
How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege? - nature24
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/upshot/how-did-marriage-become-a-mark-of-privilege.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fupshot&action=click&contentCollection=upshot&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
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mlrtime
Many men are understanding that marriage is a no win situation. You find
yourself working your entire life to support your wife and family only to have
a high percentage of ending in divorce. Your assets will be taken from you and
you will be lucky if you get 50% custody.

If you do not wand children there is no point in getting married.

~~~
moomin
You might want to investigate the "high percentage" figure. It's one of those
talking points that isn't really grounded in any solid numbers.

~~~
19guid
Per CDC (2014), the marriage rate in the United States is 6.9/1000 people
while the divorce rate is 3.2/1000 people. [1] I'd say that's very high.

1: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-
divorce.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm)

~~~
tomp
That's about 50%, which is the commonly quoted figure. However, IIRC that
figure is skewed significantly by second (and further) marriages (i.e. by
people who "like" getting divorced). The figures for first marriage are
somewhat lower.

~~~
moomin
The interesting thing is that you can't actually divide one number by the
other, because you don't know when the marriages began. What you actually need
is the data "how many marriages in 1980/1981 &c end in divorce"? The
information that a bunch of retired baby boomers are divorcing has little to
no relevance to 30-somethings getting married right now.

In particular, since fewer people are getting married than used to (the whole
point of the article), this is overstating the divorce rate.

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kop316
I wonder if this is also due to the high cost of the actual marriage ceremony.
A (cheap) engagement ring can cost over $1000, and can easily jump to $5-10K.
Then a traditional ceremony can easily be over $10K, with no upper bound on
how expensive it is. This was the cause of me no longer being with an ex, they
were already in debt $80k from school, but still wanted a ceremony that could
have easily cost $40K. I had no debt, and was unwilling go into that sort of
debt for a ceremony.

I think a lot of people see that as well, and realize they simply cannot go
into that sort of debt for a wedding ceremony.

EDIT: My point was more if that is expected of someone from their
family/significant other, that would certainly be major factor in not wanting
to get married. Wedding ceremonies can certainly be done affordably, and I
think it is smart to do that.

~~~
CalRobert
Perhaps those are the weddings we focus on and we forget all the cheap ones?
I've known quite a few people (myself included) who did it for a few hundred
quid (turned out Tuesdays were cheaper so we did it then at town hall).

Of course, it's cheaper if no family come. Remember, all those gifts they give
you are a social debt for which they will want to collect.

~~~
jk563
> Remember, all those gifts they give you are a social debt for which they
> will want to collect.

I feel that is a bit of a sweeping statement. I certainly don't expect
anything back for the gifts I've bought for friends and family for weddings, I
would be shocked if I were a unique case.

~~~
CalRobert
If someone gets you a gift, and then invites you to their own wedding a year
later, some non-insignificant percentage of the population will be offended if
you don't get _them_ a gift.

Of course, gifts are terrible if you just don't really want more stuff in your
life (I'm happy to take a pint...), and a massive exercise in value
destruction, but that's beside the whole social indebtedness bit of it.

I'm really fun at Christmas.

------
leggomylibro
Wow, this hasn't been up very long and I think the discussion here could
already use some more empathy. Looking at marriage as an institution is maybe
not the best way to approach the issues that people are going to try and bring
up in this sort of discussion. How about this recent piece from The Atlantic,
"Love in the Time of Individualism"?

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/love-
in-t...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/love-in-the-time-
of-individualism/540474/)

It seems two-pronged, to me. And people are gonna feel aggrieved, probably
rightly to some degree, no matter which side they wind up on. For women, men
are frustratingly even LESS likely to commit and stick around for any length
of time these days:

“It’s not that love is dead, but the sexual incentives for men to sacrifice
and commit have largely dissolved, spelling a more confusing and circuitous
path to commitment and marriage than earlier eras.”

And for men, the numbers are simply massively against you and you're facing a
huge time investment simply to meet one single person who probably won't even
like you that much - why would you bother?:

"Popular dating apps put women in the position of gatekeeping, whether
deliberately or not. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man
in possession of a smartphone will swipe right on basically everyone. This
forces women to be choosier about who they say yes to. Even if they also swipe
with abandon, they end up with more matches to sort through—yet more
gatekeeping."

So tl;dr, we're all (not) screwed. Of course, these sorts of pieces tend to
focus on traditional heterosexual relationships, so this all might dissolve
(maybe into similar or totally different issues) with LGBTQ relationships; I
don't pretend to know.

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bob_neumann
How incredibly frustrating: The correlation between marriage and the general
wellbeing of a middle class income is well-known. It leads folks like Ben
Shapiro and Larry Elder to say, "if you want to be middle class, 1. don't have
kids outside of marriage, and 2. keep some kind of full time job." Makes
perfect sense to me. However, the leftist NYT, reading the same correlation,
instead comes to the conclusion of, "Oh look, now those rotten rich people
have even taken MARRIAGE away from the poor people!" If that ain't fake news,
what is?

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diiaann
Most people I talk to assume that marriage is a boon for taxes. It is not. Our
current tax policy can penalize both low-income and high-income earners.

[https://taxfoundation.org/understanding-marriage-penalty-
and...](https://taxfoundation.org/understanding-marriage-penalty-and-marriage-
bonus/)

------
njharman
> “Women don’t want to take a risk on somebody who’s not going to be able to
> provide anything,”

That's such a fucked up sexist thought. It says woman are in control of
marriage, what men want is irrelevant. And that the role of men is provider.
Men belong at work and women belong in the kitchen, is that it?

