Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications
- Thread starter alaskanseminole
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Uh... who is paying for the "paid leave" in those countries? The employers, or is it subsidized by the governments?
This past year has been an eye opener for me. Before the pandemic, I was commuting into Manhattan 5 days a week. I’d leave home a little before 9am and return at 7:45pm when I’d then eat dinner with my family and then put my daughter to bed after spending an hour with her each night. By NY standards, this wasn’t even a long day. Now, I work at home from 10am-6pm which allows me to make my daughter lunch everyday as well as take breaks and have discussions with her throughput the day. It’s been amazing for us to gain that time. We’ve become much closer and I’ve helped her develop some study habits that have really improved her ability to succeed in school. This extra time has been invaluable and I don’t think I’ll go back to the old schedule anytime soon.
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Translation: Divorces have increased because we no longer force people who aren't happy together to stay together.
If that's liberal, it's another reason why liberal is better than the pro-force alternative.
Who was forced to stay together, and who did the forcing (speaking as someone whose parents divorced 55 years ago)?
Personal happiness should be a secondary concern to the welfare and raising of children.
Should be a secondary concern to keeping ones word.
The mistake is building economies dependent on (unsustainable) constant growth. That's the real mistake.
This is the fundamental flaw in capitalism.
Note to the easily triggered: This is not a full and complete condemnation of capitalism.
There are better ways to protect and care for children than forcing unhappy parents to stay married. And that's even if there's evidence that unhappy couples who are forced to stay together are good at protecting and caring for children - which I doubt.
It's simply not the case that only married parents can raise children well. Plenty of them don't. And there are plenty of other approaches.
I agree. Me, my wife, and quite a few of our friends would rather our parents divorced instead of staying together and making everyone unhappy.
Statistically speaking married parents produce the best results. There are exceptions but that's the reality.
My wife was watching Ted Lasso and she even commented how dumb it is to divorce someone simply because you are no longer in love with them.
That's funny. My partner and I watched that show and felt the exact opposite. We viewed that as a great act of love, to encourage each other to seek that which you really want. Note that it is clear in that (fictional) relationship that their co-parenting is going to be a mutually-supportive, successful endeavor.
We also commented that acts of love like that leave the door open for falling in love all over again. And each of us remarked on relationships we know of where this exact thing happened.
That's dodging the question.
The question is not whether married parents are better than single parents. It's whether parents who are forced to stay married are better than single parents.
There are other factors, as well. For example, I would guess that married parents are, on average, more likely to have a good household income than single parents. But there are ways to address the economic disparity.
Ditto for education levels.
We didn't view anything he did as being wrong. The fact that she quit on the marriage simply because she no longer felt in love with him is stupid.
If my wife really wanted out of our marriage I would let her go. But our view is that wanting out just because you no longer feel in love is selfish.
The vows don't say "til I'm no longer happy" or "til I don't feel in love anymore" . . . "til death do us part"
And love is a choice just as much as it is a feeling.
Odd because marriage makes things significantly cheaper. Only have to pay for one place to live.
And as long as there is no violence, abuse of substances and the like I would say yes parents who are forced to stay together are better than single parents.
You are functioning from your own constructs, Hoosier. Who the hell knows what their vows said? And it can be argued that those two fictional characters are choosing to love each other by giving each other the space to do what they feel they need to do.
Open yourself to the possibility of other constructs, Hoosier. This doesn't mean you have to adopt other constructs, just recognize that there are all kinds of ways to approach life-long relationships.
Yuck. You may not realize it, but you just abstractly alluded to a great deal of what i think our society is getting drastically wrong.
But those arn't even life long relationships, they are relationships until I get bored or find something better.
That's not even monogamy, it's serial monogamy.
The fact that there are other constructs doesn't mean that they arn't wrong.
Get off my lawn.
What exactly do you think our society is getting wrong. Serial monogamy and divorce are exceedingly common. Everyone is all about their own happiness. Forget their promises, their responsibility to an orderly society, and their children.
I know I'm in the vast minority on this but I feel like your duty to your children especially but also your duty to society is far more important than personal happiness.
Quite frankly I don't know how someone can be so selfish and still live with themselves.
