Marriage and divorce rates are down to levels not seen since the 70s. What do you attribute most to this decline?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Less people are getting married, women don’t want to get married. This is my take, if someone regardless if you are guy or girl, man or woman are not ready to get married, that’s okay forcing marriage is not. But I’m old school, I believe in marriage and i do want to get married. When people say do more with their lives I don’t know what they mean? Travel around the world? Because I haven’t travelled anywhere with my guy friends. I find a marriage more fulfilling, that feeling of love is special. But I just feel like the younger generation has a me-centric/I’m right attitude or are still immature so it’s a recipe for disaster if anyone has that mind set when it comes to marriage. If a marriage breaks because of cheating or money woes or violence I can understand. But if a woman leaves a man even though he’s a loving, caring, hard working man and she’s divorcing him because she’s “bored”, then people like that should not get married to begin with. When people say marriage is oppression I want to live my life…Having a job with a jerk of a boss and “travelling” once or twice a year is ultimate freedom, it really isn’t in my opinion, it’s just a facade. Some people are soo broken inside they don’t want to get married because some crush scorned them or their parents didn’t love each other so they don’t want to repeat history. There are many reasons why. I will find a girl I love and I will get married and love her and care for her as a guy/man should. I don’t care if people want to be single and say fuck marriage because one day people age and will just die alone not having that one true companion, even friends move on and you gotta retire. I believe in the hereafter of heaven or hell so i want to be a good person so you can be reunited with your spouse in heaven. People can dislike my comment or laugh or cringe at this comment but I don’t care. People also laughed at me when I warned people something bad is going to happen back in 2019 for 2020, and lo and behold it did sooo 🤷🏻‍♂️

wankiam · Accepted Answer

voted g... my theory is now that it has become less of a societal demand to be married, people tend to do it for more genuine reasons... love rather than feeling they ust need to. also the slow demise of the church will have played a part.

AmandaYVR · Accepted Answer

It's because people are waiting until they are older to get married, so they tend to know themselves and the other person better. Fewer surprises, less growing apart as they age/grow internally.
Also, in times of economic instability, this causes stress; which causes more bickering and issues come up in the marriage. But it also means both parties are in a less viable economic situation to split up. Divorce is costly.
These are the two reasons that I remember reading. There are others, but can't remember atm.

dustybiker · Accepted Answer

It’s probably a mixture of all of those things. They are all pretty strong reasons.

MrOracle · Answer

Divorce rates have fallen, but only because marriage rates have fallen to an all-time low. You can't divorce if you never marry.

You aren't going to like the answer to the question, but the answer is Feminism. Specifically, because the Feminist movement was taken over by Marxists and started pushing for Marxist goals instead of equality. Karl Marx understood that you can't convert a functioning western democracy to Marxism, democracy is too strong and too free. Instead, you must first completely destroy all aspects of western society.

Marxists took over Feminism because they could use it as a platform to destroy marriage in western societies. That's literally their often-stated goal, though they pretend that it's "for the women" - except it's the women that WANT to be married, especially when they are older. But it's really GenX women who are experiencing the reality in big numbers, and most are too afraid to admit they were wrong, and too afraid of being "gender traitors" to warn younger women - who wouldn't want to listen anyway.

The birthrate is also falling off a cliff, and that's going to be a huge problem for single women, as there will be no Social Security with so few younger people working and paying in. South Korea is already experiencing this - women aren't able to retire because they have no retirement savings and the social program's are out of money because the birthrate has been so low there.

People think that they're going to retire and live comfortably like their Boomer parents, but Boomers already spent all the money, and GenX didn't have enough kids, and Millennials are having far fewer kids. That's a tax base disaster that is coming and can't be avoided.

Shizunk · Answer

Its a mix. Feminism, socialiam and other ideologies are the biggest influence though. People do what makes them think they can achieve status and recognition. Historically, a woman would be valued based on her ability to give birth to and take care of children.
And a man, even a wealthy one was judged on his ability to financially sustain a household.
Both would be pressured by society into never ever publicly breaking a marriage vow (though the definition was sometimes a bit flexible).
Now a woman must have a great income because it is "too risky" to skip that. What if her husband abandoned her? And if she decides to instead leave him on a whim, she doesn't need to crawl back to her family humiliated. She just asks for a government handout which is "normal".
Money>fun>stability>children.
What used to be very personally encouraged and discouraged by a whole lot of people you knew is now just your personal business and requires some extra bureaucratic procedure at worst. The stigma around bad choices was removed and at the same time people are encouraged to not trust the other, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we remind everyone how people are bad, unreliable and are going to cheat and leave you anyway, the more people will try to hedge their bets, the less they will fight when things inevitably get tough and the more entitled they may feel to an idealized pleasure.
Long story short, normalizing divorce leads to more divorce. People who value marriage and expect to succeed are more likely to stay. Both negative and positive pressures are weakened today in attempts to fight inequality.

