Americans aren't getting married, and researchers think porn may be to blame | Hacker News Reader

Americans aren't getting married, and researchers think porn may be to blame

washingtonpost.com

46 pointsilamont109 comments

Here's my random, unsolicited opinion:

I doubt porn is the cause. Porn might be a comorbidity (what I'd put my money on), or maybe a symptom (I doubt that, too), but the idea that it's the cause is pretty odd to me.

I think marriage is fundamentally an economic institution. People got married because it made economic sense. You needed a partner to rear children with, assuming you wanted children at all. There's all the stuff about love and companionship and all that, but there's no reason why we need to fixate on one particular arrangement. It was about partnerships of families.

I think marriage made a lot of sense in small towns. It makes sense for large, political dynasties, for the old wealthy, etc. It doesn't make so much sense for the young middle class today.

This is my rough, unvarnished opinion. Would love to hear criticisms, refinements, etc.

> I think marriage is fundamentally an economic institution.

I don't like that reduction of marriage. Having known several couples who've made it for over 50 years and above, it really makes things clear to me -- they let themselves be totally truthful and vulnerable to each other, they rely on each other in the other's time of need, they find joy in doing things as one. Like most things, marriage is what you make of it, if all you want out of it is economic benefits, it can be just that.

Nothing stops you from being truthful and vulnerable without getting married.

There are tons of marriages with lies and mistrust.

Of course, you can have that without getting married. But you see, more than anything, marriage is really a cultural institution. It has a strong symbolic power. It's an excuse for a big party, a signaling of commitment, etc.

We humans do a lot of things based on tradition and culture. Marriage is one of those things.

Because come on, if we don't have culture, what do we have?

> Because come on, if we don't have culture, what do we have?

Well reasoned and logical action?

There is no such thing as logical action independent of values, which are cultural. Logic can help with determining how to serve values, but it can't tell you what your base values should be.

> values, which are cultural.

It only takes one exception to disprove a rule, and in the interest of not inviting debate - I'll pick an obvious example: biological imperatives have nothing to do with culture.

Everytime I hear somebody excuse silly behaviour with "culture" it reminds me of the Louis CK bit: http://youtu.be/CQSRPMFDTSs

Marriage is a tradition, but I don't see what's so cultural about it.

You might not like a further reduction which I suspect is true, which is that monogamy (punctuated or otherwise) itself is an economic (or if you prefer, game theoretical) institution dating back to when females traded reproduction for food and protection. There was no easy way for a male to determine the paternity of the child of a female with which he has mated, other than securing an ostensibly exclusive relationship and monitoring the female's fidelity as best as possible.

Of course, I don't think that takes anything away from the couples you know.

> There's no easy way for a male to determine the paternity of the child of a female with which he has mated, other than securing an ostensibly exclusive relationship and monitoring the female's fidelity as best as possible.

I disagree.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005Y34OKA

I meant a long time ago, when these institutions first developed among humans. The fact that paternity tests exist now probably only corroborates my point. I'll edit the comment for clarity.

It's an important distinction. The desire for fidelity is clearly genetic. I agree with you, it probably entered the gene pool because of those reasons. With those reasons now gone, it can and probably will exit the gene pool. This will drastically change the nature of human relationships.

Yes, I think we agree fully. I would add that the persistence of norms does not have to be directly genetic in the way most people would interpret that. It could be indirectly genetic, in the sense that we have a strong genetic propensity to adopt the norms of our social surroundings and attempt to spread those norms to the next generation. That propensity probably applies even for norms that have far outlived their original purpose.

I don't think the reasons are gone completely. Having children is much more than mating with someone and taking a test to determine that the children are yours. I want to have children one day, so I'm very careful with who I select for a partner, because I want her to be there with me raising our children, and be very committed to the family.

Monogomy in the modern age has always seemed like a sexual (and emotional) put option.

That said this rock that we're flying through space on becomes much less enjoyable if you stop believing entirely in the more romantic ideas of human entanglement (we are beings that need stories).

