Original post: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/stop-shaming-men
Archive post: https://archive.ph/JzmQy
It’s one of the most well known facts in social science that women initiate the vast majority of divorces – around 70% or so depending on the source you look at. It’s a fact I have never heard an evangelical pastor mention. In fact, as one feminist scholar found in her academic research, in evangelical sermons ‘women are framed primarily as receivers of divorce rather than initiators.’ And, while there have been improvements, divorce court and child custody practices still favor women. . . . It’s also worth asking what Blake – and by extension the rest of the evangelical leadership class – are doing to reduce these risks, help men manage them, or to create an environment in which men have a better chance of marital success. The answer is basically nothing. . . . They could tell men, “Get married and we’ve got your back.” But they don’t. Instead, should some man actually get married and any troubles arise, they will almost certainly blame him for it.”
Evangelicals, is there nothing they can't fuck up?
A good friend of mine from HS got married when he was still in college, and they waited a few years after graduation to have kids. He and his wife are still together; and their kids are coming up on HS age. So it can and did work out even among people I know, though he was certainly an outlier.
Another good HS friend was in the "no clear career goals" camp and drifted around a bit after college, and getting married seemed to have forced him to actually get his shit together so he could put food on the table.
Which is to say that there can also be some good that comes of it. Though these were both deeply religious people, so probably everyone in their life was telling them to make it work.
And it's not just college that causes people to miss the "sweet spot" but the fact kids are often moving away from home to attend college. And then moving away from where they attended college to start a career. So everything in life up to that point has a built-in time limit, and every time the timer resets you have to rebuild your social life from zero.
That would have been unusual 100 years ago.
It's going to be strange to see how things continue to develop with regards to social circles in the future due to the widespread presence of social media and the Internet.
I mean admittedly we've already had at least a decade or two to see how some of it plays out, but it's definitely been evolving at a faster and stranger pace than I ever could've anticipated. Not that it's necessarily a "bad thing", but it is rather strange and sometimes unpredictable.
And I'm still not sure if it's been a more positive or negative thing for those who grew up developing social circles and finding dates in person at a local level. Especially since some of those negative aspects can be attributed to design decisions made by the companies creating and managing online apps and platforms.
In either case it's certainly not been the easiest thing to try and adapt to.