Problems With Statistics in Selling Marriage to Men

Statistics are about a population, not individuals. What happens in your life either will happen or it won't (usually depending on your choices) - so it is either 0% or 100% for you. Statistics can tell you the odds, all things being equal, but things aren't equal. Let's take college graduates, for example. The average person with a Bachelor's degree is going to earn more than the average person without a college education. Yet some of the people with the highest incomes or the most wealth never graduated from college. This includes tech leaders, professional athletes, entertainers and authors, and various businesspeople. [Please note that this entry was posted several years ago. It still holds up pretty well.]

Statistics usually can't tell you why something is the way it is. For example, statistics will tell you that if you compare 200 people in a hospital and 200 people in an apartment complex across the street, you'll see that you're far more likely to die in the hospital than in the apartment complex. What are we to think as a result? That hospitals are harmful to our health? Or that people who are seriously sick and injured go to a hospital, where some of them are going to die, but more of them would die if they hadn't gone to the hospital?

Talk show host Tom Leykis, like a lot of other people, will tell you that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that more adults are unmarried now than married, as if this is some profound shift in how people look at life. However, most of the shift in married vs. unmarried involves people getting married later in life, such as their late 20s or early 30s instead of their early 20s. Although there is a growing percentage of men swearing off marriage, it is still a small group and most people will get married at some time in their lives. As far as divorce, Leykis has had four divorces. I've had none. If you average us together, that means the average person has two divorces. That's a little misleading. First marriages have about a 40% divorce rate, which is still way too high, but it isn't 50%. It is the high divorce rate for second, third, etc. marriages that skew the statistics. (On the other hand, perhaps even MORE marriages would end in divorce if it were for fatal illness and injuries, murders and suicides ending someone's life before they could divorce – so just because a marriage didn't end in divorce does not mean it was a good marriage.) 40% is the rate for all first marriages. I wonder what the divorce rate is for people who marry into a first marriage: 1) without children from other lovers or a current pregnancy influencing their decision; 2) after about 18-24 months of being a couple (but not too much longer than that); 3) without having shacked up OR being "long distance"; 4) after six months of intense premarital counseling with a LMFT; 5) with the same or compatible religious beliefs or practices and plans for children; 6) with no credit card debt; 7) without substance abuse problems. My guess is that divorce rate for such marriages is very low.

Conversely...

Still Waiting

Another comment was left by another Anonymous woman who didn't bother to address what I actually wrote in this blog's most popular entry, but instead tried (and failed) to shame men for actually caring about their own well being.

Since she left it as a response to another comment, I will look at that comment first.

Here's the original comment.

I'm a man, engaged to the mother of my two children.

Why? Clearly you can have kids without being married. Why bother marrying? What we've been told over the last 25 years in our courts and culture is that marriage isn't about children. So there must be some other reason you're engaged to her. (And that she's the mother of YOUR children, and presumably not another man's, that colors your comment.)

And even in this situation, the children always take priority. You (the significant other) won't always be the priority; and that's fine. We a still love eachother and we're to be married September in 2016.

I wonder how they're doing now? For the kids' sake, I hope well.

I think most of this article is trash. Not wanting to be with a woman because she doesn't have a pre-pregnancy body is incredibly shallow, and speaks poorly to your character.

It's a good thing women aren't shallow, like, say, not dating men who aren't taller than them, or preferring men with fatter wallets. The body issues were a small part of the list. There were many more reasons given, some that should be deal breakers by themselves. Nobody should kid themselves, though. If a man isn't turned on by a woman, it is unlikely their marriage will be a good, lasting, happy one.

If you're really worried about the possibility of a divorce, and the woman getting half of everything you have? Sign a pre-nup.

Judges throw out prenups all of the time. Men should avoid signing a marriage contract or any contract with a woman, especially a single mother.

Into the New Year, Mid February is Coming

Guys, did you make it through Christmas and New Year's Eve without getting engaged? If not, you need to think very soberly about what you're facing. You CAN back out. Most likely, you should. You shouldn't have even been with a steady girlfriend on those days.

February 14 is rapidly approaching. You should not be seeing any woman who is expecting you to marry her, propose to her, impregnate her, move in together, or make a big deal about February 14 - until at least February 15. And if you're seeing someone whose birthday is in late February or who counts a day in late February as an anniversary with you, avoid her until after that day.

What's the risk, really? That she'll get with some other guy? Or move on? So what?!?

Let some guy who doesn't value his earnings or is desperate pay for what she wants. You don't want to get suckered into spending a lot of time, money, and effort to get something you can get without doing so. There are attractive, available women who will gladly take the open spot in your rotation if you play your cards right. Whether you want to keep getting with women or not, you probably shouldn't get into a situation in which you're heading for marriage.

Angry Mom Checks In

Another comment (that didn't actually demonstrate where I was wrong) was left on this blog's most popular entry, which has received hundreds of comments.

I'm assuming this comment was directed at me and not someone else who'd left a comment. This is what SaEatonmomof3 had to say:

You are the most self centered, must be narcissist that I have ever read crap like this from.

Remember guys, if you won't want to ruin your life via someone else's children, you're a narcissist!

How Many of You Are Sick?

Dr. Laura's mind tends to go places most people's minds don't. I love her show, I love her books, and she's usually right but sometimes I scratch my head.

For example, during the first hour of today's (Wednesday 1/9) show,  man called to talk about an annual family vacation for him, his wife, and their grown kids (two daughters and a son).

