America, Home of the Transactional Marriage | Hacker News Reader

America, Home of the Transactional Marriage

theatlantic.com

80 pointsjseliger57 comments

I'd wager entertainment and advertising plays a large part in it as well. Educated people see the folly in shows like the Kardashians, daytime soap operas and ads showing material wealth as virtuous and something to aspire to. Less critical thinkers lap that stuff up and misinterpret the source of happiness and contentment. TV shows can create toxic expectations that can't be practically met by everyone, and for many people these shows have replaced community culture and personal belief systems.

The culture of material expectation could help explain the difference between Canada and the US when it comes to relationship stability and partner selection. Obviously better social welfare in Canada/West Europe is a massive driver, but it would still need to be paired with a culture where the stigma of poverty isn't as great and material wealth isn't as coveted.

There is remarkable data showing that the television show "Sixteen and Pregnant" reduces teen pregnancy rates in locations where it is shown. This would tend to support your hypothesis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w...

Looks like the result was more positive than that though I'm curious how they came to the final conclusion: "Using data from Google Trends, Twitter, Nielsen ratings and Vital Statistics birth data, Professors Kearney and Levine found that teens who watch “16 and Pregnant” immediately go online to search for (and tweet about) birth control and abortion. Through some very impressive and fascinating dot-connecting, Kearney and Levine found that “16 and Pregnant” led to a 5.7% reduction in teen births — a percentage that accounts for one-third of the total decline in teen births: 20,000 fewer teen births a year."

I'm almost certain that this was the initial effect, but later seasons (where every one of the cast members are reasonably wealthy due to cash from MTV) had the opposite effect.

I can o ly find 2014 data right now rhough.

Relatedly, "baby simulators" lead to an increase in teen pregnancy -https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/25/infant-simulators-teen-p...

>teenagers are handed an electronic doll to care for for a day or two

Not surprised this had the opposite effect. It completely misses what is, in my opinion, one of the most dramatic aspects of being a parent. It doesn't end until you die.

Many parents have a baby that destroys the parent's sleep schedule for so long that it feels like it will never end. Then there is worrying about your child reaching important feeling development milestones, worrying about your child's ability to make friends and to survive bullies, where will they go to school? "how can those shoes be too small? We just bought them!" etc etc. A child is a never ending stream of things to worry about.

Any bozo who has been provided with the most basic baby care instruction can take care of a baby for 48 hours. Simply knowing that there is a fixed period in time at which it is over makes it manageable.

> ...the difference between Canada and the US when it comes to relationship stability and partner selection.

I've never heard of such a thing, and a Google search for the phrase was unsuccessful. If you have a source I'd be interested to read more!

I was going by what was suggested in the featured article, and my thoughts on the matter are nothing more than conjecture based on what was implied:

Americans tend to place great importance on both marriage and personal autonomy, which is reflected in their very high marriage and divorce rates (higher than in other advanced industrialized countries, including Canada)

Relevant link embedded in the quoted text: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2012...

>these shows have replaced community culture and personal belief systems. This can be said of the whole internet in its current state as attention sinkhole.

And its highly misguided to think critical thinking abilities have anything to do with taking advantage of ppls weaknesses. Obama, the iPhone, Game of Thrones and Star Wars are using the same mechanics that the Kardashians or Trump are - if you want ppls attention rich/poor/illiterate/educated/religious whatever - you follow the same rule - given them what they want.

This is a pretty provincial piece. Marriage has been transactional for thousands of years. To this day, the practice continues around the world. I have a colleague in the US who has an arranged marriage (he was born overseas). But of course, let's pretend that "romantic love" is the historical norm (versus recent movie invention) and we've somehow fallen from this expectation.

The divorce rate is a new thing though, right? I'd bet that even if it was an arranged marriage, if you knew you weren't going to get divorced, you'd try to find ways to love your partner...

Recognizing domestic violence and spousal rape as outside the bounds of acceptable behavior and/or grounds for redress is also a new development, in the grand scheme of things.

Do you have any evidence do suggest this is actually a leading cause of divorce, as opposed to other things like personality clashes, financial stress, etc.

Everything I've read seems to suggest that incompatible personalities and finances are the main reasons people in our society split up - which would seem to debunk your theory.

If it's happened so much as once (and I don't think that's controversial), then it's a good thing we let people get divorced instead of telling them they had better find ways to love their partners.

Do you seriously think that all the fights and demonstrations to get the right to divorce were mostly because of "incompatible personalities and finances"?

Do you think those fights would have been possible without the possibility of financial independence?

Yes, there is no correlation between the ability to fight and one of the possible outcomes of the fight

I don't see where the comment you are replying to claims that domestic violence and spousal rape are the leading cause of divorce or even a leading cause.

Large populations expecting or knowing longevity are new. Never forget we count down from Depression hysteresis and post-WW2 50% share of global wealth. We have horrible diet and health statistics here. People are wise to not marry. By way of comparison Japan's population falls faster than their economic deflation.

