The Census has the 2012 Families and Living Arrangements data out so I pulled a copy of Table C3. Here is the latest data on the living arrangements of children in the US under 18 (all races):
The table has the same category breakdown for fathers that are in the chart for mothers, but the slices were too small to be meaningful and made for too much of an eye chart. To clean it up a bit further I consolidated the married and unmarried categories for “Both Parents”, and did the same for the different categories of children living only with their mother:
Note that children are as likely to be living with neither parent as they are to be living with only their father. I’ve shared stats and an exposé on the bias in the custody system previously, but this is pretty much says it all.
When you combine the profound bias against fathers regarding custody with our no fault divorce process the truth is that fathers are legally “deputy” parents. Just as deputy sheriffs “serve at the pleasure of the sheriff”, in the US fathers serve at the pleasure of the mother. The fathers in the “both parents” category are not on equal legal footing to the mothers. They are merely fathers the mothers haven’t decided to eject or replace yet. As a result, we could more accurately label the category “Both Parents” as “Mother’s Choice”:
In fact, some of the “fathers” represented in the data are already replacement fathers, as the Census data doesn’t distinguish between actual fathers and the man mommy replaced him with (stepfathers). They don’t note this in Table C3, but it is explained in definitions section of the Census paper Living Arrangements of Children: 2009:
Children are defined in this report as all individuals under 18 years old. The survey asks respondents to identify the child’s mother and/or father if they are present in the household. A separate question asks respondents to identify the type of relationship between each child and parent, whether biological, step, or adoptive. All living arrangements are as of the time of the interview.
Worse, the “stepfather” may or may not be married to the child’s mother, even though this is the very definition of the term. Instead, they leave it up to the child’s mother to define:
Stepchildren are identified by the survey respondent, and their stepparent may not be currently married to the child’s other coresidential parent.
They of course use the gender neutral term “parent” which is technically accurate but highly misleading. Because of the bias in the custody process, mothers receive custody over 80% of the time.
This means that 80% of the time when a “parent” is defining if the non biological parent they live with is a “coresidential parent”, mommy is defining whether the latest man she is shacked up with is the child’s step-father, and whoever she defines as the step-father at that moment is then treated as the actual father in the data.
See Also:
I don’t know any single dads other than one widower. And his kids are all older. Quite a telling piechart.
Good analysis, thanks Dalrock. Goes to show that if you get married, you should do it seriously and be sticking with your wife hell or high water so that another bloke doesn’t move in when your kids are there with their mum, if you break up.
I would like to know how often step fathers abuse their children compared to biological fathers. I suspect the difference is huge.
3rd Millennium Men, data also shows it’s mostly not the husband initiating divorce, so he usually doesn’t have a choice, about 75% of the time in divorce it’s the wife filing.
Tragic: children being brought up by neither parent, and then I realised I too had been in that group as well – ah the joys of being packed off to a boarding-school.
That is a depressing set of data Dalrock and Illistrates the problem nicely.
I have two minor nitpicks with the data though. Not serious problems just worth noting I thought. I don’t know how are it would be to fix or just note.
First the obvious one. It isnt reasonable to call “widowed” an example of “mothers choice” unless she actually murdered the father or paid to have someone else do it. The graph might be more powerful if you actually left that separate anyway as the rate is so small. I am guessing historically that chunk would be much larger.
Also what does “mother spouse absent” mean? Does this mean mums where their husband is deployed, working in an oil rig, or some other situation where the father is around but currently busy with work elsewhere? Given the horrific divorce rate among deployed troops it might be reasonable to lump them together like that. What exactly the category means is unclear, but it sounds like the father is present in those cases (at least for the time being) but is involved in an occupation that requires him to be frequently absent (truck drivers too maybe?). Not sure these are necessarily “mothers choice” either, but that is less clear.
Given the tiny percentage rates of both, the trend is still disturbing.
I only mention it because if you show this data to non manosphere types (and isn’t that kind of thepoint?), then they will probably quibble over such lumping together and dismiss the data out of hand, which would defeat the point.
Good find though, and thanks for presenting it.
The argument always goes that a child fairs better with the mother. The child needs his mother (the implication being that the father is not needed, but maybe nice to have around) Beyond just a *feeling*, what is the actual logic behind this statement?
@Wudang,
Apparently the rate of “step parent” abuse is quite high (although child abuse itself is fairly rare on the whole, or at least uncommon). Although it seems that “live in boyfriends” are the worst for it. But this is going from memory. You do get horrific cases where the mothers will participate n the abuse or ignore it to keep the boyfriend around, or even very rarely murder the children to keep the boyfriend (Andrea Yates did that IIRC).
@Jason
I thought about leaving widow separately, which is why I moved that sliver where I did. However, the category it is first lumped into is “Mother”, because the child lives with the mother. It isn’t merged into “Mother’s Choice”, but is merged along with the rest of the “Mother” category with “Mother’s Choice” to get to “Mother or Mother’s Choice”. There is a separate step in the animation which relabels “Both Parents” to “Mother’s Choice” which may be too subtle.
That is how I read the category, since there is a separate category for married but “separated”.
68 % of all children would mean that about 50-55 % will be living with both their parents at 17. Slightly worse than Sweden (74 and 60).
@Lavazza
They break it down by age group, and it works out to be 74.5% for under one year down to 65% age 15-17. However, this suffers from the same “step parent” problem so it doesn’t really shed much light on the question of how many kids really end up growing up without their father in the household.
74.5 % at 1 YO is really bad. In Sweden it’s 90 %.
The Swedish figures are 5 % higher, if adding step parents. I don’t know if that translates to the US.
That’s because we have sky-high single motherhood rates right now, lavazza. And unlike Sweden, it isn’t the case that most of these are cohabitation cases.
But biology does not matter! If you ask any non-manosphere types if they care about passing their genes on, most will say no. It doesn’t even register in their thought process – consciously. Dad just donates sperm to a woman to care for and hopes that she allows him to have a part in the upbringing of his children. The genes have no affect in the emotional attachment once they are released.
Sting:
Legally, before divorce reform, the presumption was that in a divorce, the children remained with their father. The rationale was that children needed provisioning first and foremost. The children need to be fed, clothed and sheltered, and since the father was almost always the breadwinner, the children should stay with the parent who was best able to provide those things and this was usually dad.
The presumption was even stronger if wife/mom was the one who wanted the divorce and was leaving the marriage, or if husband was divorcing her due to her fault (her adultery or abandonment). If mom was leaving the marriage, she took nothing with her other than her clothes, personal effects, and her pre-marital property. She certainly didn’t get custody of the children.
The legal eagles in the US (and with the help of a little old English common law) revived the “tender years” doctrine of child custody in the early 20th century and started expanding its application. This legal doctrine presumed maternal custody for children of “tender years” meaning kids who hadn’t been weaned from breastfeeding. These children had to stay with mom because they were still breastfeeding– a task dad was obviously unsuited for.
“Tender years” was expanded further to toddlers and young children who were with SAHMs all day; the rationale being that the kids are young and custody should go to mom, who is the primary hands-on parent and who is most familiar with the kids’ day to day and minute to minute needs. Plus, father is at work all day, doesn’t know what the children need, and can’t provide it because he’s working all the time. Father’s involvement has to be limited because he is earning the money and has been paying for it all anyway; so it is little imposition on father to be required to continue paying so as to ensure the children’s situation continues mostly uninterrupted.
Then it was expanded to most children in general in the face of research suggesting that women are more suited to the nurturing and hands-on care for children well into adolescence, particularly girls. Father must be required to continue paying, but he really can’t be trusted to take care of children, now can he? After all, father is an insensitive, uncaring, boorish, overworked, overstressed lout who comes home from work and demands that Edith bring him a beer and fetch his turkey pot pie. Mom is more suited to be the custodial parent because she is kind and soft and sensitive and nurturing and caring, simply because she is a woman.
@Dalrock,
Thanks for clearing that up. I did catch that it was mother or mothers choice. I guess the part that is jarring is the way it is lumped in with mothers choice. I can see how it fits,, but I thought the point was to illustrate how broad the category of “mothers choice” was, given it applied to all the cases where the mother got to choose whether the father played a role or not, and how even the married both parents case was also mothers choice.
I suspect for many people lumping widows in there would ruin the effect. A bit like claiming widower is “fathers choice” or “father”. It is true enough, but it isn’t chosen, it is a circumstance forced upon the person. And you definitely don’t want to give the impression that e large number of “mothers choice” cases are situations that are “forced upon her”, which is the image any feminist will be in a hurry to present it as.
Without the child support and the welfare ,food stamps, HUD housing, college scholarship, social status ,tec. etc. that comes from having “meal tickets’ that chart would look a lot different.
The flip side – given all the above stats, there are some men foolish enough to marry and have their children with a divorced woman who lost custody of her children to her ex. Given all the bias in favor of women in our screwed up family law system, how messed up a woman must be to have lost custody to her ex.
Carnivore:
I have no idea why any man would get involved with a single mom, beyond dating her. No man should ever get serious with a single mom, much less marry her, much less have a child with her. In this SMP doing so is economic and social life suicide. Even pre-red pill I instinctively knew this — if she couldn’t make it work with some other guy and had a kid with him, it will only be worse for me. I will always come second to the kid; I will have to deal with her ex-husband/baby daddy; I will end up paying for everything anyway. No thanks.
@deti, yes the single mom issue is obvious. But you’d think the woman who doesn’t have custody would be even worse, or at least more obvious. I bring it up because I do indeed know a gentleman who wanted children and married a divorced woman who did not have custody of her children by her first husband. She didn’t lose custody – she didn’t want it. I cannot comprehend choosing such a woman for a wife and mother. There was no surprise on my part when I heard the marriage went south.
