Rising Share of U.S. Adults Are Living Without a Spouse or Partner
pewresearch.org
pewresearch.org
I’m not exactly a hermit (or at least I didn’t used to be, the layoff has changed that). I’d go out a lot, to bars, to shows, to various events, etc. A vast majority of the people I meet are either older than me or less commonly younger than me (I stopped going to shows when I realized I was one of the oldest people there). The times I do meet people closer to my age, they are either already paired up or not interested in a relationship.
The only place I can find a “pool” of peers is on dating apps, and I’m not going by to waste my time with those anymore.
It worked for me at least.
I guess I was lucky because I went abroad right after grad school (so I gave my car to my sister and just left the USA for 11 years), but I was about 30 when I left.
Part of the problem is getting comfortable opening up groups of people. Toast masters helps with that.
So in college, most of my friends were from fraternity BBQs and church, and now it's just church. Half my friends are old enough to be my parents, but idc.
One unusually great example was this chess club I stumbled upon. They're all my age and meet once a week at a local restaurant. There's no group chat or anything, just be there or be square. Meanwhile the boba shop next door is people glued to phones ordering off an iPad and waiting behind a bunch of prioritized mobile orders.
In other words, capitalism (and our capitalist society) thinks its profitable to eat its own seed corn.
Conversely, I know countless people who are in a traditional family-focused and career-focused lifestyle, and when you are doing that it generally means dealing with children and work, and there isn't going to be much time left over for much else. None of these people I know are super involved in their "community."
Yet, I've been doing it for about six years on and off and had one lengthy relationship from it (we broke up after we realized we had incompatible difference). I thought in some ways it'd get easier in ones late 30s where people tend to have a focus on wanting to settle down.
I have a lot of great friends, well paying job/profession, have a pretty comfortable amount of financial assets, a handful of interesting hobbies, I volunteer, mentor juniors to level up in their career... I kind of don't really know what more I can really offer. Yeah sorry, I can't become taller or change my ethnicity or face. At the same time, I'm grounded enough to not try matching women who are incredibly attractive.
I'm not filtering out based on race, past marriages, or whether they already have children, and it's still like months upon months of no replies or mediocre first dates.
But it also gives the people on the other side of the app access to literally everyone who's interested in them.
So while it may seem easier than having to walk up to strangers in a bar, you also now have to be picked out of way more people than the other folks in the bar with you.
The fact that “online dating” as it is now is considered a serious alternative, makes it seem that the current dating situation is really messed up. My understanding is that the still-reliable way to get dates is to be in a community where everyone knows each other and most people date within the community (e.g. small town or school or job). But if you’re not in a community it’s a lot harder, because there are so many creeps and trolls everyone is either closed off or weird, with the very rare viable partner who just hasn’t been exposed enough to become closed off themselves.
Also, online dating and the ever constant flow of people in your face there has skewed my perspective and has led to a phase where it is harder to commit and stay with someone, so I just find it easier to be alone than be with someone and always be not sure whether this is the right thing.
Dating apps and their illusion of so much choice and options is a net negative to the actual dating structure; but maybe from a sociological perspective, this is where the society should head, I am not smart enough to comment on that.
I think about how Alaska has relatively few roads and six times as many pilots as other US states. And I wonder how Alaska would fare in a comparison of infrastructure based on the assumption that roads are extremely important but airports aren't.
I honestly cannot manage to draw meaningful inferences from any of this and I hesitate to speculate off the cuff on HN.
Media consumption, endless entertainment that promotes isolation, toxic thoughts about others and themselves, unreasonable expectations of others, fear of potential public recourse since everything is recorded and shared, and many more. It’s not a simple topic. However, I think some or all of these examples consciously or unconsciously play a role in dating and lower birth rates.
Then fix the outdated laws so people can enjoy those human connections without all the risky loss/gain baggage.
Your friends anecdata is entirely irrelevant until they've separated and we hear about how that plays out, before it's even remotely worth hearing as still meaningless anecdata.
