A fascinating look at the economic forces behind divorce
If you read nothing else today, flip over to Slate and read the excerpts from Tim Harford’s new book, The Logic of Life.
The first excerpt was published yesterday, about the effect of current factors on marriage — utterly fascinating look at the economic reasons behind what armchair pundits are quick to label ‘Black Culture’… but Hartford’s argument is compelling and utterly logical. In a nutshell, it’s a crazy spiral: the marriage pool is artificially reduced because of the high percentage of young men in prison, which causes young women to seek out better employment and education opportunities, knowing that the possibility of finding a good match are lowered. Men, realizing that the competition for mates is fierce, don’t have to make as much effort as they once did, knowing that guilt-free (aka, birth control) sex, or even women able to raise children without the help of a traditional husband, and women who have their own money, are indulging in a ‘player’ mentality. Armchair Daddy-o, yo.
Today’s column publishes an excerpt on the economic drive behind divorce, in a way entirely devoid of pointing fingers and blame. Divorce is a logical result of a number of shifting forces, and please, really do read both these pieces today. I restrained myself; though I wanted to quote both articles ad nauseum, I have limited myself to this one quote:
Tags: divorce, logic-of-life, Slate, Tim-HarfordOne influential study by economists Andrew Oswald and Jonathan Gardner finds that divorcees, unlike widows and widowers, are happier one year after the marriage ends than they were while still married.
Perhaps a more positive way to express the trend is that women’s entry into high-powered careers has given them the option to get divorced if the marriage isn’t working out; and the recognition that that option is important is one of the factors encouraging women’s entry into high-powered careers.
That may sound a little abstract, but economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers discovered a chilling example of the way that the increased availability of divorce empowered women. As states passed “no fault” divorce laws, women acquired a credible threat to walk out of the marriage. (The statistics suggest that many of them did not, actually, do this. But the threat is enough.) Stevenson and Wolfers show that the new laws had an unexpected—but rational—effect: by giving women an exit-option, they gave men stronger incentives to behave well inside a marriage. The result? Domestic violence fell by almost a third, and the number of women murdered by their partners fell by ten percent. Female suicide also fell. It is a reminder that the binding commitment of marriage has costs as well as benefits.
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6 opinions for A fascinating look at the economic forces behind divorce
JP
Jan 16, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Interesting links, very well reasoned analysis. Also, I think, very wrong.
Three things come to mind.
First, the sexual division of labor evolved far earlier than Adam Smith’s theorized about it generally. A nice analysis, in my opinion, was provided by Carole Pateman in her book, The Sexual Contract. (Not a real page turner of a book, but kind of relentless as Pateman layers her arguments.) From another perspective, look at Engels on the family as a capitalist construct.
Second, we live (in the West) in a profoundly patriarchal culture. The socialization of boy and girl children does not typically create equal chances for either to be a good parent. This, I feel, reinforces the argument that there is something more to placing women in the home than what economists call ‘comparative advantage.’
Third, with both parents fulltime in the workplace, children suffer. Being in an unhappy, bitter household is far worse. In a marriage, ‘twould be better if one of the two parents could stay home with the children — or at least be there when they leave for school and be there when they get home from school. Our economic culture is not set up for that, though, so parents and children adapt. Still, how desirable would it be to be able to be home for our little Kings and Queens.
Peace.
christina
Jan 17, 2008 at 5:14 pm
As always, the truth lies somewhere in between. I’m frequently caught talking to my computer screen, muttering about statistics. They serve so many different masters. It’s easier to make the numbers say whatever someone wishes them to… just leave out a few facts, present findings with a slightly different wording, et voila! A new opinion is born.
Mostly, what I took from this series is the often refreshing reminder that life is never as simple as the Great They would like us to believe it is.
JP
Jan 18, 2008 at 12:02 am
Ah, yes. They. Don’t know much, do They?
Life is many things, often at once. Never found it to be simple. (And I damn nea failed statistics when I took it, in large measure because my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t believe in it, in larger measure because my marriage was going to hell and my sense of self was fractured.
Thomas Carlyle wrote of the importance of maintaining a sense of wonder at the world, to better appreciate it, and more importantly, to be the person the creator endowed us with the ability to be. (Not worth reading much on the sense subject of gender, though. J.S. Mill is much, much better.)
Peace.
Around the Channel (N-Z) (1-17-08)
Jan 18, 2008 at 1:19 am
[…] Solo Mother Christina takes a look at the economic forces behind […]
Christina
Jan 19, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Oh, JP, I know what it’s like when the rest of your life is falling down around your ears. When my marriage was failing, my list of Seven Things to do regularly included such mundane things as, ‘Get out of bed’ and ‘brush teeth’ and ‘get dressed’… I like my Seven Things lists much better nowadays. It’s no wonder statistics were a struggle, considering the time you were going through. Fractured. Yes. I know what that means. It means all you can do is wait for enough time to pass, and perhaps you’ll be able to lift your head and look around and wonder, “What is left of me?”
