Almost Half of U.S. Births Happen Outside Marriage, Signaling Cultural Shift

Marriage is a legally binding contract - a piece of paper. A committed marriage is one where the people who entered into that contract agree to abide by the contract. That takes hard work, understanding, trust and loyalty (and a whole heap of other things...). Unfortunately, too many enter into that contract without a full understanding of what they are getting themselves into...they are caught up in the romance of the proposal, the excitement of the wedding and the sexual attraction that has an expiration date (for most).

I am not one who denigrates marriage. I am married, but didn't do so until I was in my forties. I never found a person to whom I believed I could commit for the rest of my life. I also never wanted children, so waiting was just fine for me. At that age, I knew who I was - I wasn't going to change too terribly much. So I could confidently make that commitment.

 

What is the definition of 'grey divorce'? How long were they married? Are they people who stayed in the marriage for the sake of the kids and then decided to get out of it after their kids were grown? Or are they people who got married later in life?

 

Rewarding what behaviour?

 

As I said you don't stop evolving after forty and as people live longer this becomes more relevant


"A grey divorce is simply a divorce that occurs at or after the age of 50. Even though the divorce rate across all age groups has stabilised, the number of grey divorces in the United States has recently dramatically increased. Currently, about one out of every four divorces is grey.

What has caused this dramatic surge in grey divorces? First has simply been the ageing of the Baby Boomer generation. In 1990, there were only 63.5 million Americans aged 50 and older, but by 2010, there were 99 million in this same age group. By 2050, the US Census Bureau predicts that there will be 158.5 million individuals aged 50 and over. In addition to the growth in absolute numbers of such individuals, life expectancy has mostly continued to tick upwards. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1950, men could be expected to live, on average, 65.6 years, while women could be expected to live 71.1 years, on average. By 2016, these ages had increased to 76.1 and 81.1, respectively. Both of these factors have worked to expose ever-greater numbers of couples to the possibility of a grey divorce.

But perhaps the most interesting part of this story is why these Baby Boomers are divorcing at this point in their lives, and whether men and women offer different explanations for going their own ways. In the course of this research project I interviewed 40 men and 40 women – none related to one another – about the causes of their grey divorces. What I found was fascinating.

The basis for heterosexual marriage in the US has changed dramatically over the past century. Scholars have noted that, beginning in the 20th century, couples were bound together by love, but also by a set of mutually binding responsibilities toward one another. In its current form, divorce under this marital framework typically involves partners engaging in behaviours that harm themselves or their spouses. In these ways, they violate their vows of binding responsibilities, and divorce is therefore acceptable.

The social unrest of the 1960s, however, brought a different set of expectations into some marriages. The Baby Boomers who came of age during this period began to see their own personal self-actualisation as the most important goal in their lives. Marriages soon became sites of self-empowerment and self-development for many couples. If at any point in time, one partner in a marriage was no longer fulfilled, that person could reasonably seek a divorce."

https://aeon.co/ideas/baby-boomers-are-divorcing-for-surprisingly-old-fashioned-reasons

 

Which doesn’t have anything to do with my response or the poster I was responding to.

Ffs get a new talking point. Where is your Latin quote?

 

FoxHastings said: ↑
It is what he actually posted :""" Marriage USED to be about improving the wellbeing of children that only heterosexual couplings produce. """"

So I proved you wrong and you made a silly statement...

Gays are quite capable of having sex any way they choose. ...with whomever they want just like straights….and there is also artificial insemination...

Such a limited knowledge of how kids are produced ...tsk, tsk.....gays are quite capable of producing children....as I said, they are NOT sterile...

 

Gay couples in and of themselves can not reproduce. They have to turn to a hetrosexual act to accomplish that and that is the issue here.

 

Heterosexuals do NOT own sex acts.....gay men can father children , and HAVE, and gay women can give birth, and HAVE...

 

The paragraph above what you quoted.

 

They do heterosexual acts which is what is necessary to create new human beings. Can you cite one human being in the history of human beings that was created through homosexual sex acts?

 

Thank you for the detailed description. The information, however, does not alter my view on the nature of change that adults go through in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

But I did find the quoted section interesting, as it demonstrates the acceptability of divorce in the US when violation of vows occurs.

 

For the purpose of apportionment for the Congress, sorta like should we count illegal aliens for the purpose of apportionment to the Congress. Of course it was the Northern states which did not want to count slaves as persons and the Southern states that did.

 

Actually, what is necessary is the fertilization of an egg by sperm. Which is done all the time in fertility clinics. So this, I think, would qualify as one of the historical events if the egg is fertilized by a gay sperm donor.

 

Yep. The founders had some lousy ideas and some good ones.

 

Both require hetrosexual copulation though. A gay couple can not by itself reproduce. To repeat what an earlier poster said, a gay couple can't reproduce but I would add the caveat of without going outside the parameters of their union.

 

Cute. I said "gay couples" and now you pretend I said "gay people" so you can pretend you have a relevant point. I don't know that many gay people but of the ones I know, most USED to be married to someone of the opposite sex and in fact have children.

 

Many did not, until they were married.

 

As anecdotal evidence I will add that I'm 70 and am amazed how much I've changed over the last decade. It dwarfs the change between my twenties and thirties.

 

Neither can infertile couples

 

You're trying to squirm around the fact........gay men can father children , and HAVE, and gay women can give birth, and HAVE...

 

...and many did.

 

I am reefing to the governments perspective on marriage. Individuals marry for a wide variety of reasons.

 

Just much fewer than today.

 

Difference is only some hetrosexual couples are infertile. All gay couples are infertile as a couple.

 

Heterosexually. Again can you cite one human being in the entirety of human history that was ever created homosexually?