~~~
ashark
Article's full of that. Mostly it's about how all these now-unemployed and
uneducated men aren't worth marrying. Which makes all the posts in this thread
about how it's caused by men not wanting to marry women because it's too risky
kinda funny. Article's all about too few men being marriage material.

They end on a hilariously useless and misguided piece of advice that wouldn't
be out of place in The Onion's version of this article:

> Mr. Wilcox suggests a bigger emphasis in high schools and pop culture on
> what’s known as the success sequence: degree, job, marriage, baby. “The idea
> is that if people follow that sequence, their odds of landing in poverty are
> much lower,” he said.

~~~
humanrebar
> The idea is that if people follow that sequence, their odds of landing in
> poverty are much lower.

Half of all babies are accidental, regardless of marital status. If sex is in
the equation before "degree" (it is), then the whole sequence is flawed.

~~~
ashark
I like that the advice is nearly indistinguishable from "be born into a family
where you'll be socialized to follow this pattern and provided resources to
help follow it and to help get you back on track if things go awry, and golly,
you probably won't be poor!"

~~~
humanrebar
He's not actually wrong. I just think leaving the word "sex" out of the
description misstates the actual problem. One could start following that
pattern, get pregnant in college, drop out, and be slightly better off than
having a baby in high school (since you check the "some college" option on the
application instead of "some high school").

If the problem is education and socialization, shouldn't the philanthropic
classes be educating teens more about the statistics involved in getting
pregnant and poverty rates? It seems like we're too busy not judging (which is
an admirable instinct) to be explicit in our culture about the relationship
between sexual activity, poverty, family structure, and pregnancy. We spend
tons of energy on all sorts of techniques to level playing fields and give
kids a leg up, but fail to broach this subject. If we think kids are mature
enough to decide to be sexually active, we should make sure they're educated
enough as well.

~~~
greglindahl
I don't know what sex education classes you had, but the ones I had (public
high school, late 1970s in the deep South) definitely mentioned the impact
that early childbearing had on education and lifetime income.

~~~
humanrebar
The ones I experienced were heavy on science and light on statistics and
social science. Also, I was speaking more broadly than just what was covered
in health class. We have smoking ads and drunk driving ads, but don't care to
publicize hard facts about other lifestyle decisions.

------
fictionfuture
Seems that the liability for men to get married is much higher now in the
event of a divorce. Also women are less dependant on men and more able to
control when and if they have children.

Everything else is irrelevant imo.

------
moomin
"As marriage has declined, though, childbearing has not, which means that more
children are living in families without two parents and the resources they
bring."

Er, no, it doesn't mean that at all. I mean, I 100% support anyone doing the
ridiculously hard job of raising a kid all by themselves, but just because
Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson aren't married it doesn't mean they aren't
committed to each other and their children.

Anyway, maybe the truth is: people don't have to get married, and it's
expensive to do so. I don't think there's any great mystery here.

~~~
technofire
> just because Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson aren't married it doesn't
> mean they aren't committed to each other and their children.

From the article:

"The decline in marriage was not offset by more couples living together."

