Why do 39% of Americans think marriage is obsolete?

It’s a bad thing. A very bad thing. I hate the direction the American culture is going.

But I won’t share my old fogey ideas here so people can lambast me for not being up with the times.

Answering the questions:
– I do not believe marriage is obsolete.
– I looked forward to getting married, and I am now.
– No, being a single parent would be devastating to me.

There are some aspects of “marriage” that don’t serve any purpose and thus won’t be liked by logical people. But an indefinate bonding is a beautiful thing and still what anyone who knows him/herself is looking for.

What’s hilarious about this is that the reason why the opinion may have shifted in this way is due to the conservative/Christian right’s constant “defense of traditional marriage” rhetoric and the legislation that has accompanied it. The movement has painted the “gay agenda” as a full assault on the “sanctity and tradition of holy matrimony.” Of course, in doing so, they’ve been forced to trot out, for years, arguments that have been shown to provide no rational basis to show that marriage is, should be, or has ever been traditional, holy, or something that should be protected. If you really want to protect marriage, why make divorce easier and easier? If marriage is about reproduction, then why are infertile people allowed to wed, or those who intend on never having children? If marriage vows are to be held sacred, why is there so much infidelity?

By attempting to defend traditional marriage, these arguments have revealed the hypocrisy associated with the institution. Personally, I think that marriage represents a profound commitment, and is a good thing. However, the ideas of traditional marriage need to be separated from the civil act of being married. The first is for the church. The second is for the people.

“Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.” – Charles Baudelaire

I think marriage should be a renewable contract. I have thought that for quite a while now.

That wouldn’t stop me from getting married again if I found the right person.

But I’m actually surprised that it was the less educated people who feel that it’s obsolete. Considering that marriages were originally intended as a way of securing alliances and property, and nothing at all to do with love, I would think the more educated people would feel it has outlasted its purpose.

Marriage still has nothing to do with love. It’s a legal binding that makes it easier on couples to step into each others lives, when needed. Such as medical emergencies, or financial contracts, etc.

I’ve known people who were in love but not married stay together for years and have children. And I’ve known people who got married and couldn’t end it fast enough.

Probably because the majority of those surveyed who believe that it is, don’t know what the word “obsolete” means. I’ve learned to no longer assume that most Americans have a reasonable basic knowledge-base.

@mrentropy Well if you look at it like that the rules might need to be adjusted a little. Because if marriage has nothing to do with love you should be able to ally yourself with anyone in a legally binding contract.

But we’ve become infatuated with the game, you just lost it.

GQ, @wundayatta ! As a deliberately single, college educated, raised by wealthy conservative parents, single mother by choice I couldn’t find myself on those graphs…go figure! Personally, I think marriage for all practical reasons is not an obsolete concept, I just think it’s too easy to do impulsively.

People attack religions for trying to maintain the status of marriage. But what about those of us who aren’t religious? What about those thousands of countries that aren’t christian? Are their marriage values not worth anything?

People get married for family, for the joining of two families, for each other… just because bad things like divorce, infidelity, and infertility happen doesn’t mean that marriage should be disregarded.

That’s like saying that because murder, theft, and embezzlement happen, we should do away with laws….because nothing will stop them anyway.

Is it not true that while people are choosing not to marry, couples are still living together in committed relationships. And if they don’t get married, and then decide to break up, they don’t have to get divorced. So, unless children are involved, it hardly matters. And aren’t there lots of couples who have a child who are not married, but are in committed relationships? When marriage requires no real commitment in any serious way, and divorce is “no fault” so anyone can leave a marriage any time with no recriminations, why should people marry? There might be be a small tax advantage to marriage, and that’s it. For marriage to come back into vogue, it will have to provide some advantages (the sexual revolution changed its main advantage).

@squirbel – Civic- as opposed to religious-based marriage values should be respected. However, because marriage is portrayed as one thing so often, and especially since the same-sex marriage movement has come onto the field. It took me a while to realize that the marriage commitment represented in the legal contract was profound separate and apart from any declaration before God that you would commit yourself to another person. However, because these two are not portrayed as separate commitments, I think that people are disregarding marriage wholesale because they don’t see how those religious traditions make sense or are applicable today – essentially, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I think that once we move away from that and state marriage is something based on the legal commitments, and people get married before God separately, we’ll see more flexibility in marriages, and more respect for it. Once it becomes about the desire for parties to create a stable family unit based on commitment to each other regardless of sex, gender, sexuality, etc., we’ll be on a good track.

