>>The lesson is that when you make it harder to exit, you also make people reluctant to enter.

She says this like it's a bad thing. I think that with respect to marriage, it is a great thing. People actually having to think through getting married. What a horrible concept for making a lifelong commitment. I think the problem here is her crappy analogy.

Of course sharks, I mean people who make their living in the divorce industry might not agree with me.

Much of this is looking at it the wrong way. McArdle is correct, that clamping down would drop the rate further. OTOH, it's happening anyway.
My own theory is that decent contraception has rendered oops marriage unneded, and the evolving pov on fatherless children has done much of the rest.
The fall of the pragmatic marriage, has given rise to the romantic marriage, that is far more unstable, because it relies on passion.

The wrong way part is to conceive the idea that you can somehow go back.

How many people consider marriage as an end? If they don't, they will find reasons NOT to do it.

It's not that both sides don't have a point... It's irrelevant, because you can't turn back.

I agree with Matt. Yes, it might make people more hesitant to enter a marriage, but I don't really see any backdraws to taking it more seriously. Those who don't want to make that commitment are free to do the living together or living-together-apart thing. But marriage should be undertaken with a lot more forethought than "Omigawd, we're in vegas. We should totally get hitched."

When you say "clamping down," you specifically mean by policy. By law... Right?

That's the only way people can imagine influencing the behavior of others nowadays, even just in positive ways. It's irresistible force or nothing at all. Without a sheriff or an IRS agent as backup, no one believes they could ever offer any improvement.

This is a horrible idea. If you want to make marriage last make it harder to enter not exit. Are you going to force a woman to stay with a man with two black eyes and a broken rib? What about a man who is constantly belittled until he commits suicide to escape? What about a couple of young fools who just didn't understand the commitment they were making?

Look at how the Catholics and Episcopalians get married. If you want an Anglican priest to marry you he first has to get to know you. You also have to go to marriage counseling to make sure you know what you are getting into. It is also made clear you get two strikes and you are out. After the second divorce you can never be married in an Episcopal church again. The Catholics make it even harder with almost a year of marriage counseling.

I disagree with you Amy. I think lifelong commitment does make sense. But you need to weed out the bad marriages before they start. Not force people to stay together after a major mistake.

The problem w/this is that even assuming people act in a mature and thoughtful manner (NOT), people lie to themselves about their needs/desires.

They either don't know, know but don't want to admit, scared to buck their cultural mores, and on and on.

This is why relationships not built on long-term knowledge of each other are a crap shoot. If someone is not truthful to their own nature a partner does not stand a chance of picking up on that.

An escape route is never a bad idea.

I think lifelong commitment does make sense. But you need to weed out the bad marriages before they start. Not force people to stay together after a major mistake.

I see something happen time and time again these days. Pamela Paul wrote about "starter marriages." I see people making a mistake in who they marry or simply not being mature enough the first time around (when they marry in their 20s -- oftentimes). Then, they get divorce, grow up a little, figure things out, and then find an adult relationship they can stay in.

But people like to believe they can make it work the first time around and often lack the maturity to know that they're too immature to get married.

Also, people change, sometimes substantially, and may no longer be right for each other. Why is it some wonderful thing that people who are unhappy together or not meeting each other's needs as partners stay together -- why do we celebrate all commitments, short of those where people are beating each other, just for their staying power?

I have two thoughts: one of the big problems is that marriage a terrible contract. It's the only contract I've ever signed where the terms and exit strategy aren't negotiated before hand. Negotiations aren't romantic, but at least everyone would have a clear picture of what the expectations are

Also I saw the following suggestion once and I really liked it. We should have different length (5,10,20 year) contracts that can be renewed or dropped at the end of the term. It would keep everyone on their toes.

Actually, we should make getting married harder. I'm convinced that more than a few people who get married and then divorced in the first couple of years confused loving the person with loving sex with that person.

A couple can be great between the sheets but lousy everywhere else.

people lie to themselves about their needs/desires

That's true enough, but generally that comes to a head sooner than later. Now, if you get married after knowing someone 3 weeks...yeah, that could be a problem.

