Tag: structure

No, I Don’t Cook: The state of marriage in the world

To answer the most asked question I get during the holidays, no, I don’t cook. My wife does. That’s not a joke, it’s a commitment we made in 1988 when we married young and chose a traditional family on purpose. I mow the grass, fix the cars, bring home the apples; she turns them into pie. That division of labor has kept our household steady for nearly four decades, and every year the same eyebrows go up from people who ask those kinds of questions—“You can’t say that.” Of course I can. We built our marriage like a small business with roles we both wanted, not roles assigned by a committee of strangers. And when someone tries to question our deal at the family gatherings over the years, I keep a poker face, and stay civil and nice—but I remember. My wife remembers too: I had an aunt once who took her to lunch to lecture her on feminism, the in-laws who offered social pressure in progressive wrapping paper, the yearly chorus of “help with the dishes or else.” We pushed back not to score points, but to defend something we knew was worth protecting.

What’s funny—what’s tragic, really—is how much social commentary people will smuggle into a question around stuffing and cranberry sauce. Behind the small talk lives a theory of marriage: some think roles should be erased; we think roles should be agreed upon. I believe in complementary strengths. And I don’t belittle the cook; I admire the work my wife does in our family, she is 100% committed in ways that are nearly gone these days. She’s made possible the work I do when most people are sleeping, because the clothes are clean, the house runs well, and a hot plate finds its way to my chair in the middle of the night. You want to know how I read so much, write so much, keep so many projects moving? It starts with the dinner that arrives without me asking.

Now, if we’re going to talk about how marriages actually fare, let’s invite the numbers into the room. The United States logged 2,041,926 marriages in 2023—about 6.1 per 1,000 people—and 672,502 divorces across 45 reporting states and D.C., roughly 2.4 per 1,000. That’s the official snapshot, and it tells you something simple: marriages rebounded from the pandemic dip, and divorces keep drifting down from their 1980s peak. 12 If you prefer measures that adjust for who’s actually at risk, Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) puts the 2023 refined divorce rate at 14.4 divorces per 1,000 married women, slightly down from 2022; some analysts saw it nudge lower again in 2024. The refined marriage rate for women in 2023 held around 31.5 per 1,000 unmarried women. Translate that: fewer divorces relative to the number married, and a stable likelihood of marriage among those unmarried. 34

Of course, national averages flatten out the geography. In 2023, Utah had the highest refined marriage rate (49 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women), while Louisiana and Delaware were near the bottom; for divorce, Alaska had the highest rate and Vermont the lowest, with the U.S. at 14.4 overall. That’s culture, economics, and age composition all doing their dance. 43

And how long do marriages last? The federal government no longer publishes fine-grained duration tables the way it once did, but the NSFG’s event histories and Census reports paint enough of the outline: the median age at first marriage has climbed to historic highs—about 30.2 for men and 28.4 for women in 2023—meaning couples enter marriage later, after more schooling and work. Later marriages tend to be more stable than teen marriages, and the divorce hazards have shifted more toward economic stress and mismatched expectations than any single “traditional vs. egalitarian” switch. 56

If you step back and trace the arc since the mid-20th century, the significant facts are now old facts: we marry later, we marry less often, and divorce rates (by multiple measures) are lower than they were at their peak. OECD cross-national data puts the crude marriage rate for many wealthy countries between 3 and 5 per 1,000 today; the U.S. is higher than most at around 6, but it’s still far below the 1970s. Pandemic disruptions knocked weddings down in 2020, and they bounced back in 2021–2023. 78

The household story is equally stark: fewer than half of U.S. households today are married‑couple households. That was 78.8% after World War II; it’s been under half since 2010. Does that mean marriage is dead?  The cost of progressive lifestyles really starts to show here.  Our living arrangements have diversified, and a growing share of adults delay or forgo marriage—and often cohabit instead. 910 Pew’s longer view shows that most Americans now find cohabitation acceptable, even for couples who don’t plan to marry, though a majority still believes the country is better off if long-term couples eventually marry. Cohabitation has grown across age groups; by 2022, roughly 9% of Americans ages 18–64 were cohabiting at a point in time, up from 7.8% a decade earlier, with the highest shares in the late 20s. 1112

Does all that mean traditional marriage is disappearing? It’s more honest to say we’re in a sorting era. The median age at first marriage rose; remarriage fell; and the marriage share is increasingly concentrated among the college-educated and the religiously observant in certain regions. NCFMR shows the remarriage rate declining steadily since 2008—down to about 34.4 per 1,000 previously‑married men and 18.5 for women in 2023—suggesting fewer second chances through formal vows and more cohabitation after divorce. 13