@Zyx First part: Marriage, legally speaking, doesn’t have anything to do with love. You can be legally married to someone and not feel anything for them. For example, people who were married for money so someone could stay in the country. That kind of thing. It happens and will probably continue to happen. The only reason for marriage, as a legal thing, is to make sure you and your partner are protected: health benefits, social security benefits, and the like.

Second part: Not sure what you mean.

I’m not saying I’m against marriage or that people shouldn’t get married. I just think modern life has changed quite a bit since its inception. I don’t think weddings should be abolished and I certainly don’t think that people should just go around swapping partners all the time.

Would there be such an uproar if, say, a gay couple registered as partners and it wasn’t called “marriage?” I don’t think so. Or,, at least, I would hope not.

I’m not entirely sure if I’m making sense here.

I think it comes with the ease of breaking commitments increasing. People no longer expect marriage to last. Thus, they are unwilling to work at it.

Exactly – @marinelife. Cultures around the world are becoming more and more immature – “give me what I want because I want it and just because you don’t doesn’t mean I’m out of line” attitude.

Let’s try this…

“Marriage” should be left to ‘religion.’ If you and your partner get married in a church or synagogue or in The Temple of Gaea, that should be fine. Following your beliefs is peachy. Having a tight-knit family unit is a good thing.

“Marriage” shouldn’t be part of legalese. Even if it’s something as simple as changing the word, then it should be done that way. If you and your partner want the benefits and protection that comes with being legal partners then the contract or legal papers need to be signed.

How does ‘obsolete’ fit in? Partnerships are different these days. You don’t need blood ties between countries to stop the invasions. You don’t need to marry rich to keep your kingdom afloat (although it’s awfully nice if you can swing that). Your daughter shouldn’t be so unimportant to you that you can use her as a bargaining chip.

Not too long ago, people stayed married no matter how unhappy they were. Now, people are more likely to sever those ties. It may be good (abusive spouse), or it may be bad (spouse keeps drinking from the milk carton), but that’s the way it is. People are less worried about offending their god than they are with wanting to be ‘happy,’ whatever that may mean for them.

But if a man or a woman want to be partners, good. If a gay/lesbian couple wants to be partners, that should be good, too. They shouldn’t have to worry about the religious connotations (because, for whatever reason, God decided homosexuality was bad) stepping in the way of their happiness and ability to ensure the legal benefits of a partnership.

Is this making sense yet?

Isn’t it true that over 50% of marriages end in divorce? I wouldn’t blame people for losing faith in it. My friend saw his parents have a very bitter divorce when he was only 7 years old. His whole perspective on lasting relationships has become quite pessimistic.

Personally, as someone who is not even allowed to get married, I honestly don’t have much sympathy for marriage at the moment. I definitely do not believe it is obsolete, however. But I believe that it’s pretty unrealistic to expect someone’s first marriage to be everlasting. The only reason divorce rates were lower in the “olden days” was not because people were more in love back then and smarter about marriage, it was because there was much greater societal pressure to stay married no matter how bad the relationship was. Abusive relationships continued to be abusive, cheating spouses were allowed to cheat as the relationship fell apart, two people who lived totally separately lives stayed together to keep up an image. People don’t do that as much anymore.

Lets just be realistic: Marriage is obselete. People think they are doing it for love, but its only for security and to fit in. If two people have kids and a house together, people will assume you are married, but if you’re not married, you will be asked questions. It’s just a societal norm like monogamy.

Progress is made for a reason. People can continue to fight modern trends, but they are here for a reason. It’s simply logic and rationality at work. This does not mean that old-fashioned values are wrong, but those values only work amongst old fashioned communities.

