I’ve skipped over a lot of the discussion and so will restrict myself to the original topic of single moms. Canada has more single-parent families than almost anywhere else. Possibly more people now live alone in Canada than as couples.
It’s a problem. Children generally do better with two loving parents and more support than conflict. People generally do better with a supportive partner - emotionally, financially, in times of crisis, spiritually and in terms of fulfillment and self-actualization. Successful relationships have a ratio of more than three or four positive interactions to every negative one, but every rose has its thorns.
I see many causes for this problem. People are often poor at communicating their needs. They are getting worse. Unrealistic expectations are socialized from childhood - it’s fine to be a princess on your wedding day, but life is about reasonable compromise. Women are more supportive of each other to some degree, certainly much more willing to discuss and analyze problems with their buddies, and may convince friends it is better to bail, rather than put in the hard work of relationship repair when this would be the best option.
Male friends do stuff together. They like the escape from the routine of family life - so they don’t talk about their family unless asked. Women think men together bash women, but this is rarely true. If anything, they are showing each other bizarre text messages and trying to figure out what it might mean. Most men are not meta-communicators. Some women, not all, are more emotionally attuned and better at reading body language than men. I read women know 33,000 words but men only know 28,000. Is this true? No… it seems… wrong. In fact, I just made this up. But women will believe it! Adult women should absolutely have full sovereignty over their own bodies and any decisions they make about sex and motherhood. Sex should be about mutual enthusiastic consent. But equally, normal male behaviour should not be unfairly castigated.
Toxic masculinity is a thing, but there is nothing wrong with mainstream masculinity, and far fewer supports are available for men. I remember reading about a lifelong Democrat who decided to vote for Trump. He had organized a big fundraiser and speaker after speaker talked about progressive programs for many diverse and deserving groups. But then he thought, I’m a middle-class, middle-aged man with two kids. Where’s my program? Being attuned to modern sensibilities, valuing masculinity, overcoming the flaws in parenting everyone has, and adapting to changing cultural mores is a difficult balancing act for anyone.
More often than not, it is the woman who breaks up with the man. On average, she has been unhappy and contemplating this for over a year before doing this. The signs are often obvious in retrospect. She feels little romance and affection, sees little prospect of improvement, thinks the man is immature or unrealistic, and feels she does much more of the work. While this is often true, it also is often unfair. The man may be working too much because they both like nice things. Anyone can find faults if they try hard to find them. In successful marriages, the faults are either invisible, laughed off, or productively discussed diplomatically and without a sense of blame or attacking character. You want to help the other grow and improve, rather than merely judge. Financial constraints are a thing, but women obviously have far more options than they did a hundred years ago.
Although society rightly values motherhood, fatherhood can be diminished and mocked. But who learned how to be romantic, or to be a good father, in thousands of hours of schoolwork? Good thing you can still find the roots of a quadratic equation though. Relationship skills can be taught, like any skills. And skills are undervalued while mediocre university degrees are hyped.
Social media - offering the illusions of community and endless choice have made things worse. Online porn has sometimes made male expectations as out-of-whack as princess fantasies.
When I went to university, for various professional degrees, most of my classes were 75% or more male. At my local school, the ratios might now be reversed. School kids live up to the expectations you give them. So what caused this change? Are male students given the same attention and support as female students? Sure, this is a thread about single moms. But where are these women going to meet men, especially with their level of education, if women see that as a major focus, and many do? They feel they settle and then regret settling. Or they find it hard to meet anyone at all, and then find working and modern life leave them exhausted.
Parenting has also changed. Many working couples spend more time with their kids today then stay-at-home moms spent with their kids forty years ago. As kids, we were kicked out of the house and expected to play outside, which we did with minimal supervision all day long. In 1972, 90% of kids walked to school; in 2024 only 10% of children do. Helicopter parenting reduces confidence, and unscheduled play remains important.
Fathers went from being feared masters-of-the-house to friends, but also sometimes from being seen as leaders and social pillars to being more devalued. Things like “the silent treatment” cause damage, but there is nothing wrong with a brief withdrawal into “the man cave” and sometimes a little time or space is healthy.
It’s a wicked problem. It won’t be solved by technology, but by eschewing technology - building a new sense of community, reevaluating the role of work and productivity, supporting men as well as women, better and more equal education, valuing skills as well as academics, and properly prioritizing real socialization. The problem is not whether you win arguments with your wife, but whether you are happy and feel respected and understand this is not the same thing as winning. Not every battle is worth fighting, but some are and you need to have solid principles and stand up for them when needed. Still, many arguments are about frustration and other things, and not the trivia they purport to be.