Being married does not raise your income. Rather, higher income makes you more likely to marry.
> We don't tolerate divorce and we ostracize people who don't get married.
Which also means high levels of domestic violence and simultaneously escalating domestic violence due to inability to leave. Up to and including domestic murders. The fact is, Islamic society does not look like society with better families to me. It seems more like society that likes to pretend that if you are not single, then all is fine, even if you just got chocked by the partner.
> Being married does not raise your income. Rather, higher income makes you more likely to marry.
Being married makes the family more financially stable due to sharing of expenses either having two earners or being able to divide working and taking care of the household.
> Which also means high levels of domestic violence and simultaneously escalating domestic violence due to inability to leave. Up to and including domestic murders. The fact is, Islamic society does not look like society with better families to me.
Domestic violence is an orthogonal problem that’s common across the developing world, and unfortunately quite common in the developed world. But it doesn’t have much to do with marriage, because of course non-marital relationships can have domestic violence as well.
In the US, domestic violence isn’t especially more prevalent in communities that maintain strong taboos on divorce (Asian Americans and Muslim Americans). Meanwhile it’s unfortunately the most common in communities that also have the highest rates of divorce and out of wedlock childbearing.
> Being married makes the family more financially stable due to sharing of expenses either having two earners or being able to divide working and taking care of the household.
This does not seem to be supported by real world. In real world, poor people marry less in the first place. And when family income goes down, people divorce more.
> Domestic violence is an orthogonal problem that’s common across the developing world,
This is not true. The ability to divorce and leave partner makes it lower. The inability to divorce and social pressure to marry makes it higher. It is primary ability to be single when you want/need to that makes it go lower. Whether you will report domestic violence or not also depends on your ability to leave - because if you report it and then stay married, punishment will follow.
And afaik, unfortunately, it is mostly common among cops.
> This does not seem to be supported by real world. In real world, poor people marry less in the first place. And when family income goes down, people divorce more.
A household with two earners sharing expenses, or dividing the load of work and childcare, is more financially stable than two separate households. This is basic arithmetic. The poverty rate of children living with two married parents is 7%. The poverty rate for children living with one parent is 33.6%. https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/population/qa01203.asp?qaDate....
> This is not true. The ability to divorce and leave partner makes it lower. The inability to divorce and social pressure to marry makes it higher. It is primary ability to be single when you want/need to that makes it go lower.
Countries with legal systems that punish domestic violence make it lower. It's certainly true that is an advantage the U.S. has over the developing world. But within the U.S., your theory does not pan out. In New York City, for example, Asians, who have by far the highest marriage rates, are less than 1/4 as likely to be involved in a domestic violence assault as Black people, who have by far the lowest marriage rates: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/ocdv/downloads/pdf/ENDGBV-Inters.... And you can't chalk that up to economics because Asians also have the highest poverty rates of any ethnic group in NYC: http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=resear.... Nationwide, Black women are 2.5 times more likely to be the victims of domestic violence than white women, but half as likely to be married. (This is one of the many ways in which white social liberalism has hurt Black women and children.) In another example, Appalachia has always had higher rates of family instability than other parts of the country. But it also has higher rates of domestic violence.
In fact, I suspect the causality actually runs in the other direction, all else being equal. Unfortunately, men aren't less violent merely because they're a boyfriend rather than a husband. But in a traditional marriage, there is a union of families, which means that the wife's family can scrutinize and police the husband's behavior. That social framework tends to absent entirely in casual relationships.
> We don't tolerate divorce and we ostracize people who don't get married.
Which also means high levels of domestic violence and simultaneously escalating domestic violence due to inability to leave. Up to and including domestic murders. The fact is, Islamic society does not look like society with better families to me. It seems more like society that likes to pretend that if you are not single, then all is fine, even if you just got chocked by the partner.