Crisis actors! The Washington Post’s looming “marriage crisis” is more conservative fabulation.
By 
Can there be too many reminders that everyone who associates with the right wing is a lying piece of shit?
No. Never. Here’s another.
The Washington Post’s recent attempt to fuel the usual weirdos’ rage against a marginalized group (young women) with the crackpot misogyny of marriage promoters introduced me to Family Inequality, a blog by sociologist Phillip N. Cohen. Cohen really does not care for for the marriage promotion crowd. They’re the patriarchy-pushing pervs who treat marriage like Chris Rock’s dad treated Robitussin. The Washington Post Editorial Board based its recent freakout about women acting all uppity by not marrying on the propaganda-disguised-as-scholarship from marriage promoters like Brad Wilcox and the Institute for Family Studies & Privacy Invasion.
In a Nov. 5 post, Cohen discussed a problem with marriage promoters’ attempts to reverse the trend of lower marriage rates. He starts with a study about teen pregnancy that had some problems.
In her book, Kearney describes a study she did with Phillip Levine which claimed a causal relationship between local ratings for the MTV show 16 and Pregnant, starting in 2009, and a decline in teen birth rates. But the decline in teen pregnancy had 15 years of momentum by that point, so not only was the supposed effect of the show swimming with the tide, making it much less important, it would also be hard to detect even if it were real. This was the basis for a (to me) convincing critique of her paper, by some pretty good economists, showing the teen birth rate already declining in those markets where the show was to become popular before it ever aired. Kearney does not mention, or even cite, that critique in her book. Her story is only impressive to people who don’t realize the direction in which history was already steamrolling:
Go to the link for a chart that illustrates data that the researchers somehow missed during their researching.
What about marriage? The global decline in marriage (mostly by delaying till later ages) is a key element of the world’s progress toward falling fertility, and a universal element of its unsteady path of modernity (and gender equality). The social change from universal marriage to marriage-by-choice results, by mathematical necessity, in a lower prevalence of marriage. Once it reaches some low point, hypothetically, maybe fluctuations in the behavior of some groups will produce an increase in overall marriage prevalence, but we do not seem anywhere near that point yet.
Go to the link for charts that illustrate the so-called marriage collapse.
According to the WPEB, this collapse is approaching, looming, pending or some other ominous verb because women in their early twenties might avoid men who hate them. According to the data, the ominous verb of marriage collapse verbed half a century ago. Why haven’t Gen Z women built time machines, gone back in time to before they were born and forced more people to get married? Or told their younger selves to support Republicans? Or some other impossible thing? Kids today. I tell ya.
People who post off-topic comments think the WPEB should ramp up the concern.