And yet, under all the trends, the old expectations haven’t entirely vanished. A widely cited study in American Sociological Review found that in marriages formed after 1975, a husband’s lack of full-time employment predicts higher divorce risk, while a wife’s full-time employment does not—evidence that the breadwinner norm still carries weight even as homemaking expectations for wives have softened. 14 Another line of research argues that when partners’ gender norms clash—when the meaning of “husband” and “wife” isn’t mutually agreed—marriage becomes both more complicated to form and easier to break. That’s not ideology; it’s matching theory with real data on cohorts and states. 15

Once you admit the obvious—that marriage is a covenant built on agreements—my answer about holiday cooking stops sounding provocative and starts sounding like governance. The deal in our house is clear and cherished. We never outsourced it to a trend line or surrendered it to an aunt with a pamphlet. And when the holiday question lands, I hear the undertone: “Are you compliant with the new code?” No, we’re compliant with our vows. That choice has paid dividends in steadiness, in output, in the way we raise children and grandchildren, and yes, in sanity.

Around the globe, OECD figures show crude marriage rates clustered around the 4‑per‑1,000 mark with wide variance, and Our World in Data summarizes the broad pattern: most rich countries see later marriage, fewer marriages, and a decoupling of marriage from childbearing. In lower-income regions, median marriage ages are younger and formal rates are higher, but there’s intense regional variety, and progress on ending child marriage remains uneven and far too slow. 71617

Where does that leave the “traditional marriage comeback”? In the U.S., there’s no sudden surge in crude marriage rates; what we do see is a stabilization post-pandemic, a continued decline in divorce rates, and a concentration of marriage among those who treat it as a purposeful life strategy rather than an automatic milestone. Whether a couple chooses entirely traditional roles, fully egalitarian roles, or something bespoke for their house, the risk lies in misalignment—pressure from outside to reshape the inside. What saves a marriage is consented clarity. My wife and I made ours long ago, and we’ve maintained it against polite frowns and impolite lectures. I didn’t ask the world to bless that agreement, and I certainly didn’t give the world veto power over it. The results, measured by the calendar and the calm of a well-run home, speak for themselves.

So, no, I don’t cook at Christmas, Thanksgiving, or ever. She cooks, I carry the burdens outside the house, and the house hums. If the conversation at the table drifts toward social engineering, I smile and let the numbers do the talking: later marriages, fewer divorces, more cohabitation, fewer married‑couple households, and a stubborn breadwinner signal that hasn’t lost its force. You can read those trends as doom or as instruction; I read them as proof that the marriages that last are the ones grounded in agreed roles, mutual respect, and a united front against outside manipulation. That’s our holiday recipe. It’s kept us going for 37 winters, and it works.  And always remember, advice is only as good as the people giving it.  And most people aren’t qualified to give it.

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Notes & Sources (selected)

• U.S. marriages and divorces (2023): 2,041,926 marriages; 6.1 per 1,000 population; 672,502 divorces across 45 reporting states and D.C.; 2.4 per 1,000. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NCHS FastStats & NVSS tables. 12

• Refined rates: NCFMR refined divorce rate ~14.4 (2023) and refined marriage rate ~31.5 (2023); state variation (Utah high marriage, Alaska high divorce). 34

• Median age at first marriage (U.S., 2023–2024): ~30.2 men, ~28.4 women; historical series since 1890. U.S. Census (MS‑2) and NCFMR profiles. 65

• Married‑couple household share under 50%; historical peak ~78.8% (1949). Census & USAFacts syntheses. 910

• Cohabitation attitudes and prevalence: Pew Research Center (2019) and NCFMR (2012–2022 CPS analysis). 1112

• Remarriage decline (2008–2023): NCFMR Family Profile on remarriage rates. 13

• Breadwinner signal & divorce risk: Alexandra Killewald, American Sociological Review (2016). 14

• Gender‑norm conflict and marital outcomes: Antman, Kalsi, Lee, Journal of Demographic Economics (2021). 15

• OECD cross‑national marriage/divorce comparisons & COVID disruption: OECD Family Database & documentation; Our World in Data. 78

• Global institution change overview: Our World in Data’s “Marriages and Divorces.” 16

• Child marriage progress & pace to elimination: UNICEF Data brief (2023). 17

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Annotated Bibliography

• CDC/NCHS – FastStats: Marriage and Divorce. U.S. nationwide counts and crude rates for marriages and divorces; latest provisional (2023). Clear definitions and coverage notes about non-reporting states for divorce. 1

