Marital roulette
Exclusive: Vox Day advises men to avoid wedding working women
Posted: May 30, 2011
1:00 am Eastern
Sunday, May 29, 2011
By Vox Day
There has been an amount of discussion of a marriage strike in recent years as various male and female commentators alike attempt to explain the continuing decline in marriage rates throughout the advanced nations of the West. As more and more men have become aware that women file for most divorces and that family courts are now little more than thieves' dens designed to funnel financial resources from men to women by any means or legal-sounding excuse necessary, they have understandably become considerably more marriage-averse.
In the last 40 years, the percentage of 25-34 American adults who were married has dropped from 80 percent to 45 percent. In 2009, it was reported that at only 52 percent, the percentage of married adults of all ages was the lowest percentage recorded since the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting marital information 100 years ago.
When one considers the widespread availability of wildly entertaining, time-intensive video games as well as high-quality, high-definition pornography produced to suit even the most esoteric sexual tastes, it is not terribly surprising that American men are becoming ever more disinclined to risk pledging their lives and fortunes to the increasingly adipose, decreasingly reliable creature known as the American woman?
Dr. Helen Smith writes: "Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them."
The problem is that marriage is more than an institution; it is a structural foundation of society. Moreover, marriage is historically proven to be the best means of producing and raising healthy children, which means that it is integral to the continuation of both American society as well as the human race. Without a strong base of healthy marriages between men and women, no society is likely to survive, let alone prosper.
(Column continues below)
So, what is a young man who wishes to be a happy and productive member of society but does not wish to find himself locked into a life of post-divorce serfdom to an ill-tempered, overweight woman with a legal obligation to children who may not even belong to him? Fortunately, the answer is both clear and easily applied. To increase your chances of marital and familial success in life, it is vital to stay away from what are known as "career" or "working" women.
While this will not eliminate all the risks of what has become known as Marriage 2.0, it will return a man's probability of successful marriage to that of the earlier, more marriage-friendly era. Marriage to a stay-at-home wife rather than one with a full-time job reduces the risk of divorce by nearly one-third. Just the simple act of avoiding romantic involvement with working women is nearly enough on its own to again make marriage a viable option for young men.
Moreover, stay-at-home mothers make for much better mothers as they spend 91 percent more time with their children than working mothers do. The most remarkable observation is that stay-at-home mothers spend 12 more minutes per day on the physical care of their children than working mothers spend with their children in total; the net result of this insufficient attention is that the children of working mothers are 23 percent less likely to pass college entrance exams, 29 percent more likely to be unemployed and are more likely to be overweight by age 11.
Although it may appear to be disturbingly like one, this column is not intended as an indictment of career women or working mothers. The facts are what they are, and my only objective is to point out to men that it is a mistake to conclude the societal changes of the last 40 years have rendered all American women equally unsuited for marriage. No one would dispute that the odds of successfully raising a family with a meth head or crack addict tend to be on the low side, and no one should be upset by the statistically observable fact that men who wish to marry and have children will have a significantly greater probability of success if they choose to marry women who are dedicated to making a career of being a wife and mother.
2 comments:
I would question this author's perspective. As a woman who has hardly ever worked since she married (and only worked when it benefited the family,) as well as a Christian who is bound to her husband in covenant through Christ, I find no reason - beit job or homemaking why a marriage should fail, if only the partners keep their eyes firmly planted on the path of Jesus Christ to heaven. It is only when people take their eyes off of the cross, and focus on themselves, do marriages falter and fail.
I lived in a faithful Christian marriage for 25 years until my husband took his eyes off of the cross, stopped reading scripture and started listening to the world. He had an affair and left me for 5 days until the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to his sin and he returned repentant.
Faith is the pillar to a marriage - not nonsense such as finding a wife who works or does not. Apparently this man has not read Proverbs 31!
Hi there!
Thanks for your comment :) First of all I would remark on the overwhelming emotionalism of your post. I understand that you went through a difficult time, but bringing that into this discussion to me is not really relevant. Also, if you read the last paragraph in the article (if you got that far) the author distinctly says "this is not a judgement against working women." He is not saying that all working women are wrong, or that a working woman will never have a good marriage. He is just pointing out a disturbing looking trend. He is asking us to think about it and not just go with the flow.
You shouldn't assume he hasn't read Proverbs 31. Many many conservative Christians have read Proverbs 31 and walk away from it thinking that a woman working outside the home is absolutely wrong (due to the context of Proverbs 31--in the home). So many people read Proverbs 31 and still think this is true. I know it as I have friends who say this. I do not agree. I personally think there is a time and a place for a woman to work outside the home. It's about the heart for me. If the heart of a wife is not in the home, then there is a problem.
Again, this was not an indictment against working women, but just a thoughtful point made in a logical, objective way. I would encourage you to look at it more objectively rather than emotionally. God bless!
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