…it’s been a revelation and confirmation of an intuition: in some ways,
gay men may benefit from marriage more than any other group.
That’s Andrew Sullivan, responding to the spot-on Megan McArdle, who also believes that men benefit more from marriage than do women.
“gay men may benefit from marriage more than any other group”
compared to children of married vs non-married parents, i very much doubt that.
Well, I guess that explains why a husband traditionally comes with a dowry; to make up for the loss of benefit…
Y’all realize that you’re doing exactly what my model predicts, right?
Society, i.e. advertisers, the media, etc. tells you to eat worse and take risks (and get skinny, if you’re a woman). That is the real “institution.” And far and away that is who you listen to. But those nags you allude to *do* benefit. Insurance companies lower their risks by putting us all in seat belts and making us lose weight. As does the government covering the insurance gaps. As does your poor nagging wife, who gets more good earning years toward the end of your short(er) life.
the strongly supports the view
This should of course read, “the wife strongly supports the view”. No, wait. I mean the data. The data strongly supports the view …
Isn’t there another way to interpret the association between having kids and being less happy? Perhaps young couples who are very happy with their lives decide not to have kids, because they’re already happy the way things are and don’t want to rock the boat. On the other hand, people who feel less happy and fulfilled might be more likely to have children, in the hope that this will make them happier and give their lives more meaning.
I assume that these sorts of things were controlled for in the relevant studies (unfortunately, you can’t do a randomized control trial for this sort of thing), but it seems equally plausible to me that the causation could go the other way. Couldn’t happiness make you less likely to have children, rather than the other way around?
Comments on this entry are closed.