Basically, an awful lot of men are—and always have been—volatile and unreliable. They drink, they get abusive, and they do stupid stuff. They're bad with money, they don't help with the kids, and they don't help around the house. They demand subservience. They demand sex. And even on the one dimension they're supposedly good for—being breadwinners—they frequently tend to screw up and get fired. In other words, marriage has been a bad deal for women pretty much forever. But they've been forced into it by cultural mores and economic imperatives, and that's the only reason it's been nearly universal in the past. Nothing has changed much about that. It's still a bad deal for an awful lot of women, but cultural mores and economic imperatives have changed, and that means more women can afford to do what's right for themselves and stay unmarried these days.
I know what a lot of guys reading this will say as a stock response: "Not ALL men!" And technically, that is true, as there are still plenty of men getting married in 2016. In fact, among college-educated men and Women, the marriage rates have barely budged since the 1950s. But for those without a college degree, marriage rates have indeed dropped (and divorce rates rose) dramatically since then. So what gives? Here is what Kevin Drum has to say:
But there's one exception to this: the college educated. Well-educated men are fairly reliable; they have good earning power; they generally aren't abusive; and they've been willing—slowly but steadily—to change their habits and help out with kids and housework. For college-educated women, then, marriage is a relatively good deal. For everyone else, not so much. And that's why marriage is declining among all groups except the college educated. For an awful lot of women, it's just a lousy deal. They're tired of putting up with all the crap they get from men, and so they're opting out. They'll opt back in when men start to pull their own weight. There's no telling when that's going to start happening.
And indeed, truer words have never been spoken. Of course, this trend isn't entirely the fault of the bottom 80-90% of men who get chewed up and spit out by the oligarchy/plutocracy/kleptocracy/kyriarchy. Much credit/blame also goes to the men at the top that hollowed out our economy, torpedoed our labor unions, and enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else who got thrown under the bus. They are, after all, the ones who made college a virtual necessity to be able to earn a living wage (let alone what used to be called a "family wage") in this country these days, while simultaneously outsourcing, offshoring, and automating so many jobs that used to pay such decent wages. But let's face it--that's karma, fellas. We tyrannized and "lorded it over" the better half of humanity (Women) for thousands of years and now we are finally getting our comeuppance. We basically rigged the system in our favor and artificially propped ourselves up for millennia, and now the props are falling. So it is no small wonder why so many Women are now choosing to "go it alone" in that regard these days. Especially since Women are now becoming more educated than men on average, earning more college degrees overall.
And while it's true that increasing female empowerment has also undoubtedly contributed to the relative redundancy of males, as men are no longer being artificially propped up quite the way they once were, that is actually a GOOD thing that we should be celebrating. Patriarchy is a fundamentally evil and thoroughly corrupt system, and the sooner it ends, the better. And it is currently self-destructing as we speak, and has been for about half a century now. As Stephanie Coontz (author of The Way We Never Were and Marriage: A History) has noted, the patriarchal nuclear family model of the 1950s and earlier inherently required a ludicrous amount of violence and coercion to prop it up and keep the "troops" (i.e. women and children) in line. And when that violence and coercion is reduced or removed, the whole proverbial house of cards inevitably collapses sooner or later. So good riddance, let's never go back!
Marriage is, after all, a fundamentally patriarchal institution. At least the monogamous, heterosexual variety that the conservatives just luuurrrrve to idealize, that is. That's not to say that marriage can't be redefined and repurposed for a Matriarchal society--indeed it has been redefined and repurposed many, many times throughout history--but the outdated idea that everybody must get married and/or have children (or that doing so is the sine qua non of "real adulthood") needs to end yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT anti-marriage. But we as a society nonetheless need to become more tolerant of a wide variety of lifestyles and family types, and reject the obsolete ideas of compulsory heterosexuality and/or marriage.
And soon Women will be taking over, as they have already crossed the Rubicon in that regard. Since the 1970s, Women have been going "two steps forward, and one step back", while men have been going "one step forward, and two steps back". The song "Not Meant to Be" by Theory of a Deadman comes to mind. Honestly, the inevitable death of patriarchy is really quite painless. It's fighting to keep it alive that is causing so much pain for both Women and men. And when Women finally do take over, they will remember exactly how they were treated, so it really behooves us fellas to clean up our act yesterday. Don't say you weren't warned.
In the meantime, fellas, don't be a fool, stay in school. And if you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em. Not like that actually guarantees success anymore, but it sure can't hurt. Though for a lot of young guys today, perhaps as much as 80% of them, vocational/technical or trade school might actually be a better choice overall than college or university for those who are less academically inclined, with less debt too. Failing that, I suppose you can always go join the circus, lol.