BCA6010 · Answer

A doesn't necessarily matter, because what really matters is whether or not women actually want a family. A self-driven woman perfectly capable of taking care of herself isn't rejecting marriage because of it.

B is a minor contributor, a footnote at most.

C at face value isn't a big factor, but the related hookup/dating app culture is a huge factor. It has essentially turned dating and relationships into online shopping for disposable goods.

D also minor. MGTOW is pretty much a direct reaction to anti-male feminist extremism by people who largely are not and were not interested in marriage and families anyway.

E is actually the opposite of reality: it was much easier to have a single-earner household at pretty much any point in US history compared to now.

F I don't believe that's actually the case. Sex education has certainly not gotten "better" or had a major impact.

I'm voting C, but really it's a bit of most of these and also a major factor you left out: the culture itself. In the US, religion and religious values are on a downward slope. Pretty much all major religions promote strong family units and lifelong commitments, but as people distance themselves from those teachings and values, and embrace counteractive concepts such as the left/far left idea of dismantling the nuclear family, then marriage and procreation likewise go down. Right now, the only reason that the US population is increasing is because of immigration.

Anonymous · Answer

Its attributed to statistics done on the wrong scales as always.

Marriage rates are dow n because no one is getting married anymore. But the divorce rate out of the married ones is still high.
Divorce rate out of the whole population is lower since you need marriage to get a divorce.

And yes it's due to this false "empowerment" of women we keep seeing.
Women are told "don't get married strong women don't need men in their lives"
And so they don't until it's too late.
Go do a study on how many women in their 40's are lonely and miserable and the numbers will shock you.

Marriage has been so demonized by the media that those who do get married are called stupid for it.

But at the end of the day, regardless of what people had the freedom to do or not do in the 70's they were happier overall.
Freedom is important, but brain washing a generation into making destructive choices and living unhappy is a crime against humanity.

I_Am_Sazerac · Answer

Honestly its a mix of all your options. But the two glaring ones are MGTOW and the financial risk.

It is a good thing women are more independent, but there are even predators among women, and those women know the courts are still biased and know that other men will come to a woman's rescue if they whisper the right words in the right ears. They will find a man, cozy up, then either make false claims or divorce and take half to 80% of all the man's resources, leaving him destitute and broken while she enjoys the fruits of his labor, and repeats the action.

Men fear those types of women, but even if the woman they have isn't like that and is a genuinely good person, the woman can STILL take all of his resources, even if she has her own money, if the marriage doesn't work.

The courts are more biased against men in this regards and men are scared. Men do the same thing to women and can get away with it just as much, but as I mentioned, the court are more in favor.

In this regard, I see more domestic partnerships than a sealing marriage because both parties opted this rout for "just incase".

Exterminatore · Answer

The divorce rates are down because there are less intact marriages. Duh.

Marriages are down because men won’t marry odious feminist and dyke left wing shrews. Modern women have little to offer men and are utterly worthless.

The women won’t marry the men because they’ve spent decades emasculating them and turning them into man bun wearing, man purse having, sissified candy asses. Or have been busy creating a gynocentric society that is set up for women to succeed at the expense of men and and so for the majority of the rest of men who do not read the Vagina Monologues, they are losers. They live in their moms basements until their 30’s smoking pot daily and masturbating to porn daily while playing video games all day when they are not at their part time jobs or marching in some protest against big business.

Not to mention the west is in moral decline and marriage is not seen as necessary to have sex or children.

Additionally, in the case of a divorce, men will be left penniless and women leave the marriage with cash and prizes so it is dangerous for men to marry.

Why are you on here asking these questions anyway? Doesn’t your feminist ass have stuff to do with your bull dyke girlfriend because you can’t get a man?

ChrisMaster69 · Answer

Over here I think it’s down to less people bothering with the bollox of getting married.

There are also two schools of thought over the impact of lockdown on families as well.

one side is it pushed families back together as all in the house, parents spent more time with each other and with their kids, actually getting involved in each other’s lives.

the other side, says the above was a nightmare and exposed families to areas they did not want to admit they sucked at, as in having a relationship and being a family.

my positive view is that families came out of it with a better understanding of each other, what their kids actually want and need, what each other need and want.

often facing adversity together makes us stronger as a whole,

Oigit · Answer

I'd say that for a long time too much weight was put on marriage and for a while people have woken up to that. Going without food, shelter and sleep will kill you. Because all three are basic needs for our survival. But for a long time so much weight was put on getting married that it might as well be on the list as well. Now people are becoming aware that getting married isn't as important as it's made out to be. So people are perfect happy and content not getting married. People are also not willing to stick it out in a bad marriage for the same reason.

exitseven · Answer

Social media has stunted a lot of people in regards to making relationships With social media people "meet" hundreds or thousands of people but do not form any intimate relationships. As the age for people using social media gets younger, the issue becomes more pronounced.
Nobody puts in the time of effort to get to know somebody anymore and many people lack the skills to do that. The irony is that "social media" has just the opposite effect.

