Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be taken away from you (sure visitation rights, but pratically the child grows up in the household of another man, if she remarries).

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DeathArrow 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

My view - for which I have no proofs, it's just intuition - is that people are too egotistic and self centered and too hedonistic to want to have children.

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giantg2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The paternity issue should be easy to overcome with modern technology. There's really no reason the state shouldn't require a paternity test to ensure the accuracy of the state issued birth certificate.

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bombcar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Some states go the other way - if you (as the father, maybe the mother but that's pretty easy to verify I hear) sign the birth certificate you are the father (Maury) for all legal purposes even if you're not - wether knowingly or not.

	▲	giantg2 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, most states see it that way. But you could still make them the legal father through adoption (like with step parents) without providing inaccurate information on the birth certificate.

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Spooky23 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s all economic, pride and ego. Once you hit a certain amount of income, the marginal cost of children seems too much. It’s not a big deal when you have nothing.

Maintaining a middle/upper middle class lifestyle for your kids is expensive. Few people can afford daycare, 5x college tuitions, etc. Extended families tend to be spread out and social networks aren’t what they once were.

Dudes online blather about paternity, divorce, etc. all nonsense and all irrelevant. Bad marriages and divorce are not new, although religious and conservative people try to imply that. The entire movement for prohibition in the early 20th century was driven by absent fathers who would drink their wages away and let the children starve in some hovel.

The only thing that’s “new” is women have the ability to choose birth control.

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dyauspitr 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.

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CalRobert 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The question, of course, is whether that means women want divorce more, or men fear divorce more.

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kakacik 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Women absolutely want the divorce more once they come to conclusion some aspect of relationship is over (typically the emotion part but simply spending less time together or feeling most of the burden of raising kids is enough).

Most guys can suck up now-loveless marriage trivially if kids are fine (after kids come, this is pretty standard path for marriages), heck we can still enjoy sex greatly in such situation. Most women, not so much. I know it sounds sexist, trust me I would be very happy if this wasnt true but when I look/ask/listen around it is.

As an cca older guy at certain age the patterns start emerging left and right, and my own marriage can see some of it, just like most other marriages around us.

Some make it, some don't. When it fails its mostly mixture of personality resilience of both sides rather than some objective measure of (lack of) quality of relationship. Its easy to judge but please be kind to those who are going/went through, they may have been a better partner than ie you and still it wasnt enough to sustain it.

	▲	CalRobert an hour ago \| parent [-]
		They’re often sexless though. Also it’s often fear of stepdads. My mom dumped my dad so she could date a string of abusive assholes. It would give me pause before leaving a marriage that wasn’t utter misery.

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dyauspitr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Anecdotally, men are a lot more content with marriage. Women want a lot more. The whole “healthy relationship” ecosystem in contemporary times is almost entirely women driven.

	▲	mikepurvis 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A lot more men than women are able to be content with the comfortable mediocrity that is bringing in the paycheque, doing the chores, getting laid once or twice a month, but otherwise not really feeling much passion or enthusiasm or joy with their partner. It's not the life you hope for, but there's a lot of social messaging that that's just the way it is, it's what you signed up for, you would be selfish to leave, the grass won't be greener, and also it's probably your fault anyway for not being a better husband. The messaging to women in romcoms and the like is much more toward you deserve better, be brave, junk the loser, go get the life you want. As a guy who was in a mediocre marriage like this for many years, I basically got my emotional needs met elsewhere: through work, family, friends, time and activities with my kids, etc.

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russdill 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The divorce mechanism is the legal end of the partnership. It's not an indication of who initiated the termination of the partnership itself.

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giantg2 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you have evidence to back up the implict claim that those two are not strongly correlated?

	▲	mikepurvis 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Of course they're correlated but it's obvious to anyone who has had a long term relationship unravel that the causes are always complicated and multi-layered. I (man) was the one who pulled the trigger on my divorce but that followed years of conflict and withdrawing from both sides and ultimately you can point to specific milestones (who killed the bedroom, who opened a separate bank account first, who stepped out first, who wouldn't come back to counselling) but it's actually better for healing not to be preoccupied with the blame game and instead focus on where one's own growth opportunities are.
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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voakbasda 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This does not surprise me, as the courts are flagrantly biased toward women in these matters. Almost without exception, they come out ahead in every measurable metric.

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giantg2 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"as the courts are flagrantly biased toward women in these matters"

As in most matters. There are many studies about lesser sentences for women vs men who commit the same crimes.

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bombcar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is not always exactly true if you dig into the details - for example, something like 20% of fathers get custody - but it's something like 90% of fathers who try to get custody get some.

	▲	bluGill 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How many don't even try though because them assume it is hopeless. Some custody includes things like 1 weekend a month - if that is all you get it wasn't really worth the bother.
	▲	CalRobert an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		“Some”? Anything less than fifty percent is state sponsored kidnapping.

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bell-cot 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

From divorces among family & friends - yes, those concerns exist. But they are also worst-case scenarios, and there are many "friendlier" divorces. Or divorces after the kids grow up - where none of the paternity, left-to-raise, and visitation issues really apply.

Vs. even if marriages were magically 100% secure - the costs of having kids in most modern societies have skyrocketed over the past half-ish century or so.