Also, allowing yourself to depend on the other, being truthful and the other things you say will quickly translate into economic benefits. Stability, emotional/financial/..., a safety net, a second opinion, a distraction when needed, I don't know how I'd do without.

Do you have to be married to be in a loving relationship with someone for 50 years?

I suspect it also made more sense when men were breadwinners and women were housekeepers. You needed both roles to have a family. Nowadays, it's more feasible to do it all by yourself, thanks to gender-equality/labor-saving-appliances/increased-wealth/etc.

(Unfortunately "feasible" doesn't mean "good" or "healthy", at least not yet)

P.S. When I say wealth, what I mean is the wealth of progress we all share... I don't know if there is a term, but for example a vacuum cleaner ran ~$50 in 1920 ($600 in 2014 dollars) and you can buy one today for $15.

I think that stopped because it became no longer financially feasible. In the 60s it was easily doable (for a man) to be the breadwinner for a family of 4-5, even 6 people. Anno 2014, It's just not possible anymore. A household, especially with children, requires a $60k wage minimum and the average wage is $32,140 [1].

I'm scared to think how much influence this really had on female emancipation. It is striking how female emancipation happened just a few years after it became pretty much required for household income. It might be more an effect of US (and Europe) social policy than anything else.

That way of seeing things also explains gender attitudes much better. E.g. to see why it didn't happen in the middle east. Simple : effectively nobody has a job, of the locals, not men not women. Apparently if employers have a choice out of 1000 individuals, of which 500 women and 500 men, and only 10 will ever get hired, those 10 are overwhelmingly likely to be men.

Makes me wonder if gender equality in the middle east would be as simple as dropping average wage, and getting employment up to 40-50% at least. Makes you wonder if that would shut up all the allah has ordained women ... crap.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

It is striking how female emancipation happened just a few years after it became pretty much required for household income.

Plenty of people would argue the first caused the second. Double the labor supply, halve the wage.

I disagree. I'm from Slovenia, and in this culture both parents have been working parents for generations (i.e. both my parents and all 4 of my grandparents were working). Marriage still makes a lot of sense, simply because (1) people like companionship, (2) it's easier if you share domestic tasks, and (3) you need 2 people to make a baby. Probably other reasons as well, but these are the most basic ones, I think.

Porn is purely selfish pleasure. Thus, when a person is married, they're used to being selfish about their sexual pleasure, resulting in strife. And when people think about getting married, they realize that would require them to stop being so selfish, since marriages don't last unless you are willing to sacrifice your own desires in order to help your spouse.

So, porn is a cause, or at least, part of a cause.

As for marriage being an economic institution... Not really. Male and female are different. We think differently, our bodies are different, and so on. In most cases, those differences complement each other. So, marriage is the joining of two people into a partnership that lets them cover each others flaws.

I think it's crucially important to note that even if folks watch porn, it doesn't mean they can't have a successful marriage. My thinking is it would actually probably help to make a conscious decision to stop watching porn or at least reduce to a healthy minimum (insofar as it is an activity that may make a man and a woman more distant and aloof), and look instead to rebuilding a healthy physical relationship [1].

The reason I feel the need to emphasize this is that I think it's pretty much a matter of fact these days that many people watch porn. They should not start thinking now that they'll have trouble with marriage because of their porn habits, rather they should focus on what can be done to prepare for a successful marriage and commit to that.

[1]: Somehow I'm expecting people to get nitpicky on me on this, so let me just preemptively say: if within the framework of your relationship watching porn is acceptable to you and your significant other, then bless you both, keep doing it.

> Porn is purely selfish pleasure.

Some couples watch porn together.You make it "a selfish pleasure" only if you want it "a selfish pleasure". And yes,women watch porn,like they buy dildos, though they might not be interested in "Bangbros like gonzo" ,but something with a higher production quality.

HBO's 'Game of Thrones' for example.

Is a virgin who doesn't view pornography likely to be any less selfish or any more successful in a marriage?

> Porn is purely selfish pleasure. Thus, when a person is married, they're used to being selfish about their sexual pleasure, resulting in strife.

Are you married? For that matter, have you actually had sex?

You and your wife can enjoy sex without you putting any additional effort into it. The mechanics of it kinda guarantee that.

