Several times in the course of this thread I’ve seen mention of the fact that 50% of all marriages fail. This bit of common knowledge is almost universally believed, but it is simply not true.
The US Census measures marriage in ten year cohorts according to when you were born. If you look at the actual census numbers, across the entire population on average, about 30% of marriages have failed. This number rose greatly due to the behavior of the two “baby boom” cohorts, but has been declining as the Gen X and even the Gen Y cohorts (so far) have come of age.
No cohort, not even the boomers, has ever had a divorce rate higher than the mid 30% range, with a prediction that the second boomer cohort will eventually reach 41% over their lifetimes. At one time, the Census did PREDICT a 50% divorce rate for boomers, but they have backed off that to the 41% level.
The 50% myth also comes from comparing the number of divorces versus marriages in a given year, which tells you little about how people do over a lifetime. The peak for divorces was the late 1970′s, when boomers entered the deadly 7 to 15 years of marriage period and divorces, for a time, averaged 50% the number of marriages in those years.
Even if the failure rate of marriage is lower than commonly believed, I still think women have foolishly made marriage a horrible deal for men in all sorts of ways, not least giving away the best incentive for marriage, easy access to sex, for free.
