Update On The Marriage Strike – Part 1
"You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation." --Marian Wright Edelman
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A marriage strike is the avoidance of marriage, especially by men. The term is often used by masculists to suggest that many men avoid (or should avoid) marriage out of a conscious fear of financial devastation in the event of divorce.
Advocates of the marriage strike hold that through the combination of laws permitting no-fault divorce and prevailing conditions in divorce courts that are substantially more likely to favor the wife over the husband in disputes over child custody, visitation rights, ownership of the family residence and other shared property, child support, and alimony, it is possible for a woman to divorce her husband unilaterally while simultaneously depriving him of the right to see his offspring and financially crippling him. They argue that since the divorce rate is high, and since women are more likely than men to seek no-fault divorce, scenarios like the above are a likely outcome of marriage, and that many men, fearing such an outcome, choose not to marry.
There have been numerous studies showing that a range of 60 to 93 percent of no-fault divorces in the United States were initiated by women, usually against a man who works a blue-collar job, for grounds cited as "emotional unfulfillment."
Proponents of the marriage strike advise that men should consider cohabitation as a safer alternative to marriage, or that in the event of marriage, men should protect themselves through prenuptial agreements. The current best means for protection still is to avoid both marriage and cohabitation.
From the various articles I have been reading, it appears that the marriage strike is gaining strength and the destruction of the family structure in our society is happening at an increasing rate. Not only that, but there is evidence that same situation is occurring in other countries.
The basis of this statement is the Census Bureaus recent publication of the fact that in this country, the number of households with unmarried couples outnumber the ones with married couples.
All this is occurring largely because of government intervention in family life, invasion of our Right to Privacy and the subsequent laws regulating divorce and welfare.
While outwardly mouthing platitudes of promoting family values and grand-sounding slogans about the government promotion of marriage on one hand, on the other hand they facilitate the ease with which couples can get a divorce by enabling “no fault’ laws and insuring the financial suicide and enslavement of one of the spouses.
Not only does one spouse receive a generous portion of all the others assets, house, pensions, etc. in the divorce but is granted liberal benefits associated with lifetime alimony welfare payments which stifles the incentive for that spouse to become a useful and self-support member of society.
Below are some of these articles that lend credence to this phenomena:
- Please read this Congressional Testimony for more information.
- 37 Percent of U.S. Births Out of Wedlock
- US National Center for Health Statistics: Divorce rate in 2003 was 50% of the marriage rate
- 15% of men are awarded custody, unchanged since 1994 (see p. 1).As a matter of routine in family court, fathers are awarded four days a month visitation to see their children.
- Annual support payments increase 18% to $40 billion paid by 7.8 million separated parents, 6.6 million are fathers
- Up to $4.1 billion available to states that create support and arrearage orders, and then collect (see 6B, 6C, & 6D).
- Divorced/separated men commit suicide 400% more than women (see # 5, 15).
- No Marriage - A case study against marriage to an American woman
- Don't Marry - A dissenting opinion on the social convention of marriage in Western society.
- Dump Your Wife Now blog - A blog for the unhappily married man who may be having marriage problems and is afraid to divorce for fear of losing assets and children.
- Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead PhD and David Popenoe PhD
- ‘Marriage Strike’ Set To Continue Indefinitely Until Family Law Is Reformed by Joint Parenting Association
- Fatherhood Faces Stacked Deck in Family Court by Phyllis Schlafly
- The Marriage No-Shows by Carey Roberts
- Have Anti-Father Family Court Policies Led to a Men's Marriage Strike? By Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson
- Women Lose When Feminists Bash by Carey Roberts
- The Marriage Strike by Wendy McElroy
- Lysistrata Complete text of the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes
- Eternal Bachelor blog - The thoughts and musings of a man who has cheated a woman out of a divorce settlement.
- Stay Single, Young Man! - by Vox Day.
- We all know family breakdown is destroying us. Don't talk, fix it What’s happening in Britain is indicative of what is happening here in the US. Only, the press won’t expose it.
Here are individual views on the marriage strike:
· Poem and a comment on the marriage strike
· Children and the "Marriage Strike"
· The New Paradigm
· The Smartest Man In Britain Today
· America the Bastard Nation.
· Men’s Legal Rights Being Swept Aside in Broad Brush Strokes Now
Be sure to visit these sites: www.abolish-alimony.org/ and www.alimonycentral.org
ABOLISH ALIMONY T-SHIRTS AND BUMPER STICKERS
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