Perhaps most significant, many men without college degrees are not marrying because the pool of women in their social circles — those without college degrees — has shrunk. And the dwindling pool of women in this category often look for a mate with more education and hence better financial prospects. ~The New York Times

Via Steve Sailer

As if it weren’t bad enough that modern education and professional psychiatry neglect and overmedicate boys when they are in school, the system is actually managing to educate their marriage prospects right out of their income bracket! 

Regarding another element of social and cultural breakdown, the experience of having gone through their parents’ divorce and the realistic probability that their marriage might end in divorce are enough to dissuade those in a position to marry from doing so.  As the article notes, to no one’s surprise:

For some men, living with a girlfriend is an attractive alternative given the possibility of a messy divorce. Many men fear that a former wife will take all their money. For blue-collar men, the divorce rate is twice that of men with college degrees.

This is, to put it mildly, a highly abnormal state for any sizeable number of people to be in.  We might then go into the social costs of the pursuit of chimerical gender equality, discuss the social disorder of a large population of permanent bachelors, generally berate a society obsessed with autonomous choice, point to the inevitable results of pushing women into the work force while simultaneously allowing the desanctifying and undermining of marriage, highlight the creation of job insecurity thanks to offshoring and outsourcing and other beneficial effects of “creative destruction” that make marriage very difficult for labourer and professional alike, or note the impact of immigration on the labour force and housing market.  Mr. Sailer has already touched on some of these.  However, I haven’t even had breakfast yet, so I’ll let those ideas float out there for your consideration.