"No Ring, No Baby: How Marriage Trends Impact Fertility"

"No Ring, No Baby: How Marriage Trends Impact Fertility" isn't the usual shit, and in it the author Lyman Stone asks, "So why has marriage declined?" The author gives reasons like "financial need, personal unpreparedness, and lack of a suitable partner. Those last two factors speak to the role of culture." Then there's a bunch about culture.

Nowhere is a link to Real World Divorce, which explains, in exhaustive detail, why smart guys don't marry. Marriage is an extremely high-risk activity for men, and it carries very little commensurate reward. If you want real-world examples, just go talk to pretty much any guy who has ever divorced. My friends have reach the "divorce" stage of their lives. It's ugly. Many are basically financially fucked for the rest of their lives, or at least for the next two decades.

For guys, it can make sense to marry a woman who makes a lot more money than he does. Most women, however, don't want to do that.

Our legal system has helped destroy marriage as much as the culture system Lyman Stone cites. Maybe we should have divorce reform.

Lyman Stone seems like he hasn't been over-conditioned by feminism, but he still isn't willing to look at one key factor behind the fall of marriage: the incentives facing men.