Much of social progress was supposedly intended to benefit women and instead ended up benefiting men.

A roundup of the latest data on the status of marriage, relationships and sex from Swiping and Dating Preferences  by Rob Henderson.  The subheading is Gender divides in sex and relationships.

A lot of interesting material to mull, consider and speculatively interpret.  On marriage and happiness.

The report notes that “No change has altered the fabric of American life so profoundly as the decline of marriage.”

One reason for this is the rise of cohabitation. The number of Americans cohabitating with their romantic partner has more than doubled over the past three decades.

Interestingly, a recent survey found that men in cohabiting relationships are just as satisfied in their relationships as married men, but women in cohabiting relationships are much less satisfied than married women. Much of social progress was supposedly intended to benefit women and instead ended up benefiting men.

Perhaps this is one contributing factor to the paradox of declining female happiness.

Women used to report having higher well-being than men. Over the past several decades, though, this has reversed. Women’s self-reported happiness has plummeted. Today men report higher well-being than women.

This is consistent with most the data I have seen.

It has always stuck me that this is a classic Chesterton's fence example.  

From The Thing, 1929 by G.K. Chesterton.

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

In this instance, there is the culture and tradition and religious norms (fences) which encourage marriage and the stability and longevity of marriage.  From the late 1880s onwards, spreading from Britain, there has been a tendency in the Women's movements (mostly made up of Upper Class women) to see marriage as a socially imposed burden which constrains the choices and opportunities for all women.  As that more jaundiced view has seeped in, marriage rates have tumbled, as have birth rates.

But there is Chesterton's fence and there is Bastiat's That Which is Seen, and that Which is Not Seen.  Why did culture, class, tradition and religion all create these encouragements of marriage.  Yes, marriage expectations can, under some conditions and for some women, be a burden.  But what are the benefits which apparently historical conditions made marriage such a beneficial outcome?

On the one hand there is the simple biological imperative and circumstances.  Unconditioned by culture or religion, the burdens and risks of pregnancy overwhelmingly rest with women.  Men are overwhelmingly focused on mating many times with many women.  There is a biological and risk asymmetry.  On the other hand women are societally indispensable in terms of continuity whereas the great majority of men are dispensable.  This shows up in the statistics where a much higher percentage of women (84%) have ever had children than do men (76%).  

It has always struck me how shockingly frank are old Southern matriarchs of a certain age when talking about this issue of women and cohabitation.  They almost always raise the adage "Why buy the cow when the milk is free."  It is a brutally frank truism.

Henderson's reported statistics also tie to a version of pathological altruism - attempting to do theoretical good while making actual things worse.  From the other side of the Christian tradition, from The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, 1949 by C.S. Lewis.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The striving by upper middle class women (who generally did not work) for more life choices (which were anticipated to be better choices ) for elite women like themselves, has turned out to have had a much more questionable legacy than was anticipated, especially for the 80% of women who did not have the luxuries of the 20%.  Strikingly, it is the educated upper income women who tore down Chesterton's fences who are now the ones most unhappy with the outcomes arising from the absence of those fences.  

Henderson's essay has no answers but interesting data and information.