Inky said:
This saying has always irked me. It assumes that sex is a commodity women give to men in exchange for something they actually want, that women only have sex with men they want to marry, and that men will only marry in exchange for sex. If someone dating me would think of the relationship as a waste if we didn't get married eventually, I'd want to know that from the start so I could decide whether I could commit to their expectations. In the same way, if someone was only going to marry me because I'd stop withholding sex from them, I'd probably break up with them if I found that out.
I can understand why it might irk someone. The problem is, if you give the guy the "milk" for free, you don't really know if he'll commit or not, because *he doesn't have to.* I can't tell you how many times a woman told her significant other, "OK, so we've been together 3 years...let's get married, you've had long enough to decide you like this" and a week later, he's moved out.
The correlation is there, but that doesn't mean that one caused the other. People living in poverty are more likely to have children out of wedlock; that doesn't mean that the child caused the poverty.
No, you misunderstand me entirely. What it means is that a child born out of wedlock is far more likely to be in a position where he/she will be supported by only one parent, not two. And the one parent will be female, and studies continually show women have 75% the earning power of men as well. That's where the poverty comes into the picture.
While promiscuity is spread through STDs,
Uh...I think you mean the reverse?
this has more to do with people who have sex with a large number of strangers, since that's the situation where the partners are less likely to tell the truth about their health. Sex within a committed dating relationship is unlikely to spread STDs since you probably don't want to lie and give a disease to someone you care about and are attached to.
Nice rationalization, but the science doesn't back it up. I suggest you speak to an epidemiologist about this, because you're flat out wrong on this one.
It isn't about telling the truth or not telling the truth, because often STDs are spread when the person doesn't even know they have an STD.
And no, you don't have to have oodles of multiple partners for the mathematics to be compelling. Even 3 is sufficient. Clearly the more partners people have on average the faster the spread, but the spread will occur even with minimal partners.
If those living together are really committed as in "for life" as in "married" there won't be multiple partners. (In an ideal world -- yeah, I know there's divorce.) You can't say that about cohabitants, because the research shows they simply aren't as committed as those who bother to get married. They break off and rejoin with other partners throughout their lifetimes at a significantly higher rate than married folks do.
And if you went back 30+ years, you'd see an even wider gap, because divorce was considered something shameful then, and you'd better have a really good reason for getting one (like alcoholism or beatings), or your neighbors and family would ostracize you.
Well, that might be an apples and oranges comparison then, because people didn't really cohibitate then either. There were common law marriages sometimes, but they were "marriages" for real, just without the paper. The participants weren't just kicking the tires and slamming the doors to see how they liked the ride.