In fact, that's probably a massive difference between actual sex and what it portrayed in porn. When you're with somebody, you don't take turns ... they do that in porn because two people can't really fit into the shot. In real life there are no turns, you're both having fun at the same time.

> So, porn is a cause, or at least, part of a cause.

Porn isn't the cause. The parent is right. It's entirely rooted in economics and self-interest.

On top of what's already mentioned, there are heavy penalties for a male if the marriage ends. Child-support, alimony, 50% of your property, custody of children, etc.

So not too much upside on a successful marriage and heavy penalties on a failed one ... not surprising many men are choosing to opt out.

There are, of course, good reasons to still marry, but the answer isn't as clear-cut as it was before.

There's this thing called aging. It's really quite a universal problem. It means that if you marry for sex, it's not going to last.

Skipping it also leads to not lasting though.

Other things cause them to not get married, then since they're not married they can watch porn.

> Porn might be a comorbidity (what I'd put my money on), or maybe a symptom (I doubt that, too), but the idea that it's the cause is pretty odd to me.

I'd guess that the increase in porn usage is caused by a simple and unrelated phenomenon: the vastly easier access to porn.

I'm rather entertained at the number of people objecting to your description of marriage as an "economic institution". That's exactly what marriage has been for thousands of years: primarily a way of ensuring the continuity of property and perpetuation of a family name. Feelings, by and large, don't enter into it in the grand scheme of things.

Marriage today would be tolerable if it weren't for the absurd debt spectacle involved (in both getting a ring and a ceremony), the rather nasty legal implications upon divorce, and overall the lack of societal support for raising a family these days.

I think marriage is fundamentally an economic institution. People got married because it made economic sense

Marriage and divorce laws are also biased against men—which Helen Smith details in Men on Strike: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594036756 . The book is not great but it is a decent introduction to these issues.

  Marginal Effect on Marriage Probability
  Porn Site -0.6310
  Finance Site -0.5889
  News Site -0.5877
  Education Site -0.5823
  Health Site -0.5744
  Sports Site -0.5928
  Religious Site +0.5399

A natural public policy option is web filtering. [...] If the results in this paper are correct, policies along these lines have the potential to reduce pornography usage and increase marital entry, with its attendant welfare improvements.

Is allowing only religious sites another natural policy option? Because that's what the data suggests too.

Edit:

Linked study: http://ftp.iza.org/dp8679.pdf -- table data from PDF page 31 and quote from page 25.

Yeah, because the fact that the average young American can barely support one person, let alone two + child, on a basic income can't have anything to do with the reduction in marriages...

Plus the expense of the ring, the wedding, the honeymoon. People put it off until it can be done 'right'.

An interesting trend in Greece, where due to the economic crisis many people can't afford to "properly" get married, is that it's become common to get a simple civil-ceremony marriage, with an intent to get a "real" marriage (church ceremony, reception, photos, etc.) sometime later. That may or may not eventually happen, but it seems universal that people at least theoretically consider it their plan (the civil paperwork-signing isn't culturally considered a "real" wedding). Not getting married at all is also increasingly common, but many people choose the in-between option of a legal marriage without the ceremony. The plus side is that you get the legal benefits even while waiting to plan the "real" wedding (things like medical visitation rights, joint property ownership, etc., become simpler).

What does this have to do with being married? It's not like if you marry, you have to have children and have to pay more. If two people make A and B amounts of money, they still make A+B together, married or not.

Taxes actually favor single income families.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty

I assumed that the majority of couples with children (married or not) have both worked for at least a few decades.

I'm not sure why an average decrease in purchasing power relative to costs of living, if that has even occurred, would cause a reduction in marriages. I would expect a reduction in birth rate, or at least a birth rate distributed differently to income, but not necessarily a reduction in marriages.

The economic necessity argument actually speaks in favor of marriage - a bachelor has one bare income, but with a spouse there's a possibility of a dual-income household.

Seems like someone needs to read this again: http://xkcd.com/552/

People consuming more porn is a more likely a symptom of what's going on rather than the cause. As whatever forces cause people to be less likely to get married it creates a larger market for porn that the industry is more than happy to supply in greater quantities.

