Who Is Right About Staying Together For the Kids - Dr. Laura or Dennis Prager?

Dr. Laura's priority is the well-being of minor children. She has experience as a marriage and family therapist, although she's far more experienced as a radio talk show host and author dealing with family problems, moral dilemmas, values, ethics, and more.

Absent actual abuse, she tells married parents who want to divorce to wait until the youngest child is 18 years old, up and out of the home. Her reasoning is that this avoids breaking up the child's home and bring chaos into their lives while they are minors.

Dennis Prager, who says people should divorce instead of living in misery, says that it can be worse for the children to be in their (adult) late teens or early twenties and then have their parents split, because then the now-grown children think of their family life as fake or a lie, and they can still get extremely upset about the divorce.

It should be noted that Dennis Prager, who has no formal experience as a marriage and family therapist and has written much less on parenting/family and spends fewer talk show hours discussing those issues, has had more children than Dr. Laura and one more divorce than her (Dr. Laura was not a mother when her first marriage ended).

It's one of the things I would very much like to hear these two radio talk show host veterans discuss directly. I doubt that will ever happen since their shows aren't part of the same company. Also, because Dr. Laura refuses to argue/debate on her show, and my guess is that would also include any other show as well (this is probably one big reason she hasn't appeared on anyone else's show in many years, except for one on the same channel as hers - on which she doesn't argue.)

Unlike either of them, I would advocate most people avoid this question entirely by not marrying.

Motivation For Going Childfree

I wanted to take a moment to address a comment that was left after this page asking for one good reason for men to marry.

 Here's the comment:

The question you should really also ask is:
Why would you want to have children? If you really feel the urge to raise one or more, adopt them, there are waaaaay to many parentless kids out there. And when push comes to shove; Putting a child onto this horrible planet is more like a crime than "something that should be done". Humans are overpopulating, overconsuming its resources, wasting away the planet as it is, and it will take ages (and many pandemics) to have them scale down a bit. Here's my advice (after putting one daughter into this world, and still being together with the same woman I had the child with): DON'T commit yourself to one woman, and DON'T have children. It's going to be bad to bear witness to what the child has to go through, and it's going to be bad to realize your favorite woman stops being attracted to you, or vice versa. Staying together 'for or because of the children' is horror for how it will grow up.

I did write an entry asking if it is now irresponsible to have children. But that has nothing to do with environmentalism, population growth, or the general state of life in this world. It does have to do with the latter part of the comment: being tied to a woman and not being able to provide the child with a present mother and father, happily together.

We are not an overpopulated planet.

We are not in an environmental crisis, and human ingenuity will continue to address environmental challenges.

In some parts of the world, life is pretty good overall (was, especially before the lockdowns).

The problems we have right now include that the state has taken ownership of children while still placing all blame and billing on the parents; misandry and opposition to masculinity; a lack of responsible, appropriate, and genuine femininity; emasculating laws and culture; and detrimental family laws and courts (among others). Most people can't give a coherent, logical, rational, unselfish reason to have children, and most men shouldn't have children. A lot of people will not think this through, though, and will still have intercourse without taking steps to avoid conception, so most people, at least for a while, will continue to keep having children regardless.

Round and Round the Circle Goes

On yesterday's (September 25, 2019) show. one of my favorite talk show hosts, Dr. Laura, again expressed concerns about parents acting in way that will not, as a side effect, discourage their children from marrying. This is probably because she wants children raised within marriages. Why not encourage people to remain child free? [This entry has been bumped up.]

Early in the call, which was from a woman divorcing her husband, Dr. Laura talked about the importance of the "until death do us part" vows, but as the caller explained her reason for divorcing (financial), the importance of those vows evaporated. At this point, I don't think I could make a diagram about when the vows matter in Dr. Laura's view and when they don't. But I digress...

Dr. Laura consistently has stated that one good reason to stay married is to give the children of that marriage hope to have a lasting marriage someday. This call was one of the frequent calls in which there's a divorce, but Dr. Laura still wants the parents to talk to their kids in a way that will encourage the children to think they won't go through divorce if they marry.

You Don't Need a Wife

Guys, you don't need a wife.

You might think you do for any number or combination of reasons (you can skip these reasons and go down to how you can have a great life without a wife if you'd like):

1) You're stuck in some mindset that's based on a bygone (if it ever really existed) era. In this mindset, "everyone" gets married, it's shameful or sad if you don't, and husband and wife work as a team with a tidy division of labor, with the wife providing her husband with admiration, respect, support, sex, children, and a "made" home, and the husband providing for the wife income and certain domestic labor, protection, and muscle in raising the children.* You grow old together. Very few marriages are like this anymore. Most women are not prepared to be that kind of wife, and guys don't need to marry to get what they want. The culture in general has changed, more and more people are living more and more of their life outside of marriage, and there's a good chance she'll divorce you no matter what you do.

