Marriage strike

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A marriage strike is the avoidance of marriage, especially by men. The term is often used by masculists to suggest that many men avoid (or should avoid) marriage out of a conscious fear of financial devastation in the event of divorce.

Advocates of the marriage strike hold that through the combination of laws permitting no-fault divorce and prevailing conditions in divorce courts that are substantially more likely to favor the wife over the husband in disputes over child custody, visitation rights, ownership of the family residence and other shared property, child support, and alimony, it is possible for a woman to divorce her husband unilaterally while simultaneously depriving him of the right to see his offspring and financially crippling him. They argue that since the divorce rate is high, and since women are more likely than men to seek no-fault divorce, scenarios like the above are a likely outcome of marriage, and that many men, fearing such an outcome, choose not to marry. There have been numerous studies showing that a range of 60 to 93 percent of no-fault divorces in the United States were initiated by women, usually against a man who works a blue-collar job, for grounds cited as "emotional unfulfillment." In Japan, where men are more likely to retain most marital assets after a divorce, the majority of divorce proceedings are initiated by men.

Proponents of the marriage strike advise that men should consider cohabitation as a safer alternative to marriage, or that in the event of marriage, men should protect themselves through prenuptial agreements.

This movement has parallels to the comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes, in which the women of Athens refused to have consensual sex with their husbands (a "sex strike") to secure the end of the Peloponnesian Wars.

Research

[US National Center for Health Statistics: Divorce rate in 2003 was 50% of the marriage rate]
[15% of men are awarded custody, unchanged since 1994] (see p. 1).
As a matter of routine in family court, fathers are awarded four days a month visitation to see their children.
[Annual support payments increase 18% to $40 billion paid by 7.8 million separated parents, 6.6 million are fathers]
[Up to $4.1 billion available to states that create support and arrearage orders, and then collect] (see 6B, 6C, & 6D).
[Divorced/separated men commit suicide 400% more than women] (see # 5, 15).

Marriage strike

See also

Research

Further reading