Fought for 18 months for custody of my son from 1989 to 1990 against a hostile social work department. I wasn’t married to his mother and she chose not to name me on his birth certificate. She made life very difficult for me when she was about five months pregnant and it was obvious that she would a) carry the birth to term thereby getting single mummy benefits and b) I wasn’t going to marry her. As far as I know I was the first father to win custody in these circumstances in my country against a hostile mother. I had great support in doing so notably my mother and father and latterly from various politicians who got to know of the case.
Point I am trying to make is that it is possible to win custody as it became obvious to the powers that be that I was willing to spend every penny I had to ensure my sons safety and that I was going to make life very difficult for anyone and everyone who got in my way. I realise that it is very difficult but I knew that my son would be far better off with me than his mother. He is now 25 and still lives with me :-).
I wouldn’t hold it against any father who walks away knowing the obstacles they face in family court throughout the ‘developed’ world. My view as I remember during the process was that rather than pay the mother anything I would bring my son up on my own with support from my parents.
As a long term single father I am convinced that the best way to raise children is with two parents working together for the best interests of the child(ren).
Keep up the good work Dalrock. The blog is a breath of sanity in a sometimes convoluted blogosphere.
[D: Thanks, and welcome!]
Carnivore:
I’ve heard of a few moms who decided they didn’t want custody in their divorces, mainly because they had careers of their own and they just felt unsuited to being mothers. These women felt castigated all around — how can it be that they didn’t want their own children! What kind of mother are you! You’re a horrible mother, first for divorcing their father, and then refusing to care for your children after leaving him! How could you leave your own children! How could you not want them!
I know one woman who came from a broken home. Alcoholic bum father, career oriented mom. The woman herself is an only child. This woman’s own mom told her that she wasn’t wanted, that neither her mom nor her dad wanted her, and that she (the woman’s mom) just wasn’t meant to be a mother. The woman herself is divorced and is the custodial parent of two teenage sons.
Goes to show also how normative maternal custody has become — it is simply unthinkable that a mom is going to leave her children with a father, even if she doesn’t want them, even if he is better suited to parent them.
More to your point, certainly no man should ever reproduce with a single mom, ever, much less with a woman who does not have custody of her children by her first marriage. It shows she either did not care about her children; or she isn’t suited to motherhood; or
Is joint custody listed under “both parents, not married”? That category could be read as either joint custody (week on, week off with each parent) or living with both parents in same household who aren’t married to each other. I’ve seen the joint custody arrangement more and more, which seems tough on the child to me (it’s almost like they are moving every week).
@Jason: You’re thinking of Susan Smith not Andrea Yates. Yates was married. Susan Smith was divorced and dating a guy from a rich family who dumped her presumably because of her children.
Even some of the 4% living with Dad could be counted as “mother’s choice.” I’ve known a couple single/divorced guys who had their kids because the mother either disappeared or didn’t want them interfering with her new life, so she “let” the father have them. But if she ever changed her mind (as happened in one case), the court would change that in a hurry, so those were really “mother’s choice” situations too.
Of course, it’s also true that some women get the kids by default because the father doesn’t want them. But that’s not really “father’s choice,” because if he chose otherwise, she’d still be likely to get them, and he’d get every other weekend at best.
Cail Corishev says:
Even some of the 4% living with Dad could be counted as “mother’s choice.” I’ve known a couple single/divorced guys who had their kids because the mother either disappeared or didn’t want them interfering with her new life, so she “let” the father have them.
That’s sort of what happened with me. I ended up raising my niece because the mother took off and the father didn’t want to be bothered with her. The mother later came back and tried to get her back but the girl wouldn’t go, and the police wouldn’t take any action to force her back. I guess that would go under the ‘neither parent’ category.
@ Carnivore,
you’re making some huge generalizations with no man marrying a single mom. what if she’s a widower? what if her spouse committed adultery? these are legitimate reasons for being a single mother. i assume you mean no man should marry a woman who frivolously filed for divorce because she was not “happy” or “could not be a free spirit”.
If this is not the case, do you hold the same to be true for single fathers?
@John Galt
They don’t clarify this one way or another (at least that I can find). As I understand it even with a 50-50 time split there is still one parent who has primary custody, and I think primary custody is what they are referring to regarding living arrangements. The way the data breaks down by child’s age strongly suggests this isn’t about shared custody but unmarried parents living together. The percentage of children in the “both parents not married” category is highest at 12% for children under 1 year, and declines consistently for older children down to 1.3% for the 15-17 age group.
Coming from someone that grew up in joint custody – second week and third weekend with my father – it felt EXACTLY like moving. You need to take all your clothes, all your school supplies, sports equipment, and any other miscellaneous items you want to use. For kids these days that can be books, laptops, videogames, whatever. Im sure its a rare father that can weather divorce, find a new place, furnish and stock it, and then buy a new set of all that for his kids even if he bought used.
I’m glad I still grew up with him, but even ten years later I remember what a pain in the ass it all was. Especially if you forgot something at the other parents house
Presumably, some fraction of the 4 percent fathers are widowers.
[D: Yes. It works out to .2% of the total.]
“If this is not the case, do you hold the same to be true for single fathers?”
Misogyny!
It’s carnivore’s “male privilege” that enables him.
-sarcasm off-
” are legitimate reasons for being a single mother”
Yeah right,you’re in the wrong cigar room cupcake.
@Frenchy,
I woud, agree with Carnivore on marrying single mums as a generalization. Single mums are there by 1 of three methods. Widowed, divorced or knocked up.
I don’t think most people would suggest “widowed” should really be in the “single mother category”. They might be bad or good, but they did exit their marriage on the right terms (Till death do you part). They might be all sorts of screwed up but they are a corner case and not really what people, would warn against as such. Perhaps I am wrong on that score.
The other two categories are more problematic.
Consider the divorce case. Either she left him or he left her, and either there was serious fault or there wasn’t, and now there are kids are kids involved and the father is likely stillin the picture. Here tread carefully. Either spouse might be alright, especially if they were not the willing party in the divorce and their spouse was the one at fault (My sister married a divorced guy, whose wife was nuts and cheated in him, I was skeptical at first). But it is unusual for either party to be entirely innocent is divor tags don’t break overnight, and regardless the circumstances they did marry the other person, so even if we assume the wife was basically innocent and just married a dirt ball, you have still got to wonder about her as a judge of character and her decision making capability. In all other cases if she was the instigator what is the chance it will be different with you? Stick your head in the lions mouth and flick him with a wet towel but don’t be surprised if you lose your head.
Finally single never married mums. Not to put to fine a point on it but you are dealing with a slut at the end of the day who will give it up without commitment. Might there be some salvageable women in this category (I would leave single mums via rape out of this case, but again, rare corner case not a common one) perhaps, but it is going to be like looking for a small diamond in an ocean of manure with your tongue.
Anyway, random thoughts from me, in what I would do when it looked like my marriage as headed for divorce and I was wondering about tarting over and finding a new wife.
Deti writes:
No man should ever get serious with a single mom
Thugtician agrees!
@Frenchy,
I think single fathers might be slightly different. It probably depends but you have a more traditional breakdown of those. Leave widowers out again and what have you got.
Divorced, depends how they got there. Seems there is a lot of fathers who end up on their own through being overly beta and their wives ditching them. They might not be ideal for a varie if reasons but they are in the “poor judge of character”. There might be other problems but they are going to naturally vary.
Are there single fathers who get full custody without being married? Probably a couple but they sound rather rare. Perhaps they are a good choice ecause they have chosen to “man up”.
Don’t really know. They are a different kettle of fish.
They could be womanizing dirtbags but they aren’t usually looking to get remarried anyway.
In both caes there is a certain amount of self selection out of the marriageable pool, and extremely poor spouse quality women won’t select themselves out like the guys will.
The operative concept in Dalrock’s phraseology is ‘serving at the pleasure’; that is the father serves at the pleaseure of the mother, typically within most marriages and ex-post. While the laws in the states all differ to some degree, for all intents and purposes, a father being any more than the ‘Wednesday night, every other weekend’ dad is largely a function of the degree to which the mother concedes anything to him, and as Dalrock and others have well documented, there are rafts of incentives for her not to do so.
In my own case (divorce initiated by by wife) I fought as hard as I could, including requesting a GAL, to get custody of my teenage sons. The older boy requested to live primarily with his mother (he would eventually only only be subject to the final decree for three months until he turned 18), but the younger asked to split time between us (he in fact, spends more time with me). In my state shared parenting must be agreed to by both parents and then approved by the court (the courts will not mandate shared physical custody), and my wife refused. GAL, despite acknowledging that I could parent the kids as well as my wife, nonetheless recommended custody go to her. My attorney advised to concede, which I regrettably did.
There is something grievously wrong with a legal system that places teenage boys in the custody of their mother when their father is an upstanding member of his community (professionally employed, scout leader, coach, church elder) and has the means (employment history, stable extended family relationships) to make the best of a horrible situation. This is especially tragic in that I live in a county widely recognized as one of the more conservative in my state which itself is not particularly liberal and large enough to be representative of a sizable portion of the population. The rot is wide and deep.
It’s interesting because I know a guy who went through the same ordeal about two years prior to me, but he ended up with custody of not only his biological daughter, but his stepdaughter as well because his wife didn’t want it. (Like Deti suggested above, I’d truly question the sanity of such a woman). It’s an interestng contrast in that although I’d say this guy and I earn about the same gross ($100K or thereabouts), our lifestyles are markedly different.
The average person has no idea how ridiculously lopsided family law is in this country.
In my unpaid-gigolo days I must confess that I dated a few single Mums – to be fair to me they had all been abandoned, which is rare, were good looking [it always seems to be that the good looking ones are ditched; never the war-pigs or beached-whales] but so it was; however, as a general rule I shake my head in disbelief that I could have done so. Why didn’t my parents or some kindly Uncle or wise older friend point out the foolishness of my action. No one ever did. Why would any man want to take on the responsibility of raising another man’s children. Is it some form of relationship masochism or misplaced chivalry. I commend Thugtician.
What is the age in each state that a child can decide which parent he/she wants to live with ?