Since the eldest is now married, he was wondering about room sharing arrangements and he asked Dr. Laura about having (no doubt since the married daughter and her husband would be sharing a room) the other daughter and a son share a room for a week since the daughters would no longer be sharing a room.

Dr. Laura quickly, emphatically, and repeatedly called it "sick". She acted like she was shocked.. She stated she was "horrified".

I can understand calling it impractical, even unfair, or whatever, but why did she call it sick? Why does she apparently think sleeping in the same room equals sex? Many married people who share a bed know it's not true. We can go months, years sharing a room and not have sex. I mean, she's used the work "sick" for other situations before, but I don't think she could possibly mean that the kids are mentally ill or that they'd be beating up on each other, so I assume she's talking about sex.

She continued the call briefly, then decided to pretend it was a phony call.

For most of history, people have NOT had their own rooms. I guess everyone was sick?

I've noticed before that she usually treats the presence of a bed or touching a bed as akin (no pun intended) to having sex with the person who uses it. For example, kids aren't supposed to touch their parents' bed.

Presumably, the brother and sister would not even be sharing a bed. I distinctly heard they would be sharing a room.

I have to wonder what Dr. Laura does with the fact that some people have sex on the couch, on the living room floor, on the kitchen table, in the family minivan, in the shower (which she sometimes recommends), you name it.

Scott Morefield Laments a Lack of Suckers

I generally like most of the columns carried by conservative Townhall, but you can often find stuff there encouraging men to sacrifice themselves for what we're currently calling marriage. Scott Morefield is the latest writer to go there (please note that you can go there and comment):

What on earth happened to marriage?

Our laws and culture have changed. Women have changed a lot. Or, at least, they've tried to. That's what happened.

Even for those who don’t believe the practice to be God-ordained as prescribed in the Bible, it’s hard to deny that following the “success sequence” of finishing school, getting a job, getting married, THEN having children leads to a remarkably strong bulwark against poverty.

I wonder what happens when a man gets a job, INTENTIONALLY AVOIDS marriage/shacking up/spending money on women and remains child-free. Guys like that are unlikely to be poor.

And yet, has anyone else noticed that ‘traditional’ families - i.e. a husband, a wife, and a child or children who are actually at least nine months younger than the total time their parents have been married - are about as rare as a liberal who tips?

Yeah, ain't diversity grand?

Stop Telling People to Have Kids

Concerned with dropping "fertility rates", there are people who encourage others to have (more) children. This is one of millions of examples of why that's a terrible idea.

Hannah Fry reported in the Left Angeles Times...

The city of Napa and Napa County will pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the father and grandmother of a 3-year-old girl who was tortured and killed in 2014.

The City of Napa and the Count of Napa. That means the taxpayers of Napa. That's because they were supposed to somehow only have government officials and employees who would have prevented this.

Kayleigh Slusher died in a Napa apartment in January 2014 after being neglected and abused by her mother, Sarah Krueger, and her mother’s boyfriend, Ryan Warner. Both were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, according to court records.

They should have gotten the death penalty.

After Kayleigh’s death, the girl’s body was stuffed in a duffel bag and stored in the freezer for three days before she was placed in her bed, where police ultimately found her. The girl’s cause of death was multiple blunt-force injuries to her head, torso and extremities. She had suffered a broken rib and damage to her small intestine and was covered in bruises before she died, authorities said at the time.

Don't you tell me that lethal injection is "cruel and unusual". The people who wrote and adopted that phrase into our Constitution would have done far worse to her murderers.

Kayleigh’s father, Jason Slusher — who was serving a prison sentence when his daughter was killed — and her grandmother, Robin Slusher, filed a lawsuit against the city and county in 2015 alleging that despite obvious signs of abuse and neglect, police and child welfare officials did not intervene or remove Kayleigh from her mother’s home.

Why was her father in prison? Was he wrongly convicted? Or was Sarah Krueger just that good at picking men? Whichever it was, Jason made a terrible mistake in knocking up Sarah. And his mother... how did she raise that guy? All that being said, I do recognize that there are legal principles that apply here that say they could be rotten people (not saying they are, but they COULD be) and they still have standing to get big bucks because of what happened to their daughter/granddaughter.

The lawsuit said that in the three weeks before Kayleigh died, Napa police and child services had been called to the girl’s home five times regarding possible abuse and drug use.

When officers visited the home, they “would have seen that she was covered in bruises and in excruciating pain from a broken rib and the intestinal infection that was slowly killing her,” but they did nothing, according to a statement from Slusher’s attorneys.

Is anything being done to the people who responded to these calls? Demotions? Loss of jobs? Criminal prosecutions? Stuff like that has been pursued in SoCal after a highly publicized torture-murder of a boy. Or is Joe Taxpayer the only person who's paying?

I have no idea if the responding personnel were simply callous or jaded or secretly hate little girls, or if they made genuine mistakes, or if they were sincere but completely incompetent. I wasn't there. I wasn't in their heads. It certainly looks like they failed to take action when they clearly should have. It's a terrible position to be in. If you make mistakes, kids die or you take kids out of a loving home, at least for a while.

But let's not forget who put that little girl in that position in the first place. Her own parents. When parents can't or won't protect their children instead of torturing and murdering them, how do we expect a bureaucracy to do it effectively on a consistent basis? Answer: It can't. Which means horror stories are inevitable.

Stop telling people to have children. They really shouldn't, unless they're prepared and willing to be good parents.