Kicking. Squealing.
In a train of thought which is seemingly not shared by a couple of close bloggers – the other day, I wrote:
A post which seems to insinuate that lower incomes cause lower marriage rates. I’m not sure if that rings true as poorer people would have a financial interest in shacking up with a stable partner with whom they could split rent, bills, car payments, and insurance payments. So if it is true that lower income did cause declining marriage rates (instead of cultural changes) then that would be one more strike against the intelligence of those lower classes.
Bryan Caplan writes:
I’m baffled by people who blame declining marriage rates on poverty. Why? Because being single is more expensive than being married. Picture two singles living separately. If they marry, they sharply cut their total housing costs. They cut the total cost of furniture, appliances, fuel, and health insurance. Even groceries get cheaper: think CostCo.
So why do poorer people avoid marriage even if, as Caplan points out, marriage is most beneficial to the poorest among us? Caplan is refreshingly candid about this:
Namely: Some people are extremely impulsive and short-sighted. If you’re one of them, you tend to mess up your life in every way. You don’t invest in your career, and you don’t invest in your relationships. You take advantage of your boss and co-workers, and you take advantage of your romantic partners. You refuse to swallow your pride – to admit that the best job and the best spouse you can get, though far from ideal, are much better than nothing. Your behavior feels good at the time. But in the long-run people see you for what you are, and you end up poor and alone.
This contrasts Ferdinand who wrote that neither marriage nor cohabitation are more beneficial to men than singledom, and it contrasts Heartiste who wrote that cohabitation is no worse than marriage in terms of benefits to men.
This gets at a fallacy which I want to take up in future posts. I’ve called it parallax view, though I think that term has been applied to sociology and philosophy in another way. What I mean by the term is that what one group with certain dispositions can handle, another cannot. I’m not comparing either of those guys to feminists – don’t get me wrong. But there is a tendency to buy into the idea that what is good for one class of people is good for another. Feminists do this by assuming that teenagers can handle free love and unconstrained sexual attitudes as well as 30 year-old academicians and activists. Well-adjusted people are better able to handle booze, sex, gambling, and marijuana smoke. Bums cannot. And what separates well-adjusted people from bums is future-time orientation i.e. IQ.
To the men in the Manosphere – guys like me, Ferdinand, and Heartiste – singledom is not a nail in our coffin. We – or at least they – are self-motivated and basically self-referential. They are less prone to outside influence and can basically maintain. Many men do need guidance. The men who enter the Manosphere bubble are probably not those men; they enjoy advice, but the fact that they’ve self-selected how to understand sociosexual dynamics implies that they also aren’t stupid about the subject. This is a select few of men.
Other men? A lot of them would benefit – in terms of their productivity and their sociability – by having social forces weighing on them which compel them to cohabit rather than remain single and to get married rather than cohabit.
Well said. And well adjusted.
I agree. I moved in with my girlfriend about 5 months ago. I hate it when she drags me home from the bar early, but am thankful the next morning. I eat better too. Pathetic? In some sense yeah, but true nonetheless. I was fine being single. But I can’t argue that I am not getting more done at work, have spent money less recklessly on stupid shit, alcohol, than when I was single.
I really don’t know what your point is here.
[Chuck: Read it again.]
It’s a fact that marital rates have been in decline for all classes of people (as well as marriage at later ages) for a good 30 years now. Upper middle class people haven’t bucked the trend, they just aren’t as affected by it.
[Chuck: Not true at all. The marriage rates of the lower classes have declined precipitously while the marriage rates of the upper classes have barely budged over the past half century. This post is tangential to Charles Murray's book "Coming Apart" which has all of that information in it. Check it out.]
Marriage is partly based on hypergamy – from the female point -of-view- and a cost-benefits analysis – from a male point-of-view. Women tend not to marry “down”, meanwhile quite a few smart men are concluding marriage 2.0 isn’t for them.
[Chuck: And to society's detriment. But I'm coming to realize that men have a lot more control over the process than we believe. Plenty of men just choose not to marry. I'm not going to say that individual men who choose not to marry are wrong; what I'm saying is that when we look at the nation as a whole, a move away from marriage - especially among those for whom marriage would do the most 'good' - there are negative externalities to be dealt with.]
Why you use this to beat poor people about the head is really beyond me. I’d say this has little to do with “future time orientation” (which you are being cute by conflating with IQ) at all.
[Chuck: Are you kidding me? As Ferdinand himself laid out, the reason that men forego marriage and family is because there is so much fun to be had in the present. Hell, I done the same thing. But look around you. Who is more likely to care just about their immediate satisfaction? Who, when pursuing that satisfaction, is more likely to make bad choices?]
Exactly – apologists for negro incompetence and squalor make up all sorts of stupid claims about poverty driving down marriage rates among minorities.
But the elephant in the room is the existence of the largely dirt-poor Muslim world (which just happens to cover nearly 40% of the globe, and climbing). Poverty is the norm, but marriage rates are extremely high there, and single motherhood is non-existent.
Chuck–
I think this is especially true in school discipline. Affluent high IQ elites know they were self motivated to learn and that some intellectual type rebellion is a good thing. They disliked school discipline certainly of any physical variety, but also detentions, extra homework, suspensions and the like. This plus the absurd federal doctrine of “disparate impact” has lead to disastrous levels of ill discipline in heavily black and latino schools.
http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-it.html
Chuck:
If a 12 percent decline (according to one of your links) is your equivalent of “barely budged” than I don’t know what to say to you.
