- Why do fewer people marry?
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- According to a 1999 National Vital Statistics Report
from the CDC, 7.4 per 1,000 Americans married in 1998. From 1990 to 1995,
the marriage rate dropped from 9.8 to 7.6. Different sources render other
statistics but the trend remains sharply downward.
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- There is never a single or comprehensive explanation
for complex phenomena that are rooted deeply in human psychology. Non-marriage
is a particularly difficult issue to address because, as a recent paper
from Rutgers University entitled "Why Men Won't Commit" explains,
official sources are scarce. "The federal government issues thousands
of reports on nearly every dimension of American life. ... But it provides
no annual index or report on the state of marriage." Much of the discussion
of the motives surrounding non-marriage must be anecdotal, therefore, relying
on statistics to provide framework and perspective.
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- In examining reasons for the current decline of marriage,
one question usually receives short shrift. Why are men reluctant to marry?
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- The Rutgers report -- admittedly based on a small sample
-- found ten prevalent reasons. The first three:
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- They can get sex without marriage;
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- They can enjoy "a wife" through cohabitation;
and,
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- They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks.
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- As a critic of anti-male bias in the family courts, the
reasons I hear most frequently from non-marrying men are fear of financial
devastation in divorce and of losing meaningful contact with children afterward.
(Such feedback is anecdotal evidence but, when you hear the same response
over a period of years from several hundred different sources, it becomes
prudent to listen.)
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- In a similar vein, the Rutgers report finds: "Many
men also fear the financial consequences of divorce. They say that their
financial assets are better protected if they cohabit rather than marry.
They fear that an ex-wife will 'take you for all you've got' and that 'men
have more to lose financially than women' from a divorce."
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- Increasingly, men are stating their reasons for not marrying
on the Internet. In an article entitled "The Marriage Strike,"
Matthew Weeks expresses a sentiment common to such sites, "If we accept
the old feminist argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is
undeniable that -- given the current state of the nation's family courts
-- divorce is slavery for men."
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- Weeks provides the math. One in two marriages will fail
with the wife being twice as likely to initiate the proceedings on grounds
of "general discontent" -- the minimum requirement of no-fault
divorce. The odds of the woman receiving custody of children are overwhelming,
with many fathers effectively being denied visitation. The wife usually
keeps the "family" assets and, perhaps, receives alimony as well
as child support. Many men confront continuing poverty to pay for the former
marriage.
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- Weeks concludes: "Over five million divorced men
in America are currently experiencing the situation I just outlined. Without
a doubt, their stories and experiences are heard by unmarried men. Can
anyone truly blame the men for having apprehension?"
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- He uses what has become a new term -- at least in the
mouths of men: "the marriage strike." Most of the men who go
"on strike" undoubtedly do so quietly but others are making a
loud political statement. For example, the Joint Parenting Association
declares, "An international 'marriage strike' by men is set to continue
indefinitely until Family Law is reformed to recognize that fathers love
their children too."
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- The apprehension of men -- along with other significant
factors -- is dramatically changing the face of marriage and the family.
The best statistics we have indicate that, from 1960 to 2000:
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- The number of marriages per 1,000 unmarried women age
15-plus has declined from 73.5 to 46.5.
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- The number of divorces per 1,000 married women age 15-plus
has risen from 9.2 to 18.9.
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- One impact: The presence of single women has increased
remarkably -- women who must choose either to remain childless or to raise
children by themselves.
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- The number of births per 1,000 women age 15-44 has declined
from 118.0 to 67.5.
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- The percentage of live births to unmarried women rose
from 5.3 to 33.2.
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- The percentage of children under 18 living with a single
parent rose from 9 to 27.
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- Some point to the steep rise in cohabitation as causing
the devastation of marriage and families. The number of unmarried adults
cohabiting with the opposite sex has soared from 439,000 in 1960 to 4,736,000
in 2000. But blaming cohabitation misses the point. Why do people choose
that alternative?
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- A significant number of men are loudly stating their
reasons: anti-male bias in the current marriage law and in the family courts.
Solving this piece of the "marriage crisis" is not difficult.
Allow people to draw up their own private marriage contracts, without government
law acting as a third party; have unbiased family courts adjudicate breaches
of contracts.
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- If men participated equally in forging the terms of the
most important commitment in their lives, perhaps they would cease to view
marriage as a form of indentured servitude and divorce as slavery.
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- http://www.dondodd.com/mcelroy/wendy.html
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- Comment
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- From S. Immak
- 8-16-3
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- I would like to make a comment about this article. Again,
as with much of the conservative male whining articles that come out, this
one has a lot of false information.
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- The gender that really suffers after a divorce is the
woman--not the man. Want the facts?
- http://www.lovegevity.com/marriage/wife/divorcecreates.html
- From my own experience with divorce I can tell you that
I got absolutely nothing from it. I left my ex-husband after being battered
with only the clothes on my back. My children also had nothing. I never
received any money from my ex for the children or for anything. He never
expressed any desire to have contact with the children either. I still
after ten years have to file papers to have his rights as a parent terminated.
The children's step-father is trying to adopt them, but somehow under the
law, my ex still has rights. Did I get a good deal from divorce? No. I
wound up on welfare, broke. For those that scream about welfare, I struggled
to get where I am now as a high school teacher. That's what happens to
most women. Only the very few have anything after a divorce.
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