Say what? Absent warfare and epidemics and with proper hygiene someone who had survived childhood could expect to live to 70.

Compare Psalm 90: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten"

If female: survived to 40 - dying in childbirth was a very large risk until the 1930s in the US and other western countries.

Granted, most of the risk was due to midwives and doctors (especially doctors) not understanding or carrying out proper hygiene.

For most of Western history commoners lived to 28F/32M. Average age rose to around 40 by 1800 in France. I used to work for Futures Group in the early 90's (inherited Robert Tappan Morris's code) spending US taxpayer dollars on global demographic engineering. Human biomass is now way too high. Being fruitful multiplying is not such a great game plan anymore. Adjust lifespan expectations for pathologies we fuel with VAST profitable supply chains consumers only imagine are personal moral failings. We run full court presses against more making of us. I signed no security clearances. These are not really secrets. Maybe security via obscurity was more popular before the Net became popular.

My immigrant mother was talking with her immigrant friends about how kids these days have it all backwards. They say you fall in love with the one you marry, not marry the one you love. I was lucky to get it both ways with my wife though, and still finding out have to work on it every day to keep it alive. That's not a bad thing, and it keeps her falling back in love with me, especially when I screw up.

Actually, if you look at the hunter gatherer societies that best resemble the environment humanity evolved in, romantic love plays a big role. Such societies are often lenient about divorce as well. The !Kung San and Hadza are well studied examples of this.

Suggestions on sources for this? Not that I doubt it, but I hadn't heard that angle before.

As is often the case in such a complex issue, when someone has a penny to make the will go deep on a particular viewpoint

› In doing research for a book about workers’ experiences of being unemployed for long periods, I saw how people who once had good jobs became...

I completely agree with you. Civil marriage even today is very similar to a business partnership IMO. People give a lot of other significance to it (religion, love, faith, emotional etc.) but if you look at it strictly from just a civil/legal perspective it's essentially a specific type of legally recognized partnership.

An interesting somewhat related phenomenon is the rise of the medical divorce, where a couple will divorce to protect assets from medical debt bankruptcy[1][2]. The ACA and Medicaid expansion lowered the divorce rate by a measurable amount in some population groups[3] which I find amazing.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/feeonlyplanner/2014/08/21/divor...

[2] http://www.helsell.com/helsell-news/medicaid-divorce-an-over...

[3] http://fortune.com/2017/02/16/obamacare-divorce/

I can recommend reading The Rational Male, he discusses the dynamics of marriage and you get a much better understanding after reading the books or the articles on the website. https://therationalmale.com/

Teaser: women initiate 70+% of the divorces and the reasons they do is not what is shown in the media.

There really should be no financial benefit to marriage. It becomes a coercive force that encourages people to marry and stay married, even though they may not want to.

More interesting, I think, is how lopsided sex ratios can affect who marries and for how long: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/19/briefly-noted-date-onomic...

I thought that was a considered a feature, not a bug....

A legal marriage is a legal contract, and all contracts are transactional (as far as I know). I don't think it's wise to pretend that a marriage contract is different from any other, and it's most useful in cases of conflict where a 3rd party (judge, hospital, etc) needs to determine what to do.

The love aspect of it does not and should not have to do with the legal aspect. At the end of the day, putting food on the table and a roof over your kids' heads is life's priority, so finding a partner who can assist with that is understandably a prerequisite before any of this love/compatibility stuff can be built on top.

I sure wish I had treated it (as you say) more like a "real" contract. It would have saved us a ton of trouble to lay out our respective expectations, roles, responsibilities, duties, and penalties for breaking the above.

I think it would have saved us both a ton of trouble, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings.

Not that it isn't important to lay out those things before signing a marriage contract...

but I'm not sure how much flexibility you have in deciding the (legal) penalties for breaking those informal expectations etc.

I imagine the terms of a marriage contract are defined by each state, as sort of a take-it-or-leave-it contract.

There might be ways to hedge, like prenuptial agreements. However (and not exactly the same thing), I recently spoke with a corporate attorney regarding company protections in the unfortunate case something happened to one of the company founders under various scenarios (e.g. if a company founder gets married and dies within 5 years of incorporation, is there a way to require the spouse to sell those shares back to the company, rather than them owning a controlling stake). Prenuptial agreements were brought-up, and my attorney basically said, "yeah those exist, and are an option, an expensive option, but in a legal battle, pffft, don't expect a prenup to be your pocket ace."

> A legal marriage is a legal contract

Not really; its sometimes referred to as a contract, but legally the law of contracts doesn't apply either in formation of marriages, or when the expectations associated with marriage are broken.

Marriage is somewhat analogous to a legal partership (especially in common law jurisdictions, where merely behaving as if it existed can cause it to legally exist.)

Actually, for a couple who earn about the same each, there is a marriage penalty:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/16/upshot/marria...

If the tax penalty is smaller than the savings from sharing a household, it's still an advantage to be married vs single and living alone.

A benefit, independent of marriage, which applies to those who cohabitate and roommates.

