On the other side of the polyamory issue, I am not sure the weakening of marriage is all that good. Single parenthood doesn’t seem to be that good for the children and I also dont see how polyamory solves the issues of paternal responsability. I would also argue for caution when messing with an institution that has been established on every successful civilization. Polyamory also seems to ignore certian aspects of human sexual competition that aren’t really compatible with civilization. I am not saying marriage is a panacea but it seems to be a reasonable compromise to channel human sexuality for the good of society.
The most conserved marriage agreement in recorded history is a property agreement, usually with women regarded as second class humans. The largest and most durable civilizations for example ancient China, endorsed plural marriage until the immediate past. It is totally inaccurate to call modern marriage with equality a conserved social structure.
We haven't exactly messed with it too much over the millennia. It's acceptableness to society and the way prostitutes are treated by society has remained roughly constant after you adjust for the baseline trend of increasing personal freedom and decreasing violence.
Prostitution has been regarded in VASTLY different manners depending on the time period and/or place you were in. Life was much different for a Greek Heteara than it was for a woman working in an Aztec Cihuacalli. (But both lives were pretty good truth be told. One was elite and rich, the other would be considered a soccer mom by today's standards. Not rich, but definitely upper middle.) And then life is different still for the average american streetwalker or escort. (Some can be rich, but majority are very poor. And they are all scorned by society. At least the holier than thou types in society.) In today's America, or even in ancient and contemporary China, prostitutes have nowhere near the status of the Hetaera, or even the women working in the Cihuacalli's. Life for contemporary American prostitutes is probably pretty hard at the mean.
So societal acceptance and society's treatment of prostitutes very much depended, not surprisingly, on which society or culture you were talking about.
Not even close. Prostitution has a hugely varied place in the world today, and it's basically impossible to say anything about prostitution that holds true across history.
I'm pretty sure monogamy is ubiquitous because it reduces social instability, not because it makes people who engage in it happier. I think the argument against monogamy on the grounds that it reduces individual happiness are pretty strong. If we can solve the problem of social instability in other ways, why not abandon monogamy if it is provably inferior?
You can argue that non-monogamy is problematic in nuclear families, but nuclear families aren't a given. In fact, the phenomenon of nuclear families might be the result of monogamy itself. Through the vast majority of human history we have formed tribes, with non-monogamy being significantly more common. Perhaps if non-monogamy became the norm, we would see a shift away from the focus on family and back towards a tribal perspective. Considering that increased rates of depression correlate pretty strongly with reductions in "family" size in the developed world, that might have added benefits.
I think people in advanced western civilizations have domesticated themselves sufficiently in general that we'd be okay with more mate competition. I think the improvement in number and quality of relationships likely to result is worth it. I also think we'd be happier if "infidelity" wasn't a thing.
>I am not saying marriage is a panacea but it seems to be a reasonable compromise to channel human sexuality for the good of society.
Or perhaps "society" shouldn't be so arrogantly entitled to intrude on the consensual relationships I may choose to enter. With regards to my sexuality, I owe "society" absolutely nothing.
That is an interesting way to think considering that you receive huge benefits from society (in addition to some disbenefits). If everybody lived in a local optimum, the world would probably be a pretty crappy place to live. There is no way for everybody to have everything they want. We make compromises that hopefully allow us to live in a more globally optimized world.
>There is no way for everybody to have everything they want. We make compromises that hopefully allow us to live in a more globally optimized world.
Perhaps not but the best we can do is uphold individual liberty and empower individuals to make their own choices (and deal with the consequences). This entails not arrogantly projecting fallacious assumptions codified into law, such as how women "need" men or that homosexuality is a choice.
Not discussing any of the particular subjects you bring up, but in general most individual/personal things that people think don't affect others have an unfortunate way of actually affecting others.
You make a good point. OP's point more serves as a scalable approach to reproduction and child rearing rather than sexuality. With widespread birth control available, sexuality doesn't have to overlap as much.
A good comment I read here on HN was to the effect of: the minimum viable unit of humanity is not a single couple (two people), it is actually a village / tribe (more like 150 people).
>With regards to my sexuality, I owe "society" absolutely nothing.
This is incorrect. You actually owe society everything. You don't generate your own electricity. If you are robbed / assaulted you won't prosecute the offenders on your own. You don't feed yourself and on and on. You don't even ensure your own safety, mostly "the herd" accomplishes that for you.
The only reason you can exist at all is because of the thousands and millions of competent caring people around you who you can communicate with because you speak the same language. There are so many details and dependencies that you have and are taking for granted they can't even be enumerated accurately.
Even your health didn't just fall out of the sky, you owe your health to the fact that your parents passed on functioning genes to you, and that the environmental laws ensured you weren't poisoned, on and on and on. You literally DO owe society everything. Yet I would be good money that you only value your society to the extent it enables you to pursue your own desires and vices.
Except I justly compensate people for my electricity, food, and clothing. I do not steal it from them. For almost everything I am provided, I agree to pay a set amount to receive a desired service.
It's not "society" I owe anything to, it's the individuals I enter into voluntary contracts with. And "society" has no more right to disrupt the voluntary relationships I enter into any more than another private citizen. To declare my sexuality or relationships are not serving "society" well enough is a criminal infringement of my freedom of association, and no amount of populist religious zealotry will make it permissible or right.
>Except I justly compensate people for my electricity, food, and clothing. I do not steal it from them.
I didn't imply that you do steal.
Also the money is another manifestation of the society (that you apparently don't owe anything to) since the society enforces the utility and value of the money and that it can be exchanged for anything at all.
The fact that you can negotiate with them in a common currency using a common medium of exchange in a safe place is fully a manifestation of the society you live in.
>It's not "society" I owe anything to, it's the individuals I enter into voluntary contracts with
What if your plumber doesn't honor the contract? What if the electricity doesn't get connected even though you paid your money? I guess you won't complain to anybody about it right?
>To declare my sexuality or relationships are not serving "society" well enough is a criminal infringement of my freedom of association
You received your genes and your health and your welfare from "society" (and society includes your parents) you are free to do as you wish within the rules of your society. That doesn't mean you can't be considered selfish or a bad person.
You can do whatever you want to do largely within our society, but I am just calling you out on your false assertion that you don't owe society anything. Nobody can make you have kids for example, but choosing not to have them (assuming they would come out healthy) is a selfish act because you deprive the future people of the company/help/participation of those individuals you chose not to bring into the world. You benefitted from all the kids other people chose to have (all the people you enter into voluntary contracts with) but choose not to pay back by having your own who will inevitably be of benefit to others in many ways. That's my point. I and society are not compelling you to do anything, but I and also society at large can certainly comment on it.