It seems many countries have gone the way of fewer marriages from what I understand. Parts of Europe, Canada, etc. What I find interesting is in America many associate not being married with less stability, and I think associate it also with the lower classes and mush it altogether to think one is directly related to the other, and to other perceived negative behaviors, but that is not the case in the European countries from what I understand? I love being married. I love the companionship, the feeling of being family, the long term, having been through trials and joys with each other, the “inside jokes.”

@gorillapaws I love your answer, and I think what you said probably does affect the results of the study.

@gorillapaws I agree, of course obsolete isn’t the right word, but I meant more along the lines of extraneous?

Can I turn the question around and ask “what is the purpose of marriage?”

If I find someone who seems like a good life partner, I see absolutely no reason to codify that in law (except for perhaps the aforementioned tax breaks). Marriage as we know it in western society was created by patriarchal, religious governments as a business contract. I have no need for god or the government to be involved in my intimate relationships, nor do I have any need or desire for a $30,000 party during which I get to be a pretty pretty princess in a foofy white dress.

If I want to be with someone for the rest of my life, we can just be together. Fuck the paperwork.

@nikipedia That notion of spending $20,000 on a wedding is probably more irrational than marriage itself lol. I really have a hard time trying to justify using that much money for something other than investing or making an important purchase/investment.

I have changed my beliefs about marriage 100% over the years.

Firstly, what most people call ‘love’ is nothing more than addictive attachment.

Secondly, marriage as an ‘institution’ sets itself up for failure as institutions historically fail.

Thirdly, due to the gross and pervasive upsurge of narcissisim in all facets of society and interpersonal relationship, sustaining a marriage for most completely excludes the ‘for worse’ and the ‘for better,’ if not attained to both parties satisfactions, usually means a downward spiral of dysfunction.

On the other hand, staying in unhealthy and dysfunctional situations should never be cloaked under the guise of a marriage commitment.

I have no desire to ever marry again.

@nikipedia

Yes, good point, I agree.

Marriage no longer serves a purpose in my life, as with many things one can and does outgrow old programming, as it should be. :-)

The notion that marriage is obsolete is growing fastest amongst those with the least education.

I would think those that are educated have better problem solving skills and are more willing to work through their problems in relationships, and not give up so easily.

@Coloma “Thirdly, due to the gross and pervasive upsurge of narcissisim in all facets of society and interpersonal relationship, sustaining a marriage for most completely excludes the ‘for worse’ and the ‘for better,’ if not attained to both parties satisfactions”

Sad but true lol.

@jonsblond Touche :)

@nikipedia Although I agree that the committment is really between the two people and not about a piece of paper, I can only tell you that I think the piece of paper makes a difference. A lot of married people say this very same thing, and what I offer is the married people know the difference, and the people who have never been married don’t, because the have not experienced it. I don’t think it has to be about a legal document, but being married to each other, even if it is only in name between the two people, is different than dating or living together.

@jonsblond Makes sense, but does that explain people not getting married? Not wanting to marry? Or, does it explain people getting divorced?

@nikipedia – As @JLeslie mentions, there is a distinct purpose of marriage that should be retained in the civil incarnation of it – there are literally thousands of state and federal benefits partners receive in marriage. It also mandates that you take responsibility for the partner’s life. The partner’s debt becomes shared debt. Property you own passes to the partner by state law, at least partially, with or without a will. Children of the partnership are considered to be both the partners’ in many cases regardless of whether it is impossible that the child be biologically one or both of the partners without any paperwork. The purpose of marriage isn’t to validate the relationship – but to streamline the various legal issues that come up in a long-term relationship where people are sharing their lives, and to ensure that the unit can be more stable than either of the individuals alone.

I think this thread, in many ways, exemplifies why people are stating that marriage is “obsolete” – marriage is portrayed as this strange, anachronistic pledge-based commitment instead of a way the state provides to legally streamline and stabilize family units.

@Coloma – I don’t know if there is “gross and pervasive upsurge of narcissism.” I don’t think that we can show that, in this day an age, we are more or less narcissistic than previous generations or societies…I think at most we can say that the narcissism has changed in form, or perhaps is more visible.

@iamthemob

Maybe.

I love being married and I am very glad that we did get married. We had a ceremony at the river with a Justice of the Peace. It was just us (and two friends as witnesses) and it was great.

