Professor Tiger wrote:I agree with IB that women have historically been programmed by evolution to seek out a mate that will provide for and protect them while they are raising the young. But the modern world seems to be modifying that default setting. Younger women are postponing marriage today, not because they have too, but because they want to.
Bullshit.
You are doing what liberals do to try and win an argument they can't win, you "reframe" the argument to fit your worldview such that everyone must accept your premise. I'm calling you out on that because although you have the facts right, the conclusion which led to those facts is entirely wrong.
Women are getting married later in life (if AT ALL) that is true, but it is not necessarily because they want to. They are marrying later in life (if at all)
because they aren't getting any proposals. Men are not asking for their hands in marriage. Even the men who impregnant them and "stick around" to help raise the kid, they refuse to marry those women.
If you are a black woman in this country and you are married, you are part of a very tiny minority of black women.
Just 30% of black women in this country over the age of 18 are currently married. Just 45% of black women in this country have ever been married AT ALL. Look it up, you'll find the same numbers I found.
For white women, they are better off, almost 65% of white women over the age of 18 have ever been married (just over 50% of those women over 18 are currently married.) That is still a frighteninly LOW statistic by historical terms. You'll find moments in our nation's short history where 80% or more of women over 18 who were married, and that was pretty much every demographic.
The 1960s, birth control pills, and the counter culture changed marriage. And it did so for everyone. Prior to the 1960s, there were still a great majority of people who very much frowned upon men and women living together while not in wedlock. It happened, but not anywhere near the level that we now have today. And forget about premarital sex, the church worked very hard, very diligently to scare young people into thinking that act would most definately get them a "
go straight to hell upon death" card. Fear and shame worked to civilize men into wanting to get married AND RIGHT QUICK.
No more.
Those days are gone, just not long gone. It seems like so long ago that fear and shame were there to mold young men in mature, responsible, civilized men, but it was only a few decades (perhaps less than 40 years.) The stigmas associated with male-bachelorhood (people thought you were "odd" and did not associate with you, employers denied you promotions in favor of married men, if you wanted sex you had to pay a prostitute, etc) none of that really applies anymore. Many (if not ALL) of th ebuilt in cultural parameters that were designed to motivate men to want to marry and support a woman all her life, those are all gone. And perhaps with good reason.
No fault divorce.
Those words, those three damning words, are all successful men (who have assets to lose) have to hear to give them cold feet in many cases. As a spiritual leader, I can't pastor to young single men and encourage them to marry when they tell me that the financial risks involved in getting married in the Community Property state of Arizona are far too great. They have seen too many of their friends with a legacy of destitution and writing checks to women they no longer fuck, women who gave them children that they can't often see! How can I sell marriage to a young man who is a working professional, a home owner, who routinely vacations with his friends, has a very strong network of friends that can fill his free time, and has as many girlfriends as he wants (and gets laid as much as he wants) when his assets and livelihood is made entirely vulnerable and put at risk by saying "I do?"
I can't.
But in counseling single women, pretty much ALL single women, I know for damn sure that they all want to be married (and right soon.) They just don't get those opportunites because the men aren't asking.
Professor Tiger wrote:They are putting careers first and childbearing comes later. And they are having much fewer children than previous generations so that they can get back to focusing on their careers as soon as possible. And if they don't find a mate that fits the evolutionary profile of provider and protector while they raise the young, modern women just skip the mate part and go straight to providing for their own young and protecting themselves.
If you are a young woman in the late 1950s, you aren't taking a DIME out of a bank to attend college.
Not. One. Thin. Dime. College was cheap because colleges were plentiful and competing on price because so few women wanted to "waste their time" attending them. What, do you want to be a teacher or a nurse? Which of those two professions that require a college degree are you tracking towards? Either way, you graduate colege
Mona Lisa Smile style, and because you've lived at home with dad and mom and kept your sexual virtues (and your boyfriend's lust is boiling to a breaking point) you wind up getting married anyway and it will be great, he can completely support you, but your husband doesn't have to worry about making you "whole" on your student loans or credit cards NOR does he have to support any illegitimate children you gave birth to along the way,
you don't have any.
You are a woman and you graduate college in 2012, yeah, you have over $40,000 in student loans, another $10,000 on the credit card. DAMN STRAIGHT YOU ARE WORKING. Alas, the only jobs that value that horseshit degree in Women's Studies that you earned are the Lena Dunham unpaid internships so you'll just "defer" those student loans until such time as you actually learn how to do something (anything) of value in the business world. That only happens after months (maybe a couple years) of working for free in an office, somewhere. Now you are 25 and you working in data entry, administrative assistant, accounting, IT help desk, insert some bullshit entry level job here. You'll be at that "professional" job for another 3 or 4 years (til you are 28 or 29) and you might be able to pay off $7,000 or $8,000 on the student loans, but you are just getting further behind on the Visa. There is always one more bill because there are all these things that you simply HAVE TO HAVE (things your grandma never needed, but you need.) And you wont live at home because that isn't "fun" (you don't get to bring your boyfriends home at night and fuck them if you are still living with your parents.) So the cost of that apartment that a single woman would never have had in 1955, well, you are paying for it.
Marriage? For a 22 year old girl? Yeah sure, that 43 year old pervert who chases you around the office wants a second chance at life is willing to marry you and would do anything to do so because at least you give him the time of day (something that no woman did for him when he was YOUR age) and well, he's established and has a home and can support you and your children. The fact that he reminds you of your dad and is fat amd ugly is just something you'll live with, take the good with the bad, because at least he's willing to pay off all your student loans and you wont have to work that bullshit internship anymore. Fast forward 5 years later and because you never loved him or respect the sacament of marriage you stard fucking one of your old boyfriends who still has the hots for you (still lives at home) and you hope that your husband doesn't come home from work early and catch your boyfriend with his dick in your ass.
Its a different world now Professor.
Professor Tiger wrote:The traditional female instinct towards marriage is clearly declining. This is all happening whether the woman is ugly or not. And for the vast majority of modern women, government subsidies have little to with the calculations either. It's more a function of self-reliance.
Subsidies (back in the say) weren't for single moms. Because those subsidies exist TODAY, of COURSE you aren't going to MARRY that baby daddy of yours (that you are still fucking) because the state might find out that you are married and will take away your EBT and Section-8 apartment. Gotta love LBJ and his Great Society.