The amount of comments espousing the idea that stable marriages can't be happy is off-putting to me and what I see as a reflection of how Americans value marriage.
I think the guideline makes 3 assumptions, and I only consider two of them to be reasonable.
The reasonable ones I would say are:
1. Complaining about downvotes is never interesting
2. Discussing HN as if it represented a single unified perspective is never interesting
The unreasonable assumption I believe is implied by the guideline is:
3. Meta-discussion is never interesting
Dang's comment in the example is essentially a meta-observation which I would say has perfectly fine merit, but goes against the guideline as it's written. While HN (or any other internet community) will never had a single unified perspective, it does seem to have certain prevailing sentiments and opinions about certain topics. We all can (and I'm sure we all do) observe trends in what comments are made on particular topics, and what types of comments are downvoted and upvoted, and I think discussing those observations is perfectly reasonable (as illustrated by the head moderator engaging in such a discussion).
If I were to improve it, I would write:
> Please do not complain about downvotes. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. If you wish to post meta-commentary keep in mind that the community represents a large variety of view points.
The problems you run into with interpreting that is that whether something is "complaining" or not, and whether a piece of meta-commentary is too narrowly framed is clearly open to interpretation. But the system of voting we have is already sufficient to handle that situation.
Perhaps it's not very important at all, but it would avoid some instance of a different type of comment, which is also never interesting. The "your comment doesn't follow the guidelines" comment.
See, it's not that easy, is it? Try to say clearly what meta-commentary is OK, and do it without using words that only mean something to the arch-message-board nerds, like "meta-commentary", and do it in a single sentence.
I've tried too and run aground almost every time. I don't think what we have now is optimal, or that "If you wish to post meta-commentary keep in mind that the community represents a large variety of view points." helps much.
It's an interesting project! I'm not being sarcastic. I've found Dan has been pretty receptive to guideline suggestions and broadly wants the same thing everyone else does: clear, concise guidelines that, well, guide the conversation on HN to the place we're trying to keep it.
I’m sure you’re not being sarcastic at all. I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with interpreting/writing/improving security policies, which largely revolves around the same sort of issues were discussing here. I would guess that you also have a fair bit of experience with that sort of thing.
My main point was that I think a guideline that nobody follows is arguably less valuable than not having a guideline in the first place. I think I did a reasonable job of articulating what I think is wrong with it, but I guess whether I have any useful suggestions for improving it is a different matter. I find the process of writing a policy usually involves suggesting a lot of bad ideas before you come up with a set of good ones.
I think "don't talk about downvoting" is one of our better policies, because it works: complaints about getting downvoted are reliably punished and often flagged off the site.
A thing the HN guidelines have to deal with that security policies definitely don't is minimalism. There's 1,000 additional guidelines I'd add if we could just have every guideline I want! "Don't dunk on programming languages in stories about unrelated programming languages"! "Don't write 2 line comments about how Google cancels every service it announces every time Google announces a new product"! "Don't correct other people's English usage"! If the HN guidelines were a security policy this would be a piece of cake.
A thing I think you'll probably notice is that a lot of serious, enforced rules on HN aren't even in the guidelines, because there isn't a minimal way to express them that won't cause more drama than it eliminates. We've got a sort of English common law thing going on here, where there's a jurisprudence you can only pick up by following the mods. I think it's actually working out pretty OK that way.
I would disagree about security policies not benefitting from a minimal approach. If they're exhaustive and tedious to read, then they won't be read or understood by the people who's decisions they're supposed to govern. Attempting to exhaustively enumerate the situations to which a policy could apply is a losing strategy. Making it as simple as possible for a person to know "what should I do here?" or "am I allowed to do this?" should be the ultimate goal.
What makes it more surprising to me (as a participant in the counter-contrarian dynamic that dang highlighted) is that among the many factors that correlate with reductions in divorce rate, they must surely be over-represented in the HN demographics: higher educations, greater incomes, later marriages, and more technical professions, for example.
HN commenters (or the stereotype thereof) who are married would actually be more likely to be in stable marriages, and thus able to weigh first-hand the relative likelihood of a stable/happy correlation.
