Are Men Entitled To Women?

 You see it often in social media debates. When men complain about women been gold-diggers or running after high status guys, some angry female will write back: "Men aren't entitled to having wives/girlfriends". 

Last time I read it, it made me think. Clearly, any individual man isn't entitled to having the affections of any particular woman. However, in a healthy society any average guy who can provide an average income should be able to find an average woman to marry and bear his children. There is a reason why polygamous societies have often been unstable compared to more monogamous ones, as this arrangement by necessity left some men out in the cold without many prospects.

I would argue, however, that our modern society is even worse. First, in polygamous societies there often was a surplus of women due to wars etc so there still was a woman for most everyone. And second, every society on Earth until now has been quite strict with enforcing chastity and fidelity on women and giving men paternity rights over their (legitimate) offspring.

Our society, on the other hand, practices soft polygamy and encourages female promiscuity/easy divorce, while restricting the husband and father's rights over his family. Even the wealthiest of men aren't guaranteed that their wives will stay faithful and not divorce them on a whim, let alone an average guy who often can't even find a girlfriend. 

Women under this system have problems, too. They are encouraged by nearly everyone in their lives to spend their best reproductive years studying/working on the career/traveling and having casual s8x with lots of guys, instead of settling down when they are at their most attractive. So later when they do want to settle down they are often left with few options. 

Both s8xes also have unrealistic expectations about each other, plus female economic freedom enables women to date losers. Since "dating" nowadays means having s8x, they often will get attached to them and somehow drift into marriage, only to realise later, when children come, that she married a good-for-nothing bum/addict/whatever. Easy divorce allows her a way out, and gives the bum a chance to ruin some other woman's life, while children grow without father with their mom "dating" again. Or, she'll be lucky enough to marry again and bring all the baggage and trauma into her new marriage, making the chance of divorce even higher than average.

All this creates a very unstable society which isn't really favourable to having many children as reflected by Western total fertility rates. 

In plain language, we are on our path to extinction and no amount of free daycare and paternity leaves will change the situation, as witnessed by Scandinavian countries. TFR of Norway is 1.4 and it's 1.5 in Sweden while it's 4.3 in Afghanistan. Now, granted, we are a bit overpopulated at the moment and don't need a TFR of 6 as in Somalia, but a healthy TFR of 2.1 would be fine. 

Easy divorce, promiscuity, late marriage and female employment are all factors in low TFR. 

Which way, Western man? You decide...