>and no amount of populist religious zealotry will make it permissible or right.
> I and society are not compelling you to do anything, but I and also society at large can certainly comment on it.
I think this is the root issue here. We have freedom of association, but there should be no expectation that there will be no social commentary when you exercise that freedom.
For my part, I have a theory that polyamory has historically been marginalized except for in fairly small, homogenous cultures, might be due to the fact that when a polyamorus relationship fails there are many more people intimitaly tied to the fall out. In a monogamous relationships there's generally only two people so emotionally invested as to be damaging. Thus, in a community there are more emotionally detatched people available to help move on. All just a theory though.
>I think this is the root issue here. We have freedom of association, but there should be no expectation that there will be no social commentary when you exercise that freedom.
So... another example where the relationship between real trends and statistics and the ones people hear/believe are basically estranged. Pun intended, I sincerely apologize.
Beyond that.., i still have not heard a narrative that rang true to me. In some nontrivial senses, I think the instinctive conservative explanations are probably true. Society did unravel, as women's liberation and other big cultural shifts happened. Some of this is very simple, financial independence of both people changes what a marriage is and makes divorce possible.
A lot of this was probably down to feedbacks. Divorce became more common, more normal than it had been This made it an option, where it hadn't been.
I suspect that the "people just got flakier" narrative is mostly "kids today" BS, but who knows.
The way coupled get together has been totally rattled every generation for 4-5 generations now.
In any case, it's interesting that the trend is reversing. My general instictive guess is quasi-femenist. The nature of gender relations & marriage completely changed, starting in the 50s (or maybe the 20s). This basically broke marriage, as an institution. Maybe we've been putting it back together in our generation. This is pretty vague though.
I'm still waiting to stumble across a sociological narrative that tickles my "ah, that makes sense!" nerve. It's an interesting question.
One thing that people don't talk about much is how much people just suffered before divorce was normalized.
People who call their spouse "the old battleaxe" or "the ball and chain". Old married couples who are miserable, hate each other's guts, and fight all the time. People who spend as much time as humanly possible at work (both at the office and travelling for business) so they don't have to go home. People who sit there and take it as their spouse cheats on them again and again and again. People who silently suffer through abusive relationships and just have become highly skilled at covering up bruises. People who become abusive because they can't stand their spouses and are taught that it's more wrong to leave your spouse than it is to hit your spouse.
And you'll still see it to this day in religious communities where divorce is stigmatized. My ex-best friend once told me about his brother's marital problems. At the time, he was about 50 and got married very young. He couldn't stand his wife anymore, to the point where he became a violent suicidal alcoholic. At one point after one fight where he put his fist through a wall inches away from his wife's head, he walked into his shed. Several minutes later, his mother followed him in, and she found him with an empty handle of whiskey on the ground and a shotgun pointed under his chin. He had quickly emptied one object into his head, and he was about to do the same with the other object. She talked him out of suicide. And according to my ex-friend, that was a regular thing.
Why didn't he leave her? Because he—and the whole family—was very religious, and their church (a small ultraconservative sect of the Churches of Christ) didn't recognize divorce. Even if he legally got a divorce through the courts, his church would consider him an adulterer and disfellowship him if he ever got remarried. And his church was the center of his life, so he couldn't go against them. Because his church doesn't allow divorce, he abused his wife, nearly killed himself, and traumatized his mother (who was still on antidepressants after losing her husband in a farm accident 15 years ago).
I'm not excusing his abusive behavior—it's reprehensible no matter what, and he's a terrible human being—I'm just pointing out that stigmatization of divorce only helps encourage and normalize abuse.
This doesn't seem to compare the actual number of marriages happening in these decades - my guess is that fewer people are getting married and/or they are marrying later in life. Meaning people aren't pursuing marriage just because that is what they are supposed to do, but instead because they actually want to.
As for people being flakier - I still think that is actually true - but as a result of communications technology. When you had to agree on meeting someplace a week in advance and not have contact with that person till then, you inherently have to be more "reliable," otherwise you would become known as being flakey for not showing up.
So I don't think it is the people that have changed, just that we still are adjusting to having the ability to be instantly connected with everyone in our lives.
One of the big specific changes was the fact marriage got redefined with the end of coverture.
"Coverture" isn't even in Firefox's spell-check, which I suppose points to how obscure it is these days. It used to be part of what marriage was: It was the fact that a married couple was a single legal person for many purposes, that person being the husband. Wives couldn't own property in their own names, couldn't have bank accounts in their own names, and, to a large extent, couldn't exist in their own names, but had to rely on their husband to function as an adult.
> Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, a feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture arises from the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one person.
[snip]
> After the rise of the women's rights movement in the mid-19th century, coverture came under increasing criticism as oppressive towards women, hindering them from exercising ordinary property rights and entering professions. Coverture was first substantially modified by late 19th century Married Women's Property Acts passed in various common-law legal jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by subsequent reforms. Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States.
Quoting Blackstone:
> By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. I speak not at present of the rights of property, but of such as are merely personal. For this reason, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence; and to covenant with her, would be only to covenant with himself: and therefore it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage.
Same-sex marriage wasn't a redefinition of marriage: Same-sex marriages are exactly like all other modern marriages, by which I mean post-coverture marriages, in terms of the rights and abilities of the married persons and how they relate to each other legally. However, same-sex marriage is flatly impossible in any system with coverture: There couldn't be two males in a marriage, because there could only be one legal person, and there couldn't be two females in a marriage, because there had to be a legal person. It was as if the law was asking "Which one of you is the husband?" and expecting an answer.
I imagine the was a rather small silver-lining: If the husband -- an extra-loaded term in this context -- ran afoul of the law or king, wouldn't the wife be considered innocent or "just following orders"?
I think later marriages is a big contributor to stabilizing divorce rates.
I got married at age 24 and after a very tumultuous time for us with economic hardships, a more hectic schedule (she was working two jobs at a time while I was doing my masters and working), death in the family, extended medical leave because of clinical depression aggravated by the death in the family, returning to school after her medical leave we grew into different people after just six years together. We decided to split.
Now that I have a stable job and I've experienced more of life, I know myself more. I know more about the type of person I would love to spend my life with and what type of person makes me miserable. And, of course, what makes me a difficult person to be with and what I can change about that.
I believe there is no such thing as a dream person cut out for everyone of us. I believe successful marriage is about honesty, expectations and compromises but I also believe that if we know ourselves better and are less shallow when we decide to commit to relationships they have a much higher probability of success.