What forces are causing people to be less likely to get married? I can speculate but I suspect it's highly multifaceted. I doubt there's one thing that's largely to blame but more of a death by a thousand papercuts kind of situation.

1. Housing is a bigger commitment

2. Job security is less available making buying real estate less attractive

3. Expectations of what should happen once you get married aren't necessarily realistic

4. Ending a marriage is highly speculative and non-negotiable (a judge says what goes and that's it) and can have lifelong or very long-lasting consequences financially

5. There's a lot less societal pressure to get married to have kids from a moral perspective

6. The economic incentive for a woman to get married so she can stay home to raise kids has largely disappeared as pay equality has largely arrived (so has the notion that it's what a woman should do). It's not 100% across the board but women don't work for 30% of what men do, meaning that marriage might only bring a marginal improvement in financial circumstances.

7. Child support being completely unrelated to marriage means that women can choose not to settle for a man they once liked/loved but who isn't their ideal partner.

I'm not saying that any of these factors are good or bad or just or unjust. I suspect that there are 20 more factors that I couldn't think up in the last 10 minutes.

1. Housing is a bigger commitment

Interestingly, this is a policy choice—and a bad one—foisted on us primarily by incumbent land owners who vote: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO , rather than a law of nature.

The thieving nature of the divorce and child support regulations in the USA are clearly unrelated.

anyone blaming the cost of divorce and child support as a reason not to get married probably aren't that great to be married to

With the inability of anyone to accurately predict the future, the 50% lifetime divorce rate in the US, and the hugely unfair consequences of divorce, your judgement of the OP is unwarranted.

The divorce rate is not 50%. We don't know the divorce rate, because we haven't been keeping track. http://qz.com/306166/the-divorce-stat-that-just-keeps-cheati...

It seems you should have omitted the first sentence.

For the cohort of HN readers, it is nowhere near that high.

See http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/pdf/marriage-and-di...

Among folks with college degrees, divorce rate is 31% for those marrying between 23 and 28 and 23% for those marrying between 29 and 34. Those with a masters degree, divorce at ~22%.

Even ignoring education and marriage age, only 26% of those who have kids while married (not before married) get divorced: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr049.pdf

1 in 4 chance is still a pretty huge risk considering the consequences.

Also, the rate counts marriages not people, so serial offenders like this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glynn_Wolfe skew the average and require 28 marriages that don't end up in divorce just to even out.

It's not the current rate that is important, it's the trend. People marrying today will be getting divorced in 10-20 years; by then, the divorce rate could well be way more than 50%.

> inability of anyone to accurately predict the future

sarcastic response: "sorry hun, we can't get married cause i'm not sure we'll be together forever and i don't want to pay money if we break up."

real response: There's risk in everything you do, and if you aren't willing to risk some of your time and equity into another person then you wouldn't do well in a marriage anyway

Most risks that people take, especially with risks of such high probability, don't involve another person visciously working to make your life miserable in and out of a court of law.

Romance and taking a leap of faith and all that are just very recent fictions, especially in Asia. Marriage has been a utilitarian tradition since it began. There are lucky people with wonderful loving marriages, but it's completely unrealistic to expect everyone to seek this out at extreme long term risk to livelihood and happiness.

Not to sound insensitive, but here's another way to look at it. At the end of day marriage is like a contract between to persons with expensive "cancellation fees" that you need to consider, exactly like it happens when you sign any other contract during your life. It is very shortsighted to sign a contract without considering every aspect of it, even more considering there is a good chance that things can go wrong.

You can still love a person and have a child and give your contributions as a parent without signing a contract, like many people actually do.

Taking into account the risks of an enterprise is laudable.

... and anyone that passionately objects to doing so probably aren't that great to be married to? :)

Worries about child support aren't a particularly good reason to get married or not get married, because they apply iff you are a parent, regardless of marital status. If you get married and don't have kids, there is no issue of supporting kids. On the other hand, if you don't get married and do have kids, you're still legally required to support them. The obligation to support isn't a consequence of marriage, but of being father or mother to a child. In fact a pretty large proportion of child-support cases that end up in court involve parents who were never married.