• CDC/NVSS – National Marriage & Divorce Rate Trends (2000–2023). Historical tables showing year-by-year changes in crude marriage and divorce rates, with footnotes on state coverage. 2

• NCFMR (Bowling Green State University) – Refined Marriage & Divorce Rates (2023). ACS-based indicators that adjust for the population at risk; state maps and margins of error. Essential for understanding geographic variation and trends beyond crude rates. 43

• U.S. Census – Historical Marital Status Tables (MS‑1 & MS‑2). Extended‑run time series on marital status and median age at first marriage. Useful for context on age trends and the shrinking share of married adults. 6

• USAFacts – “How has marriage in the US changed over time?” (2025). Synthesizes Census series into digestible charts on age at first marriage and household composition; suitable for communicating to general audiences. 10

• Pew Research Center – “Marriage and Cohabitation in the U.S.” (2019). Attitudes and experiences around living together; relationship satisfaction comparisons; long-term shifts in cohabitation acceptance. 11

• NCFMR – “A Decade of Change in Cohabitation Across Age Groups: 2012 & 2022” (2024). CPS-based point-in-time prevalence by age; growth concentrated in late‑20s cohorts. 12

• NCFMR – “Remarriage Rate, 2023” (2025). ACS event counts and rates documenting the decline of remarriage across sexes and ages. 13

• Killewald (2016) – “Money, Work, and Marital Stability” (ASR). Panel Study of Income Dynamics analysis distinguishing economic resources from role signals: the persistent effect of male full-time employment on stability. 14

• Antman, Kalsi, Lee (2021) – “Gender norm conflict and marital outcomes” (JDE). Theory and evidence on how norm mismatch reduces marriage formation and increases fragility. 15

• OECD Family Database – SF3.1 Marriage and Divorce Rates. International comparisons of crude rates, mean age at first marriage, and pandemic‑era disruptions; handy Excel annexes. 7

• Our World in Data – “Marriages and Divorces” & grapher for marriage rates. Broad global synthesis with interactive charts; connects U.S. trends to wider patterns. 168

• UNICEF Data – “Is an End to Child Marriage within Reach?” (2023). Global progress and uneven pace; regional concentration and projected timelines. 17

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Greeks and Ancient Atlantis: I was the only one in the world who got it right regarding the war with Iran

This may seem like an odd topic, given the current state of the world, but I believe we are uncovering a vast conspiracy that’s deeply rooted in institutionalism and has been impacting the world as a whole.  And to further validate that entire statement, and not to brag, but I was right.  More correct than anybody in the world regarding the war with Iran.  There might be somebody out there who said it as clearly as I did, but out of all the big players in the media, they got it all wrong regarding what Trump was doing with Iran.  As usual, I was the first to say precisely what would happen, and it took days for the rest of the world to figure it out.  So when I say that Atlantis, as a lost civilization, ended up in North America, and the mound builders specifically, it’s more than a fanciful expression of fantasy and fun.  We are discussing institutional failure and why experts can’t be trusted even to tell us the truth about history, let alone advise us on medical issues, or run our lives through government.  When we say that we need freedom from government, the answer to the whys and hows requires an institutional understanding of failure modes.  So when I say that Greek mythology is the evidence of a previous, global civilization of Atlantis I say it to demonstrate that the root cause of much failure in the world can be traced back to mistakes that go back to that ancient civilization, and that we took many of the failures that destroyed that culture and migrated them into modern life.  And our lifeline into that understanding is the stories preserved through Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology within the Hermetic tradition.  

So when you understand how ancient civilizations either succeeded or failed, you can avoid the same mistakes in our present cultures.  And in understanding that, I can see clear trends that many people miss completely, or don’t understand until it is way too late.  With that said, I have been re-reading the Greek myths so that I can better understand Atlantis as a civilization, because one of the Greek gods, Poseidon, was in charge of that society, and obviously, the hints at what Greek mythology would reveal were more than the fantastic wonderings of human culture.  The stories themselves, like all stories, reveal things about us as a species that are infinitely important in the decision-making process of modern governments and how much of it we need or want.  I don’t like any of the Greek gods of Mt. Olympus, or their children, such as Apollo, Hercules, Achilles, or Hector; they are all overly flawed people who bring great destruction to the lives around them.  And as we look around the world and consider that these stories are far older than the period of the famous philosopher Socrates, from 470 BC to 399 BC, likely by thousands of years.  That would place them in the time of the societies all around the Mediterranean Sea, especially in Malta, and the Minoan worship of the Minotaur, a creature of the famous labyrinth.  We must also pay attention to the Greeks, as without them, the Bible would not have been preserved for us to read today.  And how many stories in the Bible are re-told stories from the very ancient past, put into modern context?  With “modern” representing the latest biblical chronology.  As the story goes, Atlantis was destroyed by a catastrophe, but it was already in a state of prolonged decline, having been overrun by witches and magicians who corrupted the society’s structure in detrimental ways, long before it sank into the sea, as reported by Plato. 