JP
Jan 20, 2008 at 1:57 am
This is the second time that you made me think of this sentence from a piece of fiction:
“That morning I found out I was made of better stuff than I tought. I got out of bed without having a single reason for doing so.”
This blog, seven years after I stopped soloing, has helped me more than I could have imagined, both with the emotional damage endured then and not healed, and in helping me a better parent now in the process of gaining a better perspective.
Thank you.
As a token of my thanks, I offer the entirety of the passage from the out-of-print book I recommended without realizing it. The section begins with an epigram, a bit from a song (”More Thumbscrews”) written by the author. My you find useful, in some way, and any other solo mothers out there, as well.
I said, “By the fires
I see this is Hell
And by the looks on your faces
You’re damned here as well”
Let’s talk about love.
I sat in my room with my back to the door, my legs straight out in front of me, my feet limp, and I stared at the ceiling and thought deep and profound thoughts from which wisdom emerged, as by magic. Well, okay, maybe not. But answer this for me: Why should the end of a fling with someone I hadn’t even met two months before leave me more dejected and, well, ALONE, than the destruction of the birth world of the human race, the place imprinted into my psyche and very genes as being and containing everything that was home?
Imprinted into my psyche and very genes. Aye, there’s where its used as a polishing cloth. Exactly WHAT has been imprinted into my genes and very psyche? I dunno. Standing here, at the door to yet another epoch of humanity, with a view that spans from one end of the hall to another, I say to you that I have no idea in the world, or worlds, what this thing is, except that I got it and I can’t shake it. But some things are learned and, in fact, are learned so throroughly that they’ll never be pried out of the mind in which they have taken root.
Love, to pick an example at random. Romantic love.
To be a human being born into the mid-twentieth century is to inhale ideals of romantic love with your first breath, to drink it with your mother’s milk, to eat it with your Gerber squashed peas, and to have it thoroughly drummed into your skin and vital organs by every children’s tale, television serial, Hollywood movie, work of popular music (and unpopular music), and back-alley conversation.
But here’s another one, just to confuse you: To reach maturity in the late twentieth century is to learn that romantic love is a myth, created by the needs of the spirit and the skill of the songsmith and the confusion of a spiritual being left, for a time, with nothing spiritual to believe in. Perhaps I overstate the case, as most people of that time were not aware of all of this — certainly not consciously. But nevertheless, romantic love was in the process of being discredited, even though the generation of man doing the discrediting was its slaves.
It’s quite a concept, all in all. It tells us that love must be hot instead of warm, or the sharp peak of a mountain instead of the gentle slope of a hill. Yet we all know that too much heat can burn, that mountain peaks, while pleasant to stand on for a while, do not make as good dwelling places as hillsides. At least, for most of us.
We are a very creative race, you know. And an imaginative one, even when we don’t know it. It seems that those individuals who most bemoan their lack of imagination are the ones who think they have met the perfect mate and spend hours spinning daydreams of how it will be and what it means. These people, along with their spiritual brothers who are waiting for the perfect mate who must be out there somewhere, are using their imaginations to find new and ingenious ways to hurt themselves.
I’m referring of course, to myself.
We could tell oursleves was that what we wanted was the warm familiarity of the lover we knew, who knew us, with whom we had grown together and could continue to do so, that security was part of love, rather than its anathema. We could tell ourselves this, but even as we did, a persistent voice whispered from our souls, THIS ISN’T RIGHT. THERE’S SOMETHING MORE. And there is the other side, perhaps worse: When we achieve, out of nowhere, the explosive infatuation reflected in a hunger than cannot be sated, the voice says, YES, THIS IS RIGHT, IT MUST BE LIKE THIS FOREVER.
Infatuation, as a phenomenon, cannot ever be fully exorcised. Infatuation, with a person, an idea, a flower, a mountain, a starship, will exist as long as man. People who find their reason to exist in other people will exist as long as man. But be grateful, you who stand with me at the end of man’s infancy and the beginning of his adolescence, that no longer are such things held up as a virtue for which we all ought to strive.
All this I have learned, and much of it I learned there and then, as I sat and thought deep and profound thoughts, from which wisdom emerged, as by magic. I am thus immune from causing myself pain over what cannot be and what will not be, and I am able to go with my life and with those things that are inarguably far more important than who is sleeping with whom at any given moment.
I sat with my back against the door, my legs straight out in front of me, and I cried until I was exhausted, and eventually I slept.
I’m so fucking wise.
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