At least in Oklahoma, child support laws encourage marriage: I had a friend that ended up paying child support for about six to eight years for a kid that always lived with him. The reason is because his partner got emergency food stamps for a week while he was out of the state taking care of his sick mother. He later married her (though they were living together even before the kid), but was still having his wages garnished for something called “child support”.

Still, the fear of having to pay child support could discourage people from having extended exclusive relationships, and those are generally a prerequisite to marriage.

Not having "extended, exclusive relationships" doesn't decrease the risk of having to pay child support. (Not having unprotected sex with people you aren't both married to and going to stay married to does, but, all other things being equal, avoiding "extended, exclusive relationships" seems to be more likely to increase that risk than decrease it.)

I suspect it does, given that the likelihood of conceiving a child (from protected or unprotected sex), as well as the likelihood of a female knowing who the father of her child is, increase as relationships become longer and more exclusive.

Exclusivity isn't inherently symmetrical, neither is the interval between different relationships. The effect you are referring to doesn't come from whether the relationship is exclusive on your side, or from whether it is long term, but from whether it is exclusive on the other side, and whether there is a long gap before/after the other partner's previous/next relationship.

> If you get married and don't have kids, there is no issue of supporting kids.

Nope, but if you get married to a woman who doesn't work, generally you will owe alimony anyway. So technically you're correct, but it's a distinction without a difference.

(of course just living together may - depending on the state - also have this result)

> Worries about child support aren't a particularly good reason to get married or not get married, because they apply iff you are a parent, regardless of marital status.

Actually, they apply iff you are a parent and not married to the child's custodial parent. Marriage, therefore, has something of a mitigating effect.

Marriage does, however, also potentially have a contrary effect that increases the risk, because of the rebuttable or conclusive (depending on the state) presumption of paternity for children born during the marriage.

I would go as far as to say that married couples should banned from divorce until all their children are at least 16 1/2.

That would solve the child support problem for married couples, reduce the divorce rate and incentivise stable families.

Really? From my perspective people can't afford marriage, a kid, house, cars, and ultimately a divorce. Man it would be nice to just have $3k for a wedding ring, I could pay off a fraction of my debt! Oh! Wedding reception costs? Fuck that, I need to finance a good car that gets excellent mpg! OH, child support laws? Yeah I had an older brother that had his wallet raped for 14 years of his life. He's now looking at houses, hopefully his current wife doesn't divorce him with the kids they have. :P

Usury. Not long ago one high school educated American working a factory shift could support a wife and four kids. His large, hand crafted home is now found in the gentrified corner of town, which today's blue collars couldn't dream of buying a piece of. Today's "middle class" typically live in a chicken-wire-and-stucco tract home built by economic refugees rather than craftsmen, lease to own a $40,000 sedan, and dream of one day paying off their education debt before their medical bills start to pile up after mid-life. Marriage has been, like every other thing in America, reduced to a question of economic efficiency.

But hey, there's always Bing Crosby this time of year to evoke an America that was more than a place to make money.

You can still have that large hand crafted home if you don't expect to live in the middle of San Francisco or Boston. There are gorgeous houses within two hour's drive of me that cost five figures.

I can't afford my parent's house. But when they bought it, it was surrounded by peach fields, not bustling metro America with top schools.

To me, it is like bemoaning how your Grandma was able to afford a house in Beverly Hills in 1920, but you can't today. How unfair the economy, how cruel the world! Except Beverly Hills wasn't Movie Star City in 1920.

My take is that our nation's appetite for coveted, increasingly scarce real estate has silently grown without our realizing it. Not one of my friends today would consider moving to a house surrounded by orchards.

Right idea, different trend: The boomer generation coincided with the suburban boom, with its emphasis on car culture and mass produced goods. But the sheen of an industrially produced life has worn off, to a large extent: Long commutes and the expense of owning and regularly driving a car don't look as good as they used to. We're seeing a massive move back into the cities, contrary to the (white) flight from the cities in the sixties and seventies. And this means higher real estate prices.

