"States offer financial incentives to have children with multiple partners, to marry and divorce multiple partners, and to have children with high-income sex partners who are already married. This is sometimes characterized as an attack on human tradition, but from a genetic point of view this is helping to return the human race to its origins. "Genetic Evidence for Unequal Effective Population Sizes of Human Females and Males" (Wilder, et al. 2004; Molecular Biology and Evolution, 21:11) concludes that the ratio of females to males in our genetic history is roughly 2:1. In other words, for every 100 women who had at least one baby there were only 50 men whose genetic material has survived. Assuming that fewer than 100 percent of women were able to have a child, that means more than half of men never reproduced. "A recent bottleneck of Y chromosome diversity coincides with a global change in culture" (Karmin, et al. 2015; Genome Research) suggests that, 8000 years ago, the ratio was as high as 17:1.
The era of "there's someone for everyone," a prohibition on polygamy, and people pairing up for life meant that many women were precluded from having children with the partners of their choice, e.g., because the chosen partner was already married to a different woman and there was no reliable mechanism for getting financial compensation for an out-of-wedlock child. An anthropologist told us that "rising divorce rates turned the U.S. into what is effectively a polygamous society. The higher-quality males will have multiple female partners and sets of children, but serially rather than in parallel. The lower-quality males will have their babies aborted, if they are even conceived in the first place."
Statistics support the theory that removing the stigma against single parenting and enacting a reliable system of child support guidelines and enforcement enables women to reject low-income men. For example, "The Marriage Gap: The Impact of Economic and Technological Change on Marriage Rates" (Greenstone and Looney 2012; Brookings) notes that 83 percent of men who were among the top 10 percent of earners in 2010 were married (it was 95 percent in 1970) while only 50 percent of men at the 25th percentile of earnings were married, compared to 86 percent in 1970. The authors note that "while the share of men who have been divorced has increased across the earnings distribution, an increase in the share of men who have never been married is the largest contributor to lower marriage rates."
"I've never understood why a woman planning children would marry a low-income father," said one attorney. "If she has a kid with a successful guy who's already married, her claim to his income will take precedence over the wife and kids' claims. What's not to like about that deal?"
The source is not kevin samuels but topic area is similar. The source is from real world divorce.
