The Decline of Marriage
Like I imagine many HN readers, I had a visceral negative reaction to a lot of this post, since it directly attacks a lot of the new cultural norms I grew up in (and cherish).<p>On the other hand, it does seem to raise some interesting points, so I hope it doesn&#x27;t get flagged. Our new culture is relatively untested; a lot of our ideas about sex and relationships and children are only a couple generations old. I&#x27;m happily married with no children (maybe some to come in the future? Not sure). In this thread I&#x27;ve seen people propose polyamorous communes, and long term life partnerships with children but not marriage. These things <i>may</i> work out, but there&#x27;s not much of a historical precedent for them, as far as I know.<p>I recently came back from a trip to Oman. I talked with a ton of people there, and their cultural perspective was very different (and interesting!). While a lot of the younger adults were wanting to get married and have children a little later, there was still a pretty sizeable contingent of the population my age that already had several children. And it was clear that Islam there was such a community-driving force, I could see how their traditions were pretty robust.<p>All this to say, I have my doubts that my concept of &quot;prosperous, liberal, Western civilization&quot; will live on for the long term. But if the people are fairly content and happy as it fades, is that such an issue? I&#x27;m not sure. My biggest regret if it dies is that we may never figure out all the secrets of the universe. But alas, thinking of all my highly educated PhD scientist friends in their 30s, there&#x27;s only one child.<p>edit to add: I completely forgot to mention probably the most culturally interesting part (to me) of the Oman trip: it was for a wedding of a friend, but it was a mostly arranged marriage (the bride and groom had veto power, but their parents found the match and they only knew each other for a short while before deciding to marry).