> espousing the idea that stable marriages can't be happy
I don't see anyone saying this. Instead the claim is: when divorce is a cultural taboo, people are more likely to stick in an unhappy or even abusive marriage. This claim seems pretty uncontroversial, but at any rate it is a positive claim (not normative) whose accuracy can be judged by empirical data.
Agreed on the second point. There's certainly evidence that looser divorce laws allow people to leave unhappy marriages [1], though there's also evidence that these laws made marriage less stable and harmed children, so there are trade-offs [2, but see also 3].
I'm less sure of evidence that cultural taboos have the same effect. Here's some correlational work across countries on divorce norms and gender equality within marriage; this doesn't specifically address violence, though, and it doesn't control for other aspects of culture which probably covary with attitudes to divorce [4].
[1] Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J., 2006. Bargaining in the shadow of the law: Divorce laws and family distress. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(1), pp.267-288.
[2] Gruber, J., 2004. Is making divorce easier bad for children? The long-run implications of unilateral divorce. Journal of Labor Economics, 22(4), pp.799-833.
[3] Wolfers, J., 2006. Did unilateral divorce laws raise divorce rates? A reconciliation and new results. American Economic Review, 96(5), pp.1802-1820.
[4] Yodanis, C., 2005. Divorce culture and marital gender equality: A cross-national study. Gender & society, 19(5), pp.644-659.
What's even more off-putting is that they are commenting on divorce being "taboo". It's clear they have a specific immigrant profile in mind.
Immigrants can come from anywhere, and different countries have different views on divorce. Some countries are much less strict than the US on this matter.
Of course, the instant caveat is that defining Stable = In First Marriage doesn't mean they are necessarily "happy."
Huge cultural stigmas and structures that reinforce stability family structures is likely at play. Similar to how other stats show Religious folks have a lower rate of divorce. Partially because of the forces encouraging to not divorce, both positively with huge support networks to keep couples together, and negatively with implicit shame for those who break up. And also partially that many who divorce may also leave said faith (eg self-selection Religiosity). This second component of course doesn't apply to immigrants.
Plus, a "no divorce" policy can also create systems where spousal/domestic abuse can run rampant and no recourse to escape. So it's not always the best metric to optimize for.
Both ends will have extremes.
Too much calculations, too much expectations, keep hunting for better deals even after marriage, no willingness to compromise, having all eggs in spouse relationship basket and expecting her/him to play all roles, selfishness for own happiness but disregard for children's life, trivial reasons leading to breakup..
Plus culture where freedom, independence and success are more valued than institute of marriage, interdependence and family life.
On HN we consider article quality more than site quality [1]. This doesn't seem like a bad article to me. It's an interesting finding, not one that's been much discussed, and certainly possible to have a curious conversation about.
Arguably the article title is slightly misleading, because "stable family" can mean many things and has strong emotional associations. So I've changed the title to representative language from the article body [2], which is more precise.
Yes, agreed, I definitely don’t think it should be censored. In fact, the article’s conclusions are interesting, but it is my opinion that it is written in a somewhat deceptive manner.
Around the world, divorce and single parenthood are taboo, and raising children in two parent households is the social expectation. Even though that’s the dominant view in the world, IFS is one of the few American sources who will take the position that what most of the world believes and practices is actually a good thing. Meanwhile, standard left-leaning news sources like the New York Times religiously follow the minority viewpoint that the increased personal freedom from the sexual revolution and liberalized divorce laws justified those changes. So which exactly is the propaganda?
In addition to the above point many religious organizations offer services like counseling to couples who are struggling as well as things like play groups so parents can manage a date night every once in a while. If you are like me and not religious and have little actual exposure to this sort of thing you may want to spend some time visiting (post Covid) some churches to see what goes on there, its about 50% religion, 50% general life advice and community outreach. It's not surprising to me that a marriage with that support system is less likely to fail than one without.
Yes, if you are able to (many can't for whatever reason, ie messed up childhood). And yes of course, although those aims usually also bring some sort of happiness, at least they do ie for me
Stability and safety are both values that a lot of people would put before joy. But fundamentally we're approaching the penultimate "What is the meaning of life?" question - to which everyone has to find their own answers. I suspect hedonists would be inclined to agree with you.
Happiness is not the same thing as pleasure. People seeking happiness aren't necessarily hedonists. There's nothing wrong with seeking pleasure (or being a hedonist) but just saying that they shouldn't be considered equivalent.