Maybe the older kids choose mom and if dads tend to remarry, maybe the kids would rather have just mom instead of the whole new family of the dads.
I was going to make the same point as Cail and others: Even a large segment of the “with father or with neither” is probably still the mother’s choice. The partiality of family courts now ensures that the mother’s choice is the default in all but the most extreme cases.
While the overall picture is clear, unfortunately the specific numbers can’t really be relied on. As you pointed out, Dalrock, there are issues with the definition of father here (and the same problems would be present with the definition of mother too, for a small number of cases where the child is still with the biological father and he’s the one identifying the relationship with the mother).
TFH’s points about women voting are supported by the studies that show women have an in-group preference that is much stronger than that of men . Four times stronger. So women are 4X more likely to favor other women, than to favor men or men and women equally, if I read correctly.
If that is an innate trait, then it seems likely to be more pronounced in single women than married. Voting patterns confirm this. Careless writers might describe this in terms of “selfishness” but that is not what is actually involved. women are quite capable of being generous – to other women.
This in-group preference is the foundation of “Team Woman”, and likely underpins the spetcacle of married church going women demanding support from loyal, married men, to be provided to slutty single mothers. It’s in-group preference…
MOre study of this would be a good and useful thing, if for no other reason than to establish parameters.
Where I live, joint custody is the default. However in this case custody means legal custody, deciding where they go to school, about elective surgery etc. and has nothing to do with where they spend their time. My kids are every other week. My buddy has his daughter full time because the ex is homeless. A coworker has I believe every other week with his son. An ex boss has a young daughter and lives an hour across town, so I presume he has her only on weekends or perhaps every other weekend.
Despite these alarming numbers the popularity of marriage has only waned slightly among upper-middle class men, who are now are far more likely to marry. Given the positive impacts of an intact marriage a number of authors have identified this “marriage gap” as the reason for the growing class divide. But one glaring question mark left by the stats Dalrock presented is the lack of a breakdown by income to discover whether the laws encouraging women’s frivolous divorce and assurance of custody afterwards play a role in this marriage gap. Do wives of upper middle class men for some reason (perhaps linked to the dynamics behind attraction) initiate divorce less and as a result upper middle class men perceive marriage as less of a risk and so are more likely to marry? Is there a difference in the rate of shared custody by income that makes upper middle class men perceive losing their children in divorce as less of a devastating likelihood? Or are upper middle class women themselves less likely to divorce? In other words along with the well documented “marriage gap”, is there also a “divorce consequences gap” as far as any perception of greater unfairness of divorce laws to less wealthy men?
[D: The Census data breaks it down by income, and for the highest bracket (over $100k) they list 91.6% of the children are in the “Married, Both Parents” category. Similarly by education, for bachelors it is 82.8%, 90.1% for post grad degrees. I looked at divorce rates by IQ and education here if you are interested.]
The children all ages thing is a bit difficult to follow. I would prefer 1, 10 and 17 YO. I guess the safest group clocks in at around 85 % at 17 YO, but that’s people born mostly in the fifties (given that they have children late in life).
Dalrock you have shown us the foundation of the MRM.
BTW a guy I work with had his wife leave for a stud and left the man with 3 kids two girls (12,10) and his son (4) He handled his business and has his kids. Good man lucky man. For a while he was in a lot of shock but he talked about for the first time. And he did real well. Oh yeah alcohol,social media and kids with cell phone with cameras can be a mans best friend.
Oscar Calme
Good for you.
Saving the children from the carnage of family destruction is a cause worth fighting for.
I would just like to add that the statistics show that predominantly the major factor in child abuse, both physical and sexual involves the new partner of the parent with physical custody. Since this parent is almost always the mother, we then start talking about mothers new boyfriend. In the UK, this has been a factor in the Shannon Matthews case (9 year old child apparently abducted, but hidden by mother[ 5 kids, 3 fathers] and new boyfriend for money and prizes) and Baby P (2 year old child died from broken back after being thrown against wall or some other hard object by mother’s new boyfriend). And folks still cannot see that having a social security system that incentivises single motherhood is bad for society.
“What kind of mother are you! You’re a horrible mother, first for divorcing their father, and then refusing to care for your children after leaving him! How could you leave your own children! How could you not want them!” – deti
I recently learned from my step sister that my step mother did this very thing. She left her children and their father for a time (the children were younger than 10), came back to try and work things out but then left again because she couldn’t overcome the guilt she had for having left them in the first place.
When I was 15 and living with her and my father I found her journal and read entries of her struggle to understand why she hated me so much. Learning what took place with her own children has helped me understand better the kind of crazy she is. The emotional turmoil is still ever present with her and her children (who are in their late forties).
I used to excuse my father for marrying this person on the basis I supported his need to not live alone, until I learned they aren’t even intimate with each other, he’s not wanted sex with her for the last 20 years. We’ve separated ourselves and our children from all of that crazy now.
No surprise her daughter recently blew up her own home and joined the cougar prowl.
@frenchy “you’re making some huge generalizations with no man marrying a single mom. ”
Actually, I’m usually pretty reserved around here in deference to what Dalrock is trying to accomplish. Elsewhere, my usual generalization would be that any man is an idiot to get married these days.
Quebec mother charged in the murder of her 3 children. Not a word from the carpet baggers or the lame stream media about violence against children.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Police+questioning+mother+three+kids+found+dead+Quebec+home/7656195/story.html#axzz2EZtTxptu
There was another link where her colleagues said she was a “doting” mother. Kind of like Stalin,Mao,& Hitler were doting, but I wonder what would happen if the father did the murders?
I guess that demolishes the argument that the falling marriage / rising divorce rates are not important because children are being born to stable but unmarried couples. Who comprise 4% of all living arrangements. LOL.
Despite these alarming numbers the popularity of marriage has only waned slightly among upper-middle class men, who are now are far more likely to marry. Given the positive impacts of an intact marriage a number of authors have identified this “marriage gap” as the reason for the growing class divide.
That’s because “they” are stupid animals.
But go ahead, call me out monkey boy. Tell me “I’m wrong”. Until you are willing to argue to the point of talking back to someone calling you out on your cr*p, I’m not going to bother to write anymore.
@ deti
Legally, before divorce reform, the presumption was that in a divorce, the children remained with their father. The rationale was that children needed provisioning first and foremost. The children need to be fed, clothed and sheltered, and since the father was almost always the breadwinner, the children should stay with the parent who was best able to provide those things and this was usually dad.
The presumption was even stronger if wife/mom was the one who wanted the divorce and was leaving the marriage, or if husband was divorcing her due to her fault (her adultery or abandonment). If mom was leaving the marriage, she took nothing with her other than her clothes, personal effects, and her pre-marital property. She certainly didn’t get custody of the children.
^^^^^ The problem is no-fault divorce. As it gives leverage to the irresponsible woman who by no means deserves to keep the children. If we bring back the laws that once existed both women and men would be happier. Once men are no longer the legal protectors of their children they do not care as much about them, as you see by the huge number of children being raised in single mother homes. If more men fought for their rights as fathers and protectors of children, then we would not be having this mess. However, most men have been more then happy to be relieved by their responsibility to their children. This is what I talk about in my article “Irresponsible men are the ultimate beneficiaries of feminism” http://femininemystiquetwra.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/irresponsible-men-are-the-ultimate-beneficiaries-of-feminism/
Once men no longer hold the legal obligation to their children and their wives then they are freed from the responsibility. But what many men need to realize is that when they do gain the right to child custody, that with custody comes responsibility as well. The responsibility of being the father the leader and the breadwinner. One cannot want all the rights without taking up the responsibilities.
@ Norm that is a great link and a great example how mothers use the children to get back at their husbands. It is utterly sad and disgusting I do not understand how a mother could kill her own flesh like that. Yet, it happens so many times and the excuse usually is that she was angry at her husband. I am sick of hearing stories like that. It seems when these women (not all women) rare given the power without the responsibility they go wild. Men really need to take charge of their women, because it is really getting ridiculous. In the end all a woman wants is a loving husband who is her superior. She does not want someone who she can run all over. Too many men are giving a free pass to their wives. I am not saying that a man should beat her. However, there should definitely be a dominant submissive dynamic in a relationship, otherwise the woman will go nuts. Just my two cents about my external environment and about the experience with women in general. They are hardly the angels that media likes us to portray as. Both genders have their demons. And both genders must work to conquer them. And feminism is the dividing line that does not allow the genders to come together.
Thanks. I followed the links and read the studies. Very enlightening stats for a parent hoping to one day have grand kids. A college degree, religiosity, and discouraging hookup culture is a 90% effective divorce vaccination.
From my reading the greater likelihood of staying married in the upper middle class seems to rest in the wife’s hands, depending predominantly on her not wanting divorce to derail her life goals such as her desire for an ideal child-rearing environment, though the value she places on those goals might hinge on her perception of haaappiness (which the linked post pointed out could be influenced by her participation in the hookup culture).
Going to college and marrying college educated Christian women who haven’t participated in the “hookup culture” seems the most secure play in a risky gamble. But what about the forces changing men’s behavior? I know Dalrock stated that he doesn’t believe in the “marriage strike” as “Marrying an older, less hot woman and then having her divorce you isn’t being on strike”. However he did appear to agree with Deansdale’s statement “more and more ‘eligible’ men are rejecting marriage”. My question is if there ARE any marriage disincentives for men because of divorce laws, do they vary by income?
That is, of all the marriage issues identified by the manosphere as arising from feminism and no fault divorce: unrestrained hypergamy in marriage, carouselling before marriage, misandric divorce laws (divorce theft, alimony and child support slavery), and emasculation of men in marriage, … are they of less concern to upper middle-class men and if so why? Is no fault divorce less unfair to these men? Obviously there’s the common wisdom that “divorce for the rich man adds up to a drop in the bucket that he can recover from whereas the middle class and poor men are financially devastated when the woman takes half”. There’s also the perception that:
So in summary, is feminism less harmful to the rich?
