, promiscuity and sexual liberation as “puritanical”. Is black white and white black now? I understand if a person says that Protestantism has a liberal strand. A few Catholics and Orthodox Christians have pointed that out.
Butterfly Flower you’re writing misconceptions and mischaracterizing our position. You even insinuated how feminism and liberalism is a better deal. Now you put traditional conservatism and women’s rights activists (feminism, e.g. liberalism) in the same bin. Then you say how we think sex is evil at the core. Wait a minute didn’t Alte ban you from Traditional Christianity?
Wait a minute didn’t Alte ban you from Traditional Christianity?
She banned me because my boyfriend is Anglican and I said I will not emotionally blackmail him into converting to Catholicism. I love him, why would I force him to change his faith?
How is extreme traditionalism better than extreme feminism? They both teach women to emotionally manipulate their significant others.
Eric brought the topic up first; I’m not the only person who has noticed this.
Butterfly Flower you’re writing misconceptions and mischaracterizing our position. You even insinuated how feminism and liberalism is a better deal.
No I did not! I just said I beleive there is a happy medium which is better for men, in the long run.
I love my boyfriend; if I married him I wouldn’t expect him to work himself into an early grave.
Then you say how we think sex is evil at the core.
According to Catholicism, any expression of lust, outside of procreation, is considered a sin. It’s not exactly an embraced marital activity.
Alcest: The Oz conservative link is argumentum ad hominem . Therer are some nasty people in the manosphere, but there are nastier ones in the senior common room of any university, and here I speak from experience. BF may have been banned elsewhere, but this is Dalrock’s place.
The question she raises — should I wait? Would resonate with that Webmistress. If I recall, she wed a man in his late 20s when she was about 22. As an equal opportunity coot, I give BF the same breaks I give Svar — they are both young… and at times foolish, at other times they have insights.
My advice to BF would be to talk to her boyfriends and parents: and pray on this, keeping their hands to themselves. Fervently, for both guidance and self discipline.
Eric, do you have any links to articles about traditionalism being a form of feminism?
I’m not Eric, but I provide two texts below about this topic. I would like to know if you think they are right or wrong.
I’ve said once and again. Social conservative women are not our allies. They are even more dangerous than the feminist.
In fact, feminism and so-con pedestalizers are two branches of the same ideology: the female supremacism or, if you will, the pedestalization movement. This movement started with the troubadours, in XII century, when each poet considered himself a vassal of a lady and hence her inferior. This pedestalization spread for all the history of Western poetry, e.g. Dante in “The Divine Comedy” makes Beatrice a redemptor of the human race and puts her roughly at the same level as Christ. We can talk about Petrarca or “Le Roman de la Rose”. This pedestalization reached its apogee in Victorian times and extended until the 50s: the woman was “the angel of the house” and man was civilized by her love.
The aim of this ideology was to make men willing to economically support women. This is similar to Indian religion, which makes cows sacred in order to protect them from slaughter (which could produce the starvation of the family). Cows were specially vulnerable, because bulls were not killed since they were needed for agriculture. But, if cows were sacrified, there was no way to get future milk and more cows and bulls (through reproduction) so it was necessary to make cows sacred, in order to the long-term interests to prevail so people could have better chances of surviving.
The same way women were elevated to the status of angels and superior beings, because they were the more vulnerable (in a world without contraceptives and without medicines they had to be economically supported in order to make the survival of human communities possible). Women were brainwashed since childhood to be “good girls”, so they get closer to this ideal, although anyone that has had experience with women in their feral state knows how female nature is different from this ideal.
Then technology advanced and women stopped being so vulnerable (the death in labor was almost eliminated, women had access to easy jobs that did not demand physical endurance, contraceptives reduced the number of children and appliances and compulsory education reduced the need of housekeeping). When this happened, the old deal of full-time work for sex, reproduction and housekeeping became obsolete. Since sex, reproduction and housekeeping were not as hard as before, their value dropped and, hence, they could not demand being economically supported by a man only because of it. This is the real reason of the entrance of women into the workplace.
Faced with these new situations, there was a split in the pedestalization movement. Some women tried to cling to a past where her husband economically supported them: these were the so-cons. They shamed men to stick to their traditional role, even if women’s traditional role was not available anymore.
Some other women tried to make the transfer of wealth compulsory, even if men didn’t received anything in return. Unlike the so-cons, the transfer was not from husband to wife, but from all men to all women, through taxes. These were the feminist.
At the end of the day, as someone said, “women agree about the goal and they only differ about the means”. The goal is the transfer of wealth from men to women. But each group thinks that their strategy to reach that goal is the best.
Homemaking has long been the default occupation of women.
No. Women have always worked. Before Industrial Revolution, they worked in the family farm, while taking care of the children (who also worked). The family was a unit of production back then. After the Industrial Revolution they worked in factories. Having a housewife was only possible for wealthy men then, and it was a sign of distinction and status.
When the productivity rose, women could stay at home again. But this was a hard job. According to my mother’s memories, my great-grandmother had to go to the river to wash the clothes, because she didn’t have water at home. She had to take care of children all the time, because it was no compulsory schooling. She had to do all the work without appliances. She made cheese and walked five kilometers through the mountain to sell it in a village nearby. And she had nine children (my sister has one) because the pill didn’t exist back then.
During all this period, the deal was that women worked inside the home while men worked outside the home. This deal stopped being valid for a lot of reasons. But one of the most important one is that the work inside the home was made MUCH EASIER. Technological advances (the pill, water, electricity, appliances) and societal advances (compulsory schooling) made it much easier to be a housewife. So the housewife work decreased its economic value. So the deal was not valid anymore.
In the old times, a man could die without a housewife or a mother, back then. Now he can outsource the household chores to a maid, the sex to a prostitute or a girlfriend). He doesn’t need a housewife anymore. The deal was not valid anymore.
So women had something of lower value after those technological changes. They made up for it by going to work. Feminism was only a rationalization of this economic facts.
Now, Alte and other “traditional” women, say that crisis will sent women back home. Of course, there is always a minority of women who will manage to do that, not doubt about it. But this won’t be a majority, because the old deal is NOT POSSIBLE, because women don’t bring as much to the table when they become housewives as their foremothers did.
When the economic crisis makes resources decreases and “inflated” women’s job disappear, the answer won’t be a return to traditional patriarchy. This horse is far away from the barn. Men’s wages will also decrease (in real terms) so having a women to support will be a luxury more and more. The few women that can support themselves will marry (maybe having part-time jobs). The other will remain spinsters, will occupy poor paid jobs and will have the poor life ancient spinsters have (spinsters comes from spinning the wheel to make clothes, if I remember well).
Am I wrong? If we enter a crisis and there are fewer resources, how it is that women will have the economic luxury to be SAHM again? SAHM have only existed when
1) they offered more economical value to men than they can offer now.
and
2) the men had enough money to support them.
(In the history of mankind, these were exceptions not the rule).
All of this talk about femininity or submissiveness doesn’t help to pay the bills.
This “tradition” you adhere to are the 50s. The 50s was a revolutionary period, not the old times, when people left the farms and extended families to work in cities. Half the world production in the world was produced by USA, so this thing can be sustained. The rest of the world has been catching up since then.
Is my reasoning wrong? If it is, please let me where is the flaw? I love to learn and I don’t mind changing my mind if I am convinced that I am wrong.
Elizabeth Smith, you keep posting this link
Untrue -> http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2010/05/revealing-political-profiles.html
as if it means something. The political profile posting by Richardson is almost entirely useless.
1. It surveys one and only one site
2. If I recall correctly, it relies upon a form of self selection
3. Absolutely no attempt is made to poll a statistically significant cross section of the target
It is no more significant than any “click here to vote” poll. It proves nothing. Given the known self selection on sites such as reddit, it does not even demonstrate anything. It is only useful to ideologues who prefer speculation to fact.
You might want to stop pointing to it, if you are interested in facts.
imnobody…Owen Young, a farm boy who became chairman of GE, provided a vivid word-picture of what life had been like for a farm wife. Here, he remembers Monday–wash day:
“he drew from his memory a vivid picture of its miseries: the milk coming into the house from the barn; the skimming to be done; the pans and buckets to be washed; the churn waiting attention; the wash boiler on the stove while the wash tub and its back-breaking device, the washboard, stood by; the kitchen full of steam; hungry men at the door anxious to get at the day’s work and one pale, tired, and discouraged woman in the midst of this confusion.”
(from the Ida Tarbell biography)
A useful corrective to some of the excessive nostalgia for the Good Old Days that has been circulating recently..
I’m supposed to be a good little submissive wife, sit around all day doing housework while my [future] husband works long hours being the traditional male provider. I’m just a feeble minded woman, my [future] husband is the leader, he’s the only person capable of making important household decisions.
Butterfly Flower, forget about what the traditional women and other people say; they’re irrelevant. What do you want, and what does your boyfriend want? Is there a congruence between your ideals? For example, if he wants a submissive wife, and that’s not a position you want to adopt, then it’s better not to lead him on and do both of you a favor, and break up. Like Dalrock said, don’t settle because the results will be ugly, maybe not now, but for sure in the distant future.
It is no more significant than any “click here to vote” poll. It proves nothing.
It does prove something. Especially a website with so many members and walks of life.
You might want to stop pointing to it, if you are interested in facts.
Pointing isn’t always devoid of facts you know. It was an example. I don’t always post that link. Only when this subject comes up.
Yes, David. I agree with you. My great-grandmother was a woman like this, like my mother’s memories depict her (I translate):
“Every day my grandmother got up very early and went to hear Mass while her children were sleeping, since she was very religious. After that, she took care of her children. She had a child every two years so she ended up with eight kids but only seven survived.
She devoted each day of the week to an activity that was more time-consuming. This way, a day she kneaded dough for bread, other day she washed clothes (completely by hand), other day she cleaned up her home.
After that, she cooked to make the lunch. After that, she made fresh cheese with the milk my grandfather got from his herd. In the afternoon, she walked until V**** (a town who was about 5 mile away) to sell the cheese. When she came back, she went to the village’s washing place to do her washing with an oil lamp, since it was already night”
When some so-con women say they want women leaving their jobs to become “traditional” housewives, they want the benefits of leaving the rat race without carrying the burden of a traditional housewife as Ida Tarbell depicts it. A modern housewife’s work is much easier than yesteryear due to contraceptives, compulsory schooling, water and electricity at home.
