I can see the appeal of making marriage more difficult to get out of. My brief tour through the divorce literature indicated that ending a high-conflict marriage is better for everyone, including the kids -- despite the financial and emotional drawbacks, it really is better to have two homes, rather than one where Mom and Dad are engaged in a bitter civil war.It's written from the perspective of a woman who wants to retain her out. Her position makes no sense. If she were correct, marriage rates would have climbed with no-fault divorce. Instead, they have collapsed. Men aren't avoiding marriage because they are afraid of being held to their marital contract, but because they are afraid of women not being held to it.
On the other hand, the evidence on ending low-conflict marriages -- one in which maybe one party, or both, doesn’t feel perfectly fulfilled, but they get along OK -- wasn’t so happy. Children of low-conflict marriages whose parents divorce have more difficulty adjusting than the kids of high-conflict marriages. It’s thought that the divorce comes as a shock to these kids; a relationship that seemed fine to them suddenly dissolves, which changes their ability to trust the world and other people.
These divorces aren’t necessarily so great for the adults, either. Divorce tends to be a financial disaster for all but the very rich, because it’s more expensive to support two households than one. And people who exit marriages don’t necessarily find this makes them happier. We tend to think that marriages are good, and then they go bad, and then you divorce and get happy again, but unhappiness can often be a temporary condition that later improves....
The lesson is that when you make it harder to exit, you also make people reluctant to enter. If we try to strengthen marriage by clamping down on divorce, we may find that more and more people simply refuse to get married in the first place.
What ultimately threatens marriage is the state's involvement in it. The best way to strengthen it is to sever all connection between the religious sacrament and the state. Let the state permit civil partnerships of one or two or ten individuals; they can use the corporate model and be subject to dissolution as per contract.
21 comments:
"What ultimately threatens marriage is the state's involvement in it. The best way to strengthen it is to sever all connection between the religious sacrament and the state. Let the state permit civil partnerships of one or two or ten individuals; they can use the corporate model and be subject to dissolution as per contract."
Strongly agree. As a libertarian I truly think that the people have no real benefit of having the government sanction marriage. It is a contract between consenting adults and IMHO should be treated exactly as such.
Chick logic.
If she were correct, marriage rates would have climbed with no-fault divorce. Instead, they have collapsed.
Read the full article. Between the third paragraph Vox quoted, and the fourth, there is a list of changes in societal attitudes which accompanied no-fault divorce and drove marriage rates down.
The lesson is that when you make it harder to exit, you also make people reluctant to enter.
This refers to more material that Vox didn't quote, not to the parts that he did. Read it before you conclude that she's wrong.
It alrady is harder for men to exit.
It's not just that it is easier for women to exit, it is often a jackpot to do so. I mean, how many people would do their jobs if their work arrangements required they're get paid indefinitely after they quit?
"The lesson is that when you make it harder to exit, you also make people reluctant to enter."
If by "people" you mean "women", then you're right. Especially when it comes to women marrying beta men they aren't attracted to. If the possibility of a post-marital carousel weren't there for those women, then they might not hop off the carousel at all...
I agree with you that what Megan says with "The lesson is that when you make it harder to exit, you also make people reluctant to enter." might not necessarily be true, but repealing no-fault divorce is a non-starter. What needs to be done is changing marriage into a marital contract that can be agreed upon by the husband and wife. Both should be able to attach a standarized prenuptial agreement to the marriage license on the divison of property when there is a marital breech. Let's not let the state define what is a marriage and marital property. Currently, states don't have a good policy on handling prenuptial agreements and many lawyers are reluctant to help a couple write one although courts have upheld them in many cases. Perhaps lawyers don't want to be sued if they write a faulty document.
@2870b918-77c0-11e3-b9bd-000bcdcb8a73
Not sure what you are reading into the article or Vox's statements. All that stuff he left out? That doesn't support her assertions as much as Vox's. Government has made things easy - from a woman's perspective. For men? Just like Eurpoean employers, it the worst all possible worlds if a marriage goes bad. That is why men stay away from marriage in droves. People flake out, but women are more prone to do so because of a higher inclination to short term preferences than men. The new government improved system makes divorce palatable for women and short term preferences. MM displays no interest in recognizing this fact. Talk with most men, they do if you break it down because the evidence is all around us.
It's interesting what she's missing. Why, given all the data available on the consequences of legitimizing bastardy and no-fault divorce, would she reach for Medieval logic to try to tie this to European youth employment rather than look at what happened when divorce became easier? One wonders at why she might choose that path...where have I seen such unwillingness to give up the theory when the data refutes it before...?
@numbers
I did read the whole thing and I'll leave just about the same comment here that I did there. You must have missed the part of that "list of changes in societal attitudes which accompanied no-fault divorce and drove marriage rates down" where McMegan admits that the social stigma that used to be attached to divorce and out-of-wedlock children *kept people from getting married in the first place*.
By the time I got done reading her whole post I couldn't figure out if she was arguing for or against the proposal.
Hey, lets go with the separation of church and state! Marriage is a sacrament, definitely religious, so the state should not be involved.
I agree but how do we bell the cat? We live in a world where a judge can void a prenup at whim.
I see no reason to believe family court judges will give a civil union contract more respect.
That's the catch-22. If the courts weren't fully on board with misandry, they'd handle divorce fairly, and there would be less divorce and nothing in particular to fix. We need to separate marriage from the state because we have the kind of state which won't let us.
I've thought about starting a campaign to end no-fault divorce in my state. The easy way to sell it, would, I think, be for the sake of those poor women and children left to struggle in poverty after divorce, because everyone knows poverty is bad for kids and single parents are much more likely to be poor, and being started by a woman I think it would be effective propaganda. The fault laws are still on the books in my state, so it'd just be a matter of getting enough people outraged to get the no-fault law overturned, after all, anyone who needed a divorce could still get one.
But then I wonder if it were successful, if it wouldn't do more harm than good, considering the overall cohabiting rates.
BoysMom,
This, from her essay and also from here, is a compelling argument for that campaign:
On the other hand, the evidence on ending low-conflict marriages -- one in which maybe one party, or both, doesn’t feel perfectly fulfilled, but they get along OK -- wasn’t so happy. Children of low-conflict marriages whose parents divorce have more difficulty adjusting than the kids of high-conflict marriages. It’s thought that the divorce comes as a shock to these kids; a relationship that seemed fine to them suddenly dissolves, which changes their ability to trust the world and other people.
55-60% of divorces are low conflict - "We had a very amiable divorce, we're still friends" etc - these parents falsely believe that a cordial split is best for their children. Highlighting studies like these might help with the "it's for the children" argument.
I came to the conclusion last year after being forced through a divorce that as long as marriage means nothing to our society, it should be as easy and inexpensive to get a divorce as it is to get married.
But it's not. Thanks to the state's involvement, even if you don't pay the $50,000+ to have two lawyers battling things out, it still costs a lot to get all the paperwork and agreements in place. Plus court fees, etc. I'll be paying off my ex-wife's divorce for a very long time.
Megan McArdle voted for Barack Obama.
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