This chart shows that for example, someone married for 10 years in the 2000s experiences a ~15% rate of divorce compared to those in the 70s and 80s who faced a ~20% rate of divorce at the 10 year mark. The trend I see looking at the 10 year mark is that the 60s had the lowest. The 70s and 80s were the highest, the 90s subsided, and the 00s are lower still, heading back to 60s levels. That seems like a surge that is over to me, no?
>“Two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women,” said William Doherty, a marriage therapist and professor of family social science at University of Minnesota, “so when you’re talking about changes in divorce rates, in many ways you’re talking about changes in women’s expectations.”
I think this statistic doesn't say a whole lot. It means that they were the legal petitioner asking for the divorce. It doesn't mean they were the one who wanted out of the marriage.
My ex-wife had an affair and said she wasn't happy in our marriage. I was the one who did the legal paper work even though I didn't want the divorce, or initiate it in the relationship, but I was the one who initiated it legally.
It's not a myth. The article even points out what's really going on, but they only dedicate at most a paragraph to it: people aren't getting married as much. The overall marriage rate has fallen, and people are waiting longer than ever to get married, if they even do. The percentage of the population that's single is higher than ever.
So sure, the divorce rate has fallen, but if your goal is a society where people are in stable marriages, we're farther from that goal than ever. Traditional marriage is slowly dying as an institution.
Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way. They're better for resource-sharing and avoid the problem with thinking that your partner has to satisfy you in every way.
Have you ever met someone in a true polyamorous relationship? Like, not just on the Internet, but in real life? And known them well enough to be a close confidant?
Because I have. And I'll tell you right now that I've never seen one work. Someone is always unhappy deep down (and usually everyone is). They'll tell people its great and that they're just squares for not joining in, but if you know the parties involved you'll see they're unhappy with their partner and looking for something elsewhere (but the source unhappiness persists) or they're doing it because they're afraid of losing someone (in which case they're secretly jealous and afraid). Not things that make for a happy relationship.
Now, I don't have a horse in this race. I've always been a 1 person kind of guy, and my interest in this has always been as an outsider that just wants my friends to be happy (and if that was an open/many sided relationship that is 100% not an issue). If these relationships had solved their problems or even made them one iota happier than they had been I'd be as encouraging as anyone.
For married couples that became polyamorous after getting married, in every case I know of (3), the person initiating the polyamorous relationship was able to find outside relationships easily. The person's spouse wasn't able to. After a few years of that arrangement they've all gotten divorced.
I normally don’t post on HN, but I wanted to to add some clarity to this. My wife and I are poly. We’ve been poly for about a decade, we were in a triad for two years (all three partners in relationships with one another), and have had many committed relationships over that time.
It’s absolutely not for everyone, and anyone who says folks are “too square” are needlessly self-righteous. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about polyamory. It’s frankly playing relationships on hard, and you need to be extra committed to working things out early and often. With the right personalities, it can force better relationship health because of the high risk, high reward nature of the lifestyle. I credit poly with giving me and my wife the skills to have hard conversations early and work through problems in good faith, and we do our best to conduct ourselves the same way in all our relationships in order to practice polyamory ethically.
I also take issue with you saying it can “never” work. It absolutely can, but as I said, it’s not for everyone. It also doesn’t mean every relationship lasts forever. Looking at any relationship in isolation, it’s just dating; people fall in and out of love naturally, and there’s very normal feelings of pain and loss sometimes. Those same feelings don’t stop monogamous folks from dating, and it’s the same in poly. But when that fallout does occur, there’s a wider safety net of people who are close to you and care about you and have more intimate understanding of you than having them as a friends alone, so there are definitely advantages if you put in the effort.
Because it does involve very different configurations of relationships when there’s more than one, poly requires rethinking what relationships mean generally, and it allows for a wider variety of relationship types, and I don’t just mean a linear friends with benefits to committed marriage. I mean accepting a broader range of human interactions and expectations as part of a valid relationship.
The result, if you’re willing to do the work and if it’s something you WANT to do, is a very rich set of experiences and deep relationships you might not have if you were monogamous.
So in short: it can work, it’s not for everyone and requires way more work than monogamy, and it is also inherently no better or worse than monogamy.
Without touching on the ethics of polyamory, "requires way more work than monogamy" is one way of being worse than monogamy.
It is my perception that a large fraction of marriages that end in divorce, do so because one or both people aren't willing to put in the work that is needed to maintain the relationship. Requiring more work... at least for the large majority of people, that's a fatal flaw.
For what it’s worth, I’m poly and I disagree with that characterization. Polyamorous relationships are held to a different standard.
A monogamous relationship where everyone isn’t having their needs met can continue in perpetuity, for one reason or another. Such a polyamorous relationship is more unstable and likely to end more swiftly and decisively. It’s possible to see that as a good thing.
(If you buy this reading, “open relationships hurt marriages” isn’t a story about failing poly relationships, it’s a story about monogomous relationships that already failed without anyone noticing.)
I guess one could say both are a lot of work, you’re just doing different work.
In my experience, poly relationships fail faster, when one doesn’t do the work, than monogamous relationships, which can linger longer with dysfunction that doesn’t get addressed. But I think it’s also important to acknowledge that these aren’t ever hard and fast characterizations—these have been my views from first- or second-hand experiences with poly, but human relationships vary considerably, and my experiences (and insights) certainly won’t match everyone’s.
>In my experience, poly relationships fail faster, when one doesn’t do the work, than monogamous relationships, which can linger longer with dysfunction that doesn’t get addressed.
Well it kinda makes sense. If you have other options, or even already have another intimate partner, that makes it a lot easier to just bail out of a relationship that isn't working out, instead of sticking around hoping things change.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted as it's a legitimate criticism.
Most people are barely able to put in any work in a relationship, so it's not surprising they won't be able to put in even MORE work to make a polyamorous relationship work (really work, and not just pretend they have one)
Relationships take work. Intimate relationships take more work. Having a greater quantity of relationships takes more work.
Now, as it happens, I tend to believe that human relationships are the reason to be alive, so I think it’s good for humans to put lots of work into relationships and community (of any sort, regardless of levels of physical intimacy).
Thanks for being frank about it. It can definitely work as long as all partners in a polyamorous relationship clearly communicate their expectations to one another.
Relationships are, by human nature, not permanent either way - we all die in the end, so IMO it's unreasonable to expect them to last 'forever' anyway.
If you found your niche in polyamory - good for you!
This has been my experience as well, I knew someone personally that was in an open relationship and her husband became jealous because she was readily able to find sexual partners outside of the marriage, while he wasn't really having the same luck. They ended up divorcing.