It is hard not to come to the conclusion that, behind all these appeals to tradition, there are only following self-interest since they only want the part of traditions that favor them.
But they forget that this deal is not valid anymore, because housekeeping is much easier now, so the housewife work does not have as much economic value as in the old times. This means that the old deal (“a man supporting a SAHM”) is no longer valid for the majority of couples.
Like Dalrock said, don’t settle because the results will be ugly, maybe not now, but for sure in the distant future.
Looks towards the future.
No. Women have always worked. Before Industrial Revolution, they worked in the family farm, while taking care of the children (who also worked). The family was a unit of production back then. After the Industrial Revolution they worked in factories. Having a housewife was only possible for wealthy men then, and it was a sign of distinction and status.
It’s amazing how there is a simultaneous exclamation that women back then were oppressed and were stay-at home mothers being beaten by their husbands while also that there was no such thing as a stay-at home housewive back then and that all women worked. Which one is it? Did they always work and were liberated or were they stay-at home housewives and oppressed? Or maybe you’re confusing part-time work and women’s work for other things. Even after the Industrial Revolution public opinion was against full-time working women -> http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/02/even-in-an-industrialized-nation-americans-said-no-to-working-wives-and-mothers/
Having a housewife was only possible for wealthy men then, and it was a sign of distinction and status.
If my memory serves me well it was wealthy wives whom were the most educated and the least likely to be full-time housewives due to their status and other circumstances in past centuries.
A modern housewife’s work is much easier than yesteryear due to contraceptives, compulsory schooling, water and electricity at home.
Not all housewives use contraception (a lot of orthodox religious ones don’t) and some homeschool. Housewives do a lot of work and many don’t live in shiny mansions.
It is hard not to come to the conclusion that, behind all these appeals to tradition, there are only following self-interest since they only want the part of traditions that favor them.
Is it truly self-interest to give up one’s independence and total autonomy for future generations, one’s husband and for God? They are hardly favoured. With people such as yourself constanly knocking on housewives and criticizing them as evil and regressive they face a lot of opposition and pressure. They are mocked by women’s international organizations. They have to put away their own selfishness for others. Perhaps this altruism is seen as selfishness because it does not serve the needs to prop up liberal governments and corporations. They don’t stay all day at home doing nothing. Au contraire.
But they forget that this deal is not valid anymore, because housekeeping is much easier now, so the housewife work does not have as much economic value as in the old times. This means that the old deal (“a man supporting a SAHM”) is no longer valid for the majority of couples.
A husband having a housewive tends to save money and these types of couples have less debt than two-income households. The question of validity is simply not on what is legal but what is true and right. A person may call a pig a dog but it’s still a pig.
Alcest: The Oz conservative link is argumentum ad hominem . Therer are some nasty people in the manosphere, but there are nastier ones in the senior common room of any university, and here I speak from experience. BF may have been banned elsewhere, but this is Dalrock’s place.
The OZConservative link is okay. Thanks Chris for your comment. Appreciate your input.
Even after the Industrial Revolution public opinion was against full-time working women -> http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/02/even-in-an-industrialized-nation-americans-said-no-to-working-wives-and-mothers/
Yes, this is consistent to what I said. After the Industrial Revolution, women and children joined the workforce because productivity was low. One of the most constant union’s historical demands was that women and children stop working so women could stay at home.
This was only achieved when productivity was increased so women and children were not necessary in the workplace. This was regarded as a major progress (but didn’t last long). Therefore, it’s ironic that feminists labelled this as oppression. To be fair, being a SAHM then was MUCH HARDER than now.
This shows that even after 50 years of married women increasingly joining the workforce and after heavy industrialization of America, public sentiment was still strongly opposed to married women working if they weren’t forced to by economic necessity. The number one reason respondents gave for their negative answers was: women would take jobs away from men and families would suffer as a result.
Exactly. This is an example of how attitudes have changed since then. The public outcry about women’s work was because IT WAS BAD FOR FAMILIES. Back then, people regarded families as the unit of society. Now, in our individualist society, it is about one’s self-fulfillment. This is why women are told to divorce if they don’t feel well in the marriage. Yesteryear, duty caused behavior. Now, self-interest causes behavior.
No I did not! I just said I beleive there is a happy medium which is better for men, in the long run.
Perhaps there is no such thing as a happy medium when it comes to issues such as this. There’s being a working mother at the core while having things outside of it, being a housewive at the core with different outer layers and whatnot. The happy medium is choosing one role and being balanced in that role. A woman cannot always have it all. A couple of times balance doesn’t exist. Women have in the past generation tried to be both wife/mother and career girl simultaneously with a lot of heartache. I’d advise to pick one role, area or option and try to be balanced as much as you can in that BF. A balanced career girl, a balanced housewive or balanced other things.
According to Catholicism, any expression of lust, outside of procreation, is considered a sin. It’s not exactly an embraced marital activity.
I think recreation sex is considered immoral because it’s a slippery slope to civilizational decline. This Bible verse may be another reason as well:
“Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.” – James 1:15, Bible KJV
Exactly. This is an example of how attitudes have changed since then. The public outcry about women’s work was because IT WAS BAD FOR FAMILIES. Back then, people regarded families as the unit of society. Now, in our individualist society, it is about one’s self-fulfillment. This is why women are told to divorce if they don’t feel well in the marriage. Yesteryear, duty caused behavior. Now, self-interest causes behavior.
Agreed.
Did they always work and were liberated or were they stay-at home housewives and oppressed?
With exceptions, women always worked. But most female work was done at home because they had to take care of children too. They took care of children (when school was not compulsory), did household chores and took advantage of the remaining time to work in something (feeding animals in the farm, make cheese and sell it like my great-grandmother did).
This was not oppression. This was hard work. Men also worked hard: in the fields, from sun to sun. Life was short and hard back then. If our ancestors were told that work was liberation, they would have laughed out loud (LOL’ed didn’t exist back then). No wonder Genesis present work as a punishment for our sins.
The number one reason respondents gave for their negative answers was: women would take jobs away from men and families would suffer as a result.
In fact, for a lot of time, employers used to pay more to married men than to single women, even for the same work. The theory behind that is that a man had to support a family. This ended a long time ago. But it was always seen as feminists as oppression and male chauvinism.
I think the problem isn’t that women can’t be economically productive as wives (house or other), but that they are taught that this isn’t something they have to do. She is told she doesn’t need to get a job, she needs a career which is fun and fulfilling. Turn on any Lifetime movie and the protagonist is very likely to be a woman who works either in publishing and/or fashion telling other women what the trends are, or owns her own art gallery. In some cases she is a fabulous Realtor who has commissions thrown at her for merely being her fabulous self.
What has been lost (in general) is an expectation that women must work hard just like men. If you look at the Brother’s Grimm stories the female protagonists are always shown as very hard workers. They work even when the task at hand seems impossible and/or is boring. Feminists now teach women that anything other than a fabulous career where the goal is self fulfillment is beneath them. Doomed Harlot’s recent comment on “I need a wife” is right in tune here. This feminist martyr view is strangely congruent with the Disney version of fairy tales, where a woman only needs to be true to herself, and any work she chooses to perform must be high status as well as purely optional. If not, her husband (or the man who failed to appear when she snapped her alcoholic party girl fingers) has failed her and is worthy of contempt.
With exceptions, women always worked. But most female work was done at home because they had to take care of children too. They took care of children (when school was not compulsory), did household chores and took advantage of the remaining time to work in something (feeding animals in the farm, make cheese and sell it like my great-grandmother did).
Then it was part-time work, hobbies and women’s jobs. It wasn’t a career as exemplified by today.
I couldn’t agree more with last Dalrock comment.
Then it was part-time work, hobbies and women’s jobs. It wasn’t a career as exemplified by today.
Well, I think that it was full-time work, because it took full time from dawn to dusk. But we are discussing about words. The fact it was not paid does not mean that it was not work, and it was not hard. Much of men’s work was not paid either (they worked the land and they take care of animals so they produced food for the family).
This was very different to the housewives I see in my neighborhood (I live in a small town now). They take their kids to school at 9 am (school is close so they walk and don’t use a car). Then you can see them from 9:30 am to 11:00 am drinking coffee with their friends (who are also housewives), gossiping, criticizing the neighbors. At 11 they go home to prepare lunch. At 12 pm they pick up kids from school. Then they eat and at 2 pm they take their kids to school again. At 2:30 pm, they are again drinking coffee and talking until 4:30pm. They pick up their kids at 5pm. They go home, do household chores, take care of the kids. At 8 pm, hubby comes home and they complain how hard is housekeeping.
I have seen the same pattern the last months, when I have been ill (of course, the hours I gave change and they are only estimates) and I wish I would have such a relaxed schedule.
Then, you have the “traditional housewives” of the manosphere. I don’t want to tell their names because everybody knows them. They comment and comment and comment in manosphere blogs. Some of them have a blog too. The amount of words they produce make me think that they have a lot of free time. (Me too but only because I’m recovering from two surgeries).
So, yes, I have seen a change with the housewives of yore and the current housewives.
imnobody:
“Now, Alte and other “traditional” women, say that crisis will sent women back home. Of course, there is always a minority of women who will manage to do that, not doubt about it. But this won’t be a majority, because the old deal is NOT POSSIBLE, because women don’t bring as much to the table when they become housewives as their foremothers did. ”
I don’t think they will disagree with this, especially Alte who is rather negative in her predictions about the economy. Women will return to the home and do more work there. Shannon Hayes and others are pointing the way.
<The fact it was not paid does not mean that it was not work, and it was not hard. Much of men’s work was not paid either (they worked the land and they take care of animals so they produced food for the family).
Housewives function this way today. They work but have little financial reward. Simply because work is worthless in the economic sense does not mean that it is devoid of spiritual and cultural significance.
This was very different to the housewives I see in my neighborhood (I live in a small town now).
I don’t know what kind of housewives you know but most I have met are mostly busy and sometimes tired. My own mother doesn’t have a lot of friends but just a few here and there.
But this won’t be a majority, because the old deal is NOT POSSIBLE, because women don’t bring as much to the table when they become housewives as their foremothers did.
