Women are less happy than men in marriage, so why does the media insist otherwise?

[Afro_Vacancy]

Women are less happy than men in marriage, so why does the media insist otherwise?


To Post Secret, a project that collects personal secrets written artistically onto postcards, someone recently sent in the following bombshell: “Ever since we started getting married and buying houses,†she writes, “my girlfriends and I don’t laugh much anymore.â€

Her personal secret is, in fact, a national one. It’s part of what has been called the “paradox of declining female happiness.†Women have more rights and opportunities than they have had in decades and yet they are less happy than ever in both absolute terms and relative to men.

Marriage is part of why. Heterosexual marriage is an unequal institution. Women on average do more of the unpaid and undervalued work of households, they work more each day, and they are more aware of this inequality than their husbands. They are more likely to sacrifice their individual leisure and career goals for marriage. Marriage is a moment of subordination and women, more so than men, subordinate themselves and their careers to their relationship, their children, and the careers of their husbands.

Compared to being single, marriage is a bum deal for many woman. Accordingly, married women are less happy than single women and less happy than their husbands, they are less eager than men to marry, they’re more likely to file for divorce and, when they do, they are happier as divorcees than they were when married (the opposite is true for men) and they are more likely than men to prefer never to remarry.

The only reason this is surprising is because of the torrent of propaganda we get that tells us otherwise. We are told by books, sitcoms, reality shows, and romantic comedies that single women are wetting their pants to get hitched. Men are metaphorically or literally drug to the altar in television commercials and wedding comedies, an idea invented by Hugh Hefner in the 1950s (before the “playboy,†men who resisted marriage were suspected of being gay). Not to mention the wedding-themed toys aimed at girls and the ubiquitous wedding magazines aimed solely at women. Why, it’s almost as if they were trying very hard to convince us of something that isn’t true.

But if women didn’t get married to men, what would happen? Marriage reduces men’s violence and conflict in a society by giving men something to lose. It increases men’s efforts at work, which is good for capitalists and the economy. It often leads to children, which exacerbate cycles of earning and spending, makes workers more reliable and dependent on employers, reduces mobility, and creates a next generation of workers and social security investors. Marriage inserts us into the machine. And if it benefits women substantially less than men, then it’s no surprise that so many of our marriage promotion messages are aimed squarely at them.

Lisa Wade is a professor at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2016/05/04/women-are-less-happy-than-men-in-marriage-so-why-does-the-media-insist-otherwise/

 

[Roberto_72]

[/FONT]https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2016/05/04/women-are-less-happy-than-men-in-marriage-so-why-does-the-media-insist-otherwise/

I don't know what it is like in Australia, but in both Spain and Italy, when there is a divorce, the woman gets:
- the house (90% of the cases, 100% if the couple have kids)
- the kids (many men then become desperate because they cannot see the kids)

So the real question over here is: why are men still getting married, since a divorce can basically destroy their economies, and it does in practically one case in two marriages that ends in divorce.

 

[Norwood One]

Marriage is absolutely terrifying on an individual basis, but it's essential to the cohesiveness of society. The family unit with a mom and a dad is a blessing for young children who end up with two solid role models. The ones that are raised in single parent households turn out to be misfits and less productive than their 2 parent counterparts.

It's a way to make things work and work out it out when a relationship goes stale or sour (which majority of the times it does eventually). But marriage provides an incentive to stick together. Nowadays though, with divorce rape as Roberto has mentioned, the "sticking it out" part isn't incentivized enough than the "Divorce, take everything he owns and start over" part, so women are doing it a lot more, making it a bad deal for men to get hitched.

It's a shame.

 

[lickawrist]

Women get half of everything in the US as well. Of course, now men are doing it. Custody is supposed to be fair in the US. But I've
heard custody cases when one couple was richer than the other. Guess what, money seems to win out.

Money wins out in most, if not all, scenarios :\

 

[Notcoolanymore]

In the majority of cases, men are the ones getting screwed when divorced. From a man's standpoint there is no advantage for him to get married over staying "single".