Yep, this is one of the frequent complaints about the lifestyle. The problem is that, in my view, men are much more accepting of this* (in that, it's easy to find men who are perfectly fine with having a FWB, not necessarily sharing their primary partner) generally than women, who are much more possessive and jealous.
I do find it interesting, because women actually stand to benefit more from relationships like this: resource sharing, being able to take extended time away from work for child-raising, having more adults in the house to cooperate on raising children together, etc. Raising kids in a modern dual-income 2-person family is extremely difficult and stressful (and costly, with day care); I honestly don't know how people do it.
The only couple I have seen that's open and it's working for them helps each other find a partner so that neither one goes home alone that night. They're a very unique couple it seems. I've known him for 24 years now and he's always been a bit different, but very open about everything like that.
Now I've seen a few open couples that had the exact issue you described. One side gets jealous because the other found someone to bang that night but they didn't / couldn't. It seems like they forget they're in a relationship and leave it up to the partner to fend for themselves.
Personally I kinda like the idea of "monogamish" relationships. A couple is mostly monogamous, but once in a while has a fling, or invites a friend for a threesome. Maybe couples would do better to "play together" rather than separately?
If one partner is frequently spending the night elsewhere and the other partner is sleeping alone all these times, that seems obviously a recipe for disaster.
Yes? Tons of successful polyamorous close friends?
I would basically say that every relationship I know of that started with both parties happy to be polyamorous had a happy story arc, whether it ended eventually or not (N=~8). Sometimes a non-primary partner would be unsatisfied and move on, and occasionally primary relationships evolve to something less than primary, but that’s “working as intended”, by my book.
Now, I will agree that trying to fix a broken monogamous relationship by opening it up is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps all the polyamorous relationships you’ve observed started out monogamous?
It’s also true that polyamory is gargantuan amount of work, it’s in many ways a bigger commitment than monogamy. You have way more dyads needing active and thoughtful communication, and so people whose motivation for polyamory is not wanting commitment are terrible at polyamory.
But once you get past those two hurdles (doing polyamory under duress, thinking polyamory is less work, when it’s more), it works great for people who are into it.
I have, but I didn't know them that well. It was a married couple, and they even led a polyamory group. They seemed very happy.
I will admit that what I said before is all theory, not experience from practice. When I see poly people on the dating sites, they're way too "out there" for me to have any interest in them.
I have read though that there are successful poly relationships, and that relationship counselors generally agree that the successful ones have the best communication skills of all their clients. All the stuff I've read from them highly emphasizes communication skills.
1: You learn a lot about yourself and unpack all the stuff you've buried over a lifetime, figure out what you want, and are forever changed for the better. Maybe this means you decide poly isn't for you. This is how it went down for me.
2: You double down on all your insecurities, ruin everything, and blame polyamory for it. Most of the negative stories you hear come from this. All polyamory does is amplify what's already inside. It's like getting superpowers. A jackass with laser vision was already a jackass without it.
Wow, this is a really fantastic comment, and very insightful.
I think you're onto something here: standard monogamous relationships make it easier to hide problems or ignore them, and you can't do that with polyamory.
It totally does work for some. I have a number of friends in poly relationships. For some people it works. For some it doesn't.
I don't think it would work for most people, though. You need to be effective communicators and good at understanding your own emotions. That's not true for the majority of the population.
>I don't think it would work for most people, though. You need to be effective communicators and good at understanding your own emotions. That's not true for the majority of the population.
Well, back to my original comment that spawned this mega-thread, where I opined that we'd be better off if poly were much more mainstream, maybe if that were the case, people would be forced to become more effective communicators in order to stay in relationships.
Out of all the people I've met, I have met a single very open couple that made things work.
They met at a strip club, and right off the bat they both said what they were and that was that. Now they're one of the more happier couples I've seen. Been married for 12 years and still doing the open thing.
But I have seen many many more open relationships come crashing down over night.
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way.
Unfortunately, jealously is wired deep into our lizard brains by evolution because it has enormous survival value for both sexes, though for different reasons. Men wan women to be monogamous so that they bear only their children, and women want men to be monogamous so that they support only their children.
[Addendum, since this comment seems to be getting a lot of attention]: When I was in college I had a long-distance relationship. Because we were 2000 miles apart it seemed silly to maintain exclusivity. People have needs. But when I found out one day that my girlfriend was out with another man I found myself overcome with jealousy. The intensity of the feeling took me completely by surprise. I was literally paralyzed by it for several hours, as in I sat in the hallway of my dorm room and could not move. This is not something I chose for myself. The intellectual part of me realizes that everyone would be better off if we didn't feel jealousy. But we do. It's not something we can simply choose to put aside.
> Unfortunately, jealously is wired deep into our lizard brains
Not actually the case, given what we know of the incredible variety of sexual/reproductive practices in pre-modern societies.
Its unfortunate that we make the mistake of observing current cultural behaviour and transhistoricising it onto all previous societies, presuming that their social relations must have been just the same as ours. EvoPsych in particular seems to be littered with this kind of fallacy.
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way.
I don't think these one-size-fits-all approaches work regardless of the approach. Social acceptance of ... whatever people are comfortable with should be the aim.
This*100. As someone who was involved with a few polyamorous communities, it's far from being something that everyone can feel comfortable with. Like anything with relationships and human interactions, it's not for everyone, and even if it's for you now, it doesn't mean it's for you always. What we need is to allow people the fluidity and freedom to choose how they want to live and who they want to love. I saw some people really being miserable in polyamorous relationships.
Many, which is to say that it's not the framework that makes one satisfied, it's how much it represents what one wants. The people who were suffering in this polyamourous relationships usually suffered because they felt bad about being jealous, not living up to what the community expected of them, not being good enough to let their parents be with other people. What I'm trying to say is that it's not a specific path that makes one happy, it's the ability to choose your path and to constantly recalculate it.
I absolutely agree. For some people, polyamory works better, and more power to them. But for others, a single partner, married or otherwise, is what they choose. Marriage is itself a strange, archaic ritual.
>> Social acceptance of ... whatever people are comfortable with should be the aim
If this is what one wishes, and you don't already live in the Bay Area, then you should come here. I feel that this is what most people around me wish for.
I'm non-monogamous. I'm pretty flexible about the exact arrangement (because I'm bi and I'm ok with tailoring my approach to my partner's comfort level) but the only thing I really can't do is fullblown monogamy.
That being said:
Poly has severe complications that most people in it don't really advertise. High status, attractive men are much more likely to get partners. This can lead to a dynamic where an average looking male partner is theoretically allowed to date other people, but if he's honest with potential partners about being in an existing open relationship then the pool of women willing to date him evaporates. Meanwhile, his female partner ends up dating men that in a normal monogamous context would be difficult for her to attain, potentially destabilizing the relationship.