Liberals in the past have said the same thing over, over and over again. “It’s in the past! It’s not possible! Move on! Don’t go back!”. If a couple of commenters in the blogosphere had $1000 everytime they heard this assertion they would be millionaires.
In reality societies don’t go towards a linear line towards utopia and “progression”. They go in cycles. Change isn’t always good.
I have seen the same pattern the last months, when I have been ill (of course, the hours I gave change and they are only estimates) and I wish I would have such a relaxed schedule.
A relaxed schedule? How old are you? Are you 30 or 40 years old? I’m curious.
I’m 41 years old and, when I’m not ill, I work about 12 hours a day. Having 4 hours a day to gossip and then watching soap opera does not seem stress to me. Your mileage may vary.
(By the way, this is the first time I have been on sick leave in my life. I started working at the age of 18)
In reality societies don’t go towards a linear line towards utopia and “progression”. They go in cycles. Change isn’t always good.
Agreed. And we are in a decadent society. In our age, besides technological or medical change, most changes are bad.
If you read “History of Rome” by Indro Montanelli (it’s a very lightweight read), you will see that everything that is happening has happened in Ancient Rome before. From easy divorce, family destruction, sexual “liberation”, women’s “liberation”. So, yes, I believe in history going cycles. The cycle that started about the year 1000, with an increase of agricultural productivity, is coming to an end.
Regarding Richardson’s statistically meaningless poll analysis I wrote:
It is no more significant than any “click here to vote” poll. It proves nothing.
Elizabeth Smith
It does prove something. Especially a website with so many members and walks of life.
You don’t know how many walks of life, you don’t know how many members of that reddit site are still there, and you do not know what the word “prove” means in statistical terms. It does not even demonstrate much of anything.
You might want to stop pointing to it, if you are interested in facts.
Pointing isn’t always devoid of facts you know. It was an example. I don’t always post that link. Only when this subject comes up.
An example is not a proof. You post that link routinely to make some statement about men who you know nothing of. It’s all but meaningless, if for no other reason than the self-selected nature of the poll : first, it only polls those who subscribe to that reddit sit (many men do not) and second it is only the subset of that set who chose to participate.
Look, if I went to your church and stood outside the door with a clipboard and asked questions of some people, on one Sunday, do you honestly believe that I would be able to make any accurate statement about what all Catholics believe? No, I would not – your congregation is to some extent self selected, the people present on any given Sunday is a somewhat random subset of that, and the people willing to talk with me constitute a subset, of a subset, of a subset – and probably only a few dozen to score at that. It’s a “poll” with no meaning. Literally no meaning, in terms of statistics and ability to prove anything. Ditto for the poll Richardson writes about, if he truly regards that as significant I hope he does not teach stat.
If you are interested in fact and truth, you should stop using that poll to make claims about men.
If you keep using it, that will tell us all what you are interested in, and what you are not interested in.
Liberals in the past have said the same thing over, over and over again. “It’s in the past! It’s not possible! Move on! Don’t go back!”. If a couple of commenters in the blogosphere had $1000 everytime they heard this assertion they would be millionaires.
But a thing being repeated once and again does not mean that it is not true. How many times have you heard that USA has a huge deficit? I bet a lot.
I am not a liberal (in fact, I despise them completely and I see them as delusional). I am not a conservative (because, at any given time, they only want to preserve the liberalism of two decades earlier). They are only the rearguard of liberalism.
I think the Western world has had been going through a wrong path for the last 200 years and, finally, we are reaping the results. The traditional society was much better than this excuse for a society we have know. But we can’t go back. We are doomed to decadence. There are processes that have very deep economic, philosophical, religious and societal roots, as history shows us.
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Then it was part-time work, hobbies and women’s jobs. It wasn’t a career as exemplified by today.
of course, 150 years ago very few men had a “career” either. They had jobs. A career was a pretty rarified thing, generally available only to the most highly educated or well-connected men.
But a thing being repeated once and again does not mean that it is not true.
That’s not what I was getting at. I was talking about a fallacy (e.g. it’s all in the past and is not possible) being repeated over and over again. It gets tiring after a while.
I am not a conservative (because, at any given time, they only want to preserve the liberalism of two decades earlier).
Classical liberals, libertarians, neoconservatives, fusionists and fake “conservatives” compromise much of mainstream “conservatism”. What can one do.
Classical liberals, libertarians, neoconservatives, fusionists and fake “conservatives” compromise much of mainstream “conservatism”.
This is true, of course. But it’s worse than that. It is that the most radical and uncompromising conservative would have been considered a radical liberal only forty years ago.
This only proves that conservatives don’t have an alternative model for the future of society. They only drag their feet while the liberals get more and more radicals. The only victories of conservatives is slowing down the changes wanted by liberals. They eventually happen but it takes a bit more time because of the conservatives. Big deal.
For example, in my home country, there was a big debate about gay marriage. Thirty years ago, gay marriage was UNTHINKABLE, like marriage to an animal is today. Ten years ago, gay marriage was deemed a silly joke. Two or three years ago, the government wanted to legalize gay marriage so the discussion went public.
The left-wingers wanted gay marriage had the same “rights” than normal marriage, including the right to adoption (this is what finally happened, because government approved the law). The conservatives’ take on this is that they wanted gay couples to have the same “rights” than marriages with exception of their union being called “marriage” because “marriage” is the union between a man and a woman. Big deal.
Of course, I know that America is not as advanced in the path of liberalism as our country. But they will get to us. Conservatives have been assimilating liberal ideology for centuries. Do you know any conservative that says that married men deserve more money than single men because they need to support a family? That it is preferrable for woman to have kids while their biological clock allows them to have than having a career?
Of course, not. Conservatism is a joke.
This is a good article:
http://collapsetheblog.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/what-distinguishes-conservatives-and-reactionaries.html
That’s not what I was getting at. I was talking about a fallacy (e.g. it’s all in the past and is not possible) being repeated over and over again.
But I don’t think it’s a fallacy. The past cannot be repeated after all the degeneration that have been happening all these decades. Can you be the teenager you once were? And I am talking about one person, not about a society.
Conservatives have lacked imagination to imagine a future which preserves the good values of society while adapting to the new times. Their only mantra is to go back to a past without realizing that this is not possible in our state of decline.
For example, if your goal is to make families, you will be doing things that make families economically viable. The first thing is raise salaries so one wage can be enough to support a family (so the wife is taking care of the kids). To raise salaries, there are some measures:
One. Forbid illegal immigrants to have jobs. (Disclaimer: I am a Hispanic). Of course, conservatives won’t do that because it goes against business interests.
Two. Forbid women to have full-time jobs or pay women less than men. So women are FORCED to make families the way THEY WERE FORCED IN THE PAST.
Of course, I hear the conservatives screaming. This is discrimination! This is against women! (so this proves that they have internalized the liberals’ values, as I said).
So nothing will be done. And then conservatives will want to go to the past, with the current laws, with the current economical realities. So they want that women are as eager to have families now that they can support themselves as in the past, when they needed families to live. Insane.
So they want a square that is round. A lot of wishful thinking. A lot of talking about family values in a country where family is going the way to the dodo. Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, as if words were magic. You can’t build an old-fashioned society with current laws.
You can’t build an old-fashioned society with current laws (and with current values and economical realities). You can’t make a square with three lines.
“You can’t build an old-fashioned society with current laws (and with current values and economical realities). You can’t make a square with three lines.”
Well said. No more than you can build a house on quick sand. The proper framework needs to be there first and we just don’t have that anymore. Trying to go back is like trying to go back to the happy days of childhood.We can relish in the good memories, but no amount of recreation will be the same thing. What I have been trying to do is learning to be content in all things and in all circumstances.
Forbid women to have full-time jobs or pay women less than men. So women are FORCED to make families the way THEY WERE FORCED IN THE PAST.
How will that even work?
1. We already have a labor shortage, and you want to take out even more people?
2. A lot of familes can’t make it on one income.
3. That will not force women to stay at home, that will just make them seek a part-time job to make ends meet, or it will force the husband work more hours.
4. That will result in a lot of bitter women and mistreated families.
5. What about women that are not married or are widowed?
And what about same pay for same work? For example, I work around 40hrs per week, and I’m just as productive as my male coworkers, so why should I get paid less?
Not to mention that we already have a wage gap that’s due to various factors, including women not working the same hours as men; so the difference in productivity is already accounted for.
This being said, I wholeheartedly agree with you, a lot of women don’t make their families their priority, but care about different things. As well, many women see having a family as being trapped with no way out, and see their work as a relief; instead of having a job, they have a career, and the majority of the burden to support their families falls to the husband anyway.
Some women also consider being a housewife oppressive, and if they see relying on their husband old-fashioned. As well, they’re also afraid of staying home for the rest of their lives without working because shit always happens in life, and what if their husband leaves them? They have nowhere to go and have no way of supporting themselves.
However, I don’t have any ideas on how to change all of this. My personal opinion is that gender relations are damaged, and most women are afraid of relying on men for different things and they’re afraid to be that vulnerable.
So if you’re going to forbid women to work, you should also outlaw divorce and make couples work on their problems. Men also need to hold up their end of the deal for this to work. And of course, feminism must be erased because it put a lot of nasty ideas both in women’s and men’s heads.
“And of course, feminism must be erased because it put a lot of nasty ideas both in women’s and men’s heads.”
Not just feminism, but the rest of that nine-headed hydra.
You are not paid less. Women are actually paid MORE than men relative to true output generated.
I know that, of course I’m not being paid less, I was just responding to his (imnobody) argument that women should be paid less in order to make them stay home.
Women are actually paid MORE
How am I being paid more, any evidence for this?
Jack Amok:
You’re assuming that most women actually care about the consequences that you mentioned. I don’t think most do. I think that proving her superiority over the hated ‘male pig’ is more important that whatever else happens—and our culture will make certain that she’s the ‘victim’ no matter what.
As for her marketability supposed declining—how many women actually cared about who or what they were having sex with before they got older? Once she’s living on alimony—she could care even less.
Imnobody:
Check out this excellent MRA blog: Anglobitch. The author has made a lot of excellent articles about the connections between traditionalism and feminism. It’s out of Britain, so it leans largely to a British audience, but a lot of what he says applies to America, too.