The world is a richer place than it's ever been, and when places become rich and stable women have less babies. This isn't groundbreaking behavior, just a larger scale of an old behavior.
You are not in the "vast minority", stop being dramatic.
Most people love their children and are willing to struggle to see that they have safety.
Lol how in the hell do you know whether they're lifelong or not? Why are you now introducing monogamy into the equation? Lol.
I'm not saying you're wrong, Hoosier. I'm just arguing that there are more types of successful relationships than I think you're currently willing to consider. You're convinced that marriage is the way to child-rear, and it's just not. You're (maybe without realizing it) stigmatizing those that choose to live by different ideas of lifelong relationship constructs.
What I am saying is wrong is the implicit stigmatization placed on those who choose to parent in ways other than the one you're prescribing. Rather than look at stats and say, "well, marriage is best" look deeper as suggested above. And then rather than box people into one "best" avenue, how about we ask a more holistic and inclusive question—something like, "how about we look at the various ways of parenting and work to make each of them better and thus more likely to result in positive outcomes?"
Anything with even a whiff of puritanical thought is simply unrealistic. It's also proven to not work on a macro scale in a widely diverse society, never mind the unnecessary stress it can put on individual relationships.
A massive issue in our society is this puritanical stuff. There are all kinds of committed relationships, not just the strict and narrow marriage idea. When are your kids happy, Hoosier? Are they happy when their home environment is toxic and full of relationship stress? When are people most well-functioning? Without going too deep, trying to keep things simple here, it's when they're surrounded by—and in—loving, supportive relationships. And, guess what, these come in way, way, way more shapes and sizes than you might want to acknowledge.
Stigmatizing parenting that isn't marriage as you're constructing it does nothing good. Other societies have demonstrated very different approaches to child-rearing that are quite successful. Why is it we must force something infinitely complex into some narrow, one-size-fits-all, construct?
And this is what you're—maybe inadvertently—supporting: stigmatization. And this is destructive, and, frankly, not in the spirit of loving one another.
I'm finding that it really appears to be hard for you to imagine ways of life that differ greatly from yours, and from that which is preached by your faith. And that's fine and completely understandable.
You keep deeming pursuit of happiness as selfish. Lol. This is as much about freeing your loved ones to pursue happiness, which can be deemed entirely giving and unselfish, as it is feeling free to pursue one's own happiness. It's almost like the moment you're presented with this more open idea of loving relationships you immediately jump to the extreme, to like some hedonistic lifestyle chosen over something more committed. Man, there is so, so, so much in between. So much.
It did work for hundreds if not thousands of years. It stopped working 60 some odd years ago when we decided that being haaaappy and having fun was more important than doing the right thing.
When you pursue happiness at the expense of society and your offspring it is selfish.
It's not selfish on it's own. But the pursuit of happiness much like guns, weed, alcohol and everything else should come with responsibility.
And what societies have demonstrated over the course of hundreds to thousands of years that "marriage is not the only way". What societies were succeeding in the 18th, 15th, 11th, 9th, 6th, 3rd centuries without marriage that was expected to be lifelong.
Because a tradition that has lasted a few decades has proven nothing.
Again, you're looking at this through such a narrow lens. And working real hard to affirm your very narrow worldview in this regard.
Once again, you're viewing all of this through your narrow, puritanical lens. And you would be surprised how your idea of "marriage" is just one way of defining "lifelong" relationships. I'm not going to get deeper than this, Hoosier. This is a huuuuge are of interest and if you're truly interested I suggest you do your own reading. I only wish that you maybe recognize that your belief system on this is very narrow and prescriptive, and maybe acknowledge how this might not be healthy.
I'm not sure what "tradition" you're referencing. Curious what it is, and how this is germane to this discussion.
Oh my god this is so reductive. Are you not going to include all of the other societal shifts over this same time period? There is a lot of erosion, and it is all interrelated. You choose to focus on marriage. Why? Well, as with most things, focusing on marriage affirms your belief system on the importance of marriage. Being self-aware on this would be good for you so you can then make an attempt to deconstruct this belief system—that is, unless your belief system isn't strong enough to be challenged in that manner.
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Because they lead to single parent homes which leads to financial insecurity etc. This leads to children with worse outcomes who are more likely to commit crimes. That's the main reason.