Then you throw sex into the whole equation. Reasonably good chance that you're not going be the best sex your partner has ever had forever. Or even if everything is great, you could be someone else's best sex ever, and it could destabilize their primary relationship and it could cause real hurt to both of them.
Meanwhile, less than average looking or low status men date even less than they used to. The whole incel movement will just get worse if the whole world goes poly because men are generally less picky than women and are happier with lots of casual partners.
This isn't always the case, of course. Some people can handle jealousy. Some people can compartmentalize different sexual experiences, but most humans struggle with it. Monogamy has a stability that I don't see as frequently with poly relationships. Though many people cheat, of course.
> he's honest with potential partners about being in an existing open relationship then the pool of women willing to date him evaporates
I believe already having one or more lovers makes you much more attractive since the fact that those people chose you (among others) means you are probably a good choice.
Also, it helps you be outcome-independent (i.e. you don't care as much about whether a girl you are talking to wants to have sex with you, since you already have other girls for that), which is thought to be at least part of what makes males attractive.
Of course you won't be able to have fulfilling and honest relationships with people that insist on monogamy, but the opposite is true as well.
>> he's honest with potential partners about being in an existing open relationship then the pool of women willing to date him evaporates
> I believe already having one or more lovers makes you much more attractive since the fact that those people chose you (among others) means you are probably a good choice.
Attractive to steal or attractive to share? That's an important and relevant difference.
If you make it clear that you are already have friends with benefits (or in fact just that you are only interested in that kind of arrangement), that that's your lifestyle choice and that holding to your values is the most important thing to you, "stealing" is not really an option.
I think you misunderstand. Whatever extra appeal you have to potential partners from having other people who "chose you (among others)" may be effectively negated because you're unwilling to abandon those others for the new partner. The people you attract probably don't want to share you.
So you and the person you were responding to can both be right. You're made "more attractive" but the "pool of women willing to date [you still] evaporates.
>Meanwhile, less than average looking or low status men date even less than they used to. The whole incel movement will just get worse if the whole world goes poly because men are generally less picky than women and are happier with lots of casual partners.
This seems to be saying that women should be required to "settle" for lousy men, instead of going for better men and accepting that they have to share them.
If a woman has a choice between being a co-wife for a guy who's reasonably attractive and well-employed and treats his partners really well, or a guy who's a drunk bum but will be monogamous with her, which is the more sensible choice?
Also, another factor I think is being ignored is the fact that, over the age of 30, there's more women than men (and this gets progressively worse as the age increases). Monogamy necessarily leads to a lot of unpartnered women.
I actually agree with you here to some extent. Women that are happy to be a co-wife of (or in a triad with) a man I think are, generally speaking, better off. You're certainly right that there are a lot of single women over 30; though in some respects I think they got the worse deal in life. They reached peak mating potential at around 25-29, and lowering standards is so much more difficult than raising them.
Though in some respects you're setting up a bit of a false dichotomy. It isn't that women can get these great guys now with no downside. The reality on the ground looks a lot more like women that want a single, longterm partner who is fully faithful to them find that the very attractive poly men that they date never want to settle down. They want to continue to be open to other relationships. I'm not sure if women really win in this hypothetical future. Most of the high status poly men I know end up with a hot young girlfriend and an appropriately aged wife and tension builds as time goes on.
I want to make it clear that none of what I'm saying is firmly grounded in a clear understanding of the truth. I'm trying to express the muddy way I understand things without assuming too much. I'm sure I'm missing part of this, though I'm not sure which part.
Open and polyamorous relationships work out great if you are a high status male. It's not so clear it works out very well for anyone else. Which is probably why culture spent so much time and effort building the institution of marriage that people don't seem to mind is dying.
That's not necessarily true. Just last night my wife and I watched "Dr. Marsten and the Wonder Women", a movie about Dr. William Moulton Marston, his wife Elizabeth and their mutual lover Olive. The women stayed together even after William died. So it can work out. But it's extremely rare, and not just because of social pressures. It's hard enough to find two people who are mutually compatible. The problem of matching people up gets exponentially harder as N grows.
I'm not familiar with Dr. Marston, but Wikipedia tells me he was "an American psychologist, inventor of an early prototype of the lie detector, self-help author, and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman."
He was in a long-term polyamorous relationship with two women, but that only adds support for Erik816's point that polyamorous relationships benefit high-status men... do you disagree that Dr. Marsten was a high-status person during his lifetime?
No. He started out that way (a college professor) but he was fired when his relationship with Olive became known. He then struggled for a long time before inventing Wonder Woman. But even then, comic book author was not a "high status" profession in 1940.
But my point is this: saying that polyamorous relationships "work out great if you are a high status male" implies that they invariably do not work out great if you are a female, and the Marsten family is a data point that refutes that (implied) part of the claim. It might be the case that polyamory generally works out better for high-status males than anyone else, but so what? Playing football generally works out better for men than for women too, but that's no reason not to let anyone who wants to try to play football.
I think he is implying they dont work well for low-status males. Males in particular are known for getting violent in desperate efforts to accrue the status necessary to secure a mate. It’s not like marriage is perfect because some low-status males will always fail to find a partner but if you make that a significant percentage of the population I would expect society to destabilize.
Maybe it would force some males to work on self-improvement...
Also, remember that, over the age of 30, women outnumber men. By the age of 50 or so, there's a clear majority. Older women would be better off if they shared mates.
Finally, remember that polyamory is not the same as polygamy. It could also benefit men who want more space in a relationship, or have had failed relationships because of this, since with polyamory your partner doesn't have to be upset that you don't spend so much time together, as they can spend time with their other partner(s).
I was really talking about the type of poor man that ends up in gangs im places like Chicago. I remember a podcast that talked how even pretty heavily punished violent crimes like murder actually helped some of these men gain social status(I can’t quite find the reference right now).
Part of my argument is that in the right circumstances the partially sexually mediated drive for status in males turns violent. It seems like things like marriage and monogamy restrain this impulse and we all benefit from it.
Notice that I really don’t see marriage or monogamy as centrally enforced but rather as an emergent pattern of behavior that has been adopted by most societies and then codified into law. I presume it was this widely adopted because the individuals doing the marrying believed it was the best option at the time.
Overall I would say that although the institution has to evolve to accomodate women’s control over their reproduction and the vast economic potential women have to offer, we are probably not so special and different now that we ought do away with it.
Regarding your point about aging, I actually think that should take a back seat to the wellbeing of children. It still seems to me like monogamy and marriage are the best vehicles we have today for raising them. Even if polyamory could potentially provide some benefits to the parents, I think those are the type of sacrifices that people gladly do for the well-being of their children.
