Men rightly perceive marriage as extremely dangerous to their financial and emotional health. The current "justice" situation favors females as heavily as it favored males back in the 1900's (and favors them today in many islamic countries).

If you marry, at any time the female can decided she doesn't want to be married any more and via no-fault laws, you can't stop the divorce. Society puts no pressure -- and indeed frequently turns on the man and encourages the divorce even when the female is having an affair with some new guy.

The children are automatically awarded to the mother in 99% of cases and "child support" (i.e. alimony by another name) of 23 to 50% of the males net income is awarded to the female. There are absolutely no constraints on how the female spends the money. In my case, my daughter spent 2 years in a closet-- in a friend's case, the wife's new boyfriend loafed around for free in his house while he also paid childsupport on top of the mortgage.

The NUB of the problem is "style to which they have become accustomed". This cuts one way-- if the male later gets raises, the child support frequently escalates-- on the other hand if they lose their income, it takes a lot of effort to get the fees reduced. And in any darn case, there should just be one standard amount of money for child support in my opinion. If the father wants to give extra money cool.

Finally, the worst agony is that custody is awarded to the mother (again in 99% of the cases) who gets the child 24 days a month while the father gets to see them 6 days a month, a few weeks in the summer and every other holiday.

I stood by my daughter for 18 years and the end result was when she married at 22 she was as loyal to the stepfather as she was to me- dividing the father's marriage duties and privileges 'fairly' between us. Hell- why not, he raised her 24 days a month while I got 6 days.

The best strategy seems to breed so prolifically that there is not enough money for all the kids and you don't even try to bond emotionally with them because the woman will just screw you over repeatedly (it took my ex a good decade before she stopped purposely trying to screw with me occasionally and I paid regularly and was not a jerk).

Fact is most divorced mothers want your money but otherwise want you out of their life-- they left you, why should they have to see you every 2 weeks?

And most divorced fathers just want to get away and start over again, hoping maybe this time it will work out. The 6 day a month thing is incredibly painful and you just want ot run away and forget about the child.

The fix is to strongly bolster marriage by making divorce harder and to remove the *VERY HIGH* financial incentive currently offered to women to divorce. The financial rewards are now so high (if the husband has a job) that it feels like society wants any successful, well-off couple to divorce.

gotta agree with this, although its not always divorced people that get screwed, my sister and her ex had joint custody (and were never married) and because she made more money SHE had to pay exorbitant amounts of child support to the dad and was still paying extra to her daughter so that she could have decent clothing and what not. The dad used the money as he wanted, and it was not a great situation for my sister.

You said: "Men rightly perceive marriage as extremely dangerous to their financial and emotional health." Horsecrap. Study after study shows that married men are both more successful, happier, and make more money than men in the single department. I'm one single example among millions. I know there are plenty of venal women out there, but maybe you should be aware that when you point the finger of blame, there are three long fingers pointing back at you. Generalizing from one individual experience is irrational and proves nothing. And claiming that women get all the breaks legally is irrelevant. That is not what Yoffe was talking about.

Go read Osborne v. Adoption Center of Choice, a case where a woman took a child with whom she had been living with the father (but not married to him) from North Carolina to Utah to give it up for adoption. The Utah court ruled that the father had no parental rights and that Utah could assert jurisdiction over the matter regardless of the Interstate Pact.

It is a very chilling case that ought to make every father think that marriage + divorce is *far* better than never getting married.

Birth control for men is the best defense against unwanted father-hood. Don't whine about how unfair it is. Most men know the risks and ignore them.

My issue is over valued fatherhood, not unwanted fatherhood.

I think that women who refuse to allow a father to take that role are fundamentally as much to blame as fathers who leave.

Mothers are also not much better at paying child support either by any measure, and are worse by some measures.

You said: "Men rightly perceive marriage as extremely dangerous to their financial and emotional health." Horsecrap. Study after study shows that married men are both more successful, happier, and make more money than men in the single department."

What has this to do with this very accurate perception? I've seen too many examples of men with assets going into marriage and getting taken to the cleaners.

And what does marriage have to do with the benefits you describe? Basically married men have these benefits because they had them going in and this made it easier for themto get hitched. Not the other way around!