Partially related to having a family becoming more risky for men. If you are not protected in case of a separation, you are less likely to want to commit to a family. If there is no family, there is less motivation to earn more.
Check out "Men on Strike" by Helen Smith. She highlights the trends and proposed a number of theories to explain it.
Where is this said? Straw man runs wild.
"I believe most women want to find a man to marry and have kids"
and please share your responses.
go on! i dare you!
But as I suggested, why not test it?
Up to and including paying child support for someone who isn't even yours. Or paying child support for a child resulting from you being raped.
And there's no way around it currently. Currently, even if both parties agree, there's no way for them to actually form a binding agreement. It's gotten to the point where prenuptials are essentially useless. They are far too easily thrown out.
However, I would not tell you as such in person unless specifically asked, and possibly not even then. It's a good way to get ostracized.
Though there's also a moral component for me, but that is another matter.
In the US by 2008, maternal sole-custody had declined to 42% of custodial arrangements (from 80% in 1986), while equal shared custody rose to 27% (from 5%).
http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/05/22/joint-custody-becomi...
And I have seen too many people at work struggling with ugly divorces.
Or, the vast majority of the time, men use custody of the children as a bargaining chip to secure a better financial settlement, which is why they mostly don't end up with custody.
In contested divorces, there may be a presumption operating that the person who acted as the primary caregiver is most suitable custodial parent, and traditional gender roles means that that will often be the mother.
But that's not a gender-based assumption, that's a gender-neutral assumption applied to facts that happen to be influenced by traditional gender roles.
Now, if men who were the primary caregiver during marriage were generally losing custody in contested custody proceedings, that would be a different story.
1) That's 100% incorrect
2) That isn't even what was said.
>women end up with the kids the vast majority of the time, and the only time they don't is when there's seriously wrong with them (e.g. abusive, mentally ill, etc.).
Once again, completely and totally incorrect. The "vast majority" of people that I personally know about don't have the woman ending up with the kids. I know of one guy whose ex-wife took off halfway across the country and left him with the kids.
I also know (and hate) someone who is male and did the same - took off halfway across the country and left his ex (girlfriend) with the kid.
I would say that women can tend to be unfair with the kids. Insisting "I'm going to get my way" and the father just giving it to her rather than fight in court over it.
My sister in law isn't abusive or mentally ill.
The obvious solution is to separate the assets proportionally based on how much was put into it in the first place, though I'm sure that's much easier said than done (and a bit of an oversimplification of most situations).
The convincing argument I've heard against that is that it gives someone leverage to keep their partner in a relationship against their will, once they are used to a certain standard of living they can't have on their own. If someone with significant assets marries someone living paycheck to paycheck, for example.
If you don't want to merge your equity with someone, either don't marry them or sign a prenup. I don't think people with significant net worth go into marriages without understanding what they're doing.
Also, the original logic that any of this will have anything to do with a man's willingness to work seems really quite over-stretched.
Both of our comments are completely random, uncited, and not even mentioned in the article.