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Elitist Marriage
So, apparently another elitist upper-middle-class thing that we do is get married, according to this Washington Post article.
This stand-out statistic caught my eye:
...about a third of first births among white women coming before marriage, compared with three-quarters among black women.
This stand-out statistic caught my eye:
...about a third of first births among white women coming before marriage, compared with three-quarters among black women.
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This sets off my "look at the study" alarms wrt implied causation, btw.
I expect that being unable to pay the bills puts significant stress on relationships, as does having two full-time wageearners and insufficient disposable income to afford domestic help.
I also expect that people incapable of holding down a job due to psychological factors may also have some difficulty maintaining a long-term relationship.
I also expect that the increase in married-couple income vs. single-household income confounds with the trend to marry later among professionals (since older professionals generally have higher incomes).
But yeah, that one-third statistic surprises me. Though I'd be interested to know how much of that is "previously committed couple deciding to get legal protections now that she's pregnant" vs the media-conventional shotgun wedding.
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WRT to the causation questions, yes, I had those, too. There were a number of places in the article where I wanted citations and more rigorous grammar.
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Mm. Yes, I was reading "coming before marriage" in a more literal sense, though now that you say it, your reading is far more likely given how studies like this usually work.
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I find it really fascinating that getting married is becoming something lower-income and less-well-educated people don't do.
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