Alcestis:
You can laugh all you want to; but things like ‘speech codes’ , ‘sexual harassment’; ‘inappropriate touching’; and things like ‘age appropriateness’ and ‘safe sex’ and other feminist schmaltz seem pretty puritanical, even if they don’t have religious overtones. And tell us that the ‘right’ to abortion and no-fault divorce aren’t enforced like religious dogmas?
Puritanism had the cultural side-effect of breaking the gender polarity in western countries. It pedestalized mortal women when the ‘Mother Church’ collapsed and replaced Mary and other female catholic saints as the feminine ideal. Notice that radical feminism has never taken a stronghold anywhere but predominantly protestant countries. The recent study Dalrock put up showed all of the top countries for out-of -wedlock births (except one) were predominantly protestant. The same is true, BTW, of voluntary abortions and divorce rates.
Butterfly Flower:
Thanks for your kind comments. LOL. I haven’t checked this blog out in a long time, but there is a good one called ‘The Coming Night’; but a pro-male woman called Hestia. She posts here sometimes. I think she was also married around your age; and she’s often denounced these ‘tradcon’ phonies as misandryist hypocrites.
Remember that the real goal of feminism is always to disempower men. These tradcons want to do the same. When they complain about your age; what they really mean is that you’re too young to have enough ‘issues’ to be like a typical American housewife. Most of them have spent their own younger years chasing thugs and have gone through two or three divorces themselves; they believe that entitles them to lecture everyone else.
It’s even worse when there’s an age difference involved. I’m nearly 40, and I were engaged to someone like you, the shaming would REALLY get poured on. In a normal culture, anyone would say I was lucky to have a young, pretty, family-oriented, and sexually chaste fiancee; but our puritanical culture sees such men as ‘exploitative’ somehow. Instead, women think they have the right to dictate to men who and what they should find attractive. For example, it’s ‘appropriate’ for me to pursue middle-aged, issue-ridden losers and not care about their looks. After all, we men are told also how we secretly admire the ‘big and beautiful’ (to wit, ‘fat’) female. If any man objects, he’s immediately labelled a ‘male pig who’s only interested in sex’ LOL
Think about 51-year old Madonna, recently in the news; and pics of 48-year old Valerie Bertinelli and 45-year old Whitney Houston in bikinis. Let’s not forget ‘hotties’ like Oprah, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Palin. And these ‘tradcons’ think there’s something wrong with men who DON’T find them attractive? LOL, their denial borders on insanity sometimes!
“According to Catholicism, any expression of lust, outside of procreation, is considered a sin. It’s not exactly an embraced marital activity.”
Loving your spouse and wanting to have sex with them is not lust Butterfly Flower. Lust is when you want to use your spouse selfishly for sex without caring for them or loving them.
From the Catholic Catechism:
2362 “The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.”145 Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure: ”
Sex is for unitive and procreative, purposes.
I can assure you, that when I woke hubby early this morning, it had nothing to do with lust and all to do with love and giving and receiving pleasure.. Joy indeed!. 😉
Quite kosher too, for want of a better word. 😀
Certainly not considered sinful behaviour by the Church..
Truly I have nothing to say. Eric’s ramblings are devoid of substance. I would understand putting liberal “conservatives” in the same bin as feminists but no he continually puts traditional conservatives. How foolish and erroneous. What can I say despite that views like his make me run away from the manosphere. Men’s rights activists and women’s rights activists can have and deserve one another.
imnobody – Conservatism isn’t totally a joke. Mainstream “conservatism” is a joke I agree with you.
You’re assuming that most women actually care about the consequences that you mentioned. I don’t think most do. I think that proving her superiority over the hated ‘male pig’ is more important that whatever else happens—and our culture will make certain that she’s the ‘victim’ no matter what.
Good grief, get a grip man! You’re too bitter – not good for you or anyone around you. Women can be astonishingly short-sighted and irresponsible, but they aren’t quite as stupid as you think. Feminists, yes. Dumb as a box of rocks. Feminsts are vile, spiteful creatures who do no good to anyone. Most women aren’t feminists. They’re told that they’re supposed to be, but deep down, they’re women, not wymyn. They get caught up in the baloney and buy the lies, but it’s the hard-core feminists who tell the lies, and they’re a relatively small bunch. Destructive and annoying as all hell, but small numbers.
As for her marketability supposed declining—how many women actually cared about who or what they were having sex with before they got older? Once she’s living on alimony—she could care even less.
You really don’t understand women. They cared very much who they were having sex with when they were younger. Alphas. If women didn’t care who they took to bed, there would be no such thing as a Beta, no Average Frustrated Chump, and no guy would ever have to hear “Let’s just be friends.” Ferral women do not bed just anyone – only the alpha guys (and alpha imposters) get in. When a woman gets older, she’s no longer attractive to the alphas. Unless she’s pair bonded with one already (aka married him and stuck with him), she runs out of romantic partners. To her, that is a tragedy of the first order.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the divorce fantasy genre. Is there an Eat, Pray, Love type story that doesn’t end with the 40-ish divorcee meeting some dream guy? The Secret Millionaire Handyman, the Exotic Foreigner, the Brooding Artiste and the Cougar-bait Young Stud are all staples of the genre. They’re scarce as hens’ teeth in real life (and the few that do exist usually turn out to be cads running a scam on the dimwit woman), but the Divorce Fantasy novel requires them for it’s ending. If you want to sell women on mid-life divorce, you have to convince them Prince Charming is waiting for them out there, and they’ll find him just as soon as they ditch the boat anchor loser they’re married to.
@Jack Amok
Well put. I think a large percentage of women who don’t call themselves feminists still get caught up in the mindset without knowing it, but the majority of women aren’t engaged in the worst parts of the misandrist culture. This is why seeing the actual data is crucial. Over 40% of white women in their 50s who have ever married have divorced at some point. This is huge, and a sign that we have a serious problem as a society. But the majority of them haven’t divorced, despite all of the incentives and the culture constantly egging them on. This says something very powerful as well. It is both unfair and counterproductive to lump the two together.
Spot on. This is so obvious that it sometimes seems not worth saying. But it isn’t widely recognized in our culture. It probably isn’t even widely recognized in the manosphere.
@BF
I tell older women [like, 30-something women] they try to convince me getting married in my early 20′s is a bad idea…. I mean, why do so many women consider cohabiting alright, but frown upon marriage?
Well, I’m old enought to be your mother, so let me take a crack at this. First, I would NOT advise you to cohabitate with a guy or even sleep around. Your late teens reallly are years that you should be working on your own development as a person. But here are some reasons that I would advise caution about an early marriage:
1) the high divorce rate for young people which I belive is more tied to to immaturity than anythng else
2) the fact that a young woman may be more in love with love than with the young man in question
3) the general lack of quidelines, rules and parental supervison in modern society that taught both bride and groom in more traditional societies how to handle a marriage
4) your general attitude. If I recall correctly you came on this forum talking about how you were looking for a “sad-eyed businessman” who would spend big money for the priviledge of sitting accross a dinner table from you. If you were dating my son, that would be a huge red flag for me. I may be completely wrong about you, but I do have to say that you presented yourself as ayoung woman whose goal is to find a provider, not to participate in the give and take that a marriage is. If you can’t give, you’re not ready. It may be that older women of your acquintance see that in you and dissuade you from marriage for that reason.
I think a large percentage of women who don’t call themselves feminists still get caught up in the mindset without knowing it, but the majority of women aren’t engaged in the worst parts of the misandrist culture.
It’d be extremely hard not to, seeing all the messages that women receive from everybody reinforcing feminist values—from friends, family and mainstream media. This reminds of Grey’s Anatomy—when Christina says to Teddy that she picks surgery over Owen, and then she goes to talk to her friends, and everybody, except for Izzie, agrees that their careers come first. What is a woman supposed to take out of that? Even if she thinks otherwise, she’s going to feel guilty, that she’s wrong and start doubting herself.
The majority of women have been exposed to feminism, but whether or not they buy it depends on the values she was raised with, if she was raised with a father and what she sees around her. It’d be hard not to turn into a feminist if all you see the men around you is rape, domestic abuse, etc…
Perhaps there is no such thing as a happy medium when it comes to issues such as this. There’s being a working mother at the core while having things outside of it, being a housewive at the core with different outer layers and whatnot. The happy medium is choosing one role and being balanced in that role. A woman cannot always have it all. A couple of times balance doesn’t exist. Women have in the past generation tried to be both wife/mother and career girl simultaneously with a lot of heartache. I’d advise to pick one role, area or option and try to be balanced as much as you can in that BF. A balanced career girl, a balanced housewive or balanced other things.
I don’t want to be a career woman; I’d like to become a stay-at-home mom and if I married my boyfriend now I probably could afford to do so – it’s just that trad-cons expect said circumstances to be the norm. Times are tough, most men these days cannot afford to support a wife and kids. Being a stay-at-home mom is a luxury.
“All working mothers are selfish career women!” is troll logic that automatically proves my point.
Traditionalist women expect their husbands to have high salaries so they can fulfill their housewife/stay-at-home mom fantasies.
Said ideology inadvertently [or intentionally?] shames men who cannot afford to support said lifestyle.
In fact, neo-traditionalism pretty much boils down to “only wealthy men deserve faithful wives”.
…Hm, I can’t help but wonder how many traditionalist wives would stick around if their husbands took a paycut, fell ill, or could generally no longer support the traditionalist lifestyle. I mean, since traditionalist women think working mothers are the bane of society; I doubt a traditionalist would be able to swallow their pride and get a part-time job.
A husband having a housewive tends to save money and these types of couples have less debt than two-income households. The question of validity is simply not on what is legal but what is true and right. A person may call a pig a dog but it’s still a pig.
A husband that has a housewife tends to make six figures. So of course they have less debt than a two-income household.
Remember that the real goal of feminism is always to disempower men. These tradcons want to do the same. When they complain about your age; what they really mean is that you’re too young to have enough ‘issues’ to be like a typical American housewife. Most of them have spent their own younger years chasing thugs and have gone through two or three divorces themselves; they believe that entitles them to lecture everyone else.
You know, I got a suspicious of traditionalism once I realized none of the traditional marriage proponents were virgins when they got married.