Either way though, it means we live in very different times than even as recently as our parents, which makes "what my parents could afford" a poor rubric. We are looking to live very different places than they were.

it's not that our appetite for coveted real estate has grown. the real problem is that our alternatives to big cities are not good enough. here are your choices. you either live in an environment devoid of culture and community where nothing happens ever, where you live in a split-level townhome across from a stripmall across from a shopping center ... or you find a way to live in the city, where life is happening, even if you have to live in a bathtub.

america's brand of suburban development created this situation. and now everyone has the internet, so they can be in touch with cutting-edge culture and painfully aware of how little is happening in their suburban town. of course, all people want to do is get out of these horrible places.

Firstly the problem is not the location of the house. A similar rise in house prices has occurred outside of expensive suburbs. When your parents bought said house is was worth ~15 years of rent. Today that number is pretty much 60 nationwide (after-tax rental income, disregarding repairs to the house). Same is true expressed in wages. When your parents bought that house it was around 5-10 year's wages of ONE person working, easily payable from 10-20 years of savings. Today, we're talking 15-20.

We're fast approaching the point where mortgages can effectively not be expected to get paid off anymore, because the holder will die before collecting the capital + interest in wages.

It's scary that millennial are the first generation in probably 300+ years for whom, on average, children can't afford to buy their parent's house. Some claim 1400 years, because this has essentially been true (you have to be very flexible with definitions though) in one way or another since the dark ages.

[1] http://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T054-C000-S001-where-...

I'd like to add that in my specific area of the United States, Washington State, we've seen a huge move from international buyers swooping in on investment properties that became available on the market post-2008. There's a big move on Chinese and Canadian investors moving in on foreclosures, low interest rates, and honest to god: cold-hard-cash buyouts (it's extremely rare but in my market it's happened a few times). I'm in my mid-twenties and I feel like my significant other and I have to both be working full-time jobs at $20+ an hour to afford a 3 bedroom house anywhere near a reasonable commute from work. We also don't want to be stuck with the burden of upkeep maintenance, property tax, and unpredictable economy. Back on the topic of marriage; we're still iffy on the idea based off of fear that if our marriage went south we couldn't imagine dealing with the divorce; both psychological and financially speaking... However, our financial situation is a bit different in terms of debt and interest rates. We are both afraid of being to far sunken in debt.

Do you think Bing worked for free?

Your post wouldn't be half as funny if White Christmas wasn't still one of the best-selling records of all time.

> Not long ago one high school educated American working a factory shift could support a wife and four kids.

Wasn't much of that advantage predicated on what's now regarded as gender/race discrimination?

No. These advantages stemmed from generations of hard work passed down as inheritance, and, from gender roles voluntary entered into through religious preference.

The past is not necessarily a litany of crime, the present is not necessarily an improvement.

OH, child support laws? Yeah I had an older brother that had his wallet raped for 14 years of his life.

Yeah, a parent being legally required to support their child is really analogous to being raped...

The original definition of the word "rape" refers to a theft or seizure of some sort, so the usage here is accurate, given the focus is on the metaphor of the wallet and not the person directly.

Thanks for the historical knowledge, but it no longer means that.

Child support laws frequently have little to do with supporting children. Payments are frequently far higher than necessary and far higher than the non-custodial parent can afford. There is no accountability at all on the custodial parent's spending, while the non-custodial parent gets their wage's garnished so they can't even pay their rent.

It's uncouth to use the word in this context, but the intended analogy is simply that of theft or plunder, which is a well-accepted definition of the word and is in common usage.

Porn is one of many causes, but not a clinching cause. It is all economy.

1. In 1970's highschool graduated were able to raise families on a single salary, could afford a home, a couple of cars.

2. The above situation does not exist anymore. Have you seen graduates from places like UC Irvine, working at Enterprise car rental?

3. Yes, there are jobs for students graduated from top schools like HYP, Stanford, MIT. For others, it is either a tech job or a job like that.