2) You were socialized to think you did. Whether it was and is your parents, your peers, a religious organization in which you were raised, or the media (especially with the highly unrealistic romcoms), you were told by others that you're supposed to have a wife. But this is your decision to make,  and you are the one who will live with the consequences.

3) You don't have your act together and you think a wife will make up for your shortcomings. Even if she seems to like taking care of things for you now, there's hardly any woman who really, sincerely, wants to be your Mommy and the resentment and backlash will wreak havoc sometime after you sign on that dotted line. You can get your act together and take care of your stuff without being married. See How To Do It below.

4) A woman you're having sex with wants you to marry her. Whether she's your "girlfriend" or "significant other" or "partner" or whatever, she indicates she wants to get married. Of course she does! Getting married has guaranteed benefits for her. But it's a bad deal for you. Don't let her decide what your life is going to be like. If you're just seeing her, the only thing she controls is whether or not she's going to have sex with you. If she moves in, she controls much more of your life, and if you marry her, she'll be almost entirely in control of your life. DO NOT LET HER MOVE IN, not even by stealth. Once she does, she'll be hinting, suggesting, or outright nagging about getting married, trying to tell you that you might as well get married, or getting married will make things netter. She shouldn't even know where your place is, but if you have her over she should never be allowed to spend the night, receive mail or shipments there, leave things there, etc.

5) A woman you're spending a lot of time with wants you to marry her. See immediately above. You can find friendship and companionship with others, without signing a legal contract that is nothing but trouble for you.

6) You think you need a wife for sex. You can get all the sex you want without being married. Being married actually makes it less likely you'll get all of the sex you want. UNLESS... you live by a moral code that sex is for marriage. And if that's the case, you're not having sex already, right? Right? If you want to START living by that moral code, any woman you're having sex with now isn't the right woman to do that with. If you already are living by that code, think long and hard if wanting sex is worth getting married, keeping in mind that the sex could be bad and could be ended entirely, even if you do "everything" right.

7) You think you need a wife for children. Studies do correlate positive indicators for children with being raised by married parents. As with sex, though, you need to decide if your desire to raise children under the best circumstances for them is worth getting married.

When it comes right down to it, most men can't give a logical,  positive reason why they think they should get married.

So don't do it. Stay unmarried.

How To Do It

Keeping Boundaries As a Free Man

If you are a Free Man, meaning you don't have a wife and don't live with a woman, I implore you to enjoy your freedom. I also urge you to keep your freedom. 

That might sound easy. I mean, don't you have to decide to move in together and don't you have to ask a woman to marry you?

Sure, but it gets more complicated than that.

Some women literally scheme to get pregnant even though you've made it clear you don't want to have children. Some women incrementally move-in-by-stealth. Some women nag and nag and nag (and even get your family to join in) to get you to "propose".

You need to keep boundaries in order to stay a Free Man.

AVOID POP DNA TESTS. Don't buy them for your family, either. You can't stop them being foolish and taking them, but avoid taking one yourself. No good will come from one of those. The only time you should take a DNA test is through the advice and arrangement of your lawyer.


Monk or Ghost

This is the the most extreme way of staying a Free Man without literally going off to be an isolated hermit. Some men decide to avoid women as much as possible. They don't date, they don't have female friends, they don't work for or with women, and they don't have any professional or financial connections to women (for example, they refuse to have a woman as an accountant or doctor). That is extreme, but for some it works.


Stay Present But Independent

This is the less extreme way. You can still participate in society and interact with women. You just need to be persistent and firm in keeping yourself independent. Let's consider how to do this.

Is He A Masochist?

Today's Dear Abby was a doozy. SCARED OF COURT IN CALIFORNIA wrote:

DEAR ABBY: I went through something that caused me a tremendous amount of pain and most of my wealth. I am still making monthly payments because of this, and will likely have to do so for the rest of my life. Also, about once a year, I go through a lot of additional expense and pain because of this thing I went through.

In addition to this, I am now paying for all the expenses of another able-bodied adult. This other person wants me to legally sign over half of my earnings to them. They also want me to do something that has over a 70-percent chance of resulting in a repeat of that original traumatic event.

What should I do?

OK, that's not the actual letter, but it might as well have been. See for yourself:

Yet Another Thing to Check Out If You're Thinking of Marrying

Guys, most of you shouldn't marry. There are many reasons why I say that. Here's just one of many: Dead Bedrooms.

Read up! That could easily be YOU!

Imagine signing away over half your earnings, handing over control of your life and home, and you get a dead bedroom.

JUST SAY NO!

Stay free!