I'm not sure if "stable" is the correct word here.
Story time. I'm 27, immigrant living in the U.S. for the past 12+ years. We moved here from Iran when I was in highschool and now I'm a PhD student in computer science. I have been in the school since we moved in here. I have a brother and a sister who are 12 and 15 years older than me. They were not able to move here because they were over 21 years old. I work 2 jobs (senior software engineer and teaching at university), own a house and support my family in Iran. Iranian currency has been devalued by x20 times at least since we moved in so economy is messed up over there. I wouldn't call it a stable life. It's more like a survival.
I'm not alone. I see international students (or couples) who work extremely hard to be able to get a job after graduation. Immigration is rewarding but not an easy path.
I haven't been able to go to back to Iran and visit my friends and family members but I am scared being detained and used for the purpose of "hostage diplomacy" by the Iranian government.
This isn't necessarily something to celebrate. "Not divorced" doesn't automatically mean stable. I'm Indian, and know so many couples (mainly older) who have been locked in loveless and joyless marriages for decades. Divorce is such a taboo subject in the community that it isn't something you can even consider. If you peel back the curtain you will see a shocking amount of infidelity, emotional/mental/physical abuse, marital rape and more, not exactly stuff I would associate with "stable" marriages.
Seems like there are a lot of confounding factors here.
For many people marriage is a prerequisite to immigrate to the us or bring their family over, and people risk deportation if they divorce. So saying that immigrant families are more stable can be akin to saying that H1B workers are more loyal to their company.
I also imagine living in a foreign country you spend a disproportionate amount of time just doing basic things, let alone growing a social circle from zero, let alone getting out and dating other people.
Yep, but it is a very just filter, i think, because it seems to kill off relationships that were already cracked and being held together by just pure will.
Had that happen with my parents. We immigrated when I was a teen, and just 4 years later my parents divorced. To people on the outside it seemed completely out of nowhere. But growing up with them, it was painfully obvious (in retrospect) that they kept it all together not by trying to actually solve problems or work things out, but by holding it all together just on pure will. It could've been held forever if everything else was stable, but immigration process and the experience of adapting to a new country is anything but stable.
While it sounds bad, I don't think of it as a tragic experience, and I don't wish that it had never happened. I am not happy that it happened either, but it was bound to eventually happen one way or another. Either that or one (or both of them) would just settle with being unhappy and miserable until the last days, being constantly anxious that one day that bridge held by duct tape would collapse.
Marriage is a tool for survival in more parts of the world than where it isn't. People around the world have more miseries to care other than marriage.
Immigration itself is a filter for education, wit, and wealth, and, sometimes, even physical fittness, and health.
By the definition, if both husband, and wife pass that, that's a very rare, lucky marriage.
Russia has huge divorce rates, but Russian immigration much lower.
Russians marry late back in Russia, but in mid-twenties, and early twenties marriage is commong among people I met.
There were probably more women from Russia I knew in technical occupations in the West than all other women in engineering I knew alltogether.
Think of it, if you were a woman, and was from the start aiming at studying for long 6 years, having harsh early career, and enduring hardship of living as a recent immigrant, you wouldn't be getting a husband whom you need to pull.
There doesn’t appear to be any comparison of ages between immigrants and natives. The age rage is “between 18 and 64”.
That’s a big range.
Too big.
How do I know — from the stats given — if the disparity is simply a matter of age?
If the native average age is 45 while the immigrant average age is 35, the ‘result’ may simply be a matter of the natives having had more time to get divorced.
Isn't this directly related to the divorce rates in their respective countries of origin? IMO, this plays a stronger role in the divorce rates than anything else. One number I would love to see if how the subsequent generations of the immigrants do, both divorce rates and financially.
Could it be that this actually tracks more with wealth than being an immigrant? Looking at the numbers in the study, those richer immigrant groups like Indians seem to skew the data away from poorer groups like South Americans.
My favourite book of the past few years, Eric Kaufmann's "Shall the religious inherit the earth", points out that some religious minorities, often quite extreme ones, are much better at having children, and are likely to spread at the expense of the mainstream. This cultural difference in family stability reminds me of that.
I would like to believe that the US and Europe can pick up whatever enables poor immigrant families to maintain stable families and viable reproductive structures – without buying into the more extreme aspects of some pro-natalist religious cultures.
