Fears of Divorce May Be Keeping Many Young Couples From Marriage: Study

'Lower-income women were especially likely to have doubts about the "trap" of marriage.'

I don't see why. They would be in a perfect position to extort the man of his income through alimony. Funny how the article doesn't even highlight why men are weary of marriage. Once again the focus is on female issues. What else is new?

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!

I think for low-income women the alternative to marriage is welfare--which is more dependable than depending on a low-income man to provide. It's hard for low-income men to compete with the deep pockets of the government. For a low-income woman, the best alternative is to find a rich man to marry--some do.

Take this "article," which is really a public relations and marketing piece from the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, with quite a few grains of salt. They are trying to sell the services of their members (therapists). They don't give a damn about the truth, or equity between the genders, or the plight of modern American men. They just want to get couples to get therapy sessions. They are searching for what's going to bring people into therapy, and this looks like a trial gambit. Since most American marriages focus on the concerns, desires, and intentions of the woman, often totally excluding those of the man, it only makes sense that this trade group would talk exclusively about women's concerns. I wager that most often it's the woman who brings a couple into therapy, and so this focus on the concerns, desires and intentions of the woman is totally predictable.

It may be true that lower-income women have this concern but out of a lack of knowledge about how much The System leans to their side of the equation. It could also be that they are aware that they might get pregnant by some guy who does not stick around and even if she knows where he lives, she may not have the money to get a decent lawyer to try to get C/S from him or may not know that there might be legal ways to get default paternity judgments against him or anyone else she may think is the father of the child. (Remember I am writing the foregoing from the POV of said woman, not from the POV of an MRA.)

But the concern is unfounded and they would know it to be if they knew that they are on the winning side of the equation. More educated and thus less-likely-to-be-poor women know that The System is on their side. Hence they are a lot less scared to get married than poor women. The article does use the term 'couples' when talking about people these days being afraid to get married, when it is men who are by and large the ones afraid to do so. And as anyone who reads this site can tell you, most men have very good reason to be afraid to get married.

I suspect you're right about educated women--they know they're on the winning side of the equation.

Men (enough, anyway) seem to suffer from the delusion it won't happen to them--sort of like the belief that they just because they came for the Jews doesn't mean they'll come for me. A lot of men believe the propaganda about irresponsible men who walk on their family. They won't do that, of course, so there's no problem. Then one day they come home to an empty house, a restraining order, and divorce papers.

for women all along the financial and 'looks' spectrum. i'll try to explain some of what i have seen and come to understand.

the good looking woman has only so many years shelf life to get 'mr. right now' to commit. after a while her potential for future wealth using a man diminishes, like on a graph. if she has the mean$, it can be slightly delayed w/ plastics; but, it really starts looking creepy afer a while and can look downright scary in some cases.

once she gets mr. right now signed up, she then has a couple quick kids to lock his existing wealth and potential earnings up, so she can start looking for chump #2. a second new income supplements child support and maybe alimony just fine. his extra military benefits are also a +.

on the lower end of the 1-10 scale we have the ones who pretty much know babies mean $$$ from uncle sugar. i heard they get around $950 a mo. per child according to a female friend of mine, + food stamps, + free health care, + free college, +++. i hear this racket is really sweet, at our expense; and, all the while society blames the men.

this benefits game is played up and down the 1-10 spectrum. a 7 may bring in more than say a 9, depending on how it is played. but two things are certain, they are not playing to lose, and the system is rigged to make sure they don't.

for guys, knowledge of the game, being aware that it is rigged, and the ability to know when to fold 'em are our primary tools when sitting in on this very dangerous pastime.

"babies mean $$$ from uncle sugar. i heard they get around $950 a mo. per child according to a female friend of mine, + food stamps, + free health care, + free college, +++"

$950 per month, per child, plus benefits on top?

Please list a credible source.