Divorce courts are said to value men only for money … so if a man is in a position “play by the rules” as far as the law is concerned and “pay unto Caesar” (for legal representation, court costs, property equalization, and alimony and child support, … etc.) does he have less to fear and so is less disincentivized by marriage even though he stands to lose more money than less affluent men? Or do such men just ignore any disincentives and gamble by entering into marriage regardless of the odds of getting reamed if they divorce, because the odds of not divorcing are that much better? I wonder if feminism is much of a disincentive to marriage in the upper middle class. From my outsider’s perspective marriage in the upper middle class seems highly feminist. The men seem resolutely emasculated and determined to kow-tow to their wife’s most unreasonable whims regardless of the impact on the children. Yet they are still far more likely to marry, and far less likely to have their children harmed by divorce. Though that doesn’t assume they’re more likely to have grandchildren, or less likely to have their children harmed by other results of feminism such as the hookup culture, carouselling, etc.
Ethical writes:
Do wives of upper middle class men for some reason (perhaps linked to the dynamics behind attraction) initiate divorce less and as a result upper middle class men perceive marriage as less of a risk and so are more likely to marry? Is there a difference in the rate of shared custody by income that makes upper middle class men perceive losing their children in divorce as less of a devastating likelihood? Or are upper middle class women themselves less likely to divorce? In other words along with the well documented “marriage gap”, is there also a “divorce consequences gap” as far as any perception of greater unfairness of divorce laws to less wealthy men?
I was raised in an upper-middle class suburb in North America, populated by non-ruling class wealthy people. I’m talking about multimillionaires who are *not* part of the super-rich “1 percent”.
Among this population group, there are still strong social bonds. Divorces do occur, but the wealth that is accumulated by the couple generally keeps them from divorcing at the rates we see in the lower-middle and working classes. Their wealth also keeps them from leaving the local area.
If you and your wife have a combined net worth of 20M, then it’s quite possible that you, as the male, will be ordered to buy your house back from your wife, give her the lions share of the wealth, and otherwise shovel most of your money to her. Let’s say the split, totalled, is 90/10 (bad but not unheard of). You come out of the divorce with 2 million dollars, and your wife and the attorneys split 18 million.
2 million dollars is enough to bootstrap yourself back, in a few years, to a comparable net worth. Are you going to just disappear and leave behind all your business contacts, your kids, and start over someplace new? Of course not.
If a regular joe who makes 20 dollars an hour and has a net worth of 50,000 dollars goes through the wringer, he has much less to lose by simply skipping town and starting over someplace else. Likewise, his wife will lose much less if she files for divorce. She has a reasonable chance of trading up to someone who makes 40 dollars per hour, effectively doubling her income stream. Lower class women have peers who do not frown on divorce, while women in the upper-middle stratify themselves by what their husbands do. You should hear the old hens talk, to understand this. A woman who divorces her husband without a better replacement is rapidly persona non grata at all the best parties.
Likewise, among these people, false allegations of abuse are shamed heavily, and in such cases, both parties lose a lot of status among their peers. You are expected to have a normal and conforming relationship. The divorces that do happen are a lot more friendly and businesslike. Maury Povich does not generally go to the suburbs to find loud, trashy guests for his show.
Marriage, likewise, is a ritual which is expected in this class to this day. Among my friends who (unlike myself) come from generational wealth, girls are expected to start dating in their junior year of high school. Around Christmas break of their sophomore year of college, they are expected to announce their engagements. Many marriages are (this is the honest truth) *arranged*, usually by the mothers/grandmothers of the bride and groom. Most of them do get married, and most of the marriages endure, quite unhappily in many cases, with affairs and flings on the side in many. Appearance is everything, substance not so much.
Editalm
Ive read your tenets and found them lacking. Then I see this comment and nearly have to chuckle.
Are you seriously telling men that with rights come responsibilities?
This is almost like a parody of reality.
@Editalm
The reason we have so many single mothers is that mothers choose it this way. This is women’s hard fought right, and they are exercising it with great regularity. Blaming this on the fathers the women kicked out is adding insult to injury. Men do want custody of their children, but they are prevented from getting it due to the profoundly biased system. You (and many others) are fundamentally misunderstanding what is going on in the custody process. See bargaining in the shadow of the law for an explanation of what is taking place.
I” would like to know how often step fathers abuse their children compared to biological fathers. I suspect the difference is huge.”
The last time I saw the statistics, women are responsible for two-thiirds of alll child abuse, and they abuse boys twice as much as little girls.
I was relatively fortunate when my wife filed her frivolous divorce. Two of our kids were over 18 and away at college. Our daughter was 16 (though with special needs) and our youngest son was 14. In our state (I was told), at age 16 the child’s custody choice is nearly conclusive; at age 14 the child’s custody choice is entitled to great weight. Though we started out informally sharing custody 50/50 pending a preliminary order, my wife blew that up when she completely alienated the 14-year old during one of her weekends with him. (He threw a tantrum when they were out running errands; on her attorney’s advice, she took him to the police station for a talking to. He ran away and they have never really reconciled since.) In retaliation for his refusal (not mine, his) to continue the 50/50 arrangement, she wouldn’t let me have any time with our daughter. When we finally settled 13 months later, we split custody of our daughter 75/25 — I get her every other weekend, one evening per week, and split holidays during the school year, then 50/50 during the summer. We ostensibly split custody of our son 25/75, but in reality he still probably spends 5% or less of his time with her. The child support amount for my daughter is semi-reasonable and will only run for less than 4 years post-filing (it runs until our daughter turns 20, because she will still be in high school until then). For a year after that, she will have to pay me a small amount of child support for my son.
I realize and am thankful that obtaining essentially full custody of one child plus “typical” custody of the other and having just a few years of semi-reasonable child support payments is a much better outcome than most frivorce victims get.
However, my ex is managing to blunt my relative “success” in the divorce. She began dating online immediately after the divorce was final and now has married a twice-divorced man from out of state, just 13 months since the divorce. Two days after Christmas she is moving 400 miles away to live with the new guy, taking our daughter with her. This time our daughter’s age works in her favor — because our daughter is now 18, the custody order no longer technically applies (though, of course in our lopsided system, the child support order remains in force), so she does not have to get court approval of the move. I would have to file an expensive guardianship proceeding to have any chance of preventing the new custody arrangement, which will cut my school-year time with my daughter down to one weekend per month. It’s utter foolishness and it’s clearly not in my daughter’s best interests, but you can’t tell that to her (or her girlfriends).
@ empathologism
So since I want Patriarchy that makes me a feminist? Okay Mr. Common Sense and Rationality.
editalm says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:28 pm
As I told the other member of your coven that’s been hanging around the 2 blogs I go to, read up on what “The Patriarchy” is.
http://www.amazon.ca/Myth-Male-Power-Warren-Farrell/dp/0425181448
“my wife blew that up when she completely alienated the 14-year old during one of her weekends with him. (He threw a tantrum when they were out running errands; on her attorney’s advice, she took him to the police station for a talking to. He ran away and they have never really reconciled since.) ”
And this is a classic example of the thinking processes of frivorcees…having expelled the true father from the picture, she was advised to recruit the local Men in Blue to act as surrogate fathers to her adolescent boy, who was understandably spooked. She was expecting him to respect the collective authority of masculinity that we’ve endowed into our public safety officers, as if any nearby adult man could act as the kid’s father (Lori’s assertion).
I laugh at women who say they don’t need a father, because the day inevitably comes when they DO need a father because their son is not going to listen to Mommy and is big enough that she can’t force him to.
Also, cops have much better things to do than cover up for the mistakes of women who Don’t Need A Man.
I was just thinking about a lawyer I knew who when newly qualified married a woman who was divorced and who already had four children. Indeed I knew another newly qualified lawyers who did just the same (the second one certainly ended in Divorce) – that is quite apart from two more lawyers I knew who (probably when in their thirties) married women (both print production technicians i.e. typists) twenty years older than them. What insanity can persuade a man who presumably has a high MMV to so under-rate it to act with such foolishness. This is one of the first things men must begin to learn- not to undersell themselves: it is a buyers market and the price presently being charged is far too high.
Marrying a single woman with children or a woman who has a high N count is a bit like going to your car-dealer showroom and buying an ordinary saloon car at full show-room price when you know it has been used for a few years as a rental vehicle (the mileage wiped off the clock – but you say you do not mind, especially as the interior has been cleaned up). Marrying a woman old enough to be your mother is like buying a second hand car at the price it was when new. No one acts like that with regard to vehicles – why do people do that with regard to women? I propose that as with Sale of Goods on credit, there should be a cooling-off period, and indeed, should you marry, but find that there are bugs in the model you purchesed (e.g. she nags you the day after the wedding) that you can take her back to the showroom and get a full refund.
No thats not what does it.
Your Mend-ass-ity is showing
Going to college and marrying college educated Christian women who haven’t participated in the “hookup culture” seems the most secure play in a risky gamble.
That is because you are a near idiot.
A man making over 100k a year, or a man with a “post-grad” in a real field, can marry a random woman and obtain near the same rates. Where exactly is little Miss Hypergamy going to go to top someone making 125k a year? Someone making 150k a year? HOW MANY OF THOSE ARE AVAILABLE?
In fact, the around 20% divorce rate for +100k and college degree… 91% with “both parents” contains significant re-marriages and step dads is shockingly high. Showing an incredible over-estimate of female belief in their ability to “do better”. They are not “better women”. Their rates are higher than one would expect simply taking into account hypergamy.
I tire of having to say the obvious over and over again.
However, my ex is managing to blunt my relative “success” in the divorce. She began dating online immediately after the divorce was final and now has married a twice-divorced man from out of state, just 13 months since the divorce. Two days after Christmas she is moving 400 miles away to live with the new guy, taking our daughter with her.
See how easy it was to replace this guy? I bet twice divorced guy 400 miles away is a WWAAAAAAYYYY better catch!
