Marriage and luxury beliefs at the United Nations
publica.org.au
publica.org.au
Author notes a diversity of viewpoints are represented at UN (South America, Africa, ...), but not all, notably East-Asia, e.g. China. Yet the author notes that very disproportionately the representatives are people educated in US universities and living out of their constituency. The author says data shows overwhelmingly that 'normative' family (stable family formed by the two biological parents leads to much less child abuse, and therefore lower rates of mental illness in the raised children etc. Despite that, author notes that the 'inclusive' viewpoint from the UN would rather say that "all family structures are equal". When this is discussed no data is not considered for philosophical reasons like women's rights and equality trump such concerns. The author then says somebody who vehemently opposed his viewpoint privately agreed and apparently detailed how much she believed it in her own life. Nonetheless "she suggested jokingly that I had better leave now". The author concludes that the UN representatives are elites that do not believe what they profess.
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Without considering the ideological battle, I'm wondering how the UN could give "universal recommendations", knowing how diverse the viewpoints from each culture may be. Let us consider that what the author says is true in his country, and therefore encouraging "non-traditional family structures" creates more child abuse. Suppose also that might be entirely false in some other country (author does not provide any such data). Isn't it profoundly evil to make a "universal" statement that refuses to consider that? One point the author insists on is that his African colleagues consider what he considers a "traditional family structure" to not be a norm. If pushing such family structure on these communities created more child abuse in these communities, doing so would be an evil thing, or there does not exist any evil in this world.
If you say "oh hey, I have an idea I'd like to run past you" in some cases I'll ask what it pertains to, and if the subject is of no interest to me, or if it's related to problems I don't care about, or if it's about making the flat earth round, I may well tell you I'm not interested in the idea before even hearing it. But that's very uncommon and some of those cases are more of "not my thing" than rejecting the idea itself.
I will reject ideas for perpetual motion machines without hearing them though. For that you'll need to start by explaining which laws of physics you've broken and how before we get to the embodiment of an actual machine. If you don't know which physics needs to change I'll chalk it up to "you're an idiot, stop wasting my time".
So yes, facts don’t care about feelings. But everyone should likewise check their own feelings of desiring certainty in a world of sociology that is filled with vague suggestions and likelihood at best.
Not every idea is true, not every idea should be accepted. But the idea that we know with certainty which are which when it comes to social sciences should be held with skepticism.
You can see that in action in terms of drug use - the ideal is that people don't use drugs in a socially (as well as individually) harmful way.
Putting people in prison for using drugs likely causes more harm than good (even beyond the person in jail).
Having an entirely permissive approach where showing up at work intoxicated probably causes more harm than good as well (again, even beyond the person intoxicated).
So the question is at what point can society get the most optimal outcome? Not an easy question to answer and likely one that changes over time (since there are feedback loops and changes to underlying, but related social beliefs).
It's legal for me to go and buy alcohol, and it's also probably legal for my employer to fire me if I show up drunk to work.
There's of course nothing preventing me from drinking so much that I die, but then again I can also jump out the window of my apartment, no substance required.
I can see that being the same with other drugs. Maybe even mandate testing for certain jobs (operating heavy machinery, driving a bus, etc).
Interesting side note, if an employer is aware of a substance problem, they have to offer to help you get help before they can fire you.
Also, just about any job can be dangerous or cause destruction. How about programming at a bank, or defense contractor, or industrial machine manufacturer? Even things like working in a ast food kitchen can be dangerous to yourself and other. It's hard to draw a line for testing when the vast majority of jobs could involve injuring others or massive losses if done incorrectly.
No, they have to grant you one unpaid medical leave for rehab before firing you, not "help you".
It's illegal, for any company that works with the Federal Government, to tolerate drug use or intoxication at work.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/worklife/reference...
https://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/what-are-an-em...
It's not truly automated enforcement, at least the way I see it (not using the reporting ones, just don't let the vehicle work). If it was, it would report attempts to drive while intoxicated and send a summons.