Moral corruption is the element of concern here, and it was analyzed as the failure mode of Atlantis. As people fled that society, they migrated all over the world, taking their stories with them and their study of the stars in attempts to restart society many times over.  We are currently working on doing this exact thing with Mars.  Leaving one society for another is a common theme among all human beings; therefore, we must apply the same logic to the people of Atlantis, who migrated to North and South America, as well as to the Far East, and settled with their technology and religions intact.  However, it would need to be changed subtly, not over a few thousand years, but over tens of thousands of years.  We may find out with a lot more digging, that the Tower of Babel is a summary of what happened to the entire world during this crises period where Atlantis was destroyed and its inhabitants that survived became the North American Indians, or the civilizations of Egypt, Malta, or of Scandinavia, and the British Isles.  And we didn’t see the connection because we made the wrong assumptions about how humans migrated across the globe.  We came up with the idea of human evolution emerging out of Africa without verifying the reliability of that theory, and we constructed a time scale for human development incorrectly.  And now, generations of scientists have gotten everything wrong because they refused to correct each other as new information was presented that contradicted their findings. 

Given that history, it’s essential to understand how cascading failure is an accepted norm in our expert class of modern institutionalists.  Rather than challenge the static norm, they are more prone to adopt it.  Such as what happened with assuming that Trump bombing Iran would start World War III.  Rather than looking at the economic conditions for Iran, we thought we understood the nature of war to the point that we did not address the situation correctly, until Trump bombed them and ended their terror regime in a single night on June 21st, 2025.  The same flawed logic has dismissed Atlantis as a fantasy from the past, from the kind of minds that wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad, without considering that the stories themselves provided valuable insights into the human mind, which would long be gone as physical evidence through the process of erosion otherwise.  Very little of anything built 10,000 years ago would remain unless it were preserved in the manner we have witnessed at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.  And when we study the North American mound builders, or the creators of Stonehenge, Avebury, or the entire South American continent, we are seeing what was left of a civilization from long ago that is only preserved in the stories they passed down through generations, that were perhaps organized by the Greeks, and other Mediterranean cultures in their quest for culture.  So, they wrote down everything they could preserve, including the Bible.   To understand ourselves in a modern context, it is essential to understand the past, not the one taught in school.  Because much of that is all wrong.  However, instead, we get glimpses from sources such as the Greek myths.  And what strikes me most about them is the amount of sex in them.  These were not cultures that hunted and gathered; they were concerned with human emotions and relationships, as well as luxury items, in any society that has advanced beyond the necessities.  That means, if the Greeks had time to think about such things 2,000 years BC, or even 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, the stories came from a culture that had mastered the means to luxury, where they had free time to think about such things.   This says a lot about the history we are studying, as it provides a very accurate window into the past, much better than carbon dating.   

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

No More Kings in the World: The light at the end of the tunnel to end all known conspiracies

I have absolutely no reverence for bloodlines, kingships, or family rights to the efforts of previous generations. When we talk about the leaders of the Deep State being a global cabal of the Illuminati, with the mask of the World Economic Forum, the 13 original families, 10 of which came from other planets leaving 3 to develop on earth, the Krupps, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, I have zero sympathies for their task at ruling over others. Whatever their beliefs, whatever their history, I see it as entirely irrelevant. They have no right or obligation to rule the earth, its people, its nations, its companies, anything. They have no right to black budgets, self-rule, or a vision for the future. All they have is a corrupt understanding of the past and a love of Lucifer, their sun god, the villain Baal from the Bible. The real solution to peace and goodness in the world is to end the perception of entitlement that they have as kingly roles as history has now shown us a vast chronicle. In America, which I think was created as a false flag event to suppress kingly functions in Europe, for a competing bloodline conflict for power within those original 13 families, the idea of decentralizing the kingly role took hold, and now they can’t put it back in the bottle. And it was quite an accident that people learned that they liked the idea of self-rule instead of the compliance to authority that has always constrained society. This is, of course, the central theme of the politics of our present time, the original bloodline families want to remain in control, and most of the world wants to be free of their power. Now that we have the internet, open communications around the world, and can get around the world in less than a day, that power structure is collapsing fast, and the rulers behind the curtain have found themselves exposed in ways they aren’t comfortable with.