So basically it seems that you're saying that women need to be willing to suffer and live in lousy relationships so that they can keep shitty men from turning violent and also so children can grow up in idealized 2-parent families (many with these men with violent tendencies).
The way I see it, the reason our society seems to be falling apart now is that women now have power and wealth, and aren't forced to settle for lifelong marriages to shitty, abusive men and being relegated to being full-time mothers whether they want that life path or not.
Case studies make for bad statistics. I wouldn't want to make the rules for all of society just because it allegedly worked out for one group(?) of people.
The Marsten family lived at a time when societal acceptance of alternative lifestyles was much lower than it is today, and it caused them a lot of grief. Polyamorous relationships don't work for most people (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320556) but that's not a good reason to adopt rules that discriminate against the minority for whom it does work.
Interestingly, I feel the opposite: people aren’t getting married because they don’t feel compelled to by society. Marriage is more highly valued than before.
Personally, I’m mid-30s. I’ve been in a long term relationship that, had I lived decades prior, would have been a marriage and ultimately a divorce. She wasn’t right for me, but it was hard to discern at first. Now, if/when I get married, it’s for life - divorce isn’t on the table, and I need to find someone that I’m comfortable marrying with that constraint.
Society imposes a very heavy fine for the breakup of a marriage and it becomes a huge gamble.
Either it will work out and you'll be happy and you'll recommend it to everyone.
Or it will destroy your life.
If marriage was "cheap" to establish and break up people could do it naturally and peacefully, eventually and successfully move to stable ones if the first attempt doesn't work out.
When the risk taking a particular action gets high enough it's completely understandable why many rational people would avoid testing their luck.
... because people aren't getting married for the wrong reasons. Previously, if you weren't married by 30 there would clearly be something wrong with you. It is generally becoming more acceptable to either have no interest in relationships, or to hold out for the right person. This is a healthier outlook on long-term relationships. At least with most of my friends.
If you don't ever want to get married, then don't.
If you never meet the right person, then don't get married.
It seems like I'm paraphrasing your first paragraph; but I'm not: both the decrease in marriage rates and the decrease in marriage failures are caused by this healthier perspective. The causation isn't the decline in marriage rates (because it has its own causation).
Poly is another matter entirely. I strongly believe that mono and poly are sexual identities just like any other (straight, homosexual, trans, etc.). Pairing a poly and mono together in a marriage is a great way to see things end in tears. You should be able to openly and unashamedly share what you are, so that everyone involved can make a mature decision based on this crucial factor in compatibility. Poly marriages should be legal (and should be legally documented as such). Mono marriages should also be legal (and continue to be documented as they are today).
A relative and some nice married women from his town also thought polyarmory was a fantastic idea to try out. Unfortunately the husband of one of his friends disagreed and he got shot in the face.
This is pretty clearly a joke, but it’s a bad joke, so I’m going to respond on the meta.
Cheating on a partner in a committed relationship is not polyamory. Polyamory is a relationship predicated on communication about boundaries and desires across the relationship chain.
We’re not socialized to communicate about relationships very well, and especially about intimate relationships, so this is sometimes hard for people to imagine.
It's posted as a joke, but this something that actually happened. I feel like the emotions underlying relationships are quite strong (given that my grandfather was shot in the face over it) and we should recognize that experimenting carries risks.
Well, that’s a pretty fascinating story, thanks for sharing!
It may be hard to know two generations removed, but I’m curious: Are you saying your grandfather’s potential paramour broached the subject with her husband, without first being emotionally or physically unfaithful, and the husband went after your grandfather?
Or are you saying the husband was actively supportive of a change in the commitment at one point, then changed his mind?
If it’s either of those two, then OK, I take your point, people can be violent, and opening Pandora’s box can bring out that violence.
But if there was cheating, even if only emotional, without getting buy-in from an existing partner, than I don’t see that as a ding against polyamory (anecdotal or otherwise).
To be clear, I haven’t been involved in a polyamorous relationship myself in decades, so I don’t really have a dog in a fight here. But I have seen polyamory work well for many of my friends.
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way. They're better for resource-sharing and avoid the problem with thinking that your partner has to satisfy you in every way.
I read the book "Sperm Wars" a long time ago, but I still remember their argument that humans are mostly monogamous by nature, and that all the social factors we attach to monogamy and marriage are just rationalizing what we tend to do anyway. They also point to other species that do this, since it's a common misconception that animals aren't monogamous.
FWIW, I'm not against polyamory per-se, but I personally reject the idea that it's the solution to having unrealistic expectations. In my mind, thinking that you have to be satisfied in every way is the problem, not thinking your partner has to be the one do to it.
>Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way.
I think there's a reason societies haven't adopted them en masse, and resorted to the more traditional model all over the world and all around history, with few (and insignificant) exceptions.
Sure it is. They argue that the commonly held claim that the divorce rate is 50% is no longer accurate. Sure, one of the factors affecting this decline may be fewer marriages, but that doesn't change whatever the divorce rate actually is. I get your point that there are more nuances to the bigger picture, but when looking at one isolated statistic, citing the wrong number because there are fewer marriages is simply not accurate.
The people making the claim are citing 50% because that's what they've heard their entire lives, not because they did some kind of statistical analysis to balance the different factors involved.
There is a big difference between a specific statistic (divorce rate) and the larger picture (in this case, each of us is probably interpreting this differently). A specific statistic is purposely isolated, and then can be used as one piece of data among many to analyze whatever one might view the larger picture as.
For the divorce rate specifically, if there are fewer divorces because there are fewer people entering into poorly chosen marriages, wouldn't the resulting decline in the divorce rate still hold some significance to you?
> open and polyamorous relationships in a large way.
There is the concept of PACS in France, which is a legal association between two people, that doesn't have any predicate on sentimental relationships.
Of course it is mostly used as a lighter version of marriage, and ersatz for people who can't marry in the first place, but on the legal framework it's open to any pair of two people.
I'm bringing it up because the main issue with open relationships is who gets legal standing for anything official (even trivial stuff as legal representation, inheritance, shared resources etc.). A system like PACS lets you have open relationships while setting a pair of strongly binded people for when the proverbial shit hits the fan.
> avoid the problem with thinking that your partner has to satisfy you in every way.
And if you're not ready for polyamory, maintaining a few good friendships can help with this and lot. Arguing politics may be super fun for you but maybe your partner hates it. So scratch that itch with a Sunday coffee group.
I'll get downvoted, but I'll speak for the silent majority of lurkers on this thread reading the posts from the oh-so-enlightened and progressive 'polys. Any person who is ok with their spouse having sex with someone else is an immature and irresponsible fool.
