Reading an article on CNN about marriage trends and how middle American marriages are in severe decline and now resemble stats of poor african americans.
Wilcox’s study finds that over the last 30 years, among what the report calls “Middle Americans” (the 58% of moderately educated Americans who have a high school degree), the proportion of children born outside of marriage skyrocketed from 13% to 44% while the portion of adults in an intact first marriage dropped from 73% to 45%.
Meanwhile, among financially well-off Americans (the 30% who have a college degree or higher), the proportion of children born outside of marriage climbed only slightly from 2% to 6%, the divorce rate dropped from 15% to 11%, and intact first marriages dropped from 73% to 56%.
In sum, the relationships of Middle Americans increasingly resemble those of the poor, while marriages among upscale Americans are getting better in many respects.
Marriage just isn’t that important anymore. It’s been a cultural shift happening for some time now.
I’d say if asked, the majority of people here would prefer not to be married. Hell, in the US sometimes it’s puts you at a tax disadvantage. (see Marriage Penalty)
It really depends on how you were raised. Those with strong family relationships (like you Bing) see the advantages of marriage, while those with fragmented families see it as a burden on life. I know plenty of people who grew up with divorced parents who went though hardships as kids and simply don’t want that in their lives.
I have strong family relationships and I have no desire to be married. Signing that contract brings a million negatives to the table, and no positives that I care about. IMO it’s outdated, unnecessary, and a tool of manipulation that favors, and is used by, today’s American women.
I can’t imagine how useless ones life would be without raising chidlren in a loving home… Mind you, i would agree that a marriage is not essentially for that.
I wonder what the long term impact will be of the erosion of marriage in Western Culture…
Eh, it’s not for everyone. Most of the time, at least for 20 years or so, your life gets back burnered to worry about theirs. I like living for me. There’s like an instant transformation in people from HS and college and stuff that I haven’t seen in awhile on facebook…as soon as they pop out a kid they start sucking really hard. I would consider having kids, but not til I could have a nanny type to deal with anything that wakes you up or smells bad.
I think that any home that only stays intact because of marriage, and wouldn’t work without it, isn’t a loving home. If you don’t want to be together but you don’t want to give up half of your stuff, or are just too lazy to go through all of the messy proceedings, you’re obviously not happy together. When you eliminate the barriers to exit you keep both people trying hard. People, especially women, get comfortable and lazy in marriage and start playing the “I can do or not do whatever I want, if you don’t like it…divorce me” card, whereas without that contract, when both sides have the threat of leaving with nothing more than a “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out”, they’re in it because they want to be.
Fry knows about the Gini coefficient :eek: that MBA is paying off!
Here’s a map of the world in that regard, it’s pretty much what you would expect. Wonder how that stacks up with marriage numbers.
How are you determining that the middle class is shrinking by using the Gini Coefficient? And in what direction is it shrinking? Is the data reported in the US per household or per individual? I know it varies by country.
And before Bing tries to compare the US to CAN, in the US benefits & social assistance programs are not counted in the data but in CAN they are. Same with Europe. Countries with socialist tenants will always skew towards 0 when compared to capitalist countries.
I just find it really interesting from that map, the strong correlation between Gini and suck. Obviously there are some outliers, like the US and India, but that’s a damn good indicator for how much somewhere sucks to live.
I bet marriage is quite strong in Capetown. Maybe not interracial so much…
Because it doesn’t account for things like opportunity and growth of personal wealth over a lifetime. If you’re poor your whole life, it’s going to look more “equal” than say if you started a business, made investments and improved you and your families (to keep this on-topic) social standing.
Equality isn’t necessarily a good thing. If I’m making as much money as my dad at his age (equal) I won’t consider myself successful.