My family owns apartment buildings and I have taken rental applications from welfare recipient single mothers. Not one has indicated they receive benefits like you describe.

you can site a source for ga. handouts. i couldn't find one. my sis is an ardent feminist and i doubt her not when she comes out w/ such talk. living here one can quickly get the jist of the abuse of the system going on everywhere. living in a nice neighborhood (once) and down the street from one of ga.'s low income apartment schemes for unwed mothers is like living down the street from he!!. half of the apartments are leased to young professionals and the other half goes to unwed minority mothers, at greatly reduced rates. one of the guys i hired to help me recently 'stayed' there with his gf. he said they have several kids together and as long as they don't marry she can continue to live in this gated community practically free. there is another one near downtown i know of and 1/2 of the apartmets go unrented, for obvious reasons.

i can go on and on with examples like this. food stamps card benefits traded and sold, new rules letting fs $$ be used at fancy restaurants, free health care, free this, free that. we have roving bands of hooded creeps roaming the neighorhood at all hours. i have had my house ransacked twice in as many years, since they built the new apartments. trash and sacks of garbage on the road in front of the apartments regularly, and cleaned up by the staff by evening. crack and meth related fires/explosions regularly make the news in the minority neighborhoods. nobody even rides through them anymore if you value your life.

but i suppose my actual experiences since moving back here are all just so much racism. everything about the truth of the situation here is these days. we are sitting on a powder keg and when the gov, out of necessity, starts cutting these lavish handout programs, well, it ain't gonna be pretty.

btw - gun sales and prices are through the roof. you don't want to be the one w/o a gun when the chit hits the fan around here.

I cannot find any sources to verify your claims, especially the $950/mo per child with benefits on top and now you say food stamps can be used at fancy restaurants. Where are you obtaining your information? There is nothing on GA gov websites that substantiate any of this that I can see. The closest I can come to is food stamps can now accepted at delis for cold food. I usually don't dispute much about welfare and handouts, because I am against most gov handouts, but the claims I see posted here in regards to welfare and child support are getting quite extreme and don't match what I see.

But I do see alot of welfare fraud you like you described about your friend. He works for you (I assume you do not fill out a W2 for him, which means he is working under the table. common for side/cash jobs) and his girlfriend is a "single mother" even though he lives in the home with her. As far as I know, ALL STATES are adamant about calculating the income of all adults who live in the home when figuring out benefits, it does not matter if they are married or not. If the state was aware that the bio father was living in the home and has an income, I am sure her benefits would be reduced. That's whay I always say most "single moms" are not all that "single".

I know the belief here is that women profit from babies. I have never known that to be the case. It is a no-win financial situation to have a child with man who has no intention of sticking around. The court system only helps women who are below the poverty line. So all this stuff that is often spoken about here is only for welfare-type single mothers, which I believe is about 15% of the population. The majority of fathers are only ordered to pay a fraction of the cost to raise a child (I know some ordered to pay $20/week) and only up to age 18 while a single mother provides all emotional, physical and the rest of the financial care, which usually extends beyond 18 years . This is often a full time job as courts cannot force fathers to provide physical and emotional care. The majority of single mothers I know (not on welfare) pay far more towards the child's necessities compared to the father and feel the brunt of single parenthood more than the fathers (effects their employment, social life, relationships, etc) . This is why you don't see any rich single mothers.

Mothers that have large CS orders from casual relationships with celebrities or athletes that didn't want to be fathers only make up a small percentage (say less than .1%). This is a problem that needs fixing, but whether child support is alot or a little, I have never known a single mother to collect CS as she has been granted. The average single mother has no idea if she will receive CS from one month to the next, deals with fathers that leave the country, work under the table or falsify their situation.

There seems to be alot of inconsistencies about retro-support, interest, pressure on fathers, etc. I can tell you that I have had two children with a rich man (he's made $42 million in his career). When he changed his mind about fatherhood, he spent his money elsewhere and no longer has much money for child support. He files for CS reductions, he has change of circumstance (after he vacations, makes lavish purchases and gambles) and stopped working at age 32 (at least his work is not stable or trackable). Since I am capable of supporting the kids myself, there is no way to get much support from him. He pays when he feels like it, he also takes all tax deductions for the children every year (it is often falsely mentioned here that mothers automatically get tax deductions -they don't, it is negotiated in the parenting plan). My kids are with me 24/7 as I provide all emotional and physical support except for the short durations he comes to visit or they visit him. I have made all kinds of personal sacrifices for my kids - he has made none.