There are certainly issues to be worked out with that approach (I don't necessarily support it), but I bring it up as an example that there are still improvements that could be made (that the example of alcohol being a well regulated drug with little societal harm is not true).
It looks like they will do something similar for new cars in the coming years.
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/infrastructure-bil...
The BAC limit is like the speed limit. Start rigidly enforcing it or preventing people from violating it and you're gonna find out that a whole lot of people have been violating it left and right (probably most of them unknowingly) and were mostly not causing problems because they were tasteful about the details and generally not going overboard. Society at present does not seem well prepared to handle the debate that necessarily would follow in the wake of that.
It's not just because they weren't going overboard, but because they simply weren't caught. That can include for speeding, lack of turn signal, etc.
So there's no real variability to the people themselves, legally. Many have simply been lucky. The ones who have been violating it unknowingly have been posing a threat to society by not understanding how intoxicated they are, assuming we as a society believe that anything over .08 is dangerous per out laws.
Of course there will be debate. But that debate will be about false positives and edge cases. It's not going to be "but I want to continue drunk driving like I already am".
Mandating something like this would cause severe issues for people like them, where not only can they not help it, but it's not actually giving an accurate measurement of what it's supposed to be indicating.
Is there some other condition that you're thinking of that somehow renders the BAC result actually invalid? I am not aware of any, so I'm curious. Without this, it doesn't appear that this would be an issue for anyone on the autobrewery basis, and if anything it might help them identify the issue so they can't seek treatment.
> There's of course nothing preventing me from drinking so much that I die, but then again I can also jump out the window of my apartment, no substance required.
It's important to note that the ease of committing suicide can affect the suicide rate quite significantly. For example, before gas was made to have a terrible smell, people would often commit suicide by sticking their heads in an unlit gas oven. Similarly access to guns greatly increases suicide rates. In societies that have taken away such methods, it was observed that suicide rate directly drops: it seems many people who are willing to, in the moment, commit a painless act to kill themselves renounce if it requires more effort or the threat of pain or defeating other instincts.
In contrast, throwing yourself off a building requires defeating a very powerful survival instinct, and thus is less likely to lead to suicides. I believe that drinking enough alcohol to die is also relatively hard, especially for an adult, so it's not a common way to commit suicide (though alchohol + other drugs is).
The suicide equation may be much different with drugs you can more easily overdose on (heroin comes to mind).
Also, I believe the smell of gas was not the change. They switched from coal gas to natural gas.
https://gizmodo.com/why-have-people-stopped-committing-suici...
From the sort of results you get from rehab centers after googling certain drugs I don’t trust addiction treatment period. I’ve had those sites try to make it seem that kava is more dangerous than benzodiazepine addiction.
What if we spin it around and do what we want to do for "hard drugs"? What if tobacco and alcohol were only available with a prescription from a licensed medical professional such as a doctor? Maybe put a timer on it like this only applies to people born on or after 2025 or something?
Access to healthcare with no out of pocket expense (Medicare for all born on or after 2025?) would be a prerequisite for this.
The problem with alcohol is that it is extremely nonlinear in its negative effects vs amount purchased/consumed.
Prescriptions are pointless because no one needs alcohol to live.
And even with alcohol, we have a DUI problem.
I hear this a lot, but Singapore has extremely harsh laws for drug posesssion and use, yet some of the lowest rates of harm caused by drugs on Earth.
Perhaps it's more than just finding the "sweet spot" in terms of social norms, but ensuring that they are enforced uniformly and fairly rather than used as a rod for beating society's "undesirables" with.
Can someone argue that less harm was done in that situation? A human life ended versus people smoking marijuana?
Yeah, one can. Killing the one guy who had the balls to smuggle in half a kilo of weed probably prevented half a ton from reaching the city.