To me, marriage is a further bond. It’s hard to explain, but after we got married, I felt more connected to my husband than before. I don’t think it’s obsolete, I just think we (general we) are just becoming more accepting of the other options. It use to be that a couple living together before/without marriage was looked down on, now it’s a lot more accepted. The acceptance of gay/lesbian couples seems to be growing as well in my opinion. As we accept these situations of people that are not married, I think it’s natural to question how much marriage is really necessary. I don’t think anyone should have to get married, but I still think it holds some value.

As far as wanting to be a single mother, I don’t ever want to do that again and hope I never have to. I did it for about 5 years. I never pictured myself raising my son alone and it was hard. I consider myself very lucky to have found a man that is not only willing to be a part of my son’s life, but that also wants to be a father to him and is in the process of adopting him. There’s nothing wrong with single parents, but I felt really bad all those years that my son didn’t have a dad, especially when he asked where his dad was.

I have been with my partner for 9 years. We are not allowed to marry. We are happy, share all parts of our lives, and there is no reason why we will not be together for the rest of our lives. I guess marriage is obsolete.

@psychocandy If you could marry, would you?

Yes, but only because of the financial and legal benefits. Otherwise, I see no point. We are already together.

I was not really talking about the benefits or committment @iamthemob is talking about, but more about the psychological bond. I never really think, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, those were not in my vows anyway. It is simply I have built a life with my husband, he is my best friend, he is my family, and I will be with him forever. At least that is the feeling I have, a feeling of perminance. Of course we never know what life will hand us, and I cannot control everything. If he became sick of course I would still be there, I don’t need a specific vow for that, because I think you help any close family member, husband, children, parents. We don’t literally take a vow to care for our children an parents, siblings, we do it because of our relationship and out of love.

My vows were actually, well part of them, I won’t bore you with the whole thing, “be sanctified to me as my husband…and I will, love, honor, and respect you…I will provide for you and sustain you…” and he said the exact same words to me.

I think that both the benefits that @JLeslie speaks of and the one that I do are intimately connected. The benefits also entail responsibilities – for example, you become responsible for the debts of your spouse in many cases as if they were your own. Expressing the will and desire to take on those responsibilities through legal means is both an expression and a reinforcement of the psychological bond that the parties to the marriage have.

Knowing that this is the case, knowing that you have these responsibilities, means that you are taking the other person’s life and decisions on as your own. It is a distinctly different expression than simply living with a person. If that doesn’t mean you have a psychological and emotional bond to the person, and care about how they grow as you do yourself…I don’t know what would.

Because 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Most marriages end in divorce. People don’t want to compromise and don’t want a long term commitment. People marry for the wrong reasons as well

Society is more and more about the quick fix. And, disillusion.
Everything is disposable, and we teach our children that it is ok. Even, no matter how much of a tree huger you are. ;-)

It is tragic. A good sign that the end time are near.

I’m guessing that marriage is still about resources. The people who like it the most are those with the most resources that they want to protect. People without many resources don’t care. They don’t have insurance policies—life or health—to worry about. There is nothing to leave to their descendants.

Possibly, people with more education recognize and can take advantage of the advantages provided by marriage. It’s easy to say the church and the state has nothing to do with me and my relationships. That’s the attitude of a romantic culture. I felt that way back before I got married.

What allowed me to marry was the realization that I wanted to celebrate my relationship with my SO before friends and family. I wanted their help for our relationship. I wanted their acknowledgement of our relationship.

What I realized later is that since society did place such a premium on marriage, I automatically got a huge set of benefits just for signing the license. Later on, I realized how handy some of these benefits are.

But what marriage does or doesn’t mean to me is kind of irrelevant. What is weird is trying to interpret what these trends mean. It just surprises me, and I am not at all sure what they do mean.

Only read about half the responses.

I think marriage and civil unions need to be completely separated. If you want a religious ceremony, fine, but going to a judge and being legally joined should not automatically be called marriage.

