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It's still a risk that is higher for the wife than the husband. I've come across plenty of cases where "couple splits up, guy takes up with new partner, who if she isn't already pregnant soon becomes pregnant, guy is too involved with new family to do much about kids he's left with former partner".
And for Mackenzie Bezos, the attitude I wish to point out was that she did nothing, contributed nothing, so had no right to a fair share of Jeff's money. If it's demonstrably an attitude by the men who will be the future husbands that "marry me and be a full-time homemaker, and I will consider that the work in the home and family you do is nothing and isn't real work and isn't worth a monetary value". Do you really think a woman with any prudence will go into a marriage where she knows the view is "being a stay-at-home wife is being a leech on your husband" and leave it up to his good will as to whether he'll continue to support her should he decide greener pastures lie elsewhere? Having your own job and means of earning a living is security, quite apart from the modern pressure that both partners in the couple must be working and earning to have any kind of chance at home ownership, avoiding debt, etc.
Yeah, and WITHOUT marriage involved there's a common lower-class outcome of "guy knocks up 3 or more baby mommas, is involved in none of their lives, owes huge amounts of child support."
The alternative outcomes of a woman having no children whatsoever OR just having a child out of wedlock is generally not preferable!
My point is that even in the case where the woman is abandoned with a child in spite of being married, there are ample government and non-government social programs that will ensure she at least has a roof over her head, food, and protection from harm. IF she chooses to have a kid, a basic standard of living for said child is all but guaranteed.
Leaving out confounding factors like drug use or pure psychological illness, there is virtually no scenario where a woman is left destitute and to her own devices. Clearly it happens, there are a lot of homeless women out there, but in terms of risk calculation, for a 'normal' woman it is negligible.
And the one thing that reliably ensures a woman's happiness over the course of her entire life is generally "marriage to a decent guy and raising kids who love her." That's it. Nothing else provides the same level of consistent upside over the course of decades. And accepting the risk that a guy might eventually abandon her is the price of getting there.
If many women are too anxious or indecisive to take that initial risk, some additional social pressure to push them along would actually be beneficial overall.
Oh boy yeah, the amount of merry-go-round of A is with B, has baby, they split up, A goes on to C and B goes on to D, new babies: it's horrible. I saw it in a former job. But generally it is easier for a guy to move on to new partner (and new baby if new partner thinks this will solidify the relationship, though why they think that I can never figure out; he's already walked out on former wife and kids) than a woman with kids to get a new partner willing to commit. That's for nice middle-class people, not just the dregs and underclass.
And if you have a middle-class lifestyle, having the main breadwinner walk out and leave you with a couple of dependents does hit harder.
I've watched (from some distance) a scenario where a young woman gets knocked up by a guy she's living with, leave him, give the baby up for adoption, then finds another guy, gets knocked up, leaves him while pregnant and travels for a bit, gives the baby up for adoption, and then again just finds a guy to live with.
Insanely corrosive way of going through life.
But she can somehow always find a guy willing to put a roof over her head.
Sometimes I have to shrug and go "I have no idea how the hell this is working, but obviously it is".
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And I've come across plenty of cases where "middle aged woman goes insane, blows up perfectly fine marriage while all the kids are still in grade school, forces sale of family home, takes half of assets + half of guy's future retirement income, and proceeds to act like mid-20s party girl." Why do your anecdotes carry more weight than my anecdotes?
How do we measure that? Based on my anecdotes, I say the modern risk is much higher for the husband. And the anecdote I outlined, as I've seen it in the U.S., is far more common now among white-collar educated types than the scenario you outlined.
No, I don't say mine carry more weight. People who blow up their marriages for stupid reasons, no matter their sex, are in the wrong.
But if a possible mate is saying "Look, I think whatever work you do in the home if we marry is not valuable", then why would I marry them? Why would I give up a job and career on the assumption "my dear husband will appreciate what I do to support his career and raise our children in the years when I am no longer the hot 20 year old he bagged"?
The unfortunate reality is that very few men are going to marry women rich enough to support them if they give up their job and become house-husbands, while for women it's in general the opposite. Love may be blind, but there's an increasing trend towards pre-nuptial agreements even among those not wealthy or upper-class, simply out of mutual distrust: the men, that they will be 'divorce raped', the women, that they will be abandoned post-divorce. Or even in an amicable mutual separation, what happens to joint property? There's really an attitude of "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours".
And even if you both trust one another, the pragmatic thing is "what happens if I become a widow? with young kids? what do I do then?" Granted, not so much a likely outcome as in the past, but still a possibility.
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