4. Wherever there are jobs, there the cost of living, raising a family is a darn expensive. Imagine Silicon valley for instance: if you are just a software engineer, you can't afford raising a family here, unless you and your spouse slave away at work and in commutes. Then add day care costs, mortgages, etc. It is a stressful situation.

5. For many in the middle income bracket, the future is bleak: you can't guarantee that your kids gonna have same economic opportunity as you have.

You may be familiar with the "Old Economy Steven" meme:

http://www.quickmeme.com/Old-Economy-Steven/page/1/

Bloomberg: What the Economy Has Done to the Family (some shocking statistics) - Nov 10, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-10/how-the-bad-economy...

"Is a college degree worth the cost? You decide."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpwAOHJsxg

And see this 8-minute video, comparing the 1970s economy (and how it shaped the lives and choices of young adults) with the economy of the 2010s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzOTykfGxzE

More about that:

http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/2m7xp1/bloomberg_w...

Anyone thinks they might be holding off because of insane laws? Getting kicked out of your own house (that you bought with your own money) as if it's a given. Getting ruined by divorce, or losing half your stuff as if it's so natural.

I've read an article a while back. The cheapest divorces are those of billionaires, the most expensive ones are those of artists and athletes who married without a prenup. Who were naïve enough to think that in the case of divorce, they'd be the same as when they first met, and they'd treat each other with the same respect and love.

Looking at the state of things, the question to ask is How can anyone get married in the U.S.?

Been with my partner almost 10 years (I'm 29). We most likely will never get married. We feel we don't need it and plus, the institution from an equal rights point of view is fairly troubling. Even today's traditional wedding is filled with male / female imbalances, not to mention gay marriage is still not universal. I'm also happy to keep a few extra thousand in my hands instead of De Beers.

That will be nice for now until one of you decide to move on for greener pastures. Lonely old age may also follow...

I'd have never noticed. A large amount of the people my age (25-35) that I work with are married, most of my friends are married, both of my brothers (younger than I) are married, and I myself was even engaged for a few years.

It is reasonable to expect that marriage rates could drop significantly while there still remains a large number of people who observe most of their peers getting married.

>"The natural reaction might be to dismiss the findings as confirmations of an obviousness: that men who are married tend to look at porn less frequently precisely because they are married.

The researchers, while careful to say that their findings fall short of being conclusive, insist that the relationship between the two also "likely runs in the direction that we assert."

The reason, Malcolm explains, is likely tied to the relationship between marriage and sexual gratification...."

Hmm. Seems to be a pretty massive gap in their logic path. In reply to the very real possibility that married men simply view less porn, they quickly spun to the reasons they suspect porn could lead to men not getting married.

It also "likely" runs in the direction we assert and here is a likely reason that it might?

C'mon guys.

Marriage in the USA peaked in 1958. Please see the chart here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/the-real-re...

Marriage peaked the same year that male participation in the wage economy peaked. It was also the peak year of the baby boom. It was also the peak year for the wage-to-rent ratio (average rent was only 22% of average wage, versus 32% now). It was also the peak year for wages for males under the age of 25. (Average male wage began to decline in 1973, but the average wage for young males has been declining since the recession of 1959.)

Internet porn was not the problem in 1959, or 1969, or 1979, though the marriage rate, and the birth rate, plummeted during those years. But it is possible that the sexual revolution played a role. Barbara Ehrenreich has a fantastic book on the subject "The Hearts Of Men":

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hearts-Men-American-Commitment/dp/...

Although the marriage rate is now back down to levels last seen in the late 1800s, there is clearly a big difference in people's sexual practice. 41% of all the children in the USA are now born outside of wedlock. The number is comparable to London in the early 1700s (see Will and Ariel Durant's book "The Age Of Voltaire" where they quote the Bishop Of London, in 1719, estimating 50% of all couples with children in London were not married. This was at a time when the English government had decided to suppress marriage among the poor by raising the price of a marriage license to something only the middle and upper classes could afford, thus turning marriage into the ultimate status symbol.)

Marriage has once again become a status symbol. The poor raise children without the benefit of marriage, while the (shrunken) middle and upper classes enjoy the prestige of marriage.