Dalrock, how many divorced fathers actually *want* custody?
I don’t know the answer, but the standard refrain in response to data like this is that ‘women get the kids because the men don’t want them.’ You don’t address that, and the argument is plausible at least.
The New York Times says “an estimated 50 percent of fathers who seek such [primary physical] custody in a disputed divorce are granted it.”
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/more-fathers-getting-custody-in-divorce/
[D: I do address that argument here. As for the 50% stat, a mommy blogger making the claim without citing a source doesn’t do much for me. If you can find the actual data she is referring to I would be in your debt though.]
whatever says:
December 9, 2012 at 6:07 pm
I assume your argument is “Don’t Get Married at All”?
Just needed to clarify.
Whatever writes:
See how easy it was to replace this guy? I bet twice divorced guy 400 miles away is a WWAAAAAAYYYY better catch!
The “better catch” will probably end up like the first guy, ripped off and abandoned.
Women generally stick with a particular script. If you meet a woman who is bitching about her ex, take note, because she’ll be talking about you that way when the novelty wears off. If her ex was “abusive”, you can be sure she’ll be painting you as “an abuser” the minute she decides to start screwing around.
Amazing how few men figure this out, but there it is.
@whatever- I was making 250k a year when my overweight wife decided she was not haaaaapy.
the following eight years show it to be a poor move for her. No worries, her hamster tells her that it was the right move regardless of the facts.
There’s a way to get a girl to stay with you forever, but I’m not going to discuss my theories on that here. To be sure, it doesn’t involve doing whatever it takes to “make her happy” LOL
“Miss Hypergamy going to go to top someone making 125k a year? Someone making 150k a year? HOW MANY OF THOSE ARE AVAILABLE?”
LOL at people actually think making money whould maker her STAY. If anything it would make her leave if you have no other attractive qualities because then she doesn’t have to put up with you and gets half of it.
editalm wrote:
Well, I might agree if it weren’t for the fact that the current legal climate does not really permit a man to take charge of his woman if she is unwilling to be taken charge of. If she is rebellious, his best bet I suppose is to try to game her into submission before she frivorces him. No-fault divorce with default maternal custody is essentially the reason why women can’t be taken charge of. Previously she would have been facing destitution upon divorce; now she can skate off with visions of hunky handymen dancing in her head. It’s not particularly helpful to blame men. That’s like smashing someone’s kneecaps and then being pissed off that they won’t take you waltzing.
whatever said:
A man making over 100k a year, or a man with a “post-grad” in a real field, can marry a random woman and obtain near the same rates. Where exactly is little Miss Hypergamy going to go to top someone making 125k a year? Someone making 150k a year? HOW MANY OF THOSE ARE AVAILABLE?
Samuel Solomon said:
@Samuel Solomon:
Exactly. “whatever” appears to be speaking from his own anecdotal experience, not from real empirical evidence. Many studies clearly show certain demographics of women have a decreased tendency to divorce, not just that all women have a lesser tendency to divorce upper income men. Dalrock quotes Herrnstein and Murray, who appear to claim high IQ plays a big part in defining the demographic of women that divorces much less. Others avoid discussion of IQ and claim the demographic of low divorcing women is defined by being college educated. But the point is that clearly the man’s income isn’t the only factor. So it doesn’t follow that SOME demographics of women won’t come with an increased risk of frivolously divorcing men with good incomes even though men with good incomes are overall divorced far less. For example anecdotal experience tell us that in a legal climate where women can make out like bandits when they ditch their marriage to find someone they’re more emotionally attracted to, more physically attracted to, or more drawn to in any other way, some opportunistic women might be even more likely to divorce men with good incomes.
However my initial question was not about delving more into the breakdown of which demographics of women divorce less, but more about figuring out whether upper middle class men had less to fear from divorce laws and therefore would have less a reason to care about men’s rights. Because if divorce was rarely unfair for him he wouldn’t see men’s rights as being in his interest.
Friend of mine twice divorced, has retained HIS house twice, and the kids from his second marriage (no kids in first marriage). His secret? His lawyer is a mob lawyer.
He tells the story of his first divorce, where his soon to be ex and her lawyer arrive at his lawyers’ office. When the female lawyer realizes whom she is dealing with, she basically told her client that my buddy would be getting everything. And he did!
Sometimes it is who you know.
lzozozozolzozo
the reason that children are taken from men is that
men have assets
which the berneneke state can get the mom to transfer
via da benenrke police orce zlzzolzo
from men
to womenz and da statesz zlozzlzo
A bit of dating advice from the left coast:
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2012/11/27/wedding-rings-are-chick-magnets/
@Badger: You’re exactly right. I was 10 minutes away, but calling me would be an admission of failure (or of need, which would be the same thing). And the cop she ended up talking to was very relieved when I figured out what was going on (she unknowingly pocket-dialed me while talking to the cop) and picked my son up almost 2 miles away from the police station she had taken him to.
@whatever: Certainly, to hear her tell it, the twice-divorced guy IS a way better catch, almost exclusively because he is more overtly “spiritual.” (He is less educated, makes less money (though he does own more property), lives in the sticks, and is short.) He is a lay pastor (with no formal Bible education at all, and in a denomination with loosely defined teachings that are very different from what she is used to and has professed to believe all her life); he is willing to pray with her (or anyone) at the drop of a hat; and he has big plans for various missionary endeavors and other religious activities (including — wait for it — marriage counseling and divorce recovery ministries). In addition to this external spirituality, there have been miraculous/magical events that have confirmed to her that he is the one: they should never have “met” online because each was outside the other’s (alleged) 150-mile search radius, and there was at least one time when his telephone prayer for her was answered even as they spoke. So this is obviously God’s will. And her friends agree because she’s so obviously happy now. What I would call significant red flags (an understatement), she calls lies or misunderstandings or jealous grousings: two previous divorces; an affair with the woman who became his second wife while still married to the first (but that was a long time ago); strained relationships with his 2 children and 2 step-children; a confirmed incident of physically assaulting his second wife in anger (not striking her, but still much more physical than she would ever have tolerated from me); etc. Only having spent time with him every other weekend when he makes the 400-mile drive to visit, I’m sure, has left her less than fully informed about what it’s really like to actually live with him.
@8oxer: A big part of me not only expects but actively hopes that the “better catch” ends up likewise ripped off and abandoned, though I doubt the marriage will last long enough for him to be ripped off of much. Instead, I expect she’ll be the one most hurt economically, because she’s going to have to quit her half-decent job to move, and she won’t find (or want) a replacement job in the new location. So when she wises up to him or he to her, she’ll be unemployed and 400 miles from everything and everyone she knows. They really do seem to deserve each other.
Ethical:
“whether upper middle class men had less to fear from divorce laws and therefore would have less a reason to care about men’s rights. Because if divorce was rarely unfair for him he wouldn’t see men’s rights as being in his interest.”
Boxer has this pretty well in hand. But I’d just add that for the upper middle class, it probably depends on many factors: the children and their ages, the relationships between the spouses’ extended families, the money situation, how the husband’s job and wife’s job (if any) will be affected, the tolerability of the living situation between the spouses; and the status hit each will take.
Among the upper middle class and upper classes, status is important. Marriage is an important ritual. Among these SES groups, men in their late 30s and up who have never been married are looked on with some curiosity at best. They are considered odd or abnormal, and are constantly explaining they are not gay (if in fact they aren’t). Divorce carries stigma and is to be avoided if at all possible because it represents failure. More often than not in a UMC or upper class divorce, somebody did something really, really wrong to cause the divorce, and usually that something involves some minor scandal which causes gasps and hushed conversations in the old hens’ groups: infidelity, illegal conduct, or some kind of addiction.
The “traditional family” model of marriage is where the husband gets royally screwed. Many (an ever shrinking number, but still many nonetheless) UMC families live the so-called “traditional family” model of father as sole breadwinner and mother as stay-at-home mom. Before marriage she had a career in a low paying field which she promptly gave up to be a SAHM. He has advanced in his career and after 10 to 15 years of marriage has tripled his salary. If the marriage busts up at this point, husband is going to be paying out the nose. Since she has not worked in a decade or more, she will get at least a couple of years of alimony. There’s no way he’ll get custody of the kids because he’s been working his ass off and still will be, and won’t have time for child care. Any court will look at husband’s situation and ask “How will you have any time to take care of children?” So he will pay child support as well. The combined alimony and child support, plus the fact that he will pay both his lawyers and hers, means he’s out at least half his after-tax income, and it’s usually more than that.
And all of this is without regard to any fault. She can run train on a football team on the 11:00 news in full view of the entire public, with videotaped evidence of her flagrant infidelity; she can file the papers asking for a divorce from her husband after her infidelity; and she’ll still get alimony and child support. She is rewarded for breaking the rules and her contract with her husband; he is punished for following the rules and for honoring his end of the bargain.
What had been a good, comfortable living for a husband, wife and children; is now decimated and being spread among two households. Moreover, the unfairness is obvious: She no longer wants to be married to the man; and is rewarded for her exit from the contract with half the marital assets. To such a wife, the children are a commodity which represent a stream of income, rather than human beings who will be irreparably harmed.
So yes, UMC and upper class men have much to fear from the divorce laws.
Speaking of college aged women, better educated and lower divorce rates.
I wonder how that is going to work out long term, with college women apparently getting reasonably high n counts in college and waiting till later in life to marry. Perhaps they will all end up unmarried, high n (n > 4 or so iirc) is a strong predictor for divorce though.
So even if “education” (BTW does anybody break that down by degree?) is a predictor for low divorce risk, the current crop of college girls would seem to be high risks.
Fun times to come I suspect.
Jason:
College aged women and how it is working out for them in the marriage world?
A lot of them are racking up high Ns. But the stats Dalrock routinely finds and offers up are showing that most of these women are still getting married; only at greater ages. Some of them might be carouselers, a few are not. And apparently men are still marrying these women as they alight from the carousel; but again are doing so at older ages. So it still appears to be true that women really can have their cake and eat it too: They really can rack up high Ns and still find men willing to marry them.
