Atlantic: Make Birth Free
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Can you substantiate this? There has always been a lesser willingness among men to marry.
That was literally your complaint! Now you have different complaints. So what do you do about this? Make divorce more difficult when there are kids in the game, at least as a first step.
Get rid of no fault divorce, if you want the pretty tax breaks then you better be willing to earn them. We need to stop pretending marriage is anything other than a societal breeding contract. If you want to create a nuclear family you get tax break. Want to get divorced? Well that’s going to cost you. This will reestablish intent of marriage. We’ve made it so easy to get married and divorced that both need to be reestablished or done away with altogether. If someone wants a complete separation with no consent of the other they should have to cede all shared property. I want more marriages that last longer than 5 years and have kids, this is the most direct way to accomplish this. I think you’re placing too much value on people who shouldn’t be married to begin with and end up doing more damage to the institutions than good.
That is actually not that unreasonable. If you want to separate without cause, then you should not be treated as favorably as the other side. But bear in mind that this is still allowing no fault divorce.
But you'd drastically decrease the number of marriages as well. You're not thinking of second order consequences.
Everyone got married in history and did no 'damage' to the institution. Why should today be different? The problem is that they are allowed to do damage to the institution. We should not allow it.
Everyone historically that got married before the 60s did so when marriage still had meaning. If we separate marriage rates you see the massive difference. This eroticism and “love” as the main attributes of marriage came about due to no fault divorce not despite it. We have completely removed accountability to marriage and children. I’m curious how you define no fault divorce since it’s clearly far different than mine.
Historically, you were not even allowed to divorce unless there was adultery or abandonment. No-fault divorce means that you can divorce without such a 'fault'. So even if you punish the party that wants the divorce, that is still way more liberal than it was in the 19th century.