Reply to American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage (Wall Street Journal)

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Reply to "American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage (Wall Street Journal)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t buy that women who have never married are focusing on the “unpaid labor” aspect. That’s more of an issue that arises in marriage later on, after kids arrive. I think the likelier explanations are increased working areas, fewer social interactions generally (we see this in studies of Americans having fewer and fewer friendships, some of which would of course lead to romance), economic instability and fewer college educated, emotionally stable and well paid eligible men.  More than ever, women are looking for income and education in men.[/quote]

Do you think young women are stupid? It’s not hard to see. [/quote]

Dating isn’t like marriage.  It’s hard to see down the line how someone will interact with you once kids come along.  Especially if you have lust blinders on.[/quote]

This was the first generation of young women who truly saw moms work in near equal measure to dads- and breadwin in record numbers. This is also the first generation of young women who were raised in the activity laden nightmare that is modern day parenting. They heard terms like “mental load” and heard about the invisible work of parenting. They saw their parents work their ass off just to pay for daycare, while their standard of living wasn’t guaranteed to rise. This generation of women is neither smarter nor dumber than past- but they sure are more educated on the realities of cost of living/kids/quality of life issues [/quote]

Agree to disagree.  A subset of women may be thinking along these lines and not wanting to marry sure, but is that the primary reason for the decline in marriage?  I personally think the other factors I raised, specifically the availability of well paid and educated men, are more relevant to the choice not to marry, and the workload balance is a greater cause for divorce.  [/quote]

You think women are so dumb that they cannot think in advance about what it would be like to be married with kids?[/quote]

You’ve suggested twice that my comment means I think women are dumb.  Bizarre take. I think most women do like the idea of marriage if they could find someone of equal status (emotional intelligence, hardworking, educated) and unfortunately that’s the real issue.  [/quote]

That’s not what the story or data says, but go on. 
[/quote]

The story is selected anecdotes of people willing to talk to the WSJ. The data only says the marriage rate is declining. [/quote]

But the qualitative data matters. [/quote]

Not really. This is a subset of fairly well off women and not reflective of women in America generally and their reasoning.[/quote]

Look, it is well known that over and over, every time women in any culture or nation get access to a little economic freedom and birth control, they reduce the number of kids they have and marriage rates go down. Clearly women when they get a chance opt out of domesticity because it is a *bad deal* for them. [/quote]

Polls show that women prefer to take more extended time off for pregnancy, childbirth and parental leave - and can’t.  They would prefer a four day work week, but we don’t have that either. You are pretending that this economy and increased work hours are women’s choice.  Women are making choices within a paradigm they don’t control. Don’t pretend this is all about options.[/quote]

Women like all economic actors are making choices that reflect their interests which includes, everywhere across all time, reducing the number of children they have as soon as they are able to have a little ability to do so. There is no going back unless you are literally going to force women to get married and have babies (which is the subtext of anti-choice efforts). [/quote]

I don’t buy the idea that increasing flexibility, leave and time off in the work force wouldn’t improve birth rates.  This idea that women want increased hours at the expense of work life balance simply is not born out by poll data. [/quote]

It works in Scandinavia.[/quote]

Not really. Nordic fertility rates are at an all time low. [/quote]

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