"Kids do best when the parents are married"
"OK"
"So we must force people to get/stay married for the best outcomes for kids"
"Nope, doesn't follow"
As the child of a family situation where the parents basically agreed to put up with each other and be miserable until the kids were grown up, I feel qualified to say "YMMV" on that one. I certainly did not get an example of a loving, respectful relationship out of the arrangement. I can't say whether it would have been better or worse had they divorced, of course, because I didn't see the alternate universe in which that happened. But I can say it might have been nice if they had been happy, at least some of the time.
If kids are going through a divorce for a bad reason, then they suffer. If kids are going through a divorce for a good reason then that still is terrible, but it is better then the alternative.
Simply hating or disliking your partner isn't a good reason. "Falling out of love" isn't a good reason either. Especially if you have kids. This is what responsibility means to a functional adult.
Lots of times divorces happen just through lack of maturity. Being selfish, not giving their partners a chance, not just taking a break and giving it a couple years to get through differences, etc. People who expect that they can live and love each other like horny 22 year olds until they are 85 are just not having a realistic view of what marriage actually is. They just need to grow up a bit more. There is more than one type of happiness. There is more than one type of love. You don't have to like somebody to love them, etc.
However if there is betrayal in the relationship then that is a good reason to get divorced. Things like adultery, abuse, theft, criminal activity, substance abuse, etc.
When people are destructive, behaving in an evil manner, and is this is creating significant risks for the family than that is a good reason to get a divorce.
It's a **ing great reason, if you hate each other you're probably creating a toxic atmosphere for the kids, and you're giving them a horrible idea of what a relationship should be like.
Hating each other is a prime reason people should be getting divorced. Kids shouldn't be brought up in an atmosphere of dislike, mistrust and animosity. Better two houses than one full of ice and eggshells.
> This is what responsibility means to a functional adult.
Yes, you have a responsibility to the kids, to bring them up well. This doesn't have to mean staying together and being miserable for a couple of decades. That's not good for anyone.
Your ideas are likely massively counterproductive.
If this hypothesis is correct then splitting up purely because you hate the other person is only necessary because you don't have the will to choose not to hate them.
That's a huge oversimplification though. Hatred isn't there in a vacuum. Maybe you just don't have the mental/emotional bandwidth to summon the energy up. And maybe you can't see a way to de-stress enough to get that bandwidth. It's possible that the partner is simply not trying either and that's a very heavy burden to carry alone. The hater may have quite literally run out of steam and can't summon the energy to choose differently.
It's a tremendously complicated and nuanced decision. Boiling it down to just I hate them though makes it essentially one individuals fault instead of acknowledging all the reasons it may be better to split up than to continue to harbor that hatred.
If you have the emotional capacity to choose to love and respect your partner instead of hating them or a way to regain that capacity then that is overall better than the alternative for the kids and splitting up should be the last resort after trying to deal with the reasons hate sprung up in the first place.
You could replace an entire set of marriage counseling/books with this single paragraph, and your message would still be worth a ton more than the lot of them... for anyone really paying attention to what you are saying.
Kudos for your eloquence & deep understanding.
And I would argue that's a simplistic way of looking at something massively complicated.
I would say that you have boiled "hate" down to something facile that can be solved with just "being the bigger person" and getting over yourself, when the reality is that's not going to work for a lot of people.
Guess what - I have first-hand experience of people trying to stay together and do the right thing for the children, and to move past it. They were both miserable for most of the time they were doing this, and so was everyone else around them.
> If you have the emotional capacity to choose to love and respect your partner instead of hating them or a way to regain that capacity
Right, and for those that don't, or those that try and fail? Your solution of "just stop hating each other" is wishful thinking.
And to get back to the whole point of the thread, not a good reason to force people to stay together, and a perfectly valid reason to get divorced. You want the best outcome for the kids, cooping two adults up together in a house who can't stand the sight of each other is not a way to achieve that.
Can some people move past hating each other? Probably. That doesn't mean it's good for the kids if society tries to force everyone to do that.
I am a child of divorce. It was a defining moment of my childhood, but with the benefit of years I can conclude that I had better relationships with each of my parents after their divorce than before it. Ironically, my parents also had a better relationship with each other after their divorce, though perhaps this is atypical.