They told me not to make-out with my boyfriend, when they were all doing much worse at my age.
“Pre-marital sex is always wrong and will lead to bad marriages – but not when I did it!” …yeah…I can’t help be feel like said contradictory message automatically disproves everything they say.
I’m a virgin and, well, that’s kinda one of the main reasons why I want to get married young. I feel like it’s cruel to make my boyfriend wait, like, 5 years to finally have sex with me. I really do love my boyfriend. He’s never pressured me [he’s waiting until marriage himself] but he’s also a young man with hormones and I hate how he feels ashamed and apologizes when things between us get too, um…hot. If he was my husband then he wouldn’t have to feel ashamed when get intimate.
…wait a sec.
You don’t think young adults getting married to have sinless sex has anything to do with said age group’s failed marriage rates?
@Eric
Think about 51-year old Madonna, recently in the news; and pics of 48-year old Valerie Bertinelli and 45-year old Whitney Houston in bikinis. Let’s not forget ‘hotties’ like Oprah, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Palin.
Madonna, I agree, looks like hell, but I know plenty of 50 year oild guys who’d be thrilled if their wives looked like Sarah Palin or Valerie Bertinelli.
“Butterfly Flower says:
You don’t think young adults getting married to have sinless sex has anything to do with said age group’s failed marriage rates?”
I don’t think enough young marriages are between sufficiently religious couples to account for the national stats, but I have seen a lot of extremely young Christian couples rush into marriage way faster than elders would advise because they don’t want to wait any longer.
It’s great to wait until marriage for sex, but not if you just accelerate the wedding to make it happen.
“and everybody, except for Izzie, agrees that their careers come first”.
I don’t watch the show, but I do know that Izzie is a hated character in mainstream. Is this why? Because she will pick a man over a career?
Izzie isn’t hated but she does stand apart from the rest, her character was really popular until she decided to leave so that she can pursue making movies. When she said that she’ll pick a man over a career, the others just looked at her like she’s crazy and quickly dismissed her, but that’s how her character is written, she’s the warm, empathetic and sensitive one.
However, Christina (Sandra Ho) is hated; but it’s because she’s so arrogant and cold.
@Chels
You have not understood my argument. My argument is that you can play with the old rules and you will get the old results. Or you can play with the new rules and you will get the new results.
My argument is that you CANNOT play with the new rules and get the old results, that it is what so-cons (conservatives) want to do.
Leaving apart the discussion about women not doing the same work as men, we have to think:
– Must women be paid equally if they do the same work?
Your answer is yes
And what about same pay for same work? For example, I work around 40hrs per week, and I’m just as productive as my male coworkers, so why should I get paid less?
This is the new answer. If work determines pay, this is obviously true. The upside: Economy works better in the short terms and working women are better. The downside: There is no economic incentive to build a family so families are rarer and rarer (we are in middle of this process). Social fabric disintegrates, productivity decreases and America ends up becoming a third-world country (we are in middle of this process). Short-term gains for a long-term loss.
In the past, the answer to this question was no. Men had to be paid more because they needed to support a family. In the past, the society strived to produce better families, not better individuals, like now. (The side effect is that individuals were better too).
My argument is that you can choose the old rules or the new rules. But, if you choose the new rules, don’t expect families to be built as much as with the old rules that made the family an economic necessity.
Conservative people want to go back to a golden age of stable families WITHOUT CHANGING EVERYTHING ELSE. This is what I was criticizing. This is what I meant when I said: “You can’t go back”. You can’t make a square with three lines.
Conservative people want to go back to a golden age of stable families WITHOUT CHANGING EVERYTHING ELSE. This is what I was criticizing. This is what I meant when I said: “You can’t go back”. You can’t make a square with three lines.
Good comment, nobody. Why some conservatives think it is possible to return to the age of stable families without repealing some of the very initiatives that caused the family breakdown in the first place is baffling.
(Disclaimer: I am a foreigner and I don’t live in America. Sometimes I use “we” referring to Americans, because it is convenient)
1. We already have a labor shortage, and you want to take out even more people?
No, we have a labor excess. Many jobs (both in private and public organization) do not produce any value: there are only administrative jobs (shuffling paper).
This is the time in history when productivity is higher (due to mechanization). So you can do more with less people.
But this is the time in history when more people are working. Women are working (multiply the workforce for 2 and substract the SAHMs), we are importing immigrants to work, we are outsourcing work to Asian workers in other countries.
So there is a labor excess, so wages and salaries are low and this means that….. that……
2. A lot of familes can’t make it on one income.
This is because we have a labor excess!!! You contradict yourself. Without women working, the value of work will increase so a family could make it with one income, the way it was before women entered the workforce.
3. That will not force women to stay at home, that will just make them seek a part-time job to make ends meet, or it will force the husband work more hours.
See my answer to point 2.
4. That will result in a lot of bitter women and mistreated families.
Yes, the hell will come and the devil will be president of the United States. Please, before stating something, explain the reasons why do you think is true
5. What about women that are not married or are widowed?
They will have an incentive to get married. Widows can be supported by their children. Of course, there is not an ideal society. In any society, there are people that lose for the good of society.
However, I don’t have any ideas on how to change all of this.
Now, you are telling the truth.
My personal opinion is that gender relations are damaged, and most women are afraid of relying on men for different things and they’re afraid to be that vulnerable.
Most men are afraid to be ass-raped in divorce court. Women have nothing to lose if they get married. If things don’t work, they divorce, get the assets, a monthly allowance and the kids.
So if you’re going to forbid women to work, you should also outlaw divorce and make couples work on their problems. Men also need to hold up their end of the deal for this to work.
This is the first argument which I agree. The traditional society can only work if everything is like before. Non-fault divorce would not be allowed in this society. Of course, you can still divorce if there is domestic violence or your woman denies you sex, for example. In general, marriage should be regarded as a private contract between parties and breaking this contract should have negative consequences, like breaking of any other contract.
There is another alternative. Non-fault divorce is allowed if the one initiating the divorce is the one who loses the kids and the assets.
And of course, feminism must be erased because it put a lot of nasty ideas both in women’s and men’s heads.
I couldn’t agree more.
DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating to a return to the old times. I am only trying to show the contradictions in some usual arguments.
I think that having stable families is a good for society. Personally, I don’t have an axe to grind. For single men like me, there is no better time than now.
“If you were dating my son, that would be a huge red flag for me. I may be completely wrong about you”
J, when it comes to BF, I recommend that you listen to your first instinct. It’s the right one.
Chels
Interesting, like I said I never watched Grey’s Anatomy but I did know that in the internet Izzie was hated. Interesting, indeed.
your general attitude. If I recall correctly you came on this forum talking about how you were looking for a “sad-eyed businessman” who would spend big money for the priviledge of sitting accross a dinner table from you. If you were dating my son, that would be a huge red flag for me. I may be completely wrong about you, but I do have to say that you presented yourself as ayoung woman whose goal is to find a provider, not to participate in the give and take that a marriage is. If you can’t give, you’re not ready. It may be that older women of your acquintance see that in you and dissuade you from marriage for that reason.
…how would I know your son isn’t dating me for money?
Seriously?
Perhaps because pretty much everyone has the processing ability to assume that barring a few heiresses, 19-year-old girls aren’t usually bringing loads of wealth to the table…
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Butterfly Flower:
Not only were these ‘tradcons’ chasing thugs and going through failed marriages at your age; now they’re all attacking you for practicing what they’ve been preaching. They all scream ‘NAWALT’ and then when someone like you does something to prove, it they go on the defensive!
As for the stupid comments like the ones that come out of Alcestis and Jack Amok; they really aren’t worth reponding to. The fact that they can’t muster any more of an argument than shaming language, pseudoscience, and psychobabble proves that they have none; you’re on the right track and they’re just venting their own frustrations and jealousy because someone else is doing what they failed to do. The ‘Tradcons’ and the ‘Gamecocks’ really have hard time of it when reality and logic come against their prejudices.
Anyway, I hope the marriage works out; he sounds like a decent guy and you’re in touch with your own feminity enough to make it work. You deserve a lot of kids too—so good luck!
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‘Is my reasoning wrong? If it is, please let me where is the flaw? I love to learn and I don’t mind changing my mind if I am convinced that I am wrong.’
You have a good basic analysis, but it’s incomplete.
You left out the role of influential intellectuals such as Freud, Bernays, etc.
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The reason the divorce rate is higher is because younger people dont believe in God anymore. My generation and younger has abandoned that concept in the usa. The catholic churches where i live.. are just older people hanging out. Older people like my parents are more likely to believe in God than younger people. Back in the old days when girls got married 16… the divorce rate was very low. Why? God. People believed. Nobody today really believes in God anymore and thus they will get divorced more likely.
The other problem is that society tells girls not to “gold dig” (chase financially secure males) and money problems are well known to be a major cause of divorce. By the time a woman is 50 she figures out “upperclass professional males are better”. They are chasing more financially secure men while young females are being told to chase poor guys “dont be a gold digger”. Young women who marry rich most likely have lower divorce rates as divorce rates are lower in the upperclasses. The other problem is…… younger males 18-25 themselves. They arent really “toy boys”. They are idiots who cant make a marriage work due to high aggression and violence rates, high domestic violence rates and high rates of criminality and immaturity.
As for “men arent dumping older women for younger women”…. maybe but its a known fact the mistresses tend to be younger as well as the second wives. Are most divorces initiated by women… because they are catching older men with younger mistresses? probably. Anyways.. most males take a wife who is younger than themselves anyways. Males who take wives older than themselves have higher rates of marital failure.. despite “her older maturity”. Older woman younger male is a very high divorce marriage. So maturity isnt really the issue.
Then there is the issue of race. White males with ethnic brides have lower divorce rates than white males who marry white women (in usa statistics. wiki). I wonder what the divorce rate of young ethnic women with white husbands is. Maybe thats what younger males should be dating to reduce their failure rate. Nevermind “cougars” (no way that divorce rate isnt low). They should chase ethnic younger women and stop being so crazy.
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This is an amazing analysis. Dalrock, I was wondering if you could give me the link to the data that is shown in the England and Wales graphs? The data would really help me with a paper I’m writing for college.