An interesting note: the less educated among us are often below the poverty line and thus on welfare. If two people on welfare get married, that changes their ability to have welfare the reasoning being that with two incomes, a household can stay afloat much more easily so many who are on welfare will eschew marriage in order to keep the welfare.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. Marriage is not obsolete, many would hope it would. They come up with every issue known to man why marriage should be passed over. They do so to try and validate their fear. Those who care not for marriage or see it s ”just a piece of paper” fail to see or understand the concept of what marriage is. They fear the loss of their freedom to another person more than they desire to gain a committed partner for life. In short, it is the fear of loss over the desire to gain. It is ironic those who can’t legally marry see the benefit and joy in it more than those who can and take it for granted.

I don’t think anyone would buy a home and not care to have the deed to it, or a car and not have the pink. Why with something miles more important than a house or a car would one not want to have the ”title”, official recognitions of your commitment to your spouse? The reason why you don’t want the deed or the pink is you want the fun of living in the house or driving the vehicle but none of the responsibility. It is not really your house, so if the wind blows 20% of the tiles off the roof or the water heater craps out you don’t have to worry about being stuck with the bill, someone else is. If the tranny locks up, it is not your SUV, you call a tow truck send it away and someone else will fix it, you can move on to another vehicle and still cruise down the road with out missing a beat.

The fact that close to have the people could not sustain a marriage because of immaturity, lack of communication, mistaking lust for real love don’t make marriage any less or an avoidable thing to do. We have not outlawed cars because some are clueless enough to text and drive or drive drunk, it is those drivers not the driving process that is incorrect or in error.

Lets balk marriage because it a staple of the church, so is not murdering anyone yet we feel free to go along with that and not make it just a church thing.

“We love each other, why do we need a ring and piece of paper to show it?” Why not? Unless you are ashamed to travel around with the ring to let all would be admirers that you are closed for new business even though some clods will still ignore it. Why have the registration, I am sure when people see you in the car they will know you own it because you drive it and have the keys, even if it gets stolen the insurance company will certainly know it is yours just off sight alone. Or maybe your pet, you feed it and buy its shots you need nothing more to say the dog belongs to you that the fact you feed it and it licks your nose. The reason not to have the ring or the license is to have an easier time dumping the relationship; an egress system. Living together and having kids playing house might be the motivation some need to commit because they know at any moment their “other half” can just pack their bags and go. Those who cohabitate fear the other can leave more than they feel losing their freedom to one they supposing love. To be in a relationship with out marriage no matter how long is like someone letting you squat in their house. They let you redecorate, put in plants make the place comfortable but you never really own it, it can be raked from under you at any time and rather quick. Those who don’t want to marry might work harder because they can see the person they love leaving with no roadblocks at all to make them think about it.

Marriage has to be protected or that it is the church and thus just an institution that denies rights to some Americans so lets scrap it or throw open the doors. Law is what it is, even those convicted of crimes that were not violent, they could have cook the books in their company but they lose their Constitutional right to bare arms. Life is not 100% equal straight across the board, but that don’t stop those who want to have a committed union from creating an equal standing process like marriage,—unless marriage is really the “gold standard” in relationships?—

I don’t think marriage is dead to the truly wise. I look forward to having that ring on my finger and showing all other women “sorry, you are too late, this dude is taken”. I am not afraid to have the deed and flaunt it.

Let’s just do away with marriage entirely and let the women raise all the children. Then we can have even MORE men growing to adulthood without a role model, and even MORE women growing to adulthood without a clue as to what men are really like. GREAT prescription for further American effeminization.

“American effeminization”?

@CaptainHarley: Just FYI, some of us single moms do a damned fine job…

@JilltheTooth

Two of my daughters raised their children on their own, and they did an outstanding job. You are to be commended.

@wundayatta What is odd is it seems being married helps create wealth, so it would seem it should help those in the lower rungs economically would do better married, but I have been told that people can qualify for more public assistance if they are not married. So, the government is rewarding the lower classes to not be married, but at the same time rewarding the upper classes to be married. I don’t know if I am making sense.

And, I think for the most part people are totally unaware of economic advantages or disadvantages of being married when they get married, especially young people.