If people want to help children of divorce, then make it so that having divorced parents isn't socially stigmatized, and implement social safety nets to reduce the economic uncertainty that accompanies divorce. But trying to keep parents together by any means necessary--no matter the cost--that doesn't help children, because when they grow up thinking that a toxic relationship is normal that only helps to perpetuate the cycle of marital misery that itself has a damaging effect on the well-being of children.
For example: A father loses his job and refuses to find work. The family becomes poor, moves to bad neighborhoods, the father starts drinking and becoming abusive. After a couple of years the mother divorces the father.
Divorce is not what the kids are cut up and bitter about. Had the above mother not divorced the father, the kids would have still been cut up and bitter.
Divorce, almost by definition is destabilizing.
It’s possible to have a divorce without a change in living and childcare arrangements for the kids. But that’s very rare, and frankly I can’t imagine he point.
“Stability” is agnostic to family structure, or whether the structure is normative.
I wonder how the researchers control for the effects of external factors, like the family's economic wellbeing?
After all, a family that is struggling financially might be less able to afford a wedding; might have more to get into arguments about; and might have less money to spend on their children. But I'm not sure how easy it would be to control for that.
michaelt said people who are unmarried might be poorer. This correlation might arise due to people being too poor to get married.
You're saying people who are married might be poorer due to spending all their money (or borrowing money) on the wedding.
https://lendedu.com/blog/cost-of-wedding/ (Headline: One-Third of Americans Go Into Unnecessary Debt to Pay For Extravagant Weddings—And Quite a Few End Up Regretting It)
Headline: ‘humans are bad with money’
Marriage seems surprisingly unpopular among women, despite the fact that they seem to disproportionately benefit from the arrangement.
So not saying you are wrong, just saying it really depends on your social circle and broader culture or country, as there will likely be big differences between secular countries vs religious countries.
Not the case in Sweden, one of the countries where marriage is odd and cohabitation is normal and marriage deviant. I’m not aware of any country where marriage and cohabitation have similar outcomes. Can you share your source?
What is true is that the average age at first marriage is high in Sweden at around 34 years, which means if you only look at what twenty-somethings are doing you will get very confused about how people are living together, but in fact a lot of couples are older than 30.
Otherwise it is just reading the arrangements of chicken bones.
So a cohabiting couple too poor to afford a wedding might also be too poor to break up. So the bias might be in the opposite direction than you think.
In general, it’s a wash.
Those in extreme poverty have to save up.
(And also - having seen children whose parents refuse to divorce when they clearly don't like each other, please please please get divorced, for the sake of the children!)
Don't forget welfare and child support rules/laws which can penalize marriage and reward separation/divorce.
A couple can get married without a wedding. On the same amount of money they would need to move in together and split the bills.
Locally in Oxford, UK, you can get married on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning for £57 (under $100) at the registry office.
Weddings are a signal. The louder the signal, then the bigger the bet, and thus, the more you have riding on that bet. Weddings are a choice, but they are a choice of sending a strong signal to others. You should not discount the powerful effect it may have over the marriage itself.
My fiancée and I have been living together since 2003, and every once in a while someone will say we'd be married under common law. But it does require a little more than mere cohabitation, and -- more importantly -- Ohio doesn't have common law marriage ... not anymore, at least.
There’s a fairly large body of work that suggests that families and men in particular will significantly increase their income after getting and staying married. Ex. [1] The conservatives have been saying this for years. [2]
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/marriage-solution-income-in...
https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/marri...
The commitment effects of marriage are a lot stronger than socioeconomic effects. Cohabiting professional managerial class couples break up more than married working class couples.
What’s funny about what you said, is that it is exactly the professed reason for getting married.
I.e. marriage is harder to do, you have to get in front of the entire community and sign a consent contract. Etc. Doing hard things raises the bar for a relationship, and, controlling for everything possible, has far better outcomes for children.