The suppression of marriage in the 21st century is less easy to identify than in 1719, because back then it was an explicit policy of the government, whereas now marriage licenses are cheap. But marriage is a commitment to make things work over the long term, and without a stable job no one can reasonably make long term commitments, nor does anyone want to rush into a marriage that they know will fail, so the poor are left going through life without the benefits of marriage (or you could restate this as: "the poor are left going through life without the benefits of financial stability, which limits their ability to make the long-term commitments necessary to make a marriage work.")

Does this study examine the difference between people who are in long term non married relationships and those who are not?

Does porn cause people in relationships not to convert those relationships into marriages or does porn cause people to be less likely to enter a relationship at all?

I rarely hear the alternative explanation that speaks most to me: marriage as an institution is currently a segregated privilege. I do not want to participate, lest I lend it some small sliver of legitimacy.

Where are the articles talking about the people who don't get married because they no longer need a plausible cover for their sexuality? Or because they are creating loving non-traditional families? Or those like me who empathize with those who are disallowed from participating?

(These are not rhetorical questions, if you know of such research going on I would like to read it!)

I suppose it's easier to blame the newfangled interwebs and kids these days, rather than talk about the very real social changes that are taking place.

http://www.thelocal.de/20140117/dating-in-berlin-unwilling-t...

Look up exact same articles for Japan, China, S Korea, anywhere. We work more with less social time, prefer independence and marriage expectations are too high so short-term obligation free hookup services like Tinder are preferred to maintaining a relationship.

I attended a talk where porn and video games were cited as candidates for explaining the surprisingly low crime rate during the last economic downturn.

I mention this without value connotation since, while low crime is “obviously” good, society may also have benefited from stronger displays of discontent in the long-term.

The Researchers of the Study miss the obvious...its hard to find an optimal oportunity to "jack it" when your wife is constantly there, breathing down your neck. Marriage leads to total loss of individual privacy, which is needed to properly enjoy Porn ;-)

Isn't this just as simple as the US catching up to Europe? Average marriage age throughout northern Europe is 30+, often when a couple decides they are ready for children.

Because only men look at porn. Crap article.

Correlation is not causation and they have no plausible mechanism beyond old-style stereotypes of human sexuality.

It's not porn. Porn has been around for a long time.

It's the information. People now know more and they see that marriage is heavily stacked against males and against higher earners. We also have a ridiculous situation when prenups get thrown out by judges.

People just don't see that many benefits in marriage. And what are they exactly? I can only think of four:

* Slightly lower taxes

* Visitation rights

* Ability to make medical decisions about the spouse when the spouse can't

* Spousal testimonial privilege and privileged communication

I feel secularization is probably a large contributor. Without peer pressure of a religious community it's easier to put off the marriage.

Regarding lower taxes, another commenter linked to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty

The decrease in marriage in today's generations stems from the increase in failed marriages of the Boomer generation. Many of today's eligible Gen-X'ers and Millennials come from broken homes.

You really believe that just because their parents failed the children decided not to try for themselves? Perhaps it has more to do with seeing how their parents failed. Specifically since the article is geared towards men, maybe it speaks towards a generation (or few) of boys watching the system screw their fathers over.

Being young myself (early 30s) most of my male friends are terrified of marriage because their parents are all mostly divorced and its ugly.

Men now see marriage as a huge risk, if your wife decides she doesnt like you any more she takes at least 50% of your assets and if you have children its very unlikely the state will give you custody and you will be on the hook for child support if you cant pay (because you get a worse job etc) you will go to debtors prison.

The reality is women won't marry low status men and men don't really want the burden of having to support a wife and child without any income. It's really about money/status, in a status obsessed society.

It never ceases to amaze me how sophisticated people are at demonizing porn.

Demonizing? They're saying porn discourages people from marriage. We call that a win-win where I'm from.

If a woman can be replaced with (essentially) Youtube.com , then, she isn't offering much is she?

Something tells me the article is not right in blaming porn.

I live with a girl and have no intentions of classifying that relationship through the state. This article is a joke. Check out the MGTOW movement if you're interested in the real reason guys are refusing to get married.

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