As far as welfare or CS calculations for kids with multiple fathers... I understand that when CS is calculated for a specific child it it is based on all income sources of the mother including her CS for other child(ren). Just like if a father has another child to support, his child support payments for his previous children also gets adjusted. If a single mother qualifies for welfare (food stamps and whatever else), all income including CS is calculated and welfare will only bring the mother UP to the poverty level, not beyond it (from what I can tell this is around $1200/mo for a family of three to live on - hardly what I call rich). Some fathers don't pay CS because they know their kids will be cared for by the government (Also why some couples choose not to marry or don't report that they live in the same household).

If I was getting rich off having kids, I would have10 kids. I love my kids, but they are a huge amount of work and TAKE alot of money. Remember, single moms are usually on the bottom of the financial scale because kids need more money then they bring in, if having kids was profitable, this would not be the case. All the single moms I know would be far better off financially if they did not have children to support and care for. They also have to think about what happens after the kids turn 18, and the mother no longer receives support. If she has spent all her time birthing and caring for kids and had no time or energy for career or education then what does she do? She is pretty much setting herself up to be poor her whole life.

The biggest concern I have is that in unmarried and low-income situations, mothers automatically get full custody and if they are poor they receive gov handouts and do not have the pressure to work and contribute financially like the fathers are required to do. I would like fathers in unmarried situations to have just as many choices, although I do not support long term welfare for anybody.

But my point is that women also have reason to fear divorce and single motherhood as they usually end up poor.

Re: First Paragraph. "It is a no-win financial situation to have a child with man who has no intention of sticking around." I very much agree with this... yet it continues to be done, over and over ad over again. Why is this? If this is such a bad situation for both the woman and child (and often the man as well), why do we continue to see it... Furthermore, why is it the man is always being blamed for this scenario (your whole, pity the hard work mothers endure, while fathers get off easy shpeel does just that), when everyone knows a man has no say after sex on whether an "accident" that leads to pregnancy will ever reach term, let alone parenthood (vs adoption).

"The majority of fathers are only ordered to pay a fraction of the cost to raise a child (I know some ordered to pay $20/week) and only up to age 18"

Well, fathers are ordered to pay whatever the judge tells them to, and while you may know some who only need to pay $20/month, others are ordered to pay much much more, sometimes more then is reasonable (http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=20903). Furthermore, fathers are also regularly ordered to pay half of any additional costs (never fully defined, regardless of the fact they have no say in that. For example, my mothers husband as a daughter. His ex wife makes $50k/year more then him (because he paid to put her through collage while married). Furthermore, she married a man who made twice what she makes. So when their daughter decided to go to medical school, mother said OK, because she could afford it. Father was forced to pay half the tuition, half the residence costs and still pay child support to maintain a room in the mothers home, despite the fact he had just been laid off and was paying lawyer fees to get a downward modification on support (due to the layoff) and have the grocery bills removed from the "additional expenses", the mother had been charging him. And he will continue paying child support until his daughter is 26 years old (or drops out of school).

"This is why you don't see any rich single mothers."

This is why? Couldn't have anything to do with personal choices in career? Or the fact that very few people actually become rich, parent or otherwise, single or otherwise? What about single fathers? It is not common for single fathers to fall into poverty, why is it only women that fall into poverty and have financial troubles when granted custody?

And for all your complaints about mothers not receiving the support they were ordered, that doesn't change the perception (regardless whether it's justified, half truth or completely false) that having a child brings in money (from both the government enforced child support agencies and government sponsored social assistance programs), that incentivise taking that path (IE, the path to being able to both have a baby (as any woman who choose to have a baby wanted anyways), and have that baby act as a paycheck so that mother didn't need to work (even if that requires living in poverty, it is still doable, and that is enough for many women, so long as they don't have to work... or we would see less of it, as we do with single fathers)).

"But my point is that women also have reason to fear divorce and single motherhood as they usually end up poor."