It depends how cultish and restrictive the parents are. I know of some cults that even handicap their kids' English skills and keep them mingling amongst their own so that they don't really have any outside resources. Once they're economically dependent on their tribe, it's much harder for them to break out.
Yes, but those children that move away also move towards Western norms of sub-replacement fertility; while the children that don't, don't.
I wouldn't say the best way to think about this is "these crazies are baby-making machines!" (Strawmanning your argument a little there.) There is some craziness in e.g. Quiverfull protestantism or Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, sure. Nevertheless, if culture X is set to survive into the future on current trends, and culture Y is not, then maybe culture X isn't completely stupid.
I cannot find the citation anymore, but I remember reading about an interesting phenomenon related to this. Since I cannot find the source now, please call me out if it is actually wrong, but it seems to make sense and rings true to my personal anecdotal experiences.
Basically, the hypothesis is that immigrant families themselves indeed move away from extremism. But their children born in the new country tend to overcorrect and try to "discover the roots" by swinging harder in the opposite (extremism) direction. One generation down from the one that became less extremist, basically.
I might be confusing some details given how long ago I had read it (it might be not the children of the immigrant family, but children of their children, for example), but that's the gist, and I saw it happening myself more than once.
Let's not forget how the divorce system in the US HEAVILY favors women - perhaps more men would marry if the consequences of a bad marriage weren't so devastating.
yeah the potential of lossing access to children, your home, car, half of your possessions, and large part of your social network is not something to take lightly. then trying to peice your life back together when your have to pay alimony and child support, before your other expenses is a lot to ask when the alternative is free internet porn.
I agree. I like the idea of marriage. But in the US 1 party is given financial incentive to divorce and make the other person their indentured servant for life. That incentive may be a factor in the high divorce rate.
I like to say that an american marriage is a startup: you find an investor, pitch an idea, do some business activity, bring new board members (kids) and sell your share to move on to other opportunities.
They are not. They are normal. Would-be opinion-forming bullshit articles are supporting the bad guys, by delivering easy to refute narratives which ultimately support immigrant haters. I'm so sick of this good/bad scheme predisposed to paint immigrants bad.
Edit: from my perspective a new strategy of far-right idiots is to propagate "positive immigrant narratives" which then prove wrong, just because they have been exaggerated from the start. Cheap psychological trick, still effective.
The IFS does appear to be a right wing group. That said -- have you noticed this trend elsewhere?
From my not-terribly-informed position, it looks more to me like this is part of the ongoing power struggle in the conservative movement. They recently had fairly poor election results, and this looks more to me like an attempt by this group to reverse their looming demographic challenges by at least trying to reach out to immigrant groups.
I didn't vote on your comment because I couldn't really parse what you were saying. So the IFS makes a poorly supported argument for immagrant family stability, is the idea that it's giving the anti-immigrant community a leverage point to turn it into a crater?
I despise the idea of differentiating between immigrants and natives. All people are equal.
We all should be measured by equal terms. Quite often there are articles painting immigrants as innately good, which - to me - is the same racism as painting immigrants as bad.
Surely "all people are equal" does not mean "we should never do sociological research on people" or "any sociological research that finds statistical differences in how different groups of people behave is necessarily wrong and evil."
>I despise the idea of differentiating between immigrants and natives. All people are equal.
You seem to be confusing the words equal and same. Nothing in the article says immigrants aren't equal, it says their family dynamics are DIFFERENT. With statistics to back it up. It's no different than me saying that statistically: the average black family from alabama living in zip code 35033 consumes a different variety of food than the average hispanic family from south dakota living in zip code 57620.
Nothing about that says they aren't EQUAL, but they are absolutely DIFFERENT.
Calling that "racism" is a pretty blatant abuse of the term.
If I immigrate to Switzerland or Singapore, I should not have all the rights that the citizens have, such as right to vote or social programs which would stress their system. Not until enough time passes and I qualify to be a citizen.
Your comment is written as if immigrants are a homogeneous group, all identical to each other. That seems like a far more pernicious view than suggesting that they might differ (in positive ways, no less!) from natives.
Immigrant here - I don’t see ANY difference between myself, Americans, Indians, Russians or Chinese I have met while working here - at the end of the day we are all people