What seems to be happening is:
1. They’re still marrying but at older ages.
2. They have fewer children because they’re older when they get married.
3. Most of them don’t have bastards because of the stigma.
4. They divorce at slightly lower rates.
5. A third of female college graduates will marry men who don’t have college degrees; in effect “marrying down”. This is probably going to continue, I think.
6. These women are going to shoulder more and more of the burdens of supporting their families. Since they have educations equal or superior to those of their husbands; they’ll have to carry those burdens.
Jason says:
December 9, 2012 at 10:17 pm
Women who descend from the professional class (so-called UMC women whose parents were doctors, accountants, pharmacists, veterinarians,engineers, chemists, small businesspersons etc,) have had an almost non-existent birthrate since 1978 which has been masked by the largely unchanged birthrate among the generational wealthed class who marry at 21 and stay married.
Many people tend to lump UMC people in with the upper class, but there is a nearly impenetrable ceiling overtop the UMC, as you say, their promiscuity in university, delayed marriage, snarky attitudes (nearly all of the feminists that infect the internet are part of this social class) and overall unpredictability makes them of a totally different breed, and fortunately, are a vanishing population. UMC divorce rates are not upper class divorce rates.
Simply put, the white UMC of women who have now stabbed their potential husbands in the back by taking their positions in universities through programs like Title IX will either have to marry down and sink back into the working class (because lets be honest, the middle class is gone in the anglosphere, solid union-based pensioned manufacturing jobs are as dead as the dodo in the anglosphere) or die with no offspring.
Women’s consumer greed destroyed the middle class, and their ambition has almost destroyed the UMC, A white university educated UMC-descended woman is probably the single most dangerous and destructive force in the nation today, both in societal long term viability, and in the radfem hatred and destruction they have wreaked on their male cohort since the 70s.
Has anyone else noticed that in a sweeping generalization, if you find a woman who isn’t insane in the “All women are crazy yo.” sense, that she probably has an advanced STEM degree? I certainly don’t have a large enough sample size to come to any conclusions, but of the handful of women I know who have their shit together and seem rational, it’s true.
Jason et al,
Check out yet another article from an aging educated woman bemoaning “after I spent all this time becoming so awesome, there’s no more men!” Girl has zero awareness of the extremely low desirability of the women in her elite social circle. She even includes a primary-source photo of her gaggle dressed ready to slut it up. They must have been sick the day they taught self-awareness at school.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/12/05/why-are-so-many-professional-millennial-women-unable-to-find-dateable-men/
Makes me think of:
Ahh of course, what “where are all the good men” whinefest be without the veiled homophobia and allusions to the problem that just too damn many men are ‘teh gay’
I’m so so sorry that those dumb misogynist gay men are oppressing you dearie.
editalm – “men really need to take charge of their women”… I hope you see the inside of an ambulance then ER and then you go directly to a jail cell. Your crime? standing up and taking charge of your woman. She called it domestic violence. No evidence required for her to have you arrested and the white knights find it necessary to beat you, cuff you, beat you some more, patch you up and then throw you in cage with human-like animals who hear you are a wife beater, child molester, rapist… come back and tell us about responsibility after that, bitch.
From the comments of the Forbes article:
Dear Larissa, I hate to break it to you, but your requirements from men are actually stringent enough that they eliminate about 93% of the male 25-34 population. Statistically speaking, you really are too picky. For a full break-down of the numbers including citations for all of them, please see my response: http://cocktailsfortwo.tumblr.com/post/37289475605/why-are-so-many-professional-millennial-women-unable-to
Those two songsters remind me of Flight of the Concordes.
Badger says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:46 pm
“my wife blew that up when she completely alienated the 14-year old during one of her weekends with him. (He threw a tantrum when they were out running errands; on her attorney’s advice, she took him to the police station for a talking to. He ran away and they have never really reconciled since.) ”
I was called to a woman’s house just last week and the heroic single mom with the 9YO male child, throwing a temper tantrum, wanted me to “scare him” with a threat of jail if he did not calm down and obey mommy.
I asked her who told her to call and make this request?…the kids shrink …
I told her in no!!! Then I asked where the boys father was…the indignant woman said, “that’s not important”; I said apparently it is.
She said, “if you are not going to do what I ask, you can leave”…adios maam!
So yes Badger, apparently this is some new feminist thing to use the cops as stand in fathers for failing single mothers.
My God, we are losing our society!
@Badger,Thanks that was a fun read.
@unicornhunter, that was a wonderful application,of math.
@Buck, How may cops would go along with that request?
@UnicornHunter:
The women that have a much better level of self-awareness (which is really the trait that makes a relationship stable in the modern environment) than the norm will likely be fully capable of a real advanced degree. However, this is still a very small fraction of the total.
In other news, I’m agreeing with TFH more and more each day. As the social science on the way the genders operate differently piles up, the harder his points will be for the normal person to refute. That’s going to make for a rough future.
Only child of a single white woman, here. She said shed call the cops on me when i was a kid in the 90’s. It worked, i believed her. Wow thanks for putting that into perspective for me.
@Buck and @Joshua: I had no idea the “call the cops” advice was more than just the isolated idiocy of my wife’s attorney. It came out of nowhere from my perspective. It’s not like the idiot attorney was a feminist woman attorney. Instead, the attorney was male, a professing Christian, in his 60’s, and a father of at least one boy himself. Apparently he drank the Kool-Aid somewhere along the line. Buck, I applaud your handling of that call-out.
The first thing I would like to say is that I am the ONLY person I have ever seen point out that divorce rates for men of higher income or higher education are lower. Given how obvious this is, it is more than a little weird. I’m not the defective one for having to scream “YEAH! SEE THAT KING OVER THERE? NO CLOTHES PEOPLE, NO CLOTHES!”
Exactly. “whatever” appears to be speaking from his own anecdotal experience, not from real empirical evidence. Many studies clearly show certain demographics of women have a decreased tendency to divorce, not just that all women have a lesser tendency to divorce upper income men. Dalrock quotes Herrnstein and Murray, who appear to claim high IQ plays a big part in defining the demographic of women that divorces much less. Others avoid discussion of IQ and claim the demographic of low divorcing women is defined by being college educated. But the point is that clearly the man’s income isn’t the only factor. So it doesn’t follow that SOME demographics of women won’t come with an increased risk of frivolously divorcing men with good incomes even though men with good incomes are overall divorced far less.
So you are going to throw hypergamy under the bus to support the prime directives that
1.American fake “religious” people who haven’t a single bone of compassion or even a working pagan sense of justice in their whole bodies are better.
2.Rich people are better.
3.People who have gone to college are better.
The primary reason to pick these groups is because they are high status in America so naturally they must be better in every possible way and in all things. EVERY possible way. In ALL THINGS. Right? And yes, I imagine in the writers area church-attendance is required and failure to do so will be severely socially punished.
Well, let’s look at college. No, women with a higher opinion of themselves, and with a higher N have a HIGHER chance of divorce, not lower. And yes, N tends to go up quite a bit for women in college compared to women of the same age group not living in college. The only two factors pushing divorce rate down for college education in the WOMAN is increased age and higher IQ.
Increased age, however, is not that great a “feature” in a wife. The most likely reason IQ lowers divorce is also Hypergamy, with women refusing to marry men less intelligent than them. But regardless of the mechanism, a high IQ woman with no college education is superior to a high IQ woman with college education.
Notice how I haven’t talked about the extreme negative effects if college chick has studied “feminism”.
So you have predicted the EXACT OPPOSITE OF REALITY. College Education(for the FEMALE)=higher divorce chance
The better question is why have you predicted the opposite of what one would expect?
Also, by restricting oneself to rich women(small amount of the population), college educated(not better, worse), and “religious” women(Daughters of the King) you have suggested that people greatly restrict their choices without even really improving their chances at all.
PS:
To those reporting their wife went crazy and divorced them despite the fact that she had no chance whatsoever to do better. Well, I would say that was the case with more than half of the divorces for the +100k and college education group. So yes, apparently women will even ignore hypergamy for that idiot dream of EPL. BUT, and this is a big but, the decreased rates can be largely, or entirely, explained by the fact that even many “unhappy” women are able to figure out just how bad an idea divorce actually is.
My parents did – the second time. The first time I shacked up with a divorcee (her kids were grown), we’d been together for a while before they met her. They treated her as part of the family for the several years we were together, and never gave any indication that it bothered them. The second time, when I was about to bring a single mother of 5 to a family event, they put their foot down. My mom even asked me, “What, do you think you’re going to marry this girl?” When I said yes, she just looked at me like I was nuts. Then I found out how much it had bothered them the first time, because other people would ask about us or assume we were married, and they had to admit we weren’t.
Parents need to speak up a lot more often and tell their kids, even adult kids, when they’re screwing up. My parents tried to set a good example for us and let that be our guide without a lot of explicit “do this and don’t do that” speeches, and that worked pretty well for the most part (none of us got into drugs, for instance, even though they never sat us down for “the drug talk”), but some things need to be said. I didn’t go home and immediately break things off, but that was the beginning of the end because it made me see that I was fooling myself and it wasn’t going to magically work out someday.
@Buck
Yes, it apparently a fairly widespread practice for mothers to be advised to call the police on their children. My ex routinely calls the police on one of my sons, presumably at the behest of his and her counselor.
This is entirely logical, though, in a society that actively encourages women in invoke the state to detroy their husbands.
@deti regarding the following…
What had been a good, comfortable living for a husband, wife and children; is now decimated and being spread among two households. Moreover, the unfairness is obvious: She no longer wants to be married to the man; and is rewarded for her exit from the contract with half the marital assets. To such a wife, the children are a commodity which represent a stream of income, rather than human beings who will be irreparably harmed.