There is also the emotional experience that children of divorce have to go through that they just shouldn't have to deal with if it can be avoided. They are expected to see their parents separate at all times. There are rarely if ever any family outings that include both of their parents. Their family life becomes a jumbled mess, they have a dad and a step dad a mom and step mom all at once. Step parents are some of the most likely people to abuse children by the way.
This often leads to parents competing with one another for their children's affections. . . parental alienation etc.
On top of that it's the principle of keeping your word.
Furthermore it's the security of the home. I feel people do better with the security of knowing their financial life, their family, their emotional support system can not be suddenly swept out from underneath of them without them having done something wrong first. And if someone should attempt to do that to someone without that person having done something wrong that person should face societal and legal reproach. Not jail, but if a person can be find to be primarily responsible for ending the marriage through abuse, adultery, or just filing for divorce because they are unhappy, that person should not get much of anything in the divorce settlement and primary physical custody of the children should go to the person not at fault.
Because as it stands now, if my wife just decides she's likes someone else better and divorces me, I lose not only her but seeing my children on a daily basis, and half my stuff. On top of that I would have to probably pay her alimony and child support just for the pleasure of having her destroy our family and hurt our children's present and future. At the very least if my wife decided she liked someone better than I should get to keep my stuff and my daily access to my children.
I don't for the record believe she would do this, but that's the reality a lot of people face.
This for the record is why we have more single parents too. Because it's not just people divorcing, it's people realizing that marriage is meaningless and thus commitment is meaningless. Why commit to anything if your experience in life is the other person can call it quits at any time for any stupid reason. So people are screwing each other at best in a state of serial monogamy, producing children and having no commitment to the other parent. So they run off with someone else and the children are left wondering what they did wrong that one of their parents decided to quit on the family. Eventually they grow up believing that's just the way things are so they arn't gonna marry, they are just going to do whatever makes them happy in the moment and screw their children over in the same damn way.
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I'm letting you challenge it. . . I just think it's wrong and society has suffered as a result.
Wow, more reductive stuff. All of this stuff is true to an extent, but it conveniently ignores EVERYTHING ELSE OUTSIDE OF YOUR NEAT, PRESCRIPTIVE EQUATION. How do you not see this? I'm trying to broaden the discussion, and you simply won't budge.
Why? I mean, really ask yourself, why?
No, you're not. You keep going right back to an entire EXTREMELY NARROW, PRESCRIPTIVE CONSTRUCT that conveniently eliminates myriad other factors at play. This is not only unhealthy from a base anthropological standpoint, it's also, in my opinion, contributing to the problems you've referenced.
You stubborn fool. Her leaving you doesn't necessarily precipitate all those things you just mentioned. Once again, an extremely narrow way of considering this stuff. I know several families who were once married, are no longer, there was no 50/50 split of material possessions and child-rearing time, and, arguably, the co-parenting IMPROVED as a result of choosing to dissolve the marriage.
Are you going to pretend away my personal knowledge and experience? Or will you honor it and ask about it?
Oh. Hoosier. You are exhibiting some pretty bigoted behavior with regards to this stuff.
Ok explain to me how a marriage gets dissolved without splitting up parenting time and possessions.
How is it bigoted . . . this is something everyone has control over. And I don't speak to individual situations here. I don't blame someone who divorces on account of addictions or abuse. . . I wouldn't personally due to my religious convictions I would just separate. But I'm ok with someone outside of the Christian faith divorcing for those reasons. (I would divorce for adultery)
Dude, people divorce and remain in the home together. People divorce and become neighbors, sometimes even finding MORE TIME to parent together.
I have friends who, once married, now divorced, spend more time together as friends than they did in much of their 7 years of marriage. Their kids effectively have a much more supportive and loving and nurturing, healthy environment than when the parents were married. They live less than a block from each other, yet share more meals together now than during marriage.
You want to know how this all occurred? Because it's, well, it's kind of prescriptive along the lines as I alluded to several posts ago—and it might be a prescription you understand and support.
Dictionary definition of bigoted, Hoosier. You're hardly a bigot. I think you're an incredible person, and I think you know that. But this unbending, narrow, strict thinking is arguably bigoted in nature.
