Besides raising kids, a traditional marriage is an exchange of financial support for domestic products (“home economics”). These days men are better at producing their own domestic products and these products are more available on the open market (heat & serve meals, housekeeping by the hour, etc.). Women can get jobs that make enough to support themselves.

It has been argued that contemporary marriages are consumption partnerships. But I say marriages are still about producing something: relationship products. These are all the activities you like, from long walks on the beach to footrubs to sex that your friends don’t produce.

The two relationship products that men particularly benefit from consuming are:

• emotionally-intimate talking: for most men their only really good friendship with a woman is their partner
• social network building: in most marriages the woman manages social relationships from dinner parties to family gatherings

Single women are not missing such vital relationship products, which explains why married men are statistically happier than single men but single women are happier than married women. Men get married instead of serially date to ensure a reliable supply of relationship products. Women can get relationship products without marriage, so advertisers create the need for marriage-as-romance. Marriages centred around relationship product production are “companionate marriages”.

In a recent conversation/discussion on how pro-choice affects the sexes differently, I came to an interesting conclusion. Pro-choice doesn’t include the male in the relationship. It gives woman the choice, with half the responsibility going to the man. Let’s look at this from all four possibilities:

Man for, Woman for

They both want the baby; great, they have a baby, God willing. If the man leaves she knows that she will get child support payments for the baby as a minimum, plus half the net worth and alimony if they are married. Yes there is a small percentage of children that are given to the man in the relationship.

Man for, Woman against

She decides not to have a baby; she can have an abortion and they likely break up.

Man against, Woman against

They want an abortion; she has an abortion. Who knows if the relationship works out.

Man against, Woman for

She has the baby; he prays to God. If he decides to break up with her he will have to pay child support payments for the baby as a minimum, plus half the net worth and alimony if they are married.

Worse off, I’m stuck with a baby I don’t want, but my morals will force me to look after it.

I know of two girls that are very close friends that both “accidentally” got pregos very close to each other. They were both supposedly on birth control. The first one may have been an accident, but the second one I don’t believe. This is a situation that I don’t want, and the real reason I wear a condom.