You are aware the vast majority of those women living in poverty were never married to begin with? or if they were, it was likely a shotgun wedding. You are pulling out the statistics generated by the 40% of unwed mothers to justify their own choice not to have gotten married. Circular logic. If you can show me statistics that demonstrate a woman who chooses to get married to someone they wanted to be with (and wanted to be with them), then had a child as a mutual decision with that man (as opposed to forcing ether wedding or child onto him against his wish's), typically degenerates into poverty (not just does worst finiancially post divorce, splitting from a two income family to single income, is going to have that result), I would like to see it. Otherwise, it just seems to me you are showing the outcomes of the women making a specific choice, and trying to use that to justify saying the other women should also be making that same choice. Seems to me that would do more harm to women than help.

PS: "I understand that when CS is calculated for a specific child it it is based on all income sources of the mother including her CS for other child(ren). "

This is incorrect. It is rare the mothers income even matters, it is usually the fathers income alone (or in some cases, the fathers household income, including his new wife, regardless of her children's needs) that influences the order. Even in those places the mothers income is calculated, state assistance and child support are not considered income, as the state does not want to pick up the fathers slack (so they aren't going to reduce his amount because they are paying her), and they are not about to punish a second child with less money just because a first one was already there.

@Kratch, regarding your last paragraph:

"This is incorrect. It is rare the mothers income even matters, it is usually the fathers income alone (or in some cases, the fathers household income, including his new wife, regardless of her children's needs) that influences the order. Even in those places the mothers income is calculated, state assistance and child support are not considered income, as the state does not want to pick up the fathers slack (so they aren't going to reduce his amount because they are paying her), and they are not about to punish a second child with less money just because a first one was already there."

You are right about welfare not effecting how much the father pays in support (as you said, the gov is not going to reduce his amount). I do know that, I just didn't express it well when I was typing. Welfare is intended to be calculated AFTER the child support and all other income. State or gov assistance basically makes up for the shortcoming of what the parents are unable to provide for basic necessities for the child. From what I know, it does not go beyond that. Some men here claim a mother gets child support (enough to cover necessities) on top of state assistance, and I have never known that to happen or be the intent of state assistance. People on welfare have a very low lifestyle from what I can see.

I do not know if you are from the US or not or if you have ever had child support calculated. Here in the US there is a legal form used by the courts called "child support calculation worksheet". It may vary slightly from state to state, but it includes very specific questions about income from both parents, and if child support is coming in or out of the household. The questions are identical and mandatory for both the mother and father, and support orders for previous children are documented on the form and effects the calculations.

Parents can ask for proof if they believe the opposing spouse has been untruthful on this form by requesting yearly tax returns or paystubs or they can do a "credit check" by using a social security number. If someone is self employed or accepts cash for work things can get difficult to prove. The calculation worksheet is mandatory to re-file or update any time a parent asks a judge for a change in the parenting plan even if the change has nothing to do with child support. I have had my child support reduced several times for "change of circumstances" based on the father's choices, and when he had another child, and my income very much influence his child support calculations as I must declare it on the worksheet everytime he asks the courts for a change. So your claims that a mother' income is not considered or additional children effecting existing children's support do not match my real life experiences.

I am aware and concerned that fathers have more pressure to provide financial support with less choices of custody especially in unmarried pregnancy situations especially when a mother qualifies for welfare. However, I am also aware that not many fathers ask for full custody and often a mother is left to provide all emotional and physical care (even when children were agreed and created in marriage) and often mothers makes more financial contributions towards children when welfare is not an option and the father has chosen not to provide emotional and physical care, as the courts cannot force him to do so.

Many of the claims here that women are profiting from having babies (ie improving their lifestyle) is false. There is no way two people can create a third person (baby) who is unable to contribute (let's face it children COST money, they don't MAKE money) and some how create wealth from the situation. The way to wealth is to stay single or stay married. Children and single parenthood do not make anyone wealthy and they effect future relationships and career opportunities if they live with you.

