Hacker News Reader

Comment by dschuetz | Hacker News Reader

To a western ear the whole article sounds just weird. As if everyone in India is supposed to get married, or else.

Until relatively recently, when progressive ideology began to push back against the influence of conservative Christianity, "Everyone is supposed to get married, or else" was the cultural norm throughout the Western world, and remaining single made you a social pariah and an outcast, or at least marked you as morally deviant, and a suspected homosexual.

Many people still want to, they just can't afford to. There are changing norms, and at the same time changing access.

if you count many people that don't truly want to, but are pressured to, then it sort of evens out or more.

To be frank, here the progressives are the sane ones

That's true, but at some point, since late 80s and early 90s, this shifted radically in Europe. Can't speak for northern America though.

Huh? Maybe the single guy trope (that's secretly gay), but I think we were passed the extreme stigma against single people by then. I think back in the 50s-70s, and it was a more critical norm... you just didn't want to be seen in our thirties with no spouse.

Of course, there is similar stigma to this day, but what OP was mentioning was real serious discrimination, ie. like ethnic minorities face, though to a much lesser extent.

And the same still applies, but you can replace "marriage" with "committed relationship". And most people might not desire marriage, but they desire a partner, and they're facing similar issues, albeit the social status fallout is smaller.

it wasnt as extreme. Even in the 60s , 10% of people were unmarried. These percentages have doubled since. According to the article in india that percentage was <2%

We're at about ~30% in the US right now and increasing we'll likely see >40% by the end of the decade.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this exact title before, but with US in place of India, and young people in place of men.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com