Dalrock Twice Strikes Gold

I have mentioned the blogger Dalrock before.  Besides dealing with statistics about marriage and divorce reasonably well, he is also very observant.  He recently wrote two noteworthy essays.

First, he noticed that America has moved from a marriage-based definition of family to a child-support-based definition of family.  This is discouraging men to marry.

There are some benefits.  For example, very few children now starve, for no fault of their own, because they were born socially illegitimate.  But the new system will ultimately hurt everyone because it will shrink the economy as men lose motivation to develop enough earning ability to support anyone besides themselves.  (And society cannot automatically and indefinitely afford child support for children born out of wedlock, as nice as that dream is.)

Second, Dalrock noticed that Americans have flipped an old script:

Instead of seeing marriage as the moral context to pursue romantic love and sex, romantic love is now seen as the moral place to experience sex and marriage.

I would go further than his claim.  Marriage is what makes romance healthy and productive, as well as moral.  Only those who have never read literary classics would be surprised that "following your heart" usually leads to grief and disaster.  People who embrace being moonstruck become destitute poets or bitter old bachelors/spinsters.