Choose your mates wisely
Marriage is a failing institution. There are some basic factors driving this failure — judicial and societal — but the bottom line is indisputable: For the first time in US history, across all ethnic groups, the majority of women are unmarried and 40% of babies are born to unwed mothers.
The judicial reason is quite simple: women know that, most of the time, they’ll beat men in matters of alimony, child custody, and child support. Rewarding failure is self-fulfilling. Here’s a test: Ask any woman, about to get married, if she still would march down that aisle if there were no child support or alimony to collect upon dissolution of the impending union. Is she still giddy with glee or pissed off like a Swedish countess?Compounding the judicial factor is a specific societal shift: anything-goes America now celebrates unwed mothers. When unwed teen Jamie Lee Spears (Britney’s sister) became pregnant, her picture appeared on the cover of People magazine. On Oscar Night of 2009, Barbara Walters asked actress Anne Hathaway about marriage. The 26-year-old Hathaway selfishly expressed a desire to become a mom but not a wife. This narcissistic attitude is now the rule, not the exception.