Even in those seven, it's not something that happens automatically. For example, in Utah, it only applies to those "who hold themselves out as and have acquired a uniform and general reputation as husband and wife."[1]
If my meaningless anecdata isn't remotely worth hearing about, then what's to be said about your intentionally misleading irrelevant statement?
*Oops:
[0] https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/common-law-marriage-by-s...
[1] https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title30/Chapter1/30-1-S4.5.html?v=...
It generally does not require a ceremony (but it does usually require an explicit mutual agreement), and living together does matter (cohabitation is commonly a requirement or evidence of common law marriage), but other than that you are right that publicly presenting as married is often a requirement (and otherwise is evidence).
Here’s info from Texas as an example, which is more required-elements-based and includes cohabitation: https://guides.sll.texas.gov/common-law-marriage#:~:text=Tex...
And here is Colorado, which is more evidence based and does not identify cohabitation as even a form of evidence (though it does have joint ownership of property): https://pitkincounty.com/288/Common-Law-Marriage
Utah is more specific requirements, and includes both cohabitation and how the couple presents publicly, but no ceremony: https://www.utcourts.gov/en/self-help/case-categories/family...
In a country that celebrates sociopathy, manipulation of others, & psychopathy to such a high degree, I think the laws are perfectly fine as they protect exceptionally vulnerable people.
What sort of resources do you actually think there are for a spouse that is able to escape after having been isolated and abused for years, that oftentimes becomes responsible for not only their own well-being, but also childrens? The answer is practically nothing aside from maybe your very basic necessities to sustain life.
I also think you’re really missing a major point but that’s a tangent I’m not going to go on.
[edit]: Revised “What sort of resources do you actually think there are for a spouse that’s been isolated and abused for years” to “What sort of resources do you actually think there are for a spouse that is able to escape after having been isolated and abused for years”
We need better general solutions in this area, a lot of the separation-related problems would vanish. Job-separation and spouse-separation overlap substantially, and it's rather harmful as-is when spouses are incentivized to stay in abusive relationships if they wouldn't even receive significant support separated from an abusive deadbeat anyways. They become trapped.
I mean... kinda? The ones that don't involve microelectronics and aren't mostly fabric, yeah, lots of them may as well last forever, from the perspective of a human lifetime.
But I have LEGOs that are probably way, way older than the average length of a romantic relationship. Hell, they're probably quite a bit older than the average length of a marriage. That's just true. My kids have some metal trucks made a decade before I was born and with hundreds of hours of kid-play-time on them, that they still play with. And those are just kids' toys, not things made for use by adults who will be careful with them! Lots of stuff does last a really long time.
Quite a bit of stuff does indeed get a ton closer to lasting "forever" (say, an entire human lifespan) than most serious relationships do. Normal consumer shit, too, not, like, gothic cathedrals or something.
Treating things as less-disposable than a serious partner is probably not a great idea, but, in actual fact, they... kinda are.
So yeah, I'd suggest to be mature and consider that things can go wrong, which shouldn't affect the depthness of the connection while things work (hopefully forever).
And, about the taxes: Married filing separately is a thing.
That said a lot of countries actually have lower taxes for married couples like Germany, or separate it entirely like in Sweden.
Is this correct for European countries, UK, Australia, NZ, or Canada?
I have never heard of it for any state in the US. Typically, everything before the marriage contract is signed is not part of the community property in the marriage.
Actually it's slightly worse because asset split might skew more towards the person with lesser income to make it more equitable.
So it's entirely possible you could be the primary earner for a marriage and then when the divorce happens you actually leave with less than half of what you provided.
Happened to my Dad.
And again you're mistaking the fundamental nature and intention of child support. It's not a fee for the privilege of seeing your child. A parent can pay less child support by having the child more. Family court judges are fairly progressive and like this. Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it. Men are simply less often willing to prioritize eg daily school transportation requirements vs their job.
1. In 51% of child custody cases, both parents agree for the mother to be the custodial parent.
6. 79.9% of custodial parents in the United States were mothers.
The math doesn't add up, assuming this is correct.
>Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it.
