I had that thought too, but they sort of addressed that. Per capita, child rearing costs single women more than married women. That's because married women get to split costs with husbands.
If you look at divorce statistics, for all that men feel that they get screwed, after a divorce the ex-husband usually has a significantly better standard of living, and the ex-wife and kids wind up worse off. (My source for that is _The Price of Motherhood_ which is a fascinating book, but was not exactly the most comfortable book for my wife to have found while pregnant with our first.)
Thus if you add in children, marriage becomes an even better relative deal for women.
(Note that all figures that they offer are aimed at women, and not men.)
>>If you look at divorce statistics, for all that men feel that they get screwed, after a divorce the ex-husband usually has a significantly better standard of living, and the ex-wife and kids wind up worse off.
In all fairness, comparative troubles hardly make any sense.
The fact of the matter is, Alimony is a huge demotivating factor when it comes to marriage. No ones likes to part away with what they have earned because a relationship ended, the best protection against that at this time is to somehow stop getting into a relationship at the first place.
This makes problems more worse for most women.
Contrary to whatever is going around in the name of freedom, marriage is a really an amazing institution for many societies around the world. When it comes financial security, physical security and center of responsibility in most cases marriage works like magic. And alimony sort of becomes a very demotivating factor to get married.
In process what happens is alimony protects a few women, much of the alimony system is abused. And the side effect is most women suffer because of it.
I think the biggest complaint from men in divorces is not that they get screwed economically, but that the courts are heavily biased towards giving the mother the children. Sometimes "standard of living" isn't the most important factor in play - otherwise custody cases would be two parents trying to make the other one take the kids, instead of the other way around.
I haven't done the research to make the argument that their complaints are true, (though I think it is), but you are somewhat misrepresenting the complaint.
I've never been married, divorced, or had children, so if I am missing something obvious, please let me know.
Statistics that I've heard on that one. A significant majority of the time, children go with the mother. In a significant majority of cases where fathers contest custody, children go with the father. This is at least in part because the father usually has better finances, so can make a persuasive case that he'd be in a better position to be a caregiver.
That said, it is very common for men to threaten a custody dispute then back down with some other concessions. It is difficult to tell how often this is because he didn't think he'd win, or preferred the concession.
My source on this is the same book.
Disclaimer, I've been married over 20 years, 2 kids, never divorced.
> In a significant majority of cases where fathers
> contest custody, children go with the father.
I have a fair amount of familiarity with family law (not a lawyer though) and I have to say this is hard to fathom. To my knowledge fathers have to basically prove gross negligence or substance abuse or other criminal activity by the mother in order to stand a chance of winning physical custody. It is generally presumed that kids are better off with the mother and any father seeking custody needs to prove otherwise. Having better finances usually doesn't factor into the decision AFAIK -- if the father has better finances to support the child, he can do so with child support.
I was quoting from a book that I read 8 years and 2 moves ago. But the best that Google turned up is the very dated http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias... that found that when fathers choose to contest custody, 70% of the time they win sole or joint custody.
I have found elsewhere a claim that usually this is joint, so women are still coming out better. This seems believable, but that claim was not sourced.
Several places I found the claim that women receive sole custody about 70% of the time, joint custody 20% and men get sole custody a bit under 10%. But also the majority of custody cases are not settled by a judge, so that proportion does not speak to what happens when a judge makes the choice.
So I should put a question mark next to the specific claim that men who contest, have a good chance of getting custody. Because I don't have good sources to back it up.
You could both be right. Perhaps fathers, being usually the better-off partner financially, often get lawyers when it comes to something as important as custody for their children. And perhaps those lawyers usually tell the father they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting custody unless they can prove the mother's unfit, and the father usually decides not to contest custody to save everyone's time and money, unless the mother actually is unfit and thus the father has a very good chance of winning.
Result: Usually the children go with the mother. But when custody is contested, it's often because the father has a strong case, and so fathers usually win contested cases.
If you look at divorce statistics, for all that men feel that they get screwed, after a divorce the ex-husband usually has a significantly better standard of living, and the ex-wife and kids wind up worse off. (My source for that is _The Price of Motherhood_ which is a fascinating book, but was not exactly the most comfortable book for my wife to have found while pregnant with our first.)
Thus if you add in children, marriage becomes an even better relative deal for women.
(Note that all figures that they offer are aimed at women, and not men.)