High Divorce Rates are Not Feminist, they're Patriarchal Malinvestment Clearing

I came across an article by Gina Luttrell recently posted on Association of Libertarian Feminists facebook that suggested we shouldn't bemoan the increase in the divorce rate. I knew I would take issue with it - to be both a libertarian and a feminist we should think it a tragedy when anyone of any gender sees a contract collapse - but I did go back and give it a read. There is one area in which I agree with her argument: to be true to feminism, we cannot wish to roll back to lower divorce rates by reinforcing the old notion that women should return to the (legal and social) subservience that artificially propped up many previous marriages. Why, though, might we not wish for lower divorce rates as a result of happier, more egalitarian marriages?

She and I are both the product of divorces, and as such recognize the emotional strain it puts on the family. She contrasts this with the anguish of staying in a stultifying marriage, and suggests that ultimately divorce may have less cost.but my question is, why doesn't she make like an Austrian Economist and consider the alternative investments that might have been made in a more egalitarian environment: marriages starting on stronger foundations. She's saying the bridge of no-fault divorce cost less than the potholed roads of rocky marriages, but what about the road not taken in an alternative reality that encouraged partnerships on equal footing, with both members taught to embrace each others' talents and see each other as contributing members of a loving union?

Indeed, I wish she would give the society to which feminism aspires a bit more credit. She says:

If we assume that there was equal marriage satisfaction in the 50s and 60s as there is today (and I see no reason to assume otherwise), you have an incredibly low divorce rate, but half of married people—most likely women—were miserable. 

She then goes on to says feminism may have busted up families by freeing women (creative destruction), but that it doesn't follow there was less happiness. True enough, but this is like a Keynesian analysis that obscures a distinction she gave strong foundation earlier in her article: the marriages unfortunately were cultivated and matured in a society that didn't just tolerate, nay actually encouraged inequality in the home. She cites a counselor telling a woman lamenting spousal abuse in public the equivalent of grit and bear it.

Why should feminism be billed the cost of the divorces, and celebrate its post-break happiness as if salvation? Lets put the blame where it belongs - in a patriarchal society, it was acceptable to stoke family creation on a bad footing, which is the social equivalent of malinvestment. It's their tragedy of overinvestment - not that of any libertarian movement - and both the man and woman after a divorced are robbed of the life they might have led otherwise.

In fact, consider not just the jaundiced "morality" of a society with thick gender rolls, consider the economic backdrop as well. In a 2010 speech, Jeffrey A. Tucker mentions how monetary pump-priming precipitates a present-mindedness. I'm not indulging in the absurdity that gold standards prevent unhappy homes, but in a post-World War II era with a baby boom, suburbanization, relative splendor thanks to global competitors decimating themselves, and a FHA all combining to make individuality more affordable but retained alongside antiquated mores that shame waiting for family formation, the result of a lot of families on unsustainable psychosocial footings really isn't surprising.

The point is that we shouldn't celebrate divorce in some warped, liberationist feminism that only sees the happy post-judgment lives, but should aim for what Libertarianism and Feminism jointly imply: better informed individuals under an equal law learning and evolving ways to form better contractual arrangements, which includes better marriages that they want to keep whether they must or not. We may not like debtors prisons, and see bankruptcy law as prudent, but, the magnificence created in the aftermath of successful bankruptcy doesn't stop us from wishing artificial booms hadn't necessitated so many in the first place!