Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Selling Marriage Because of Claimed Correlations

Male Female Clip Art
Marriage sellers claim that the problem with declining marriage rates include, among other things:
  • Married men live longer
  • Marriage matures people, especially men
  • Unmarried women are dependent on government
  • Unmarried women push destructive ideas
  • Married people are more likely to own homes
  • Married people are more likely to have more children
Assuming marriage does help men to live longer, and that's not certain, the longevity isn't the result of signing a terrible state contract or having a ceremony. It would be because of nagging to go the the doctor, and perhaps receiving care. But these things can be done without marriage. Why not cut out the "middle man"?

Likewise, women can be taught to avoid government dependence without making her dependent on a husband. Cut out the middle man!

As far as maturity, but men and women can be encouraged to be mature without marriage. There are great, mature people who never married. So if you're concerned about maturity, figure out how to encourage people to mature even if they're not married.

If unmarried women push destructive ideas (a claim of Dennis Prager), perhaps it was their tendency to do so that have caused her to avoid marrying or caused others to avoid marrying her?

Married people are more likely to own a home because they're stuck. They don't have the freedom to move when they'd like. What's the alternative to married people owning the homes? Investors? So what's the difference to society? Someone's going to own the homes, and the owner has an incentive to take care of it.

I'm not opposed to there being more children, but what's really going on here? I've written about this already.

People are less likely to marry when they see that marriage won't improve their life. Fewer people are seeing marriage as worth it.

If you want people to behave a certain way, you just might have to encourage those behaviors directly, instead of counting on marriage to make people behave as you prefer.

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