Ok, but say you are parent and want what's best for your future kid. It's better for your child that you be #34 partner of Bill Gates, than #1 partner of Joe Jobless. Now apply that realization to everyone.
Soon, only the wealthiest will be able to find partners.
One way would be to raise kids in commune, but even then a super rich commune will beat any other. They would have access to best medical care, the best trainers, the best pretty much everything.
Anyone with any self-worth is not going to want to be partner #34 of anyone. They're not going to get any time with that person. Someone who's just a gold-digger might be fine with that, but that's it.
The whole idea of polyamory is that you can have deep, committed relationships with multiple people, but since your time is limited, you can only practically have 2, maybe 3 partners like this.
The logic is pretty much the same. Just replace kids with selfish interest. It's still qualitatively better to be Warren Buffet's partner #42 than Joe Shmoe's #1.
It's still plausible that the recent trend is an improvement (and that we're therefore closer to the broader goal of general welfare, if not high marriage rates). There's less cultural pressure to marry, and so people abstain from marriage whose marriages likely would have ended unhappily, in divorce. A happy marriage is probably better than being single, but being single is probably better than an unhappy marriage.
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way.
How is this different from being single? And what indication do you have that this would be a good idea?
Anecdotal I guess, but people who label their relationships this way have been without exception some of the most dysfunctional people I’ve ever met living in extremely unstable living conditions and breaking up and moving constantly.
single is a lot closer to "relationship anarchy". there are all sorts of variations of "poly" though, some of which people have tried to put some hierarchical factors in place.
as a civilization, I don't think we have nearly enough data to suggest that it's a "good" idea... but it's certainly something I'm open to trying (p*unintentional).
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way. They're better for resource-sharing and avoid the problem with thinking that your partner has to satisfy you in every way.
I agree entirely with this, but just as civil rights and legalizing recreational drugs took forever (and is still ongoing), it's going to be decades of effort to dismantle the societal expectations of marriage while still enabling the benefits that come/came along with traditional marriage (legal, financial rights).
Relationships are hard enough with just two people, adding more people doesn't make it easier, so you have to provide resources to help cultivate that stability society wants to express (insert diatribe about lacking mental health funding here).
EDIT: Regarding raising kids in a poly family, "it takes a village" [+].
Genuinely curious, if you want an open and polyamorous relationship with a group of people, why wouldn't a structure similar to an LLC or similar business group not be roughly sufficient (as far as a framework goes)?
It starts to break down for child custody as well as medical directives, end-of-life decisions, hospital visitation. You also don’t get marriage related tax benefits or the ability to hold title to real estate or financial accounts as “tenants in the entirety” (which is permitted only in some states, solely for married couples, that protects joint assets when only one person has claims against them), which is important depending on the creditor laws of your state and how they handle claims against a member of a multi member LLC.
> If you can't call it marriage, the group denied that right is second class, full stop.
People can use different terms to distinguish between different things, but that doesn't necessarily make any of those things "second class," full stop.
All label the upper/dominant class uses to show they are giving those below them everything they are entitled to, except actual equality, while firmly keeping them where they belong.
No it doesn't, polyamory makes the sex market winner take all which is primed by the premium women put on more attractive mates, or discount they put on less attractive ones. Because their preferences skew you would see fewer men with more women, which is the opposite of what you claim will happen. Try thinking it through!
This has not been my personal observation of how it works, at all.
Rather, this reads as a dehumanizing portrait of women as fickle pursuers of status.
How I actually observe it working is that men who are open, thoughtful, emotionally vulnerable, and communicate without animosity can have lots of intimate partners.
Possibly not the specific partners they had their sights set on, though, which is where the “dehumanizing” part comes in.
Personal observation? Shucks. What do you think is distinct about your local sample (your network) that would not make it representative? What about all the data that dating websites have been sitting on for ages?
Observations like that have been rotating in that market for awhile, including with big players like OKCupid. Women are picky, men are not, but with contraception women can afford to share, resulting in skew.
What you're observing is the criterion for attraction looks like they're grounded in compassion, but that doesn't serve as an explanation against the distribution and is instead subservient to it. For example, it could potentially reflect to what extent men are compassionate is somehow on a Pareto distribution, which isn't out of the question. But considering that this trend holds on websites such as Tinder as well as OKCupid, it seems to be general to all female preference regardless if they're going for carnal or intimate pleasures.
Dating websites are themselves not representative of human interactions.
I’ll happily concede that if you restrict yourself to the intersection of men looking for casual encounters with similar aged women looking for casual encounters, you’ll find winner-takes-all effects.
But there are lots of women not looking for casual encounters, and I don’t accept the proposition that polyamorous women are removing themselves from the dating pool for less than perfect men. It appears to be very much the opposite.
It’s just that casual encounters are really, really different from polyamory. “Willing to have casual sex with multiple partners” != “Interested in a polyamorous relationship”.
How many of your partners are shared with other men? Alternately, if you're female, how many male partners do you have?
There is one unique alternative here and that's the landscape of emotional needs is somehow much more diverse than the landscape of physical needs. Then it would make sense to maximize among many partners as it's unlikely that a single individual can have all the skills necessary to satisfy a long list of independent needs.
Although even then I'm skeptical, the polyamorous couples I've seen don't seem to last long (~5 years) and eventually the male chooses or vice versa.
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way.
Doing so is going to require a LOT of trial & error. Open/poly relationships introduce all sorts of emotional factors which (I think) most people aren't prepared for, even if they could be.
Our political institutions are wholly unprepared for a reality like that. Can you imagine the difficulty a parent might have instructing their child's preschool: "on of the moms or dads will pick Kiddo up at 3 every day" ?
Certainly it's possible that different institutions are possible, or even better. But it's not the case that our society has any historical examples of successful, publicly polyamorous (and especially, non-hierarchical) role-models.
I have no data on this, what is polyamory in practice? Is the equilibrium polygamy for a few alpha males and the rest maintaining their wives and children?
I think generally it goes as far as a committed relationship between three or more people, sometimes cohabiting, but apart from marriage which would be called bigamy.
It lends itself to social stability, and has a bunch of benefits for the people who are in those stable marriages. E.g., the life expectancy for men is significantly higher when they are married. It's also generally found to be better for kids to have a stable home life, and we know that being a single parent is very difficult.
I believe the reasoning would be that it's good for kids. Statistically it is - relative to divorced or unmarried parents.
If the new norm were flexible open relationships however, that wouldn't necessarily correlate with worse outcomes for children. I think we just don't know.
