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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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I’m not familiar with any data on this but I seriously doubt the average woman who signs up for military service anywhere in the world normally does so at the age of 18.

Even a basic Google search for "average age at enlistment" cites 18-20 for the US, France and a few others I plugged in. For Israel and other compulsory-service countries it's 18. Germany showed a slightly higher average in the low 20s.

I also doubt that a woman doing military service is generally conducive to her ever entering a stable marriage in the first place.

I will take moving the goalposts here as admission that the original point is conceded.

Not that any of this disproves OP’s argument about the 30% figure in any sense but it needs to be pointed out anyway.

It doesn't disprove it, but it does say this scenario is rather rare.

Let's consider a 24-yr-old woman who completed 6 years of military service and another woman of the same age who did other things. Which one of them have a higher chance of entering a stable marriage resulting in 4-6 kids?

a stable marriage resulting in 4-6 kids?

Do men want six kids? Think about it: you have to be able to earn enough to keep yourself, wife, and six kids in our modern economy. You have to be able to help raise those kids (and I don't mean "change their nappies", I mean "be involved as a parent forming their characters and guiding them"). Some men do complain that "now we have kids, my wife has less time for me and clearly values the kids more than me" which puts strain on a marriage and may break it up. "We have six kids, but when I come home from work I disappear into the shed and do my own thing and she has full responsibility for every thing to do with the kids" is also a way to break up a marriage.

It takes two to tango, as the saying goes. If you want stable marriages with six kids, then men as well as women have to be prepared to be spouses and parents in that relationship.

None of this is relevant here no matter how sociologically accurate it is, sorry. The original claim I'm replying to is this:

An 18 year old woman would be discharged at 22, 24 or on the outside 26 -- well before any appreciable drop in fertility. A 24 year old can easily have 4-6 kids, well over the current average (e.g. beyond the current most-binding-constraint).

Based on her traits before having entered service? Or in the counterfactual where the very same person with the very same disposition to enlist who randomly was disqualified at 18?

Because it’s probably correlated in a way that’s preexisting. I doubt there’s much of a causal relationship.

True. But a causal relationship is not what I implied.

OK, well then allowing or forbidding her from going into the service does nothing for the marriage rate.

She as the person-who-would-have-enlisted already had all the traits and dispositions that were gonna lead to not being married at 28.

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