Steve Chapman argues in his latest article for Reason:
A much more obvious reason why domestic violence has gone down dramatically since that era is that it is taken much more seriously--too seriously, depending on who you ask. In fact, in many jurisdictions, the police are actually by policy required to arrest someone that they can blame for the incident in order to make sure that all Is have been dotted and all Ts have been crossed with respect to the reports of domestic violence.
While it's true that divorce rates have tended to go down, they seem to have gone down at rates that are fairly comparable to the rate of marriage itself; you have to be married in order to get a divorce, after all. This article from USAToday shows that the rate of marriage has actually been in deep decline since the 1970s.
Of course, the one thing that Chapman conveniently left out is the fact that feminists have fought bitterly to ensure that no laws pertaining to alimony, child support and asset division have not been adjusted accordingly. From a libertarian point of view, this is problematic because in many cases, contracts are just conveniently thrown out by the judge to the benefit of the spouse that is leaving (usually the wife) without legal recourse for the non-consenting spouse. It is also extremely unfair that a spouse may simply walk out one day, and in many states take half of the assets regardless of the wishes of their spouse, or any consideration for how much the spouse that is leaving has invested.
With more families moving toward cohabitation, eventually feminist groups will advance on that lifestyle and demand a similar situation for asset division, etc. The only result from the further disintegration of marriage will be more state power.
It may seem obvious that easier divorce laws make for more divorce and more insecurity. But what is obvious is not necessarily true. What two scholars have found is that when you make divorce easier to get, you may actually produce better marriages.Chapman goes on to actually use the word boyfriend at least once in the article to describe what he meant by intimate partners there. Now, I know what you're thinking. How the hell do you divorce your boyfriend/girlfriend? I don't know, and chances are Chapman doesn't know how that works, either in practice or as an argument for divorce laws, but there you have it.
In the old days, anyone who wanted to escape from the trials of wedlock had to get his or her spouse to agree to a split, or else go to court to prove the partner had done something terribly wrong (such as committing adultery). The 1960s and '70s brought "no-fault" divorce, which is also known as "unilateral divorce," since either party can bring it about without the consent of the other.
The first surprise is that looser divorce laws have actually had little effect on the number of marriages that fall apart. Economist Justin Wolfers of Stanford University, in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that when California passed a no-fault divorce law in 1970, the divorce rate jumped, then fell back to its old level-and then fell some more.
That was also the pattern in other states that loosened their laws. Over time, he estimates, the chance that a first marriage would break up rose by just one-fourth of one percentage point, which is next to nothing.
In short, nothing bad happened. But in another NBER paper, Wolfers and fellow economist Betsey Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania report that in states that relaxed their divorce laws, some very good things happened: Fewer women committed suicide, and fewer were murdered by husbands or other "intimate" partners. In addition, both men and women suffered less domestic violence, compared to states that didn't change their laws.
A much more obvious reason why domestic violence has gone down dramatically since that era is that it is taken much more seriously--too seriously, depending on who you ask. In fact, in many jurisdictions, the police are actually by policy required to arrest someone that they can blame for the incident in order to make sure that all Is have been dotted and all Ts have been crossed with respect to the reports of domestic violence.
While it's true that divorce rates have tended to go down, they seem to have gone down at rates that are fairly comparable to the rate of marriage itself; you have to be married in order to get a divorce, after all. This article from USAToday shows that the rate of marriage has actually been in deep decline since the 1970s.
Of course, the one thing that Chapman conveniently left out is the fact that feminists have fought bitterly to ensure that no laws pertaining to alimony, child support and asset division have not been adjusted accordingly. From a libertarian point of view, this is problematic because in many cases, contracts are just conveniently thrown out by the judge to the benefit of the spouse that is leaving (usually the wife) without legal recourse for the non-consenting spouse. It is also extremely unfair that a spouse may simply walk out one day, and in many states take half of the assets regardless of the wishes of their spouse, or any consideration for how much the spouse that is leaving has invested.
With more families moving toward cohabitation, eventually feminist groups will advance on that lifestyle and demand a similar situation for asset division, etc. The only result from the further disintegration of marriage will be more state power.
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"...you may actually produce better marriages."
No-fault divorce doesn't produce better marriages. What it does do is allow the weakest ones to die.
"The first surprise is that looser divorce laws have actually had little effect on the number of marriages that fall apart. "
This may be true on its face, but raw numbers tell us little about the rate of divorce, which was already declining in the late 1960s and 1970s due to a decline in marriage.
Enactment of no-fault divorce caused an 20-30% upward shift in overall divore rates over time. Although the referenced paper concludes that no-fault had a minor effect on divorce rates, the author neglects to account for the confounding variable of declining marriage rates in his computations. In addition, this study from Europe concluded that unilateral divorce increased the divorce rate by 20%
"Fewer women committed suicide, and fewer were murdered by husbands or other "intimate" partners [in states that enacted unilateral divorce laws]"
Data such as this is useless unless the data from the other states is provided as a comparison. And even then I don't see where they've tried to isolate and eliminate confounding factors.
"eventually feminist groups will advance on that lifestyle and demand a similar situation for asset division"
It's already happening, my friend
I loved this quote from the article:
"A change in divorce laws alters the balance of power in a marriage, giving more leverage to the weaker or more vulnerable spouse. If either partner can demand a divorce, each has a greater incentive to keep the other content. "
It alters the balance all right, to the point that it handsomely rewards one partner for initiating a divorce at the expense of the other. This isn't an equal playing field, and there's no amount of "keeping the other happy" that will do when one partner has every incentive in the world to cash the other in.
Mike I just tried to comment and it got eaten. Are your comments on the blink again?
Nope, you just had too many links in there. Most spam filters moderate any comment with two or more links in them because that's usually one of the first signs that it might be spam.
eventually feminist groups will advance on that lifestyle and demand a similar situation for asset division
Yeah, I think they do this in the U.K. now.
The result is predictable: men simply won't shack up with women anymore. They'll get together for sex, but they won't sleep under the same roof.
The only result from the further disintegration of marriage will be more state power.
Which is precisely why it's being done. No authority that is not of the state can be tolerated by the all-encompassing state.