The irresponsible man: the case against unmarried men

I'm Dr. Orion Terriban, and this is PSYCAC's Better Living Through Psychology, and the topic of today's short talk is the irresponsible man. So in this episode, I'm going to be responding to the most common criticism I've heard in response to a man's decision to not get married or have children. The criticism is fundamentally that the decision is inherently selfish. A bachelor is a man who hoards wealth for himself, which is greedy, miserly, and antisocial. He also must be immature, a perpetual man-child who is afraid of commitment and eager to escape real responsibility. Finally, he must be deluded, as life without a family is devoid of meaning, purpose, and legacy. Literally, nothing is more valuable and important than this, so a man who chooses to forgo it is as foolish as a man who prefers three brass rings to a single gold coin. I have received this exact criticism many times over the course of my adulthood. In fact, it is often offered in far more judgmental and antagonistic language than I have presented it here. In any case, I'm going to respond to this criticism with my most persuasive counter-arguments. Let's get to it. First and foremost, I think it's important to decouple a couple of things. It's like, yes, I believe that marriage and parenthood can provide men with meaning and maturity and legacy and purpose. However, it is clearly not the only way to achieve those things. In fact, there are many other ways that men can create a lasting legacy for themselves, can maturely assume responsibility, and can imbue their lives with meaning and purpose that don't involve reproduction. What's more, it seems just as obvious that marriage and parenthood don't always and inevitably provide men with these things. Just look around. The world is full of people raised by deadbeat parents, people who were given the opportunity to assume responsibility and did not. Likewise, the world is full of people who receive very little in terms of a legacy from their parents. And I'm not saying this in terms of a monetary inheritance. I'm saying that they learned very little from their parents in terms of wisdom or knowledge or even practical skill. People aren't particularly rich in these attributes in general, and parents are not some special exception. Finally, the world is full of people who became the meaning of their parents' lives, lives which were otherwise devoid of purpose. And that is a role that children neither ask for nor possess the ability to discharge. Take my word for it. A child who unconsciously becomes the vessel for his parents' unlived lives is a therapy patient waiting to happen. All right. So at this point, we're more or less forced to admit that marriage and parenthood are not the only ways to secure meaning, maturity, legacy, and purpose. And that meaning, maturity, legacy, and purpose do not always attend marriage and parenthood. So we have to concede that these two groups, the institutions on the one hand and the values on the other, are functionally independent. Sometimes they go together and sometimes they don't, which isn't an entirely reassuring observation. So why do so many people act as if marriage and parenthood are the be-all, end-all for individual growth and fulfillment? It's actually very simple. It's because they are ordinary, conventional people. And ordinary, conventional people, among other things, lack initiative and imagination. Case in point, ask these same people, the same people who criticize bachelors, a simple question. How should I make money? And I'll bet you dollars to donuts that 99 out of 100 will tell you, get a job. Ordinary people are employees. And because they have an employee mentality, they literally cannot imagine another way of making money other than a job. And they're afraid they'll die penniless in some godforsaken gutter without one. Make no mistake, the people who tell you to get a job to make money are the same people who are going to tell you to get married to grow up. And, in my opinion, ordinary, conventional people are about as equipped to give good financial advice as they are to hold forth on purpose and meaning. It's not very nice to say, but the average person has about as much fulfillment as he has money, which is to say not very much of either. So what is his take on these topics really worth? If you appreciate the insights on this channel, I would highly encourage you to get your hands on a copy of my book, The Value of Others. Over the course of 432 pages, I delve deep into my economic model of relationships and explain the behavior of both men and women in the game of mating and dating. I also provide a lot of actionable advice on how to get and keep more of what you want in the sexual marketplace. Once you read The Value of Others, you'll never look at relationships the same way again. Now available in e-book, audio book, and paperback formats. The links are in the description. Now, we can't get rid of jobs because the majority of people are ordinary and conventional, and how else are ordinary and conventional people going to make a living? But let me ask you a question of my own. Are the most financially successful people you know employees? You already know the answer. The richest people are not employees. They are investors and entrepreneurs. They are people of initiative and imagination. However, if you start talking to the average person about side hustles and passive income and capital gains, you're going to get a lot of bemused reactions. There are plenty of ways to make money without being an employee, but you'll be talking right above their pay grade. They literally will not understand what you are talking about and why it would matter to them anyway, which is unfortunately one of the reasons the poor stay poor. The same people who cannot imagine a way to make money without a job are the same people who cannot imagine a way to secure meaning, maturity, legacy, and purpose without marriage and parenthood. And if you think about it, this is actually a very strange position, as it's functionally arguing that lost, immature, poor, and purposeless people should become parents, in much the same way they argue that broke people should get a job. And that sounds at best like a pretty risky gamble, like we typically don't hire people without relevant skills or experience, especially for important roles, with the expectation that the demands of the role will somehow prompt them to rise to the occasion. By the same token, people don't suddenly become emotionally mature and responsible when they become parents. Sometimes they do, but I would argue, just as often, they don't. In fact, it's difficult to argue against the perspective that maybe, maybe, I don't know, maybe, we'll have better outcomes all around if people intentionally choose to start a family once, you know, they feel sufficiently mature and responsible for the task, which of course presumes that there are ways of becoming mature and responsible without marriage and children. Otherwise, we're functionally arguing for a kind of marital conscription, which is at cross-purposes with the marriage vow as a freely chosen oath, to put it mildly. Just like there are many, many ways to make money without a job, there are many, many ways to create meaning, legacy, and purpose without children. However, in both cases, these ways require initiative and imagination, which is why they are incomprehensible to the average person. Marriage and children will remain, for lack of a better word, the commonest pathway to meaning and purpose, in that it is well within the reach of the vast majority of humanity. After all, it costs about a hundred bucks to get a marriage license and absolutely nothing to make a baby, though to be sure, it's typically expensive to raise one. And just like it is far more difficult to say, start your own company, than it is to get a job, it is far more difficult to assume responsibility for your own purpose and legacy than it is to start a family, which is why people don't start companies or assume personal responsibility for these things. What do you think? Does this fit with your own experience? Let me know in the comments below. How did I do? And please, send this episode to someone who you think might benefit from its message because it's word of mouth referrals like this that really help to make the channel grow. You can also sign up for my free weekly newsletter or book a one-on-one paid consultation with yours truly by signing up on my website. There's also my book, The Value of Others, in which I unpack the hidden dynamics of intersexual relationships and my member community, The Captain's Quarters, where I host bi-monthly group consultation calls and Q&A sessions with invited guests. The links to everything are in the description below. Please check them out. A lot of great value in those resources. As always, I appreciate your support and thank you for listening.