But what happens is that people change. I'm not the same ass I was 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago. Then there's the whole dynamic of him thinking she'd never change, and she thinking that she can change him.

Both are not true, and can lead to disappointments.

Negotiations aren't romantic

True. And for the vast majority of human existence, marriage wasn't about love as much as division of labor, reproducing, building wealth, and making family units stronger.

It's only been the last 150 or so years that people married primarily for love, and the rest was just a bonus.

On the other hand, as Socrates is supposed to have said, by all means get married. If you find a good wife, you will be happy, otherwise you'll become a philosopher.

Many states have 'covenant marriage' options, which eliminates no-fault divorce. Very, very few people take advantage of it, including the 'marriage is the bedrock of society!' crowd.

No fault divorce does need a reform, and that reform is a rebuttable presumption of joint shared physical custody.

The incentive to divorce for some is both monetary as well as sole parent custody with the "loser", usually the father, being relegated to uncle status or worse and seeing the kids every other weekend and one night a week.

That's devastating to the kids AND to the non-custodial parent.

So no fault divorce does need a reform. It's not making marriage harder to get out of. It's removing the custody incentives to divorce.

Marriage rates are at the lowest level in a century, and yet it's easy to get a divorce. McArdle's employment example is interesting, but does it apply here? Maybe marriage rates are so low because it's easy to get a divorce (e.g. kids soured on the idea after watching their parents split up)? I don't know.

Matt and Elle make good point for commitment.

And should a no fault divorce be legislated out in every state?

Technically DOMA is totally unconstitutional. Marriage is not an enumerated power in the U.S. Constitution.

One of the reasons that Las Vegas has/had such a cachet for the quickie marriage is that the way Nevada laws were written is that a divorcing couple could fly there and get a no fault divorce in three days. So the ex-spouse would fly out after the divorce was final and the new spouse-to-be would fly in and they could get married the next day.

So each state has to figure out what it wants for marriage and divorce laws which is completely separate from the religious aspects.

I do think putting in a requirement that a couple has a choice before getting married of either attending marriage counseling or submit a negotiated prenuptial agreement before getting a marriage license would be a good idea. (It could be waived in special circumstances like this.) But making divorce harder really doesn't make any sense.

> Maybe lifelong commitment doesn't make
> sense anymore. We have a far longer
> lifelong than ever, and we don't need to
> stay together to keep the fields plowed.
> Why hold "lifelong commitment" up like
> it's necessarily a wonderful thing?

Me wuz thinks'in that you been dothin' the too much of this little protest for ten years now.

Ten years, sometimes described by offhand thinkers as a 'decade', is a very long time, but your argument's never augmented or refined. There're no new wrinkles or details. The immobility of the posture might be a hint, or maybe perhaps a clue. Even a blog visitor gentle of deportment and mild of mood (which, to paraphrase Hamlet, I be not) will begin to wonder if Amy is Trying To Tell Us Something.

Or, y'know, wonder if Maybe There's Some Kind of Psychological Reversal happening, like when a senator who hates teh gay gets caught in a Minneapolis airport trying to kiss another man on the pee-pee.

"To work and to love," said Freud, who knew more about people's hearts than you do. (Or than I and perhaps every reader of these words put together.) Freud was smarter than Marx, who thought it was all about the Benjamins... But it's not, and Karl was a fool anyway. People will give their lives and guide their family's lives and contribute to their community's lives to the service of things having nothing to do with their economic interests.

In these ten years, I've seen a number of happy couples move into old age. The oldest couple outside my own family happens to have been living on a farm the whole time... And I don't doubt for a minute that Dad's still "keeping the fields plowed," but he ain't doin' it for the crops.



A life of maximal teenage novelty is neither the pinnacle nor typical human aspiration, especially in the heart. It can take a lifetime to get to know someone. Many —perhaps a majority, but certainly the happiest people I know— decide early that they want that person, and no other will do.

