Employed Parents

You remember the guy who did the worst Prager U video ever, based on my personal opinion and viewer reactions? It's the video that told men they should get married because they'd earn more money but neglected to mention that 1) if his wife divorced him, most of his money would go to her and lawyers, and 2) even she stay married to him, most of his money would be spent by her? Yeah.

Well a tweet by him caught my attention. It linked to a Bloomberg story carried by Yahoo claiming that having children is a bad career move for women. The text of the tweet was:

As if money is the only thing to live for

Yup. From the guy who wanted men to stop doing the things they enjoyed under the lure of "you'll make more money!"

Rebecca Greenfield reports:

Someone Might Have Beaten That Prager U Video Advocating Marriage

The Brad Wilcox video for Prager University that was thoroughly and effectively countered early in the year wasn't enough, apparently, because some other organization did a marriage-promoting video that is just about as bad, called "Why Bother With Marriage?"

"From many points of view, marriage is a costly hassle that makes no sense. Why, then, might there still be good reasons to get married?"

Obviously, you can go watch it yourself if you want a good laugh, but if not, here's their main point:

Being married makes is harder to leave each other.

I kid you not. That's their argument.

A lot of people would see that precisely as why they shouldn't bother getting married.

They say marriage places a high and costly barrier in the way of splitting up. To a breadwinning man, this is like saying, "You should glue weights to your scrotum, because it will hurt a lot when someone comes along and rips them away." What kind of selling point is that?!? Divorce can be legally obtained unilaterally for no reason. Yeah, it's a pain for a breadwinning husband to go through a divorce, but it is financially rewarding to his wife.

Isn't it obvious by how many divorces there are that marriage isn't stopping people from splitting up?!?

And the premise requires that marriage is otherwise beneficial. The video does make a feeble attempt to say that marriage is good because it provides structure and that relationships (which they neglect to stress can exist without legal marriage) help us mature, develop, and become whole. No, really. What kind of structure are they talking about? The video even says "we lock ourselves up willingly because we don't trust ourselves." Apparently only married people develop impulse control, too.

So, if we're really, really generous to them, they're making the point that relationships are good and that getting legally married makes it more likely we'll stay in a relationship even when we really want out of it.

Hmmm.

I don't think children are mentioned at all.

At this rate, the only hope people promoting marriage have is hoping that men are masochists and/or lack critical thinking skills.