It is my belief, in the American macro of policy, it is simply rational and prudent for women to avoid marriage and children whenever possible (as a practitioner in risk management, assessing and managing risk, and a rationalist) so long as the policy is what it is. My opinion would change if the policy, macro, and experience changes and failure modes are less brutal (there’s ~$100B in child support debt outstanding, single parent outcomes are suboptimal, 23 million children live in a single parent home, etc). But as it stands, you’re setting yourself up for failure by entertaining marriage (considering 40-50% failure rates for first marriages) and children (two incomes required, $330k to raise a child 0-18 in 2023 dollars excluding daycare and college). The median household income in Kentucky as of this comment is ~$62k/year. Half of all violent crime in Kentucky over the last six years was domestic violence of both men and women. Returning to the labor force as a stay at home parent (if divorce occurs), regardless of gender, is challenging at best. Might as well skydive without a parachute and hope you’re lucky enough to fall into a tree.

People change as well. Who you marry is potentially not who you want or need a divorce from. Sometimes the economic unpleasantness can be avoided with prenups, but this is much more rare than it should be. Choices can lead to substantial long term obligations and liability, binding for one to two decades, and I think better choices can be made (based on the evidence and the data).

My opinions in this thread are not gender driven, but data driven.

(~40% of pregnancies in the US are unintended every year as well, per the Guttmacher Institute, although I don’t have Kentucky specific numbers at hand in that context)