The only way most men were kept in line, marching off to their dreary jobs, was with a Noble Lie, that it would make them honoured as heads of houses. You can make a man literally die for honour; but he won’t work himself to death for an ungrateful woman who regards him simply as somewhere between a joke and an oppressor. –David Collard

When reading the 2010 State of Our Unions report for my post Whistling through the graveyard? I noticed the following quote:

Probably because of marital social norms that encourage healthy, productive behavior, men tend to become more economically productive after marriage. They earn between 10 and 20 percent more than do single men with similar education and job histories.

They cite several papers which have investigated this, and in doing just a bit of my own research I found that this is a fairly common topic of academic inquiry. What is fascinating is the theoretical models the papers are considering. It never occurs to them that when men marry they take on the burden of providing for a family. Men with families earn more because they have to. It isn’t a benefit of having a family, it is a cost.

I’m not complaining about the cost, but simply pointing out that it is what it is. However, outside of the manosphere the world appears to be oblivious to this. Here are the common theories studies tested when considering the fact that married men earn more than their unmarried counterparts:

Married men can focus more on paid work since they are freed up from doing housework. Women can spot the men with secret potential to earn the most. Men don’t earn more because they marry, they marry because they can earn more. Patriarchal employers are paying married men more out of the goodness of their hearts.

Obviously the courts understand the reality here which is why they threaten divorced men with imprisonment if they don’t earn enough money. They know that the incentive to work hard to support a family is removed when the man’s family is taken away from him. Take away the man’s family and you have taken away his reason for working harder.

But the actions by the courts are only a short term solution. Sooner or later men in general will become aware of the new reality. Getting married no longer is a reliable path to having a family, but the burdens will be yours for the duration either way. In theory we would have a group in our society invested in conserving the traditional family. If I had to make up a name for such a theoretical group, I’d call them Traditional Conservatives.

Now that I mention it, we already have a group by that name and with those stated goals. However, they aren’t interested in ensuring that the traditional patriarchal model of the family is protected*. Instead, almost all of them have made it a habit to cut men off at the knees. Their unwritten agreement with feminists has been and continues to be to hold men down while feminists rob them.

In one sense I can see where the Trad Cons are coming from. They are only trying to conserve today’s culture, and have already swallowed yesterday’s feminism whole*. From their point of view they need to make sure men keep signing up to do the additional work required make them attractive as a potential husband, and later after marriage take on even more work to support their new family. But they don’t want unhappy sluts, so they can’t fight against divorce theft and the intentional shift of power to wives within marriage. The only option this leaves them is to try to shove more men into the machinery and pretend all is well.

What the Trad Cons trying to shove more men into the hopper haven’t considered is that (surprisingly) it doesn’t seem to be men catching on that has lead to our growing batch of unmarried women. They were so busy holding men down so the feminists could rob them that they didn’t notice that the feminists were convincing women to delay marriage past all reason. Now we have a generation of men who didn’t get the signal to prepare for marriage. While there is a great deal of hand-wringing that these men are shirking their economic duty to prepare to marry a washed up 30 something carouseler, hard stats are typically in short supply.

However, fellow blogger (and proof of NATCALT*) Oz Conservative had a post the other week which may back the theory up. In his post Pay gap is now running the other way? he shares stats from the US Census which show that single women between 22 and 30 earn 8% more than single men of the same age. I’ve seen statistics like this before, but Oz Conservative helped me connect the dots here:

But what happens when men don’t just “go with the flow” but get more motivated? What happens when men start to take on family responsibilities and settle into a stronger work ethic? At that point in time, men start to earn more than women, many of whom are downscaling their work commitments. But when men in their 30s and 40s start to earn more, do we get the media cheering them on for their strong work ethic? No, it gets presented as a great social injustice that has to be rectified by state intervention.

Oz Conservative is spot on here, but this still leaves the question of how many of today’s unattached 30 something men will be lured by the possibility of marrying an ageing career woman/former carouseler to knock themselves out career wise. The other question is what percentage of those men who are already successful will want to roll the dice on marriage in our current legal and social climate. This is a question which will greatly impact everything from future tax revenues to property values. If beta men don’t perceive the incentive to take on the role of family provider it is because we as a society have spent great efforts to degrade that role. No amount of chanting man up and marry those sluts! will change this.

*Not all Traditional Conservatives are like that