From a pretty early age I decided I didn’t want to get married or have kids cuz both my parents seemed utterly miserable. For a long time I found it weird anyone wanted to do it at all, why would you want to be trapped with someone you hate who you get into screaming arguments all the time?
And it’s not just me, you see a lot of jokes online about people like playing that one scene from Marriage Story while playing old N64 games for nostalgia.
I think the experience of seeing our own parents be so miserable maybe soured a lot of us on starting families.
I think it’s more the latter than the former. Some people stay together for financial reasons but a majority of couples get together for the wrong reasons, and make a mess out of their domestic units.
I think it’s both, or less boomers would’ve stayed with their abusive husbands. Women couldn’t even have their own bank accounts till the 70s in the US. I’m not convinced men have changed, women have just realized they don’t have to put up with it.
Standards for living have gone down, and it’s normalized to have Nanny Telly watch the kids. These must be part of it too.