As far as I am concerned, under the current legal and economic regimes marriage is dead, and I will never bash a poor -of which I currently am one but I know you mean “black people” – person for not marrying.
You want more marriages? Reduce the penalties for and ease of divorces – I don’t care how, there’s a million ways – and increase economic security (once again, I don’t care HOW, there’s a million ways) and then we can talk. Otherwise this is just you trying to stir up shit.
I just started my period ugh!!
I don’t mean “black people” at all. You’re reading a lot into my post that isn’t there. I didn’t mention black people once in the entire series of posts on this topic.
I will definitely agree that no-fault divorce harms the poor more than anyone though. They are already on very unstable ground which means that they’d benefit most from marriage not being arbitrary and subject to changed minds and changed hearts.
But that is merely an example of our loosened and dilapidated culture. Has less to do with the economic picture. People who are more prone to screwing up their lives need more stability in their institutions and their environment. The Church, marriage, police, community, etc.
Monogamous marriage and western-style nuclear families were not common in Africa before the arrival of the white man.
Blacks in the West are just reverting back to their African ways, with women running households and males not being providers or having any involvement in child rearing.
Fair enough, Chuck, and if you disavow any HBD implications of this post I will take you at your word.
However, rather than bowing to upper middle class people (and some rich ones) for staying married and showing “future time orientation”, you might want to consider Novaseekers point that one of the main reasons that upper middle class people’s marriages are so stable is that usually both work and both make just enough so that divorce would hurt them both financially, thus having a built in disincentive for divorce. No other economic bracket gets that advantage.
But I’m coming to realize that men have a lot more control over the process than we believe.
That sums up my main gripe with one of the louder contingents of that manosphere- they want permission, from women or society or churches or whatever, to be men. There is no permission to be granted, just fucking claim your life as a man. “Honey, can I be your leader?” is weakness in motion.
I can tell by Clarence’s comments he is not, nor has ever been, married.
Lara:
Got an argument or is your sideswipe your female “version” of an argument?
If that’s all you’ve got than kindly shut up and let the men talk things over ok, sweetums?
And , Ulysses?
Your blatherings might make sense to a married, cohabiting, or partnered man if we didn’t live in a society that has the definition of domestic violence expanded so much that slamming doors is considered abuse. In short, I don’t know what you suggest men do, other than avoid women, and be the best man they can be whilst avoiding women.
Well, Clarence, I would suggest that men not let fear of hypotheticals inform every decision nor use potential badness as an excuse to crawl into little turtle shells. Hyperactive cops and lawyers exist, but obviously most men aren’t being dragged to the slammer for domestic abuse. As to avoiding women, you can’t change anything if you’re not there and if your absence is unnoticed. One cannot go on strike from a job he never had.
Ulysses:
If no one shows up to look for work, the work doesn’t get done.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
By the way, in Virginia alone something like 70 thousand ‘restraining’ or protective orders are granted per year.
How many per fifty states? How many over a ten year period since I’m willing to bet at least half the restraining orders in any given year are to new people?
Do you know what effect a “protective order” has on child custody? On employment background checks? On gun rights?
Hell, how many men live in fear of their wives due to our stupid divorce/child custody laws?
We’re a long way from no one showing up and there is no John Galt of any stripe.
Ulysses :
I’ve been reading at Dalrocks among other places quite a bit. I’d say there’s indications of a marriage strike looming, and , as Dalrock himself would say, there’s definately a “second marriage” strike.
Pump and dumps are doing fine, however.
By the way, IF a man doesn’t have kids (or doesn’t give a crap about his kids) he does have quite a bit of power in a modern marriage. He can still unilaterally divorce her (and lose only money) if she doesn’t follow his lead and he doesn’t have to lay a hand on her. People like Paul Elam can get away with always being “the man”.
People like Welmer, on the other hand, have to compromise.
Women do like marriage, but they’re flexible. Unless there is also a sex and cohabitation strike, they aren’t going to notice a few missing red pill takers.
Ulysses:
You underestimate:
A. the number of women who marry for money or other financial considerations
B. The social implications of marriage. Women tend to play the social game more than men and marriage can increase a woman’s social rank
C. Raising kids, and controlling access to them
D. Sexual jealousy. It’s not just a male thing.
Thus you are a bit too sanguine.
@Chuck, is this what you are writing?
—Low IQ men are advantaged by marriage.
—High IQ men are not advantaged by marriage.
IF so, why do you believe that? With what evidence?
Charles Murray sites no distinction between cohabitation and singledom. One is either married or not. As measured by child-centric metrics and self-reported (both genders) happiness, cohab and singledom result in nearly the same metrics…….and this is true of both Belmont and Fishtown residents. The state of marriage accounts for the single largest bump in happiness scores. see page 267.
Off-topic, figured it would be a good topic for tomorrow.
http://jezebel.com/5881335/why-do-men-love-barely-legal-porn
Keep in mind also that for a lot of low income people, there are considerable economic incentives not to get married. Many of them put off marriage, or just never get around to marrying at all, because doing so would cost them government benefits such as food stamps, free housing etc.