This is my life. My wife and I were (fingers crossed) headed for a fairly comfortable life until she blew it all to hell, but she literally had no one in her life willing to tell her what she was doing to herself, and more importantly, her kids.
One consideration to add, if only anecdotal. It matters with whom a woman interacts insofar as even UMC types socialize at least somewhat across economic strata (some up but more down, my guess). When a woman of lower status destroys a marriage, she may not in fact be foregoing as much as a UMC, because she does not have much accumulated wealth to share in, and probably has had to contribute more in the way of income to the household anyway. The lower gets in the ear of the UMC, and well, there you go.
@whatever
You certainly aren’t the only one. I’ve brought this up many times. What I think you are missing though is the factor of IQ. I went through this in some detail a while back in this post.
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Jason says:
December 10, 2012 at 3:34 am
@Buck, How may cops would go along with that request?
Jason, I would guess most cops would do as requested.
First, many Agencies are “community policing” organizations, so their respective chief would discipline a cop for not being community orientated…read…doing as the public asked!
Second, many times just tossing out a bit of BS will make a problem go away, at least for the here-n-now, so the cop feels, hey, what does it hurt.
Third, subterfuge is a recognized enforcement tactic. Sometimes a little deception can work wonders.
I caught a 7YO doing graffiti, pretty innocent stuff, but criminal damage none-the-less. I called the parents who asked if I would give little johnny a scare, so by agreement, the kid got the whole convict treatment…cell door slammed shut, camera flash mug shot (no film), a stern desk sergeant speaking loudly about the prison bus will be here in a few days, hope the kid likes stale bread and black coffee…the ruse went on for perhaps 20 minutes , until the parents could collect johnny from the station.
The kid was scared straight, apologized profusely, scrubbed the graffiti off the victims garage.
(this ruse was by agreement, OF BOTH PARENTS, and very controlled…and the kid did actually commit a minor offense).
I venture to guess he’ll never do graffiti again.
When I was 5, I got caught shoplifting 1 cent candy from the local five-n-dine…the store owner knew my dad and gave him a call. I got the “treatment” from the store owner, a local cop and my dad…I’m 50+ and can tell you, I’ve never taken another thing…EVER!
For 30+ years I’ve had parents point to me and tell children, “if you don’t behave he’ll arrest you”…I just cringe every time I hear that. If I have a chance I usually tell the kids, no, I’m here to help you and protect you, I’m sure you’re a good little boy/girl, look how big and strong you are, you can help me with bad guys.
So, in answer to your question, if I thought talking to the child would do positive work, I’m here to help, but if I’m to be used as a foil for a substandard parent, then NO!!!
Determining whether there are other forces in addition to hypergamy behind the decreased divorce rates among the upper middle class does not equate to discarding the idea of hypergamy.
I wonder if that’s an opinion based on anecdotal experience again, or if that’s actually the consensus of all the studies he has reviewed? So far his reasoning has appeared to be based solely on his own anecdotal experience. Not that anyone’s anecdotal experience should be ignored, but it’s important to know the difference between what happens for you and maybe your self-selected group of cohorts, and what the evidence shows is generally the case. This is particularly true when assessment of one’s own anecdotal experience is heavily clouded with emotion. Typically one sees this behavior most often in feminists. Not knowing the difference between anecdote and evidence is one of the key reasons it’s impossible to argue with them using facts.
@Unicorn Hunter
That was an excellent numbers based breakdown of the dating prospects for the young lady in the article. Frankly, it was shocking to see how much their opportunities are decreased, especially when they add in some non negotiable requirements.
But I cannot help but wonder how that same analysis would apply to this discussion on UMC divorce.
Two thoughts come to mind. First, that more of these UMC types do have a clear understanding that their status and lifestyle will take a major hit if they go EPL on their husbands. I think Deti pointed this out. Or maybe they are smarter and realize the same thing. So they grit it out.
But the second thought relates to the same application of math to the situation of older divorcees who aspire to or come from a solid middle class, upper middle class lifestyle. Many of these clueless ladies dumped their good earning husband and walked out the door convinced that a pile of handsome, fun, successful men were just waiting to sweep them into their arms.
Yes, this has been discussed at length by Dalrock in earlier posts and in many threads on this blog. But I don’t recall any hard number analysis like Unicorn conducted. I don’t even know if this is possible.
But I do know this. If the numbers of acceptable men as calculated by Unicorn is low for picky, college educated, single women in the 25-34 age range just think about what the marketplace (and numbers) look like for UMC or middle class, college educated, EPL divorcees in their forties.
Most women like this don’t appear to have softened their requirements for a man. If anything, their herd mentality creates even more hurdles some prospective man has to clear. Couple that with the fact that most single higher earning men in their forties are single due to divorce and may not have any interest in getting married again.
Talk about the proverbial needle in the haystack.
you guys are talking about which demographic of females is most or least likely to divorce, but shouldn’t we also factor in their proclivity to cheat if the math doesn’t bear out a good divorce plan?
Many women who want out and/or are unhaaaapy (no longer attracted) but cannot leave with the golden parachute will often choose affairs as a way to fulfill that gnawing void inside or resolve the conflict of alpha f*cks and beta bucks.
I would speculate that a great many women take this option in lieu of divorce, which is equally heinous but tough to chart or count, given its nature. I’d further speculate that the UMC women would have more resource and opportunity to do so… and their hamsters would be highly skilled in justifying any behavior they wish.
@Interested, that’s not my analysis. I just found the link in the Forbes article.
I don’t know the exact age range – 45? 50? – but somehere I saw the number on what percentage of unattached men that age were divorced, and it was barely “most”: 53%.
There are a (very) few widowers, but ~45% are never-married. The popular perception, i.e., the perspective of divorced women aged 35-40+, does not reflect this.
@Hurting
I think that you are right about the reasons that a lower middle class woman may destroy a marriage. There is not much financial benefit to being the wife of lower middle class man. I have a friend contemplating divorce now. She works long hours, does most of the housework and child care and finds her marriage unfulfilling emotionally. In that situation a husband can easily become more trouble than he is worth in the eyes of his wife. If she divorces, not much about her financial situation will change, she will still work long hours and still have to do most of the housework and child care.
Why didn’t they include clear and distinct separate categories? A biological parents category (nuclear family), then step father, then boyfriend, then gay and lesbian etc?
Without knowing ‘who is who’ it renders the data worthless. We already know from Hospital Data half or more of children are born to unwed mothers.
I say:
@whatever
The first thing I would like to say is that I am the ONLY person I have ever seen point out that divorce rates for men of higher income or higher education are lower. Given how obvious this is, it is more than a little weird. I’m not the defective one for having to scream “YEAH! SEE THAT KING OVER THERE? NO CLOTHES PEOPLE, NO CLOTHES!”
Bizarre reply:
You certainly aren’t the only one. I’ve brought this up many times. What I think you are missing though is the factor of IQ. I went through this in some detail a while back in this post.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/whistling-through-the-graveyard/
Your article at no time points out that college educated women marry college educated men and because the man is college educated hypergamy demands, in big red letters that are on fire, that the woman not dump him. It continues focusing on the woman when the almost entire(or entire) reason for the decline in divorce rate is because THE MAN is of higher value.
Other posters have made a good point that the fact that the man cannot be easily replaced doesn’t stop the woman from being a horrible to the man and running around behind his back.
Dalrock —
Be careful not to ignore biological differences, which are huge. For one thing, it is just a biological fact that if the child is born into a single parent home, the child with be with the mother only. Among animal species, instances of single mothering probably surpass instances of single fathering by 1000 to 1. Among most species, single fathering will not happen, ever. Single mothering is the norm in possibly the majority of species.
Mothers want to mother. It is in the genes. I suspect that in most instances, when the father wants to do fathering, they become part of vast 68% that have joint parenting.
The 4% where fathers have sole custody are instances where the father has a stronger parenting drive than the mothers. Such an inversion is surely exceedingly rare. By analogy, it is exceedingly rare for the wife to be taller than her husband because the average height of a woman is perhaps two standard deviations below the average height of a man.
My wife and I have four and when we fight over the kids, it is always because one of us wants the other to please do more child care. She would never get mad that I am hogging the child care. I laugh just thinking about it. If I am hogging the childcare, my wife would be in a state of bliss.
To me, sole custody is hardly a victory at all. Just a ticket to huge work.
Continuing the height analogy, just as it is rare for a short man to be paired with a substantially taller woman, it is rare for a highly responsible man to be paired with a woman so irresponsible that she would abandon her children.
Keep in mind also that most of what drives the single parenting stats is the behavior of the poor and minorities. In inner cities, single mothering is just the accepted norm. The modal and median single mother in the US is poor and/or minority. The idea that this representative single mother is using an attorney and the legal system to keep her children’s father away beggars belief.
@Dan- you’ve made some terrible errors in your observations.
@Cail Corishev
Your experience of dating single mothers interests me greatly.
I think part of the problem is firstly a form of excessive liberal-reasonableness where no one wants to point out the obvious. Secondly in my parents case they came from the generation where divorce was unknown, so there was the assumption that any marriage their children might make – whoever it was with – would be for life. They really seem to have believed that a wedding band was a form of super-glue, such that – for example – when my brother and his fiancee separated (neither he not her had been married or had any children – they had however been living together) my father’s brilliant attitude was to see it as shame on the family – and him – and that had my brother and his fiancee married that would have prevented the separation and breaking of the engagement(!) It upset my father far more than my brother, who then not only had to deal with the break-up but also endless carping from my Father – my brother caught as it were between a rock and a hard place – unable to keep either my father or his fiancee haaaaapy.
Come to think of it I knew loads of single mothers, far more than single women and there is a reason for this, not unrelated to my previous post on this thread. This is the situation: in those days the average age of marriage for a woman was just under twenty-one: this meant that if (like myself) you are at college studying, there is no realistic chance of marriage until say mid-twenties, but by then all that were left were the fatties, the odd-balls, and the sluts – there were a few. One can only date what is available … and so. That is not the situation now, indeed (as we know) the very obverse is what occurs. Not only are there more college educated women than men but they are unlikely to marry until their late twenties and beyond. There really should be no excuse now to date single mums.