The article we are commenting on is about fearing marriage which seems to be more about fearing divorce, and Evan asked why women would fear divorce. My answer to that is because everyone comes out worse off financially when you take one household and then must use the same amount of money to support two households, and single parenthood is very challenging. As a women gets older and more baggage (children living with her) she is less likely to date and find another partner compared to a divorced single man.

Some of the comments here indicate that a woman has no reason to fear divorce or single parenthood as she will sit back and collect alimony, child, support and have her choice of new partners. I have never seen the average woman come out of a divorce like this. Most do not get alimony, they lower their lifestyle, and have to struggle to get back into a full time career while juggling childcare and have no time, energy or money to date or socialize. I am sure ex-husbands struggle as well. Both genders should enter marriage cautiously or not at all.

The point was, CS is not modified downwards because a mother is getting welfare, or child support from another father. As was implied. Furthermore, as welfare isn't even granted/calculated until after the child support order is established, that too does not equate into the calculation, IE, a mother on welfare counts as having no income on the rare occasions her income does count.

And no, I'm not from the US, I'm from Canada, where even mentioning the mothers income when discussing child support orders is a no no (this is national policy. the claim goes, what the mother makes doesn't absolve the father from paying his due responsibility). But I am familiar with some child custody laws from the states. I acknowledged that some states do account for the mothers income, but that isn't the norm, it's the exception.

"Some men here claim a mother gets child support (enough to cover necessities) on top of state assistance, and I have never known that to happen"

You are simply interpreting the term "on top of" differently. If a mother is getting child support, with government assistance topping her up, that is getting both child support and welfare, IE, welfare on top of child support. Sure, the welfare isn't a set number, it is simply a buffer to lift the mother up to the poverty line, but it is still support plus welfare providing so she doesn't need to work. And women are just as capable as men of working under the table for cash money.

"However, I am also aware that not many fathers ask for full custody and often a mother is left to provide all emotional and physical care"

So, because men aren't being unreasonable and demanding all the child's time (as mothers tend to do), and are often seeking 50/50 (if they don't just take what the mother gives them to begin with, because otherwise it's going to be a dirty, costly legal battle that will likely end up with them getting exactly what she offered, if even that), as a child should have both parents in their lives, you feel men deserve the lot they get?

"often mothers makes more financial contributions towards children"

This isn't universally true, and it presumes you only include the contribution within the child support order. But fathers also usually pay benefits for their children, acquire accommodations with a room for their children, and spend a great deal of time and money on their children during visits. Now, again, this isn't universally true, though it is universally ignored during discussions on the topic of contributions.

"and the father has chosen not to provide emotional and physical care"

Ah, my mistake, you've chosen to address only the true deadbeat dads here. but by limiting your discussion to just this selection, you really do trivialize your argument. After all, we can't be certain just how many of those fathers are of the true deadbeat variety until we assure that those who want to be involved are allowed to do so, and will not be destroyed financially and emotionally by a biased and overzealous support enforcement agency.

"Many of the claims here that women are profiting from having babies (ie improving their lifestyle) is false."

"Improving their lifestyle" are your own words injected into the equation. Do you deny that a woman who has children can more easily live unemployed then those who do not have children (but remain unemployed)? Do you deny, that a woman who does not wish to work for a living, can turn breeding into a profession (not a great one, but much better than what she could do without one)? Do you deny that having a child has tremendous non-financial rewards that compensate for any loss in income they would produce (I'll elaborate more once I have your answer to this)?

Kratch I do not intend to go over point by point with you. Many of your questions and points I am not even disputing or have anything to do with why women should fear divorce which leads to single parenthood (the topic I am discussing) , and I am against welfare so I am not going to spend any time appearing to defend it. However, many of the things frequently posted at this site about welfare and CS policies, I do not beleive to be true and they get passed on as if they represent the typical situation. The majority of divorces including parenting plans and CS orders in the United States are uncontested between the divorcing couple.

Many things posted here (by you and others) about CS and welfare laws/policies do not match what I know to be the laws/policies (in the US anyway), or match what I see typically happening in my world, or match my personal experiences with CS collections and Parenting Plans.