Maybe 16 of those 17 men figured it wasn’t worth it to support 16 nagging women.
😂
... and the mothers in law.
“No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.”
- Mark Twain, "Roughing It"