------
stcredzero
Well, for one thing, getting married was something for everyone, including the
poor. In Meg Keane's _A Practical Wedding_ , there's a discussion about what
weddings were like in the beginning of the 20th century. It turns out that
what we consider a "normal" wedding was once the wedding only rich people
could afford.

[http://a.co/iC1AZMU](http://a.co/iC1AZMU)

Back then, a wedding happened at church or city hall, and there was a simple
stand-up reception at home. The Tappet Brothers warned to beware, "The Wedding
Industrial Complex." A lot of the "traditions" around weddings are
manufactured with the express purpose of getting more money out of you.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with a VP at my company about what
happened to going out to the ball game. It used to be something democratizing,
something even the poor could afford. Now, everything is jacked up in price,
starting with the ticket, and the amount one would spend to take a family out
could count as a major purchase. The same thing happened to the movies. I
think capitalism is the best system we've come up with so far, but someone
needs to realize that everyone needs an outlet, or else people will reject the
system.

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debacle
I find a lot of the conclusions drawn in the article unscientific, and they
don't really jive with my experience. From what I've seen, totally
anecdotally, being more successful and being married are symptoms of being a
more stable individual. I don't know many people in good jobs or with careers
that aren't in some sort of relationship, and many of those I know who can't
maintain a relationship also can't maintain a job.

The only exception to that rule that I've found is black women. I don't know
many black women in stable, long term relationships, regardless of their
career success. The reasons for that are more social than economic.

------
RickJWagner
3 simple rules to join the middle class: Finish high school, Get a full-time
job (any job), Wait until age 21 to get married and have children:

Dramatic results.

~~~
KittiHawk
It doesn't sound like that's been nearly sufficient for quite some years now.

------
mfoy_
To quote Alec Baldwin's character, Ellerby, from _The Departed_ :

"Marriage is an important part of getting ahead; lets people know you're not a
homo. Married guy seems more stable. People see the ring, they think 'at least
somebody can stand the son of a bitch'. Ladies see the ring, they know
immediately you must have some cash or your cock must work."

A touch on the homophobic and misogynistic side, but it seems relevant.

~~~
thriftwy
Once marrying becomes an unfortunate choice, it starts to signal the opposite.
"This guy is so desperate he had to _marry_ "

~~~
mfoy_
That frame of mind implies that marriage is something women want and something
men do not want.

Why? It sounds like you're making some weird assumptions about sex-positivity,
child-rearing, or finances.

~~~
msla
Or just making assumptions about how well single women get on in life, which
is, in turn, an assumption about how well women do in the workforce.

If a woman's best life strategy is to get married so she doesn't have to take
in laundry or become a shopgirl or take some similar low-pay/low-status job,
marriage becomes seen as something the man is roped into, because men can
(presumably) do just fine for themselves on their own, and, perhaps, are
better off financially without "The Little Woman" to support.

Dual-income households destroy that pretty well, but notice how universal such
thinking was in the pop culture of the 1940s and 1950s.

It's one more example of how all social effects are interrelated: It's hard to
be sex-positive if the common STDs are effectively incurable, or require
chemotherapy ( _vide_ mercury treatment for syphilis) to even attempt to cure.
It's impossible to have same-sex marriage if your legal system has coverture,
which means a marriage is a union of the husband and wife into the legal
personality of the husband. It's impossible to take a modern view of marriage
as something which can be put off if fully one half of the population depends
on it to have a good life.

~~~
dpark
> _or require chemotherapy (vide mercury treatment for syphilis)_

Huh? Syphilis has been curable with antibiotics since penicillin. I don't
think mercury is a common treatment for syphilis at this point.

~~~
msla
That's my point: If you're treating syphilis with mercury, it's hard to have
sex-positive culture.

~~~
dpark
My apologies. I misread your comment and didn't interpret that part in the
context of the "1940s and 1950s".

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jasonmaydie
I don't buy the authors assertions at all. Who thinks being married is a
privilege in the United States? We went through the last 10-15years liberating
ourselves from marriage and now somehow it's being viewed as a privilege? It's
like saying male/female parenting is privilege. It's not.

------
richardbenson
Can HN stay politically neutral, please? Otherwise in two weeks every post
will be about Trump, or how only whites can be racist, etc. Kill the cancer
before it spreads.

~~~
jgh
HN is certainly not politically neutral and you can see that in action every
time there's a post about sexual harassment or racism in the workplace.