@Dan
The 4% where fathers have sole custody are instances where the father has a stronger parenting drive than the mothers. Such an inversion is surely exceedingly rare.
Per Samuel’s comment – please educate yourself to the realities of the domestic relations travesty in the U.S. Dalrock has well-documented the truly perverse incentives and faulty logic, up to and including the idea that men are less nurturing than women, that produce this result.
Indeed it is precisely the fact that women in the overwhelming number of divorces choose to destroy their families and drive fathers effectively out of the picture that is the most glaring bit of prima facie evidence that women, in fact, do not love their children as much as their fathers. What they value, above all else, is their temporal happiness – welfare of the father and children be damned. The idea that women are superior to men in either their aptitude or inclination to parent children is bullsh*t on toast.
Also, with reference to your specific comment about innate parenting instinct, even if it were true, men apply logic to the situation from a division of labor standpoint within the marriage. That is, men (and presumably some women) recognize men’s comparative advantage in the activities other than direct childrearing, namely paid employment. I would argue that it is quite possible and probably likely that men in many cases offer an absolute and a comparative advantage over women in every measurable respect of maintaining a household with children. in other words, a husband could very likely be a better nurturer and a better provider, but to the extent that this hypothetical man’s delta in the latter category exceeds that in the former, he should logically serve/lead from the position of provider.
Once the marriage is off the table (typically as a result of divorce initiated by the mother), a different calculus must be employed, one which accounts for the fact that neither parent will spend as much time parenting the children as in an intact household dues to the greater demands of running two households; at a minimum there will be two sets of chores to do as the result of maintaining two households, and in most cases, one or both parties will likely have to seek more gainful employment. To the extent that the demands on the man are already high pre-divorce (he’s likely already working full-time and contributing mightily to both the non-childrearing and childrearing aspects of running a home anyway), he is likely already oriented to operate more efficiently and handle the additional aforementioned workload better.
Child custody is nothing more than a racket run by self-interested insiders to benefit women in their quest to extract confiscatory amounts of wealth from men.
Thank you for proving my point about the average person’s ignorance of the state of deomestic relations law in this country.
@T
I think that you are right about the reasons that a lower middle class woman may destroy a marriage. There is not much financial benefit to being the wife of lower middle class man. I have a friend contemplating divorce now. She works long hours, does most of the housework and child care and finds her marriage unfulfilling emotionally. In that situation a husband can easily become more trouble than he is worth in the eyes of his wife. If she divorces, not much about her financial situation will change, she will still work long hours and still have to do most of the housework and child care.
And when she talks to her UMC friend, the one who really does have something to lose, they will both commiserate about their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their husbands. This gets, or keeps, the ‘dump the loser’ mentality ball rolling. Layer on top of that the advice of interested parties (attorneys and counselors who profit from the destruction) and the ignorant, and you’ve got a prescription of UMC family destruction.
Even in your example, the wife views the husband as more trouble than he is worth, but her view could still be faulty. Unless he’s an absolute deadbeat of the first order, there is no way that they’d all be truly better off than were they to stay together. It’s just that comparatively, the fall socioeconomically for the UMC couple might be greater on percentage terms.
Dan
I think you need some time to research, observe, rethink, regroup, and then report back.
@Boxer, deti:
Other comments in Dalrock’s blog, as well as this main stream media article echo what you say about social stigma being important in discouraging frivolous divorces (at least without a better husband-in-waiting on hand) among the upper middle class.
The social stigma of divorce of course varies heavily with the community in which the husband and wife live and the child-centeredness of the wife’s own parents. That stigma in addition to UMC men marrying women who are more responsible (all responsible women are not college educated, but more women who have a college education are perceived to be responsible … responsible women are less likely to blow up the marriage without a good reason) and the fact that there are fewer men that would be considered upgrades could account for marriage being statistically far safer for UMC men.
As for whether divorce laws discriminate less against UMC men … that’s unknown (to me at least) except as far as wealth allowing individuals to navigate the legal system better in general. Divorce may be just as unfair for UMC men. But given that they don’t tend to be crippled for life by it to the same extent less wealthy men are, I wouldn’t be surprised if the meme “take it like a man and don’t complain” turned out to be fairly popular among the current generation of UMC males, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those UMC males polled even more heavily pro-feminist/anti MRA than the general population. Looking at the viral growth rate in the number of searches for manosphere on Google Trends however, the next generation of UMC males may see things very differently.
she literally had no one in her life willing to tell her what she was doing to herself, and more importantly, her kids.
This is something crucial. We have some friends whose wife is exploding the marriage as we speak. 25 years, we were friends since day one. No infidelity. A few problems from each side, but a woman who “just cant take it anymore”
May I compliment my wife. She sent a message to her friend. Agonizing over the text of it, my wife sought my counsel on it several times prior to sending. The message was one of Christian boldness, in my opinion EXACTLY what should be said. Wife of course was worried, saying to me well, she hadnt walked in the womens shoes to which I ask what that has to do with Biblical truth. She finally sent the message, and has not heard from the woman since.
In a turnabout , a decade ago it was largely the husband of that couple who gave a blunt talk to my wife that resulted in her coming around and asking to reconcile the marriage she was in the process of blowing up, and to that mans credit ripping some scales off her eyes that truly changed our whole dynamic.
It requires God’s intervention buttressed by at least one strong and straightforward person saying truth.
Women holding women to account worry sick that they havent walked in the womans shoes. That if the poor dear is unhappy, well dam the torpedoes full speed and sink all nearby vessels…..kids, the family economy, friends and family…whatever the hell it takes to make this women HAPPY.
This is the one reason I disagree with the comment, dont waste time with women, with talking to women and getting them on board. This one role, a woman holding another to account on dovorce is a rare, but uniquely needed thing.
How we got to where we are:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/bargaining-in-the-shadow-of-the-law/
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/threatpoint/
@empathologism: You are so right — both that intervention by other women (and maybe men) is necessary and that it is rare. I commend your wife and the other husband for making the effort.
In my case, there were three responses from women who have been our friends over the years. A relatively small group cheered her every move, including recently attending or Facebook congratulating her on her foolish remarriage. Another group professed to disagree with what she was doing — both the divorce and the remarriage — but declined to make any attempt to dissuade her because “she’s made her mind up and it won’t do any good.” This group included women who had been mentors of hers at various points. The third group — the largest group — just disappeared.
The common reaction is to give people their privacy when word gets out about a divorce in the works. My thought is that, at least for Christian couples (whose divorce can and should be judged against an objective standard of right and wrong), they’re not entitled to privacy in a divorce, at least not until it’s been determined by a church authority that the divorce has a biblical basis. Christian friends, out of love rather than nosiness, have an obligation to inquire about the basis for the divorce and, if the basis isn’t biblical, to say so and to attempt to steer the initiator away from the cliff.
@empathologism, David…
I could not even get my pastor to chime in – and per the mandate of the canons of the Roman Catholic Church, he is absolutely required to render judgment on even a separation, much less a divorce.
From my experience, about 90% of the people close to a divorcing couple are not troubled much by it beyond offering nominal support, 5% will egg it on (typically the misery loves company crowd) and another 5% will offer meaningful support to deal with the it. Effectively 0% will make any attempt at fraternal correction. In my case I know of only one person, a friend of my wife’s of more than 20 years who, so far as I can tell, did try. My wife has since written her out of her life.
Tonight the first collection call came (creditors looking to reach my wife who has destroyed a FICO score that once peaked over 800.
Do they give data on where custody was contested? I think this would make the chart more powerful as there is an assumption that men don’t desire custody _as much_. I’d actually agree with the assumption (especially where cads and not beta providers are concerned), but that’s only a gut feel.
@Hurting: Your pastor’s failure/refusal to do anything is shameful and disappointing, but not surprising, unfortunately. I commend your wife’s friend’s willingness to try. The fact that it didn’t work isn’t surprising (absolutely amazing how self-persuaded these divorcing women are), but at least she didn’t merely assume that it wouldn’t do any good so as to avoid the unpleasantness.
Here’s an article by a church leader who actually gets the benefit of church discipline for the non-initiating spouse: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/04/19/discipline-grace-for-the-offended/?comments#comments.
Also sorry to hear about the credit damage. I forgot to mention that earlier as one of the ways I was more fortunate than some/most in my position: our pre-divorce battles over money had already destroyed our credit and had us in foreclosure, so she didn’t get any assets in the divorce because there weren’t any.
@David J.
Full disclosure – I suppose it’s possible that my pastor actually thought the divorce was licit, but I sincerely doubt it, as I assume he would have eased me out of my church ministries. To date the opposite has been true – he’s asked me to do more and more visible things. While he is an easygoing man, he would not tolerate scandal. I think it’s more of the post-Vatican II influence in the Catholic Church in America. He would get no support from the diocese (I know, I checked) were he to have stepped in. It may have done no good, but it wouldn’t have hurt.
So far the only credit hit to be realized is on my wife’s end, and I’m speculating, although she’s said she’s headed for bankruptcy. Two years ago we had a household with a net worth (exclusive of home equity and the PV of my state pension) of around $250K and a household income in the $110K range. We gave the house away (sold it a year ago almost to the day, ‘luckily’ leaving closing with a check instead of bringing one). I have more of my share of what’s left of the retirement accounts, but that’s not saying much.
Sorry to hear of your situation. There but for the grace of God go I.
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@GKChesterton
I’m not sure what you could glean from the data even if you could get it. My final decree looks like I conceded custody – and in fact I did, but that’s only because I was bargaining in the shadow of the law, to borrow a phrase. If you dug a little deeper, you’d see that I did fight at first, but I suspect a lot of shell-shocked men give up right away at the recommendation of their attorney.
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