> An escape route is never a bad idea.

It's often a despicable one.

The determining factor should be children. If no children, make it relatively easy to split things up. When minor children are involved, it should be damned difficult to get divorced, and should remain difficult even after the kids are grown. Once you create a family, your responsibility for stability greatly increases.

I agree with Amy that lifetime commitments don't make sense anymore. But there are significant problems with the present system, which I would seek to reform as follows.

Problem 1: Women, who rightly have all the "choice" after conception, have been wrongly using that choice to extract support from men who had no intention of having children. Not all women do this by any means, but a large fraction of those receiving welfare do.

Solution: First, change the child support law back to what it was 100 years ago: if you want child support, then get the man's ring on your finger before getting pregnant. No marriage, no child support. Second, change the welfare system so it will no longer pay for a mother to get a separate home of her own while either of her parents is still living.

Yes, these changes would be hard on some children. But they would deter the mothers from having those children. And we need to deter them, because those children have no future.

Problem 2: No-fault divorce can lead to unfair outcomes (regarding child custody, property splits, and/or alimony awards) where one partner did something wrong that caused the breakup.

Solution: Don't repeal states' no-fault divorce laws, but modify them so that if one partner brings an at-fault divorce proceeding and the other brings a no-fault proceeding, the at-fault proceeding isn't dismissed (as it is today). Instead, the partner who brought the no-fault proceeding should be deemed to have consented to an immediate divorce, but the at-fault case should still be litigated and should determine the rest of the outcome.

Problem 3: In an angry breakup (not necessarily even involving a marriage), the woman can make all kinds of completely unfounded accusations (domestic violence, threats, even child molestation) and get the man kicked out of the house, cause him to lose his job, even make him homeless, and she suffers no consequences for telling these lies.

Solution: Repeal (or better yet, get a court to declare unconstitutional) VAWA and the other laws under which police get to devastate a man's life before he's convicted of anything. And make malicious, false police reports of serious crimes no longer "privileged" against defamation suits.

Until these morally imperative reforms take place, the best one can do when these monstrous injustices happen is to name and shame the people who commit them.

"A life of maximal teenage novelty is neither the pinnacle nor typical human aspiration, especially in the heart."

Yes, this. Popular culture, aided and abetted by government income support programs, have driven the rise of the romantic love model of marriage.

It is so much easier to be stupid about your choices, and your life partner, when someone else is picking up the tab.

The marriages that last are values marriages, where both parties value each other's long term happiness, and the life and assets they have built together.

The other things they value are commitment and keeping their promises,

You should have a sense of shame, and of failure, if you do things that cause your marriage to fail.
It means that you are neither an honorable or a trustworthy person.

McArdle is lost in the distinction between economic behavior and the more general run of social behavior. No-fault divorce is a novelty of the last four decades. Societies have ample experience with more restrictive regimes, and they are generally more congenial socially.

McArdle is lost in the distinction between economic behavior and the more general run of social behavior. No-fault divorce is a novelty of the last four decades. Societies have ample experience with more restrictive regimes, and they are generally more congenial socially.

Posted by: Art Deco at April 18, 2014 3:50 PM

No fault auto insurance wasn't and isn't a particularly good idea either.

"Many states have 'covenant marriage' options, which eliminates no-fault divorce. Very, very few people take advantage of it, including the 'marriage is the bedrock of society!' crowd"

I had to look it up because I had never heard of it, only 4 states have it, not many. As to it being low % (1-3% so far) it is a relatively new idea, which since I'd never heard of it is probably relatively unknown. It is also too new to truly tell if it has any affect on divorce.

> too new to truly tell if it has any affect
> on divorce.

What effect would matter?

Listen, the problem isn't that this-or-that metric is unpleasant when listed on a spreadsheet of social trends.

The problem is that people are shitty and cowardly and selfish about forming marriages.

"A life of maximal teenage novelty is neither the pinnacle nor typical human aspiration, especially in the heart."

What a profound remark. An important notion, beautifully expressed.