Seeker, the following might help. It comes from an article on a book by Susan Sharpiro Barash. She wrote the book after interviewing 500 wives across America and the book is titled “The New Wife: The Evolving Role of the American Wife”. (NB this is a book about Americans, but Australians seem to copy Americans so I guess Australian wives will become like American wives eventually).

-The new wife is usually a member of Generation Y and takes the best bits from the past: the romance of the 1950s plus the hard work her mother did in the 1960s.
-She is happy to return to the workforce after a five-year child-minding gap “They believe they can return to their careers at any time” says Barash
-The New Wife has a husband who supports her. “These men prefer to make more money so their wives can stay at home”.
-“Potentially a good provider” is on her shopping list when looking for a husband. “It is a very calculated conscious decision on the part of these women” says Brash.

Now Social Science has had a long history of being a highly relevant science that is highly non-sexist and regards both sexes equally, which is the reason why this study is on wives only, and not husbands and wives combined. But if husbands were asked what they wanted from a marriage and a wife, it could very well be like this:-

-The new husband is usually a member of Generation Y and takes the best bits from the past: the romance of the 1950s plus the hard work his father did in the 1960s.
-He is happy to return to the workforce after a five-year child-minding gap “They believe they can return to their careers at any time” says Barash
-The New Husband has a wife who supports him. “These wives prefer to make more money so their husbands can stay at home”.
-“Potentially a good provider” is on his shopping list when looking for a wife. “It is a very calculated conscious decision on the part of these men” says Brash.

So a male cannot afford to waste too much time trying to determine if a woman would be a potential wife. During this initial stage, (which was once called courting), he can be charged with sexual harassment, stalking, date-rape, or emotional violence.

So he has to make some quick decisions about this potential wife, and if he sees that she will not meet his requirements or expectations, he should be quickly moving along to the next woman at the bar.

As far as non-custodial fathers being allowed to have more contact with their natural children without killing them etc, then I think that there is ample evidence that they can.

Certain people in certain organisations must have made an oversight, but divorced fathers often get remarried and they have step-children. They see these step-children daily, so this means that they should be able to see their natural children more often than once a fortnight, (and have to pay money to the mother for that privilege).

Timithy, seems to be a slight misunderstanding.

I’m asking why is it that out of those marriages that fail, the women made mistakes about choice of partner, more than 70% of the time. With all this advice available to them, why do women get it so wrong so often?

If we agree with your argument that men spend less time in choosing and courting, than that means women spend more time in such activities. This would then be another reason for them not to get it wrong as often as they do. Would it not?

Are we then saying that for women, it is all about marrying-up, having good children, and when family assets sufficiently accumulate, make the break (taking the 70% in assets, 90% of children, and 36% in child support) in readiness to attempt correction of her initial error in choice of partner?

Is it simply that women have different tastes in men, in their 20’s 30’s 40’s and beyond?

Seeker, I guess it depends on what is meant by the “ wrong decision”. Perhaps it has more to do with a stimulus-rich, experience-poor environment that we definitely do live in.

If it is believed by society that it is acceptable for a man or a woman to have several different partners in their life so as to provide lots of stimulus (ie the novelty of meeting someone new, having a whole new set of relations etc) then there is nothing “wrong” with that because society is agreeable to it.

The main problem would come with any children involved, (although there are problems regarding more mundane matters such as division of assets etc to be agreed upon). How many parents should children be expected to have? A new set every few years or every few months? It would get a bit much for children trying to remember the birthdays of all their different parents or deciding who to contact first on fathers day or mothers day.

Finding a “reason” for a divorce is not that necessary anyway within a No Fault divorce system. If asked, someone can just put their reasons for wanting a divorce to “communication problems” or something similar. This was the most common reason given for divorce in the study carried out by the AIFS. See http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/WP20.html

Of course “communication problems” is a very wide area, but it was not broken down any further in that study or any other study carried out since to my knowledge. This is why I regard Social Science as being highly relevant, and any tax-payer money being spent on it is money well spent.

Seeker I don't think that women are making mistakes in picking partners as such. Men tend to compartmentalise their lives alot more than women. Men have one life at home, another different life at work, another one with their mates, etc. and the less they have to do with each other the better. Women tend to have one life with all different aspects blended together. When they're unhappy in one aspect of their life it effects all others. With men as long as most of their lives are travelling OK they tend to ignore others that aren't. This means that by the time a man is forced to pay attention to the relationship compartment of his life, the woman has struggled, argued, begged,grieved and finally moved on. All this even before the man acknowledges a problem. (You SNAG's out there please pay this no heed) The main reason women leave men is because they have been unhappy for a long time with no signs of improvement. Men leave women for other women, always. Very, very few exceptions. We're much too chicken to be on our own.

Timithy, no wonder you're having troubles with girls if you think stalking, date rape, harassement and emotional violence is akin with courting! Stay away from my sister!!

Hi Bozzie,
I don’t even know your sister.

The point I was trying to make was that there are now considerable risks involved for males if they approach a female or attempt a relationship with her, and yes, accusations of sexual harassment, date rape, stalking etc can most definitely occur. These accusations can also be backdated, like the accusations made about a US university professor last year regards something he did / didn’t do with a student many years earlier.

The risks involved for a male can also increase the longer the relationship continues and there can be palimony, alimony, child support, and even pet support (which is the latest legal craze in the US). In the vast majority of cases, these payments have to be made by the male.

Maybe society is beginning to litigate itself to a standstill.

It's a real insight to relationships reading some of these comments. I had no idea that men were wandering around out there thinking of all woman as these man-hating, malicious, calculating, litigious beasts that were just waiting for the right moment to deprive men of their family and livelihoods and continue on as single mothers. Sounds a bit time consuming. Thankfully I don't know any women that think like this. Surely the majority of literature, art and music throughout history would be horrified by the joy-killing anti-relationship attitude of a lot of these comments. There are no 'Rules' as these books would have you believe. Navigating the whole deal used to be its major attraction. Otherwise life would be a little dull.