There's other financial benefits to marriage, off the top of my head:

Family health insurance plans

Unlimited tax free inheritance

Spousal social security and pension

Social security survivors benefits

Well, you could be unmarried and living together.

I don't know how it is in other places, but in Vancouver, if you cohabit for a number of years, you are subject to the same stuff as if you were married couples. I can't remember the details, forgive me, busy work day.

That's called common-law marriage and it exists in California too, but it doesn't mean you start paying married tax rates. It just means that, e.g., if your partner falls terminally ill you are allowed to make medical decisions for them just as a spouse would, or if they die you take custody of the children rather than their side of the family, etc.

California most certainly does not have, and has not had for over 100 years, common law marriage. Many people think they’re fine, then are in for a horrible, rude awakening when their long term partner is either sick or dies as the title holder to assets.

Spread the word!

https://apeopleschoice.com/common-law-marriage-in-california...

You can only enter into a common law marriage very few jurisdictions in the US and certainly not in California. In jurisdictions where you can legally enter into common law marriage in the US, the couple doesn't just "get married" by cohabitation for a few years, they have to actually agree to get married and present themselves as married to others. It's very clear that they must want to be married and agree to be married. It usually requires a public decoration of marriage. (So a marriage ceremony, just without an officiate)

You can also file married income taxes if you are legally married in your state of residence. In fact, if you didn't it probably would be considered tax fraud.

The economic benefits of sharing a bedroom with another income earner will only get more powerful as we crowd into cities that don't want to grow.

DINK is on its way from being a nice bonus to baseline entry criteria if you want to live within public transit range of a job.

That doesn't require marriage, per se, but something that looks a lot like it.

>coercive force that encourages people to marry and stay married

Not necessarily 'stay married' because for many people there's a financial incentive to get divorced. And you can't get divorced if you don't get married in the first place.

The whole idea of marriage is to be a coercive force that pushes people away from a defect-defect equilibrium in the Prisoner's Dilemma of relationships.

This reminded me of a book I read last year that takes about the role of work and poverty in a poor, anonymous town in California. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in this topic: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0043GWQ22/ref=oh_aui_d_de...

> The country’s exceptionally thin safety net prompts residents—especially those with less-steady employment—to view partnership in more economic terms.

Huh? This is literally the opposite of reality.

It's the poorer countries with low GDPs per capita that have thin public safety nets, and where strong marriage and family ties are a must, economically speaking.

Here in The West, we're so rich that we'll redistribute our money (tax dollars) and allow you to become a single mother.

Furthermore, name me another part of the world with fat homeless people.

Marriage is not "transactional" in the country with one of the richest countries on Earth. With a GDP per capita of 57,466.79 USD (2016), marriage is optional, and economically independent women don't need to settle with mid-tier men, especially not during the "fun years" (e.g. 18 - 30).

Remember, 80% of men are below average: https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0...

>It's the poorer countries with low GDPs per capita that have thin public safety nets, and where strong marriage and family ties are a must, economically speaking. Here in The West, we're so rich that we'll redistribute our money (tax dollars) and allow you to become a single mother.

That was then, this is now, as they say.

In the west safety nets might not be as thin as in the "poorer countries" but they have been getting increasingly thinner. And being a "single mother" is the last thing (economically speaking) anyone would wish for in today's climate.

So you're both right. Marriage is even more transactional in the poorer countries, but the article is about how it's becoming more transactional in the US too, which is indeed a thing.

>Marriage is not "transactional" in the country with one of the richest countries on Earth.

That doesn't matter for those who can't find a job, or that are an illness away from being homeless and with no savings -- which are millions.

>In the west safety nets might not be as thin as in the "poorer countries" but they have been getting increasingly thinner.

I can't speak for the rest of The West, but the safety net in the US has been getting better over time. Compared to my childhood it's easier to qualify for government assistance and it's easier to get medical care.

>I can't speak for the rest of The West, but the safety net in the US has been getting better over time. Compared to my childhood it's easier to qualify for government assistance and it's easier to get medical care.

Compared to the time when a single income earner in a family of four, could buy a house in their 30s and send their kids to college?

That's not the safety net, that's a condition contributing to whether people who need the safety net.

But, yes, in a number of key respects, the safety net has gotten worse, too. And it's harder to qualify for most assistance (other than health insurance subsidies) than it was pre-“Welfare Reform”.

In the west safety nets might not be as thin as in the "poorer countries" but they have been getting increasingly thinner.

Do you have an example?

In the US there are more social safety net benefits than 10 years ago.

ACA subsidy, Medicaid expansion, Medicare Part D, etc.

It's the poorer countries with low GDPs per capita that have thin public safety nets, and where strong marriage and family ties are a must, economically speaking.

This used to be true, but over the last 15 to 20 years the rest of the world has gotten a lot richer, and safety net programs have become much more broadly available.

It's hard to compare of course, but https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/progdesc/ssptw/ gives some guidance.

That's right, and the rest of the world's divorce rates are going up and marriage rates are falling.

This article seems completely unmoored from any historical context.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com