[D: Thanks! This is very strange. The ONS keeps moving the file (I’ve already fixed a broken link once). Here is the google HTML version of the spreadsheet. At least that way you can see that it really was there at one time. From there if you need the new link try searching at the ONS directly using keywords from the spreadsheet. If you find the new link please post back letting me know. If you can’t find it after a thorough search please let me know too and I’ll see what I can do.]
@JustACollegeStudent
I just found a PDF on the ONS site that references the table I used. This might help if you contact them. It is table 3b referenced on page 4 of this PDF file. Please let me know what you come up with.
I found it. They zipped it up with other spreadsheets. This page has the download for the zip file (today at least…). The spreadsheet is “numberofdivorces.xls”. You want Table 3b as I discussed in this previous post. Good luck on your paper.
Thank you very much! 😀
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There are less marriages and more divorces today because in the past, people would stay in unhappy marriages because they had to, in order to survive.
Now women having access to education and a career, they don’t have to stay in an unhappy marriage. It’s an improvement. Marriage just for the sake of marriage is not necessarily a positive thing.
Karen Logan: The right time to show that attitude is BEFORE marriage. Few men are against living in sin. There are no “Groom” magazines. And men in paternalistic cultures don’t have to stay married. They can get out scot free, but they don’t. So either their marriages are seldom unhappy or men are moral/altruistic than women. And at birth men enter an unhappy marriage with the state, which they cannot dissolve.
“Women having access to education and a career” apparently does not mean that women want to work hard to support themselves and their dependants, and pay taxes to support others and their dependants.
” in the past, people would stay in unhappy marriages because they had to, in order to survive.”
Yeah, because it’s all about the wife! Go girl!
Newsflash: In the past they stayed in “unhappy” marriages because within a marriage is where children are most likely to THRIVE. Strangely, many such “unhappy” marriages became happier when women focused on something besides themselves. Crazy, I know!
“There are less marriages and more divorces today because in the past, people would stay in unhappy marriages because they had to, in order to survive.
Now women having access to education and a career, they don’t have to stay in an unhappy marriage. It’s an improvement. Marriage just for the sake of marriage is not necessarily a positive thing.”
Manslation: More shoes!
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I’ve just seen the post from the Hamster, posting under the name Karen Logan. Marriage has been reduced by her entirely to Happiness, and you can see she thinks that : “If women are Unhaaaapy they should leave the marriage as they now have the money to go solo”. Apart from the fact that women usually chose to go solo when the only money available is that earned by the husband, imagine that a man had written something like: “Men can be unhaaapy in marriage but thanks to the fact they earn more as they get older, they can divorce their aging wife for a younger model for it would be wrong for men to be unhaaaapy”. Would the feminsts think that a good thing? Would they Hell!
For what it is worth I believe I am correct in saying that not only have the rates of divorce remained fairly constant these past forty years, thus even if the take up rate for marriage has declined unhaapiness has not altered one bit, but studies show that the married are happier than the divorced. Of course it might be that the married are those who are generally happier anyway. Either way the point of this post is that Divorce has little to do with unhaaapiness and a lot to do with sexual options. Really the Fembots must try a lot harder if they intend to make any mark. [Facepalm]
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humans have always married at youngish ages and divorce rates were always lowish during most of those centuries. Its only in recent decades that divorce rates went up (even for youngish women). There is something else causing the divorce rate of younger women. In the past, young women had low divorce rates (proving they are CAPABLE of lower divorce rates).
In the old days, a woman’s wealth hinged on that of the man she married. So, younger women were chasing wealthier men (the best man they could get). The financial status of a man mattered to women back then. Now they are chasing “hot guys” and learning the hard way that hotness cant buy love and happiness. If young women were marrying wealthier men as a cultural preference and norm, i guarantee their divorce rates would be lower. I wish we could study the divorce rate of young women in the 20’s married to wealthier higher rung men and isolate their stats to see what it is and compare it to the others. I guarantee its an better acceptable rate. Maybe we should stop telling females “dont chase successful guys. Thats golddigging”. That cliche is a major of divorce.
Young females are trained from birth to shun the idea of chasing richer men (more financially secure). The opposite of that is poorer men. Poorer increases divorce rates.
Just because most divorces are initiated by women does not mean that in the majority of divorces the woman is at fault. It is also likely an older woman will overlook her husband cheating because she knows her chances of re-marrying are much less than they were when she was younger. My own mother had to initiate divorce more than once. My step-father (my first step-father) kept cheating on her even when she was pregnant with their child and eventually abandoned her. She got a divorce on the grounds she had been abandoned. He never even showed up. My own dad treated her like shit. She gave him an ultimatum to stop dealing drugs and he wouldn’t quit. For our well-being she had to divorce him.
The Radical One says:
Just because most divorces are initiated by women does not mean that in the majority of divorces the woman is at fault.
And the reverse is true as well.
Mother-of-four who abandoned family to join Occupy camp in New York divorces banker husband… and pockets $85k
She was filmed making out on camera…“I actually made out with four guys,” she said, laughing wildly.
Her husband filed for divorce and he is the one who has to pay her regardless of her behavior.
“My own dad treated her like shit. She gave him an ultimatum to stop dealing drugs and he wouldn’t quit. For our well-being she had to divorce him.”
Your mom chose a bad boy. She was either really dumb or she knowingly married the hot bad boy alpha. Playing with fire often gets one burned.
You will be hard pressed to find an extrodrinary lookin female that is past the age of 25
Wow how do you not get that many of these middle aged women are divorcing because they have tried everything to make their marriage work, and it’s not working. Men don’t often leave wives for the mistress, they often just want to keep the marriage and the mistress. They have the best of both worlds that way. In my non-scientific or researched opinion, there are more men who are happiest with a wife at home and mistress on the side rather than leaving the wife for a mistress. At least that’s true from my personal experience. My husband doesn’t want to divorce me, but doesn’t want to stop cheating either. So when or if I finally file for divorce, is it me who’s driving the divorce rate? Or my husband who wouldn’t stop cheating no matter how hard I tried? I think men can often be passive-aggressive, withdrawing from the marriage completely until the wife has no other option left but to file for divorce, or to accept a husband who is cheating, never home, and accept a life where they are basically single except in name.
@Deb: I agree that men often want to have their cake and eat it too. They do not legally “initiate” divorce but for women, having a mistress and a wife at home simultaneously is essentially the end of the relationship.
I’m disappointed to see how the author is so quick to jump to men’s defence based on the figures, without analyzing other possibilities. This just shows how far the society can go to twist facts and figures to blame women.
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The assumed conclusions about women must want divorce more because they are the ones filing more is, from what I’ve been reading, esp in the US, just because it’s recommended by lawyers. Also they say to do it to help the woman’s self-esteem, because it seems that the reason is because of the man’s poor conduct: another woman or abuse, being selfish even when there are children involved… and the men also seem to be too cowardly to initiate themselves, because then it looks like what it really is – they are dumping their wives. Women are not benefiting more from divorce – most will have a helluva time.
The rise of the divorce rate corresponds to the rise of feminism. Excuses can’t change the fact that it is the moral corruption of women and the adoption of feminist attitudes and laws that are destroying the family. Of course, men will still be blamed.
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/women-in-their-20s-shouldnt-feel-bad-about-wanting-a-boyfriend/273737/
Dalrock please read when you get the chance.
@ acekigmo
It’s called no-fault divorce for a reason. A wife has the authority to levy extreme punishments on her husband for any reason at all, and there is nothing he can do about it. Most of these divorces aren’t coming from men cheating; they’re coming from women bored of their husbands or women angry that their husbands aren’t kowtowing to their every little demand.
Mere dissatisfaction with one’s husband is no reason to destroy his financial future and treat him like a criminal.
It all gets back to the main problem: unleashed hypergamy, female premarital sex, women erroneously conflating their SMVs with their MMVs, having sex with men who will never ever marry them, marriage to men they aren’t attracted to or have lost attraction for, “I’m not haaaaaappy” divorce, and erroneously believing a better man will be just around the corner.
Same old same old story.
They dont feel appreciated, so the experts at Huffington Puffington say
Sorry, I don’t believe women are filing for divorce more because a lawyer recommends it. The woman’s decision has been made before she ever sees the lawyer. She wants out of her marriage to the man she isn’t attracted to or doesn’t love or no longer wants for whatever reason; and the lawyer is there to get her the best deal and make sure she gets her half or more.
I don’t believe women are filing for divorce more to help their self -esteem which has been destryoed by an unfaithful, abusive or disinterested husband. Women are filing for divorce more because they CAN, and because they no longer want to be married.
I don’t believe women are filing for divorce more simply because they’re the ones willing to pull the trigger and do it when both H and W want out of the marriage. Most of the time, W wants out of the marriage for whatever reason. Men aren’t the ones filing because (1) they don’t want to get divorced because they are fully aware their sexual options are much, much less than women’s; and (2) they know they will get financially raped and lose half their material possessions.
@ Deti
“Men aren’t the ones filing because (1) they don’t want to get divorced because they are fully aware their sexual options are much, much less than women’s;”
That is an age specific thing, however. Prior to age 35 women have the advantage in the SMP from divorce, but after 35 it is men with the SMP advantage. Dalrock has devoted a lot of time on this blog to exposing how society tries to hide this fact from women, with EPL and other divorce porn.
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I believe the divorces are because the men are “trading in”. They can’t stay faithful to one woman. I read the average age of divorce for men is 42, and for women 48. Well what happens to a woman’s body from age 48, ie the onset of menopause, is shocking. I’m guessing that has everything to do with it. It says in the bible, men, don’t divorce your wives because it’s cruel. The women are filing to keep some semblance of dignity. What are their chances of finding “love” at that age? And usually left with the kids, and not making much money, always less than what men make…
I believe the divorces are because the men are “trading in”. They can’t stay faithful to one woman
Your information is several decades out of date, if it was ever true at all. No doubt, this sort of thing happens occasionally, but the great bulk of divorces are now filed by women, who — according to the research — in most cases were NOT cheated on or abused. They’re just sinfully blowing up their families and cashing out.
. It says in the bible, men, don’t divorce your wives because it’s cruel.
Of course it’s cruel. It’s also cruel whem women do it.