It’s all about decentralization; ruling families do not have the bandwidth to deal with a human race that needs to grow. They can only hold power by holding down that growth, which is precisely what we are seeing playing out in global politics presently. Suppose you really go back to the root cause of the Holocaust, for instance. In that case, there is still very much hatred of the Jews that goes back to Mordecai not bowing to Haman and how Esther convinced king Xerxes of Persia to allow the Jews to destroy all their oppressors in books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was written by an anonymous writer out of Russia intent to convince opposition forces that the Jews were plotting world domination. In truth, the conflict goes back to the original bloodlines in conflict with the rebel Israelites who defied those ruling classes, which culminated ultimately in the story of The Book of Esther. The Protocols, as I’ve said before, have been used to create conflict for a very long time, including being passed around the recent Caliphate movement in the Middle East as recently as yesterday. But who writes these books, and who distributes them, and why? The answer to that is those who want to continue to rule as a centralized power where the world centers around them. If there is anything that has held back civilization, its this ridiculous notion of power and control over others from the beginning, likely starting with those original bloodlines and carrying through to this present time, where the pressure of decentralized government, decentralized economies, decentralized academia, is colliding with necessity in violent ways that are all too obvious now. 

As bad as things look today, in these election cycles, with international conflicts, I see one thing happening for certain: the birth of the human race as it is breaking free of these kingly shackles. In America, we had a brief period of independence from those ruling families where the colonies were too far away from the mainland of Europe to control. But it didn’t just start there. The secret societies allowed for some discourse if it gave them revenge over the kings of Europe and the Church for their massacre of the Knights Templers purge of the 1300s. I’ve told the story of Friday the 13th, 1307 before, which drove that whole Gnostic tradition underground, where it stayed. They plotted the downfall European kings and were successful well before America came along. But America was the bright idea of revenge for the whole plot. But it only lasted until immigrants from  Europe brought with them their tradition of love of kings and being ruled by a centralized authority. Once global communication became possible, and flight, and the world shrank, we were destined to have this very modern conflict that would erupt over self-rule instead of centralized rule.   Rule by kings only worked so long as people couldn’t share information and weren’t very smart, to begin with. Or the people were smart, but through their education systems, made ignorant in order to let those bloodline families stay in power the way that slave owners from the Democrat south in America would cut off the feet of slaves to keep them from running away, or would deny them the ability to read so that the slaves would never figure out how to free themselves from the authority figures in their lives. We see the same trend in every corporate environment, every cubicle, every cry to work from home, the desire of all humans to either rule or be ruled in the traditional ways of the bloodline descendants, and the fantasy of the few to rule over the many. To make themselves single-point failures for the purpose of control and nothing else. 

I remember watching Oliver Stone’s movie with Kevin Costner, JFK, with great interest at the obvious allegation against the FBI and CIA and their role in the assassination, which we now know in 2023 was a CIA operation; our own government took part in the killing of an American president, and a popular, and powerful Democrat from an influential family. We watched over the years as members of that family were systematically killed off or encumbered in many accidents that forever tarnished their public image. And we could tell similar stories of mystery and mayhem regarding 9/11, election fraud to remove Trump from office, Nixon’s innocence in Watergate. The Tik Tok UFO that has been shown so much. The billions and billions of dollars that have gone to Ukraine for mysterious reasons while Biden traveled there on Presidents’ Day of all places, as New Palestine, Ohio, suffered from a major train derailment. I would offer in the wake of all these massive tragedies, and the bombardment of all the crazy news that looks like Armageddon is upon us, the Book of Revelations is happening now, and we all play a role in its outcome; I would offer that the wheels are coming off quickly for those original 13 families, the inevitable reality is blowing up in their faces, and they are pulling every string of chaos to attempt to stay in power, just as the corporate executive does in their feeble attempts to hold a corner office as young challengers seek to knock them out of that office and the prestige that goes with it. We are seeing the great undoing of that power structure and all the conspiracies they have used to stay in power. Mankind is doing more than walking on the moon, it is reclaiming its rightful place as a creator within the universe, and the power structure of kings, which is more ancient than ancient history itself, is falling apart and coming to an end, which is why our times are so violent and chaotic. But fret not; there is light at the end of the tunnel, and something new and better is just beyond. We won’t be able to experience it until the kings are out of the way and not trying to funnel the efforts of human imagination through their limited means to grapple with the pressure of innovation and imagination. And once they fall and their roots into the past to preserve their rights to dominate all society have expired, we will find a new day filled with great optimism and a chance for a future that has never been contemplated in all of human history.

Rich Hoffman

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