Jamie05rhs · Answer

Divorce rates increased dramatically during the second half of the 20th Century. Younger men (and women) in later generations saw this occurring, so many of them chose to avoid marriage entirely, because they didn't want to take the risk.
I am one of these people. I am pro-marriage, and I want to get married, and yet I am extremely cautious about it. Because I refuse to become another statistic like everyone else.

Anonymous · Answer

This so funny that how many men are butthurt because of Feminism. Women and men should be equal and have the same rights in the first place. MANY years women live in the society in which patriarchy exists. No men talked about it they were very content happy. They were dominating the women cheat them multiple times and come to the clean home and eat the meal their wives cooked to them. The women have no choice not to marry with them. Because women were not allowed to work now they are allowed to work and they can choose who to marry the traditional men who does not want to marry with Feminists, do they think that Feminists want to marry with them 😂 of course not. So there is not a problem. Answer of your question is mixture of the all choices i think. We can not give all the pressure to one choice. Everything can be the reason.

Bricealan · Answer

I'm thinking that MOST of the things you list are the causal factors. As for me, the "plague' has isolated me to the point of me living like a "monk' in a monastery. I do notice some 'easing' of the mask requirements here in Orange County, and I tend to get out more and be more social.

My one and only marriage, ended in a disaster that took me literally YEARS to recover from emotionally, and my present lady friend and I seem to negotiate the problems we see pretty well.

Breanna_nonbinary · Answer

The divorce rate is stupid. We only look at the conclusion that we draw from it. They say that 50% of marriages end in divorce. It’s shocking, I know. However if we look closer you’ll realize that that marriage can only end two ways: divorce or death. So basically 50% of marriages end in death.
This, like all scientific studies, can have a conclusion that is simplistic in nature usually that’s all that we hear. The marriage statistic doesn’t reveal the length of time people were married, the reason they divorced, if it was amicable, what the age they were married, if it is the first marriage etc. however those statistics can’t be sensationalized into a headline.
So anytime you hear about a study’s results keep in mind that it’s only one person’s interpretation of the raw data.

Fuentes · Answer

I think it has a lot to do with the economy back then you see people finished high school and went to college and got married and could afford most of everything or some would finish high school and become a manager with good pay and be able to afford a family. These days everything is so sky rocketed high having a family puts a strain on the marriage and things never work out.

HellGeist · Answer

It's a confluence of factors. Could be all of the above.

For the record, I understand that Divorce rates are up. Not going down.

Marriage is indeed going down.

Part of the cause is Modern Feminism.

Thanks to the internet, guys are sharing their experiences and now Western women are not seen as marriage material as a generality among many men who have been through divorce or are products of divorce or who learn from eachother's pain and experiences.

I think the trend will continue. It's just natural blowback.

Eventually things have a way of balancing themselves out when extremes are reached.

It's a good thing in the short run, but long term it could lead to societal degradation, but I invest in crypto, not societal values, lmao.

readyplayer001 · Answer

casual sex is too easy to access and a lot of people dont wanna put the time into relationships anymore. then you have others who at this point wanna stay to themselves. with the internet people are less social they feel talking to someone on line classifies as a relationship when they have never met or even kissed which to me is very odd. a myriad of things

HighValue · Answer

Divorce rates are down because there are less marriages. Can't get divorced when they aren't married in the first place.
Marriage rates are down because more men are aware that women can steal from them during divorce. (And no women do anything to get those laws changed so ALL women in the USA are complicit in it). The only way to prove that wrong is to get the abusive sexist divorce laws changed. I'm still waiting on that one. How many generations will it take for women to even get one single law changed to finally help men?

Anyways, it is possible to have a life long, exclusive relationship, live together, raise kids, etc. without ever getting legally married. No reason for the man to risk losing half the assets he worked for years to earn. If someone insists on marriage and won't offer to sign a prenuptial agreement it pretty much proves they are a thief trying to rip someone off. No prenup = no marriage.

Bluemax · Answer

Many or possibly all of those things you listed are probably contributing factors.

If pressed, I would say that both a decrease in people getting married and people waiting until they are older and better trained and educated before getting married are probably the greatest contributors.

Finchie40 · Answer

My guess is because less people are getting married these days , people have become more selfish these days and only really care about themselves , I blame a lot of it on social media brainwashing people’s heads to believe every man or female is a cheater or a whore. Sad world we live in

Razp_Sorbet · Answer

We learn from previous generations mistakes. Though my parents have been married for 25 years. I had friends who had divorced parents, half of my aunt's and uncles are divorced, Christmas in my family consists of my grandfather being in the same room as his girlfriend, his ex wife and his current wife (separated). We see what that situation does to people and we see it's not easy on them so we take our time to get married make sure the person is who we want to be with.

Marriage and divorce rates are down to levels not seen since the 70s. What do you attribute most to this decline?

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