“In the popular imagination, marriage is for women,” wrote Zawn Villines. “It takes significant indoctrination to get women to ignore the plain truth.”
The data cited better supports a story that many men are unworthy of marriage. It is these men ending up married, or being single, underneath the data cited.
Compared to men worthy of marriage, men unworthy do poorly in life. Should a woman have the misfortune or poor judgement to marry a man unworthy of marriage, that woman will suffer. Her suffering will be more than her husband's (until she divorces him).
For the woman, herself worthy of marriage, who marries a man worthy of marriage, the woman strongly benefits, as does the man. Whether this benefit is more or less than the benefit to the man, I'll not speculate. Otherwise, why would deep culture emphasize to women, far more than men, the importance of finding a good marriage partner?
All this loops back to a major theme of Sex and the State (https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/), which is a focus on the challenges of bottom half men.
Women interested in a good marriage would be a lot better off in a world where bottom half men were succeeding more. The bottom half men would be a lot better off too. As would everyone else.
"Now, marriage being better for men than for women doesn’t make it a bad thing, necessarily. Annual prostate exams are also better for men than for women, and those seem fine."
To many men, this might appear like "simping", but I think it is a rational response, to the reality pointed out in this excellent essay. Also these are not hard things to do, i love my wife, but sometimes I get complacent and self absorbed. It is a helpful reminder to really honour my wife and our relationship, which I really hope is "until death do us part".
It's amazing how they don't even pay lip service to making marriage better for women. Its usually "women must be forced to suffer for the children" or at best "some women have gotten too dumb to realize they want to be married."
Broadly true, but again I will quibble with a specific claim: it's not the case that marriage "boosts leisure time for men." Wives do more housework than husbands, but the total amount of housework (and child care, and paid labor, etc) done in married households goes way up compared to single households. The result is that married men do more housework (and more of all types of work) than single men and have less leisure.
And even relatively feminist studies (ex: excluding things like home repairs) show that marriage "creates" so much more housework that "Both the men and the women who got married did more housework than those who stayed single, the analysis showed. “Marriage is no longer a man’s path to less housework,” said Stafford, a professor in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts." https://news.umich.edu/exactly-how-much-housework-does-a-husband-create/
The data cited better supports a story that many men are unworthy of marriage. It is these men ending up married, or being single, underneath the data cited.
Compared to men worthy of marriage, men unworthy do poorly in life. Should a woman have the misfortune or poor judgement to marry a man unworthy of marriage, that woman will suffer. Her suffering will be more than her husband's (until she divorces him).
For the woman, herself worthy of marriage, who marries a man worthy of marriage, the woman strongly benefits, as does the man. Whether this benefit is more or less than the benefit to the man, I'll not speculate. Otherwise, why would deep culture emphasize to women, far more than men, the importance of finding a good marriage partner?
All this loops back to a major theme of Sex and the State (https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/), which is a focus on the challenges of bottom half men.
Women interested in a good marriage would be a lot better off in a world where bottom half men were succeeding more. The bottom half men would be a lot better off too. As would everyone else.
"Now, marriage being better for men than for women doesn’t make it a bad thing, necessarily. Annual prostate exams are also better for men than for women, and those seem fine."
^I LITERALLY CACKLED 🤣 may I quote you on this
Nothing would please me more!
It's a very good line 😄
The appropriate response from men like me, who are married, is to double down on making our marriage work for my wife (notes to self really):
- keep talking about the sharing of the domestic load and look where I can take on more responsibility
- give her lots of freedom to do her hobbies and meeting her friends
- really listen (i.e. to understand, as opposed to respond) to her share about her day, her colleagues, her hopes, fears and dreams ...
- make more effort to be physically affectionate - snuggles, kisses, hand holding, gifts, notes, mid-day texts ...
- invest my time and money in making our home safe, warm, cosy and welcoming to family and friends
- gently encourage her to grow
- be open and vulnerable about my own struggles, wins, hopes & fears
- lean into loving our kids - I already do of course, but my love is expressed more by giving them freedom, than actively supporting them
To many men, this might appear like "simping", but I think it is a rational response, to the reality pointed out in this excellent essay. Also these are not hard things to do, i love my wife, but sometimes I get complacent and self absorbed. It is a helpful reminder to really honour my wife and our relationship, which I really hope is "until death do us part".
It's amazing how they don't even pay lip service to making marriage better for women. Its usually "women must be forced to suffer for the children" or at best "some women have gotten too dumb to realize they want to be married."
Broadly true, but again I will quibble with a specific claim: it's not the case that marriage "boosts leisure time for men." Wives do more housework than husbands, but the total amount of housework (and child care, and paid labor, etc) done in married households goes way up compared to single households. The result is that married men do more housework (and more of all types of work) than single men and have less leisure.
Your own link confirms this: married men have 5.16 hours of leisure per day, while nonmarried men have 5.99 hours. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11A.htm
And even relatively feminist studies (ex: excluding things like home repairs) show that marriage "creates" so much more housework that "Both the men and the women who got married did more housework than those who stayed single, the analysis showed. “Marriage is no longer a man’s path to less housework,” said Stafford, a professor in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts." https://news.umich.edu/exactly-how-much-housework-does-a-husband-create/
That's a good point. Thank you.
Don’t you sell your body to men for money? Why wade into these waters? Marriage certainly isn’t for you, on that much, I can agree.