It’s cruel whoever does it to the one who still wants to be married. Also cruel is the way it’s done. I guess that’s the risk one takes when you get married. I don’t believe the info is out of date. To take 2 high profiles who traded for younger trophies: Demi Moore’s ex and Mr Trump. I didn’t know (or remember) that the research said that the majority of women who filed weren’t abused or cheated on. For both sides I don’t believe marriage should be entered into or got out of lightly/for trivial reasons. I just believe, truly, that men are more the ones who want out of marriage than women do, and they break their vows more often.
To take 2 high profiles who traded for younger trophies: Demi Moore’s ex and Mr Trump
The very definition of Apex fallacy: judging a whole group by its highest-status, highest visibility members (“2 high profiles”, as you put it).
The reason why Apex fallacy gets it so wrong in this case, is that the incentive structure is VERY VERY different for non-eliite men. Elite men can get a new woman, a younger woman, a harem of women, .pretty much any time they want. But MOST men have terrible, terrible trouble getting the sustained atttention of even ONE woman, and are far less likely to dump her for another.
Most men, upon discovering that their wives are cheating, try to work things out; most women instantly file for divorce. THis should tell you which sex is more committed.
I just believe, truly, that men are more the ones who want out of marriage than women do, and they break their vows more often.
Lots of children “just believe, truly” in the Easter Bunny.
@observer
I think that you need to improve your observations
Observer:
better than 70% of all divorces are initiated by the woman. A good part of those divorces are no fault, i.e. she just doesn’t want to be married anymore. Your citation to two famous examples of extremely high status men “trading in” a spouse don’t in any way reflect reality.
The only thing men do more than women is cheat, but women are catching up. Something you’re forgetting is that it is much, much easier for a woman to cheat on her husband than vice versa simply because men are much more sexually available to women than women are to men.
“Demi Moore’s ex and Mr Trump. ”
Huh? April Fools was yesterday right?
Demi Moore has been married three times now. I am assuming you mean Bruce Willis, a good looking man to this day at age 58. He and Demi divorced amicably (to the point of attending the subsequent marriage ceremonies of each other) and both remarried much younger people, her in 2005 to Ashton Kutcher (16 years her junior), him to Emma Hemming (22 years his junior). That said, not quite seeing the point of her as an example of getting dumped by a man for a younger honey.
Donald Trump?…. using Donald Trump as an example of average man’s behavior is laughable. Trump could dump a wife and pick up a new one that same day every day of his life. He isn’t very attractive anymore but well… he’s Donald Trump. He has actually only been married 3 times, a pretty average number for the pop culture crowd. Ivana Trump, his first wife and the one most heralded as the “one done wrong,” has been married 4 times, the last one was an Italian hunk 24 years her junior. Poor women, where’s my hankie?!! /s
“…men are more the ones who want out of marriage than women do, and they break their vows more often.”
Just to point out, this was a different commentator.
This observer recognises reality. Women want alpha fucks and beta bucks. And the white knight of the state is happy to assrape men in the courts, to ensure the spoiled little postwall princess can have her epl moment, after evicting ex hubby, turning the kids against him, and claiming mostof his assets.
For her part, too often the women fell off the carousel, snared a beta provider, and stayed with him long enough to spawn several bargaining chips, then takes the cash and prizes in the deluded belief she is still as hot as she was fifteen years earlier. A hunky, millionaire gardener fails to appear, and she winds bitter about where have all the good men gone.
Think i covered most of the salient points there.
Perhaps too many observers spoiled the broth…
LOL! wow! Men are truly from mars! I mean we’re basing what we say on our own experiences, and what you guys are saying is not what I am seeing. As for examples, don’t nitpick – they could’ve been better but I stand by my point. It’s usually the men running off with the younger trophies and leaving the “old” family behind, or having their mid-life crisis and wanting to behave like a teenager again (ie when they can afford the expensive convertible…). I’m on a forum of women who are divorcing and all of them is because the men were either abusive or cheated. All of them are devastated and getting on the forum for support. Yes there’s bashing, but I can say that most if not all of these women love(d) their husbands and are in a state of shock. They say they are filing to file first. Not sure what the implications are of that but I can tell you, it’s not because they want out of their marriage from the man who they thought they married. Like someone said, “I loved the man I married, and hated the man I divorced.” They are losing the “dream”.
It’s usually the men running off with the younger trophies and leaving the “old” family behind
Again,… NO… it is NOT. I grant that in a country of 300 million, you may be able to find a significant population of betrayed women, such as you describe — but, betrayed men are far more numerous.
having their mid-life crisis and wanting to behave like a teenager again (ie when they can afford the expensive convertible…
Apex fallacy again. Few men can afford the expensive convertible.
As Yoda said, “Observer, powers of observation, you do not have”
@observer
Observe between your legs and tell us what is there. You say that you are a man, but your belief system is that of a women.
“we’re basing what we say on our own experiences, and what you guys are saying is not what I am seeing.”
Women see what they want to see. Men see what actually happens.
“Its usually the men running off with the younger trophies and leaving the “old” family behind, or having their mid-life crisis and wanting to behave like a teenager again (ie when they can afford the expensive convertible…)…”
And a bunch of unhappy, aging harpies on a forum would accurately self report, of course.
“I loved the man I married, and hated the man I divorced.”
Women are not capable of love. But they are quite handy at divorce, and getting their husbands to hate them.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/why-so-many-wives-wish-their-husbands-would-cheat/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/monique-honaman/i-just-wish-he-would-have_b_1297919.html
Okay it’s pointless to refute anything, the answers I’ve seen here are long-cherished hatreds not beliefs (and again, missing the point – just because someone can afford to drive around in an expensive car doesn’t mean most wouldn’t if they could). I don’t know for sure as I’m not a man (“look between my legs?” gentlemen? where are you?), but I (and psychologists – I had to get tested in this horrible process called divorce/custody) can assure you that that my powers of observation are just fine, and from what I’ve seen, men seem to have more “issues” (as you also demonstrate in your hate-filled answers). Anyway if you’re stuck in these beliefs about women’s motives, there’s no point in offering another point of view, and you have not convinced me that what you say is the way things actually are. It’s mainly just being rude and women-bashing. You cannot entertain another point of view, ie from a woman, based on her (my) experience, and observation. What I do see, is that you believe all women are out to “get” men (in a bad way) and therefore worthy of hatred. I loved my husband, and still do. But he was cruel. And I see (hear) a lot of similar cruelty from other women whose husbands left. Maybe I see it more because women get on forums and men don’t generally talk about that stuff, but from my side of the fence, it’s the women who are hurt more, emotionally and financially, and I think a lot of studies bear that out. I’m sure my ex is saying the same thing you say, about me — that I have everything, so in fact he is the victim. He abused me for years (I didn’t realize that’s what he was doing), and finally tried to hit me. When men are violent it’s no joke. I have no idea what he’s capable of, and I can’t live with him to find out. But I would give anything (except his cruelty) to have him come home. I want him home. He doesn’t want. There is more to this than I can say on here, but here we are, kind of stuck. But even with this unbelievable betrayal, it doesn’t mean I think all men are bad. Luckily I’ve met at least SOME good ones 😉
Three more things: a clarification on my having “everything.” He left the family (with children) home, just took his personal belongings. I would happily live in a shoebox with him if he loved me. I now think of living here as compensation for what he did. 2nd, what do you look like, on a scale of 1 to 10? I would put myself at maybe a 4 or 5, ‘cus I’m over the hill and looks fade, it looks worse on women than men. I think that has EVERYTHING to do with it. and 3rd, men and women who marry engage in a social contract. One of the pair, usually the man, has to go out and earn, while the mothers have to raise the kid. There is no other way. Babies aren’t born able to look after themselves. And in that time, you lose job opportunities and skills. It IS a trade-off, and it has to be a partnership. There is no other way to raise a family. So when the man bolts, it’s a huge setback to a healthy family unit, and when he does go, all kinds of problems develop, esp for the kids’ future.
He abused me for years (I didn’t realize that’s what he was doing),
If you didn’t realize it was abuse, that sounds pretty mild.
and finally tried to hit me
Okay, that’s fair. Open fire. A 9mm works well for most men, a .45 is hetter for a guy who is really big or on drugs..
Maybe I see it more because women get on forums and men don’t generally talk about that stuff, but from my side of the fence, it’s the women who are hurt more, emotionally and financially,
I don’t doubt that you, personally, were shafted by a bad man. I have seen that happen to women I know, also. I also don’t doubt that women talk about it more — which is why there is a widespread PERCEPTION that women are more often the victims.
But that false perception is beginning to change, because, men are starting to talk. And a lof ot women aren’t happy about that because hearing how much evil their sisters do, upsets their “woman good/man bad” worldview.
and I think a lot of studies bear that out.
For the twelve thousandth time, NO. Dalrock links to most of those studies here at the site, and they show the opposite. Many more women than men file for “frivorce” (the manosphere term for a frivolous divorce, one which is not justified by abuse or adultery, but simply because they are bored and “not haaaappppyyyy”. (Or, in some cases, THEY, the wives, are committing adultery.)
Meditate on this thread for a while:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/why-so-many-wives-wish-their-husbands-would-cheat/
He almost hit her? My question is What did she do to provoke it?
I was married to a woman who wanted me to hit her so she could show the world how terrible I am. I no longer buy into the woman is the victim bullshit. On any topic
Ton: He almost hit her? My question is What did she do to provoke it?
You MIGHT be onto something there… see the linked thread 2 posts up:
The women sometimes responded with a kind of countermanipulation: “they thought if they were cold and treated their husbands terribly, the men would leave, or ask them to leave.” Sometimes this happens—which, incidentally, explains why divorce initiation statistics can be misleading. A significant portion of the roughly thirty percent of divorces which are formally male-initiated result from the wife deliberately maneuvering her husband into taking the step.
But it is not always easy for women to obtain a divorce in this manner: “Some of the women couldn’t believe the things their husbands were willing to put up with.” (So much for men not being committed.) The author recounts cases where women deliberately tried to provoke their husbands into striking them because they calculated it would be to their advantage in the looming child-custody dispute.
