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Marriage

El Chupacabra said:
My parents have both been divorced multiple times. Aunt has been divorced, brother has been divorced (I wouldn't be surprised if he was on his second in a year or so), sister's only a year + in, so I have hope for her.

But yeah, I haven't had great examples.
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We also read some studies in that same class that showed people are more likely to get divorced if their friends and family have.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Just saying that marriage doesn't make a monogamous relationship immune. Would your family members in committed relationships be less committed to each other without the ring, ceremony, etc.?
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i'm not saying being married automatically means your relationship is great.. it just ups the ante and makes "making it work" mean something more. i can't imagine my parents/family members not being married. If they weren't, I wouldn't exist. Bringing children into the relationship without being married simply wasn't an option for them and I don't imagine it being an option for me either (at least not planned that way). So in short, i guess yes they would be less committed without a ring.
 
I don't know (and frankly I don't care) whether such statistics exist, but it seems like if you're trying to show whether marriage does or doesn't provide more stability, you'd have to compare the divorce rate to the rate at which nonmarried, committed couples break up. Marriage obviously isn't a 100% indicator that you've got long-term stability with one person, but it's probably a better indicator, numbers-wise, than not being married.
 
"A false conclusion in the 1970s that half of all first marriages ended in divorce was based on the simple but completely wrong analysis of the marriage and divorce rates per 1,000 people in the United States. A similar abuse of statistical analysis led to the conclusion that 60 percent of all second marriages ended in divorce.

These errors have had a profound impact on attitudes about marriage in our society and it is a terrible injustice that there wasn’t more of an effort to get accurate data (essentially only obtainable by following a significant number of couples over time and measuring the outcomes) or that newer, more accurate and optimistic data isn’t being heavily reported in the media.

It is now clear that the divorce rate in first marriages probably peaked at about 40 percent for first marriages around 1980 and has been declining since to about 30 percent in the early 2000s. This is a dramatic difference. Rather than viewing marriage as a 50-50 shot in the dark it can be viewed as having a 70 percent likelihood of succeeding. But even to use that kind of generalization, i.e., one simple statistic for all marriages, grossly distorts what is actually going on."

"Thus, we reach an even more dramatic conclusion: That for college educated women who marry after the age of 25 and have established an independent source of income, the divorce rate is only 20 percent!"
 
mattwfu99 said:
I don't know (and frankly I don't care) whether such statistics exist, but it seems like if you're trying to show whether marriage does or doesn't provide more stability, you'd have to compare the divorce rate to the rate at which nonmarried, committed couples break up. Marriage obviously isn't a 100% indicator that you've got long-term stability with one person, but it's probably a better indicator, numbers-wise, than not being married.
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This is obviously from the UK, but I don't think that really matters.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn107.pdf

A number of recent UK papers have documented the association between
marriage and relationship stability. Using the Millennium Cohort Study (the same
data source that we employ in our own work), Benson (2009) finds that around
27% of couples that were cohabiting when their child was born have separated
by the time the child is aged 5, compared with 9% of couples that were married
when their child was born.

Kiernan and Mensah (2010), also using the same data source, document more
detailed trajectories of couples that are married or cohabiting when their child is
born.6 They find that 88.1% of parents who were married at the time of the birth
of their child are ‘stable’ at least until their child is 5 years old, while 2.1%
experience periods of separation but are together when their child is aged 5,
7.6% are lone parents when the child is aged 5 and 2.1 % have re-partnered. By
contrast, around 66.6% of couples that were cohabiting at their child’s birth are
classified as ‘stable’ at age 5 (43.4% remain cohabiting and 23.2% get married),
5.7% experience periods of separation, 20.5% are lone parents and 7.3% have
re-partnered.
 
It is really tough for me to even imagine being married. It's not like I got cynical all of a sudden when I was older, I have never really thought of it as my thing. Even thinking about buying a ring is weird because it seems like such an unnatural act for me. Way to go parents.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Doesn't our divorce rate kind of negate that security?
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It's a routine bias that people believe statistics with large sample sizes reflect general truths, but those statistics as applied to them do not hold true. I forget the name of the bias, but one of our resident behavioral psychologists can probably help out here.
 