We paid something like 150 USD in fees and all the celebratory meals around that cost less than 400 USD total.
I was married in America in a mainstream church. There’s a lot of pressure to spend.
It’s largely a result of commercialization. Lots of wedding related businesses creating fake traditions.
“An engagement ring should cost a months salary,” etc.
Since no one else mentioned it: Religiosity is my guess for the key factor. In particular "married couple who had not lived together before marriage" would be strongly correlated with faith.
Religiosity -> Marriage and Religiosity -> Stability.
In my experience, many young couples in western Europe don't see marriage as signifying that a relationship is stabler. It's something you just do after you've been living together for a while since it simplifies some bureaucracy (especially if moving outside the EU) and it's a good reason to have a party. In many countries being in a domestic partnership is very similar to being married from a legal perspective.
Most people I know in Europe that got married did it because of kids, as the bureaucracy is much simpler in terms of legal protections for the child if anything bad happens to either one of the parents.
Conclusion:
> in the majority of EU Member States, being married does not bring substantial financial gains or losses for a couple. For several countries we find important differences, mainly stemming from personal income taxation rules that either assess incomes jointly or apply marriage-related allowances or credits, and also from different benefit eligibility rules. While in seven countries married couples are substantially better off than cohabiting partners (marriage bonus), in four countries, the opposite holds true (marriage penalty).
I'm not sure how it would work if we were not married. Would probably involve some more bureaucracy.
An of course, as you say, it's easier to handle child bureaucracy when married.
As soon as couples start to have concrete plans for children (or children are already on their way), marriage suddenly becomes very relevant for many relationships, and is often demanded by at least one side of the partnership.
This puts aside the romanticised view of marriage (which might be perceived equivalent to living together) and points to a more fundamental reason for marriage: Securing resources for your offspring. And offspring needs a lot of resources for a long time.
In the end, its commitment that counts. And marriage was built for ensuring commitment as much as humanly possible, with a high barrier for abandoning.
- In-laws - you become a member of a new family, new levels of mutual privileges and responsibilities
- Public wedding - Proclamation to both social circles that the new family project now has officially started
- Family name - new Identity
- ...
In many US families, it's not uncommon to take people you're seriously dating on family vacations, or have them over for holidays, etc.
Some people who choose not to get legally married have a ceremony and/or party.
Some people who get married don't change their name. People who don't get married can change their name if they want to.
Really, most couples I know really only marry when they are already very well established in each-others circles, as sort of a affirmation of their love. Maybe this is also because legally you can achieve the same protections for your children a lot simpler than getting married.
But this doesn't mean the whole of the Netherlands works like that, just my social circles :)
Still, I would argue this:
Lets say your 19 year old daughter wants to introduce her boyfriend of same age into your family.
How would you rate her (and his!) seriousness if
a) they lived in his apartment or
b) they are organizing their wedding.
I would wager b) would be "well-established" much quicker, especially in the wider circles, and thus have more "social resources" sooner, thus giving their potential offspring better chances. Of course, with kids out of the picture, it wouldn't make much difference. But that is exactly my point: Marriage serves having children.
Your "(a) living together" is a much more serious and well established relationship than "planning wedding".
"living together" implies a de-facto relationship with the legal protections that brings. "Planning a wedding" gives none of that.
To your point: legal protection is a very serious "social resource" given potential offspring a benefit.
The data show that married-before-cohabitating situations have more robust relationships for raising children.
Still, I think what's helping ensure commitment in that case are the children, rather than the marriage. It's much easier for a married childless couple to split up than for an unmarried couple that has children.
I would argue exactly the other way around: A lasting marriage is not itself the goal (though certainly nice to grow old together), but serves the purpose of raising offspring - that's what counts for every species that has survived.
This is the luxury belief. It feels true, it doesn’t conflict with secular values, but all the research points to it being false…
I agree so that marriage is, also historically, as much about economics as it is about love.
Sounds like an elite to me.