I read the article about women wanting a divorce because they aren’t “haaappy” (that’s what he said to me on one of the occasions I brought it up, and I also thought at the time, WT…?). I’m also thinking while reading the article, regarding the provoking to get a reaction was to ease his guilt about wanting out of the marriage – that was him. Anyway I don’t recall a reference to studies in it, maybe I missed it. As for the provocation, I cannot say what happened because it’s too specific, but it was surreal. Also, if you don’t come from an abusive background you miss the signs. I don’t mean obvious physical abuse. I only read later, after he left and I read up, that the odd things he said and did were red flags. The abuse was subtle at first, like breaking my things (including permanent damage to me) “by accident”, and then I realized that it was a pattern over years. And many kinds of abuses worsened, broadened, and became more frequent. He went from loving husband with the odd quirk or mild misdemeanor (can’t think of the right term) to chronically sadistic and cruel Mr Hyde… practically from the moment I told him I was pregnant. I spoke to therapists and counsellors for myself and for my child right after he left, again in a most traumatic way. One (a man) said that many people come to him who have suffered emotional abuse from their spouse but that I had been “subject to deep psychological abuse.” Another who was much older and a lot of experience said there was so much abuse she didn’t know where to begin. I couldn’t afford to go back. I told another expert in child abuse when I tried to get help for my child, what a member of his family had done to us, and she was visibly shocked. Ex’s background is a dysfunctional family, and I had no idea about “families of origin” and how the cycle of dysfunctional families repeats, and the problems of adult children of dysfunctional families. So this obviously must apply for both men and women. Anyway after we married and had the baby, I was on cloud nine, but he turned miserable and made the dream into a nightmare. I can’t believe I married such a person. He told me himself what he was afterwards, which was just… hard to hear from his own lips. He basically admitted he was a bad character, “and you can’t change someone’s character.” But while there is now peace in the house, I still miss the man he was. Did I “see what I wanted to see” as someone here said? Maybe. I just figured that nobody’s perfect. Was it all an act? For so long? I don’t know. Someone or something happened that turned him against me full force. Age and looks? Jealousy of the baby? Someone else? Dunno. But that was that.
with so many women CHEATING so much nowadays, it is very obvious why the divorce rate is so very high now. they are without a doubt, the cause.
I don’t understand. Maybe women do initiate divorces, but how do you automatically conclude that their husbands didn’t have the 7 year itch? Isn’t it still possible that the husband was doodling around with other women, and the wife wouldn’t stand for it? Just because women initiate divorce, how does that mean that the men didn’t somehow warrant it? Not accusing here, just confused.
TC:
Read this post (The original post by Dalrock only — I wouldn’t recommend slogging through the comments).
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/is-frivolous-divorce-overstated-in-the-manosphere/
This should help get you started on why. Things really havent changed all that much in the nearly two years since that post was written.
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there could be a whole host of reason for difference between USA and UK, ie state benefits, divorce laws, ethnic make up of country. However money seems to be at the root of all things at the end of the day doesn’t it?
But what is does suggest is that age is not a key factor, other things are.
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Manipulation. This why many women lose at their own game.
They manipulate men believing they wont realize. With out realizing that men are actually the ones that allow females to manipulate them.
Men understand the one things that is important to Women..
And that is
stability=Money=Material Things
Weather Your are good or bad female at the end off the line the only thing they truly care about is Material things.
A men love is much profound then a Females one.
Is when men realize that he has been manipulated when things start to break up apart
Is just like babies
you can lie to your child and he/she will believe that is “truth”, is only when he/she has grown old and start to have hes/her own experience when he/she will question those “truth” you spoke of and distrust comes about.
No, Dalrock, if 66% of divorces are initiated by women, that doesn’t mean male-initiated divorce is a myth. It means that 34% of divorces are initiated by men. Something that happens 34% of the time isn’t mythical, or even rare.
Note that for all races, the odds of divorce if the woman first marries over 25 is under 33%. By your standards, that means *all* divorce for first marriages at that age is a “myth.”
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I disagree that an older woman who divorces has no chance of getting married again. The only way the pump and dump will happen is if the woman allows it. I got married well after 40 to someone younger. How did that happen? I never let myself go, I remained open to the type of man I would accept (never been one to need super handsome, rich, cool car, etc., etc., integrity, sensitivity, and respect are far more important). Oh, and looking a decade younger didn’t hurt either. In fact, all my dates I never paid and I never put out (not the first time out). Of course, men by and large prefer younger women for all the obvious reasons. But quite a few men also prefer more mature women especially if they value the things an older woman brings to the table and/or is not interested in children. These men may be younger or older. A woman 40 or older who is reasonably attractive and in good shape can hope to marry, more typically to a man over 60. She just needs to understand her market and who out there finds her hot.
You say a woman at 62 shouldn’t expect to get married? Well, Gloria Steinem the feminist got married for the first and only time at age 66. Just sayin’
Also, although women may file for divorce more, men are more likely to just walk away and set up housekeeping with someone else. Again, just sayin’.
Why are women so often initiating divorces? That’s what men need to ask themselves. I don’t think it’s just because when she’s younger the woman is a spoilt, gold-digging little harlot itching to use her body to marry up or that when she’s older or more educated she’s a selfish harridan who just can’t stand answering to anyone else. So many men are just entitled douche bags who want the woman to provide all their needs (sex and maid service) without giving anything back. In other words, far too many men treat women as if they’re farm animals. Who wants to put up with that? Not saying every man is like that, but obviously enough of them are.
So what’s the big take away lesson here? Is it that all women are hypergamous and only tolerate the husband they have for lack of a better alternative? That’s what these figures seem to suggest about female nature.
Wonderful to see so many Hamsters running around aimlessly in this thread. Were I an Health Inspector I would be ordering instant de-fumigation, even though I might, personally, prefer to play with the little things, tickle them under the chin, stroke them.
I’m no expert, and I’m not disagreeing with anything above (I’m a weekly reader of your blog, and yours is emphatically my favorite of the “manosphere” blogs), but just a thought: while middle-aged women may be driving divorce the same as younger, to what degree may that be because her husband, while not initiating a divorce to find a younger and hotter gal, has a younger and hotter mistress on the side whom the wife has found out about?
With that said, while I am no advocate for cheating, whenever a woman complains of her cheating man, my immediate thought is, “is she still putting out, or has she basically cut out sex in particular and physical intimacy in general, mostly only using them for power in the relationship? Has she become physically lazy, letting herself become unhealthy and fat, and thus not sexually appealing to her husband anymore, who, as tends to happen far more naturally with men, has aged like a fine wine or scotch?
I’m remembering one of my customers, a lovely young lady whom I doubt is even 25 yet. She’s Christian, and fairly recently married (2 or 3 years at the absolute most). One day, she was picking my brain as to how and why I was single, not understanding how I hadn’t landed a cute gal. I expressed my distaste for the culture, and how so many western women, ever so eager to compete with men at every turn (feminists are little more than adult women with penis envy, so far as I’m concerned), thus becoming grossly masculinized, forgetting to be feminine. They complain that men “aren’t like my grandpa anymore”, all while they never once bother to be charming like the women of her grandmas era. I then made a comment that “women are clueless as to how easy men are to please, and the power that they emphatically hold over men simply by wearing a cute dress and not shaving off half of their hair to look like Skrillex”, telling a story of when I took a beautiful, young Indian-American woman with me to an artsy fartsy gathering that, as much as I am generally a fan of the artistic output, the smelly hipsters and unthinking liberals also flock there. You know these types: the “gender is a social construct of the evil patriarchy” types who claim that fat women and skinny women who dress and act like men are sexually appealing types. As soon as I walked in with this beautiful young woman, in a cute red dress and sexy shoes that perfectly matched, virtually every single head in that place turned; one 40 year old man tried to score a coffee date with her while I was at the bar grabbing some wine; and, my hipster ladyfriends basically cornered me at the bar to declare to me how beautiful my friend was.
Back to the subject of my customer: her initial reply was, “Not only from a man’s perspective, but also from a woman’s, it feels good to dress both well and attractively, looking in the mirror before going out, knowing that I look damn good. It feels good, and it’s a good confidence boost.” A few weeks later, we touched the subject again, and she then declared doesn’t like “the notion of having to dress like that for a man, though”. I immediately replied with, “Not even for your husband?” The look on her face made it obvious that the thought had never crossed her mind, so I added as an addendum, “Isn’t one of your jobs, as his wife, to remain that sexually appealing woman that got his attention in the first place?”
“I guess so, yeah….. I had never thought of it that way,” she finally replied with, with her eyes staring in the distance, suggesting that she was immersed in her thoughts.
Other than talking about my dates, we’ve never since broached any such subject.
Great surface analysis that almost entirely obscures the bigger picture. Experience has confirmed my gut feeling that women file for divorce years after bending over backwards to save their marriages. Because these women have toed the feminine line and protected their husband’s bad behavior from public view, shock and awe is followed when said wife files divorce.
My own husband, an upstanding family man in public(an image I’ve helped build by not exposing his horrific private behavior in 15 years) is an abuser of both his own wife and one of our children behind closed doors. He refuses and has refused counseling and believes that my preparation to separate from him is an unfair ultimatum. Poor guy. It’s also unfair that he can’t see his boys everyday. Most women would happily be alone when given the choice to spend their lives with an unsupportive and/toxic spouse, which is we leave. When enough men figure that out, they’ll do what’s necessary to prevent divorce fallout prior to marriage.
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The fact Jan has let her husband abuse her and her children for 15 years means she is complicit in his abuse, and in fact she and her husband are a team who have been conspiring to abuse their child.
If the abuse were actually serious, she would have gone to her church’s leadership by now. But power and prestige were more important, so she tolerated his misbehaviour.
I have been around this scenario long enough to understand what really goes on. Abusers tend to find and marry each other. The tragedy is what happens to the kids.
The trend only applies to white and blacks who are most likely to be programmed by their shit they watch on TV.
Hmm, for myself, just having to be with somebody who WANTS to be with me is reason enough for her to stay. If marriage is something she desires, I’m affraid that my presents is all I can offer her as incentive.
I’m thinking that the Marriage part of a relationship refers to common law before FDR in WW2. With combined SSI and no risk of being drafted any more, I believe that marriage would be more of valiant reminder of Honors known only for Snow White dreamer.
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Summary: It’s his fault.
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The flat divorce rate among Hispanics is worth examining further.