I just discovered this was the case in my state at least. This is good to hear. In the 80s when I was growing up, it wasn't; it was more like I described earlier.
In the past, women were the most likely to win a custody battle because they were considered the primary caregivers of their children, as most fathers spent the most time outside the household because of their work schedules. Although the current share of custodial mothers is still bigger than that of custodial fathers, recent divorce child custody statistics tell us that the number of custodial fathers has soared over the past few years.
Funnily, if you were rich and go broke, you don't get to ask welfare or an employee to give you a salary based on the "lifestyle you were used to".
So? Why should the child get "what it was used to" and not a mere comfortamble amount? Especially if the father had a change of luck and makes less post-divorce?
I don't see any concern for kids from families that have not gone through divorce, but have gone broke or bankrupt. I don't see the state or anyone coming to pay them money to "maintain their lifestyle".
Why is this "lifestyle maintainance" only applicable to kids of divorced parents?
And why are children who started life poor less deserving of such money? They're just as capable as kids from rich parents to "get used" to a more luxurious lifestyle, they just never had the chance.
It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area? or a comfortable amount? Have you seen the poverty line calculations, or the asset limitations on disabled people? The state is not good at carrying this responsibility.
The current system leaves it up to the parents. Not what the parents say they want post-separation, but how they actually acted. That's why it's based on pre-split allocations.
Things are to be examined in context, relatively to similar concerns, and to societies priorities and decisions at large, not as isolated domains. At the very least one should ask why this class of people deserves more than another, why their "lifestyle level" is relevant and is not for other cases and so on.
>The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area?
The area shouldn't matter. Use minimum wage as a calculation. If they kid is supposed to live on that while working their ass off as an adult, they can live on that as a kid too, especially since they still have a parent they live with to supplement that. If minimum wage is too low, the lawmakers should raise it for adults too.
Because there are vindictive people who try to tank their own income because they hate their ex. I had a boss who tanked his prior company to do this.
Involved, stay-at-home, full time fathers are given at best 50% custody and then a hefty child support obligation and told to go out and get a job. Uninvolved mothers are given primary custody by default and then collect a massive paycheck as a result.
France has this law. The US has it too if the man signs the birth certificate, and there's no way to force a paternity test.
I mean, yeah you should support your offspring regardless of what your wife does.
"Wouldn't it be great if finding a partner was exactly like shopping, where you hunt around until you find a thing meets all your fussy requirements?", said a disturbingly large percentage of society.
However, this works as long as the networks remain broad and active, and people participate in them (you need at least some "busybodies"). I can see this being hampered if people frequently move, and move away from friends/family.
If course, our society is so brain dead it has trouble understanding anything that isn't modeled on shopping in a market. So everything must be converted into "shopping in a market."
PS. A "I keep all my stuff forever while I earn all the money, and you cook, clean, have sex with me, and raise my children" pre-nup is not equitable, and is, in many jurisdictions, thereby not enforceable.
You're building a life together. If your partner doesn't meaningfully support you in it, you're with the wrong partner. If they are meaningfully supporting you in it, they are entitled to a share in your family's fortunes.
PPS. This isn't some feminism boogieman, this is a direct consequence of 'men are the breadwinners, women's livelyhood is utterly dependent on them.' If you're earning similar amounts to your partner, that default 50/50 split is a non-factor. If you aren't, see above.
Lewis' law is out in full swing today.
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/i...
Or am I misunderstanding something
In addition to the brackets, there's tons of other deductions, exemptions, etc that are higher or double for married-filing-jointly tax returns.
Just one example is the capital gains on selling your home: if you're filing singly you get an exemption on the first $250k of capital gains, but if you're married and filing jointly that exemption is on the first $500k of gains.
So, depending on your particular situation, you pick the one where you pay less taxes.
Marriage cannot ever increase your tax liability.
The tax brackets mostly eliminate the "marriage penalty", though there are some true edge cases that might make filing separately better. Generally speaking, most married couples do the same or better by filing together.
Can’t. You’re just wrong.
1. Tax benefits (discussion here)
2. Children