An Unmarried Individual May Not Be Happier Married

 

There are marriage-selling sociologists and their marks who post graphs that depict married parents as happier than “unmarried,” childfree people.

I’m a married parent. I’d love to tell you that if YOU marry and have children, you’ll be happier.

But there’s no solid evidence of that. It might make you miserable.

The graphs rely on statistical trickery and for marks to not understand that apparent correlation isn’t proof of directional causation.

Who is counted as “unmarried” in those graphs?

• Divorced people, whose unhappiness could be primarily due to their marriage
• People who are too sickly, ugly, poor, or unpleasant to attract a spouse - how happy do you think they are?
• Generally unhappy people, whose unhappiness makes it more difficult to attract or keep a spouse 
• Desperate people who think they’re losers, sinners, failures, or doomed (perhaps taught so by their clergy or cult leaders) for not marrying/multiplying 
• People who are partnered and living like they are married, but haven’t legally married; a state license isn’t going to make them any happier 
• Intentionally never-married, childfree people

The people in that last group could be, as a group, much happier than married people. Marriage sellers NEVER separate them out in the statistics, though.

Another trick common to graphs is to shorten an axis to make disparities look larger than they are. For example, if the data goes from 0 to 100, only showing 40 to 60 on a graph can make differences seem larger than they are.

In the case of the specific graphs we’re talking about, time frame can also matter. If the ages included only go from, say, 25 to 35, that’s definitely not the whole picture.

There are never-married, childfree people who are very happy.

There are also married parents who are miserable. Some even murder their spouse and/or children or are murdered by their spouse or child. That’s extreme, but there are many other things, like abuse, that can be involved without it getting to the point of murder. If you are living free, you can easily leave abusive people.

Don’t be fooled by graphs that rendered and presented in misleading ways.

Consider embracing freedom and making the most of it.