Perhaps there's a heavy correlation confusion here -- I expect it's more like "If you're the type of person who would stay in a stable marriage, then your kids will do better than those who aren't, but you don't actually have to get married to confer that effect, it's just about what type of person you are"?
Despite its flaws it generally works in terms of creating a stable social structure and especially in raising children. Which I mean I suppose we could just decide that’s no longer important...we’ll probably be dead before society totally unravels. Besides, at least that way we can one-up the baby boomers on something, even if it is destroying western civilization.
Okay, so I’m being a bit hyperbolic. But still — in a world which is increasingly isolated and people are more atomized and mentally ill than ever, is it really a good idea to abandon “the family” as it currently exists?
>Despite its flaws it generally works in terms of creating a stable social structure and especially in raising children.
>But still — in a world which is increasingly isolated and people are more atomized and mentally ill than ever, is it really a good idea to abandon “the family” as it currently exists?
Given the fact that more children than ever are growing up in broken homes or with single parents, I'd say the traditional monogamous family unit is failing, and unless you're willing to go back to the days when women weren't allowed to have real jobs, it's not coming back. Having two parents both work and try to raise kids with no help whatsoever is incredibly stressful, so it's no surprise to me that this whole arrangement is falling apart.
To me, if polyamory were more widely adopted, it would actually be better for a stable society and raising children, because you could have larger family units (I mean with more adults), where the adults would be able to share parenting burdens and finances better, somewhat like the "old days" where extended families resided together and grandparents helped with child-raising.
Of course, the big problem I see here is that it's hard enough to find one compatible person, and trying to put together 3, 4, or 5 people in such an arrangement would be really difficult, but it is my belief that if poly were widely accepted, this might not be quite so difficult because people might have lower expectations of any one partner, and be more willing to compromise and work together. Of course, I could be completely wrong...
But again, it's clear to me that what we're doing now isn't working. And we can't go backwards.
There are more reasonable solutions than polyamory. Universal child care being the easiest to achieve, but it’s no more ridiculous to suggest that we all ought to live in multigenerational homes so our parents can retire and take care of our children while we work than it is to say we should embrace polyamory.
It certainly makes sense that those societal structures would be oriented towards families -- throughout history (and in modernity), families have always been the atom of democracy. The sanctity of individuality is a relatively new phenomenon and it is weak when compared to the sanctity of families.
There's no evidence that pre-civilization humans had monogamous family units. In fact, in pre-contact Hawaii, it's well documented that they didn't practice monogamy at all, except among the royal families.
> Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted open and polyamorous relationships in a large way. They're better for resource-sharing and avoid the problem with thinking that your partner has to satisfy you in every way.
Personally I think re-establishing the importance of family values and monogamy will make our future a lot better off. Not only for the children but for society as a whole.
I know the media like to bleat on about the decline of family values but I'm somewhat sceptical about that.
It seems far more likely that women just have more options than they did in our parents and grandparents time. Reversing that might improve the figures but it would also come with some undesirable side effects such as extending abusive relationships.
I've had the experience of talking this point with someone and their argument essentially boiled down to "women are overgrown children who need men to guide them." This is why I don't entertain "family values" arguments.
> Personally I think re-establishing the importance of family values and monogamy will make our future a lot better off
Which is why the declaration of human rights recognises the family as the fundamental unit of society and requires the state and society to protect it. (Article 16.3). Sadly this article seems to have been forgotten.
> It's not hyperbole. If you're not allowed to hold a job because you're female, how is that much better than slavery?
You serious? Just to point out a few of the glaring problems with your position:
1) you're essentially offering up a straw man to over-broadly condemn a wide range of social practices (which you haven't demonstrated much understanding of);
2) your general assertion that married women (globally, I assume) were generally not allowed to "hold a job" is questionable on many levels (for instance, on a family farm, do you think the husband had a "job" but the wife did not?);
3) if you weren't aware: slaves are legally property that can be bought, sold, and killed if it suited their master, serfs weren't slaves and neither were wives.
In the United States 100 years ago, women were not allowed to have very many jobs. Usually, they could be a schoolteacher, but only until a certain age or when they got married, at which point they were fired. Women were basically the property of their husbands, since they had no real ability to support themselves otherwise. That, to me, sounds just like slavery.
Poverty is overwhelmingly felt by single folks and children of single folks -- especially in communities of color. Whether you're raised in a two-parent household is the #1 indicator of whether a child of color succeeds in life.
The traditional family has (and always will) be the strongest institution for children.
Not only that but the #1 source of violence and terror in the world are single males, marriage overwhelmingly acts as the cornerstone of the civilizing process for both men and women.
I don't agree that everyone wants a polyamorous and open relationship. Myself, I am in one, and it suits me.
However, how do you define a family? Polyamorous families exist, families with parents in open relationships exist, and they are just as much families as monogamous families.
The common definition of a family, and the one referred to by the article is "a group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit."
OK, but what of the other families I mentioned? Are you simply saying they're not families? Neither does the definition mention the monogamy of the parents.
They're not families according to the usual definition, and I don't see how two parents could live with their children together as a unit without them being monogamous.
Current evidence seems to sugges that this is very harmful for children (which we’re having less of anyways). The long term trend is concerning. Western democracies can’t be sustained by a population which is getting dumber and more criminal, and that’s naturally the outcome of a society which has less and less of a priority on having children and raising them well.
Good news then, criminality rates are going down. In particular youth violent criminality. Kids also drink less, get hooked on drugs less and get less pregnant as teenagers.
Theres basically a lag in these statistics. You won’t see what’s happening now until it’s progressed further, and then another 15 years for the children born under those circumstances to grow up. And violent crime is actually beginning to rise again since 2016 IIRC, so I wouldn’t hold on to the idea that we’re going to be at this all time low for violent crime for much longer.
The generation whose parents divorced is already grown. The data about them are known and counted in those data. Lag already passed. There was no surge of divorces in 2000 either.
You do realise that by not conditioning on polyamory to derive that rate, you make the same mistake this OP is chastising? Additionally without a link to the data?
You can see that suicide rates peaked a few years after the change in divorce laws, but it is ticking up again. Highest ever for females.
So we now have kids who don't do much besides social media and are depressed/suicidal. My theory as to why female suicide has ticked up: their self esteem has cratered due to the tits-and-ass parade on social media.
That is odd take-away from graph that shows suicide problem being rather small among females - and going up at exactly same time as when males suicide went up. Also while males suicides went up more. With both genders coinciding with bad economy.
Nevertheless, the youth is not still overall better behaved then previous generations, for all the complaining about social media.
Frankly, it just seems that you hate women so much, that you don't see man standing next to her who clearly need more help.