Oh! We should have opinions so that we can disagree with each other and become elite. I'll start
All cows are spheres and have uniform density. These 2 properties make them BEAUTIFUL!
I didn't look super deep into this but I quickly looked up the data for my country the UK, and also the US. In both countries the percentage of people getting married is dropping and the percentage of children in single parent homes is also dropping.
So less marriage = more two parent families?
It’s meant as a caution to people employed in the tech industry.
It’s very tempting to view “data less” decisions as the product of stupidity or lack or critical though.
This shows how educated, smart, diverse group ends up worshipping the “idols of the tribe.”
> In the overwhelming majority of countries, the most educated cohabiting parents still have a far higher rate of break-up than the lowest educated married couples.
> There were some countries like the United States and the United Kingdom where the advantage associated with marriage was smaller at low maternal education levels, but it was still quite sizable: children were 57 and 69 percent (respectively) more likely to see their parents split before age 12 if their parents were cohabiting rather than married at the time of their birth.
> as cohabitation becomes more common, does it become more similar to marriage in terms of stability for children? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The stability advantage associated with marriage varies a lot between countries, but it is not smaller where cohabiting births are more normative.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/cohabitation-contributes-to-famil...
Is that a good thing? Have reactionary forces lost control of the elites after centuries? Are they now at least having to pretend they care about data rather than raw power? That meritocracy wasn't working after all?
Or is this just the latest variation on "the Jews who claim to want democracy and human rights are really going to eat your children" and it doesn't really need to be internally consistent?
The bourgeoisie have their own disagreements and factions, which show up more clearly during periods of crisis.
Essentially another approach to trying to create division and tribalism in discourse where it suits the person using it to do so.
Which is one of many recent right-wing stances I’d applaud as very 'woke' and sophisticated takes on complex issues if I didn't think they were just lying about caring about it in order to justify something horrible they do actually want to do.
Yeah but if you disagreed with appalachian coal miners, you wouldn't call them "elite".
Yes. There is a direct line of inference in right-wing dialogue between "The Elites" -> "The Liberals" -> "The Leftists" -> "The Democratic Party" -> "The Socialists" -> "The Marxists" -> "The Cultural Marxists" -> "The Globalists" -> "The Bankers" -> "The Jews."
There are no right-wing elites in their parlance, because by definition all elites are part of the above framework.
And yeah, for a lot of people that means Jews. There's a reason we've seen actual literal Nazis supporting the right. They know exactly what "elite" means to them.
Not at all. They've discovered that by casting their enemies as "elites", even though they themselves still control a lot of the actual elites, it's easier for them to get support among the disaffected lower classes they're actively oppressing.
The answer is expediency. She wants political support, or at least avoid picking a battle.
This is noteworthy. Similar to Gell-Mann amnesia, we should keep this effect in mind in other questions. When people say "trust the experts" we should keep it mind. Is this an actual expert opinion, or is it an expedient lie. That doesn't mean that it is a lie every time. Clearly these people do a balancing act between truth and realpolitik.
Literally, “With this, therefore that.”
I know it’s a fallacy, but fallacies need to be shown, not cited.
Mea culpa.
Turns out, all these modern left ideas are not incompetence, and not malice, and not virtue signalling, but fitness signalling: if you can advocate for polyamory and not ruin your life, you are very fit indeed.
But most of your population, they try running into the ground.
I'm fine with polyamory and would support it in a social context not because it's an expression of my social class or a way to pick up girls, but because that's simply my honest opinion: we spend too much time poking our nose in other people's business and should do it less.
If you want a standard marriage, that's fine. If you honestly want to raise a child alone, that's fine too. And if you manage to successfully create some hybrid structure with 3 men and 3 women having sex with each other and get that to work, more power to you, and no need for anyone to have a problem with that.
The problem I have with that stance is the difficulty of "manag[ing] to successfully create some hybrid structure". Personally I've never seen polyamory succeed over multiple attempts, and each time results in at least one person being hurt. There's something to be said for discouraging activities that are unlikely to work out and can potentially be damaging.