It is as if something good were offered to people and, preoccupied with what is in their immediate interest, they reject it in favor of the pleasures of unmarried sex, brief cohabitations, unmarried parenthood, and frequent divorce. A bachelor may notice other men who are happily married, but he does not link their happiness to marriage. Sex for single men is less frequent and less enjoyable than for married ones. Men who choose to remain single spend most of their evenings at home, eating Cheez Dip and watching wrestling on television. But a puzzle remains.
Divorces are more common because they are more respectable.
No-fault divorce laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s have encouraged divorce, but these new laws were not controversial when they were put on the statute books. The culture has changed, and the law changed to catch up with it. A culture that once made divorce next to impossible became one that made it easy. The culture made it easy, in my view, because it has fully adopted the view that everyone has equal rights, that all agreements are private contracts that can be renegotiated at will, and that no higher authority or external public has the authority to ask people to act contrary to their preferences so long as they put no one else in danger. But Waite and Gallagher show that the erosion of marriage does put other people at risk, and Judith Wallerstein and her coauthors suggest how grave a risk it is.