Why so many marriages fail in the US

[neil]

In practice, it's about whether or not the institution of marriage is feasible, practical, and successful. In any other situation I can think of, a failure rate as high as 50% would be considered unacceptable or very poor performance, for example a vehicle breaking down in the middle of the road half the time it's used.

More like a vehicle breaking down after years of use, isn't it? We don't expect most vehicles to last for the rest of our lives.

No, we don't, but that's what's reasonable to expect with vehicles; that's the deal with them (i.e., the warranty).

On the other hand, the deal with marriage is different - it's supposed to be for life.

I'm not saying or demanding that it ought to be for life; I'm simply going by its definition (or what it's advertised to be).

Sometimes employees have contracts with their employers for a certain span of time (e.g. 5 years), and they can renew that contract when it expires if they want to. Why don't we have that sort of option for marriages?

[no one]

Who says it is supposed to be for life?

[neil]

Who says it is supposed to be for life?

The couples themselves who willingly, voluntarily, get married - it's literally what they say in their own vows.

[Anomalocaris]

because marriage as you know it is a institution designed primarily in a more primitive age to perpetuate social hierarchy evolved to handle many communicable diseases for which there is no cure, very high infant mortality, and heavy reliance on greater upper body strength for economic productivity. it is failing now because thanks to the habitual tendency to dictate based on made up reasons that characterizes religions, particularly overreaching expansionist imperial religions such as christianity, it failed at all to evolve with human progress.

[brewer]

Plain and simple, 7 year itch.

[Astreja]

People grow apart. Their interests change. Their life goals change. Divorce is a perfectly reasonable solution when a relationship is bringing someone more pain than happiness.

[Belacqua]

[...]

Here it is: marriage in the United States fails because it's an institution that isn't compatible with equal rights, along with separation of church and state.

[...]

I think I would put a lot more emphasis on economic matters. Old-fashioned marriage isn't compatible with modern capitalism.

If women's liberation means that women are more free to live as they wish, that's obviously a good thing. In practice, though, it has largely meant that women now have to work at jobs just as much as men do. To maintain what we used to call a middle-class lifestyle, both partners have to work outside the home. Corporations began to advertise women's lib when it became clear that they could double their workforce and pay the same amount of benefits. Corporate profits continue to rise, productivity continues to rise, but workers' purchasing power does not. 

So to be clear, I am NOT saying that the world was better when middle-class women could only be housewives. Freedom of choice is good. The trouble is that currently most couples have no choice but to work for others. 

Two careers doesn't mean double the stress -- more like ten times more. If one partner gets transferred or has a chance to move up in a new location, what will the other do? Childcare gets hired out. The necessity of moving for work means that extended families become impractical -- grandma is across the country and can't help out. 

Moreover, capitalism thrives on personal acquisition. It encourages the atomization of society by defining success as the ability to get what you as an individual want. Fulfillment is no longer defined as contributing to the stability and flourishing of a group. It's completely understandable that a Walmart employee doesn't care much about the flourishing of Walmart -- such employees are cogs in a machine. But it's sad that family members also are more likely to bail out of their family group when they feel they want something for themselves. Too often, some kind of lifestyle they've seen in the movies. 

If we could define success differently -- as including the flourishing of those around us -- society would look very different.

[Anomalocaris]

Rather, the societies which enforce old fashioned marriage is not competitive with ones that let it fall apart if it would.


In the survival of the fittest,  reliance on tradition marriage betokens the society’s inflexible backwardness and commensurate increasing lack of fitness.

[Belacqua]

Rather, the societies which enforce old fashioned marriage is not competitive with ones that let it fall apart if it would.


In the survival of the fittest,  reliance on tradition marriage betokens the society’s inflexible backwardness and commensurate increasing lack of fitness.

Fitness for what? In competition with whom? 

I thought Social Darwinism was out of fashion.

[Anomalocaris]

Fitness as in being more effective in amass the material and social capital and in generating the internal consensus needed to increase its own influence and undermine the influence of its rivals

Social Darwinism may be out of fashion to promote as an ideology.    But that is separate from the fact that mechanism of evolution through competition as unavoidable operates within any society and amongst any collection of societie as chmistry operates within any living being.