ITK said:
Older posters: I am 33. When will my friends start getting divorced?
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i don't know if i qualify as an older poster (i'm 32) but i have one friend who was divorced in his late twenties. everyone else doing fine so far
 
marriage sucked for my grandparents on both sides; it worked very well for my parents and inlaws. going well for me so far :noidea:
 
Just because a couple stays married doesn't mean they're in a fulfilling relationship. How many people have stayed in a bad marriage because of cultural taboos against divorce?
 
ITK said:
Older posters: I am 33. When will my friends start getting divorced?
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I'm kind of hoping this starts happening soon, though not with my friends, of course. I'm going to be the Dennis Rodman of marriage rebounders, boxing out, clearing the glass, throwing 'bows.
 
Back to the OP... seems like you need to have two separate discussions:

1 - whether or not marriage as an institution makes sense in today's society
2 - wedding/marriage traditions

As others have pointed out... it is quite easy to have a wedding without all the "stupid" traditions you pointed out (father walking the daughter, dowry, etc.).

Marriage is a risky proposal for any dude making a decent living these days.
 
seventwofour said:
Just because a couple stays married doesn't mean they're in a fulfilling relationship. How many people have stayed in a bad marriage because of cultural taboos against divorce?
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Modern day divorce rates, during the time the taboo is probably the lowest it has ever been, are lower than they were when our grandparents were the same age.

I don't think marriage is right for everyone and I think there are a lot of problems with the traditional views of marriage, but I also think people tend to just throw out this 50% statistic, which is completely inaccurate.
 
buckets said:
Back to the OP... seems like you need to have two separate discussions:

1 - whether or not marriage as an institution makes sense in today's society
2 - wedding/marriage traditions

As others have pointed out... it is quite easy to have a wedding without all the "stupid" traditions you pointed out (father walking the daughter, dowry, etc.).

Marriage is a risky proposal for any dude making a decent living these days.
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Yeah I think this is a very good point.

I think marriage does still provide stability and most marriages do work out. The statistics also support this.

I also think there are a lot of terrible marriage and antiquated views that are horrible. I don't even like when my friends jokingly tell their wives to "get in the kitchen" or something like that. You may think you are just joking, but it is a toxic thing to say in the long term.
 
I think humans are pretty much genetically hardwired for pair bonding. Cultures all over the world and throughout time have had some form of marriage. Customs vary widely, but there is always the idea that men and women get together and stay together for extended periods in a socially recognized relationship, with some degree of exclusivity of sexual access expected.

Just because something is generally true of humans doesn't mean its good for every human, of course, and I don't think any culture can claim that their particular definition of marriage is the best one.
 
bojanglefunk said:
"A false conclusion in the 1970s that half of all first marriages ended in divorce was based on the simple but completely wrong analysis of the marriage and divorce rates per 1,000 people in the United States. A similar abuse of statistical analysis led to the conclusion that 60 percent of all second marriages ended in divorce.

These errors have had a profound impact on attitudes about marriage in our society and it is a terrible injustice that there wasn’t more of an effort to get accurate data (essentially only obtainable by following a significant number of couples over time and measuring the outcomes) or that newer, more accurate and optimistic data isn’t being heavily reported in the media.

It is now clear that the divorce rate in first marriages probably peaked at about 40 percent for first marriages around 1980 and has been declining since to about 30 percent in the early 2000s. This is a dramatic difference. Rather than viewing marriage as a 50-50 shot in the dark it can be viewed as having a 70 percent likelihood of succeeding. But even to use that kind of generalization, i.e., one simple statistic for all marriages, grossly distorts what is actually going on."

"Thus, we reach an even more dramatic conclusion: That for college educated women who marry after the age of 25 and have established an independent source of income, the divorce rate is only 20 percent!"
Click to expand...

Damn, I think most women I know who have gotten married meet those criteria. I better develop a new strategy.
 
i only have one friend who's been divorced. he just turned 30. got divorced at 28 after a 1 year marriage-- he has issues committing to ANYTHING though so it kind of makes sense that marriage wasn't for him, although he definitely says he wants to try again. Another example of his commitment-phobia: he just graduated with a Masters in engineering. after 6 months on the job, he's quitting because he "hates engineering" and wants to go in a completely different direction. This was already after 1 career change a couple years out of college which spawned him getting the MS.
 
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