And, I think the lack of traditional roles makes marriage less necessary. Women can work, men can do housework. So maybe people see less value in the partnership? Not that I think it makes marriage less necessary, but some may not see the point in marriage, since traditionally marriage was an institutution marketed to people as necessary when you have children, or required by religion if you wanted to have sex, or the man works and the wife cares for the homestead. The idea of the partnership between the couple, and the value of the long term relationship, rather than it being a burden or committment long term was not emphasized I think.

Well, @CaptainHarley, you just sucked the wind out of my knee-jerk reaction. Thank you. :-)

I think many people in that poll have different reasons for thinking marriage is obsolete. I also believe that ‘the purpose of marriage’ varies along class and cultural lines. To me, the legal institution of marriage is obsolete, philosophically speaking but I am legally married so that I can milk this fucked up system for all it’s worth because I have kids and need health insurance, etc. They think they’ve prevented queers from getting married – well, screw you, I get all the same benefits as straight people and I’ve never identified as such. If marriage is to have benefits attached to it (which I think it shouldn’t), then it better fucking be extended to any consenting adults who want to join in marriage. As for the concept of being in love forever and ever, marriage was never about that – a love match kind of marriage is a recent development in humanity’s history and because love can be fickle, present-day marriages fall apart – marriage in the ‘good ole days’ (in which I still don’t believe) was formed for other reasons and kept for decades because spouses were friends, partners, colleagues, enermies but not madly in love (or at least it was rare) – I always say it’s easier to have a long marriage with someone you only slightly like and that’s how it was for the generations before us (with exceptions, of course).

I still want to know how marriage is related to “American Effeminization.”

I would like to add that when marriage provides again protection to women and children, it will begin to be restored, at least for some. Now, women and children have lost the protection that marriage used to afford. Children are no longer protected at all. Very un-PC of me, I know.

@iamthemob Spare me.

@skfinkel – What kind of protections are you talking about exactly?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – I…can’t…

@skfinkel Spouses are still protected under the law. Spouses have partial ownership of their home in most states even if their name is not on the deed, traditionally that helps the wife. A Spouse can be awarded alimony of they are divorced, traditionally that helps the wife. There are more, but what really has changed is not the law I don’t think, but that the woman is financially independent.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I really find it sad that you thing so few can have a passionate love affair that can last decades. sigh

@jonsblond It is sad. I really believe few couples know intense love. But I know couples that know love, as well. Love always existed and will continue to exist – how we try to normalize it will vary. I felt nothing changed with Alex when I got married to him, nothing – we always were and still are madly in love w/each other.

I’m with @mrentropy. I don’t think marriage is obsolete per se, but I don’t think it is necessary or necessarily desirable. The choice to marry ought to be entirely personal and the choice of couples not to marry ought to be equally accepted. I do think marriage ought to be restructured a bit for modern times, possibly on a case by case basis. Personally I favor the renewable contract sort of marriage.

If I were ever to get married I would opt for a companionate marriage as proposed by a Colorado judge in the 1920’s. It was proposed as a trial marriage for young couples without the means to marry. This Judge was well aware that it was healthy for young adults to pursue sexual relationships even if they couldn’t marry and and acknowledged that there was nothing wrong with the fact that youthful relationships didn’t always last. The companionate marriage was meant to give young adult an avenue to pursue serious sexual relationships without subjecting them to scorn and ridicule. Sadly it didn’t really catch on.

Companionate marriage had three stipulations. It was initially a ten year contract eligible for renewal but was solvable. The solvability was made more feasible than in standard marriage by the second and third stipulations. Each party retained their own assets and were not financially responsible for each other if the marriage ended and birth control would be used to prevent children which would alter considerations in the event of divorce. If a baby was born the marriage would no longer be considered companionate.

Source: Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell. I really enjoyed this one. You can see a review of the relevant chapter here.

@JilltheTooth

Hon, just because I think that children need both male and female role models, doesn’t mean I don’t think women can raise great children on their own. : )

@CaptainHarley ; As I’m sure your daughters can (and have) told you, we don’t raise them in a vacuum. I’ll bet you’ve done more than your fair share of role modeling for your grandchildren! You lucky dog, I want me some of those. Maybe I shouldn’t have raised such a sensible child! ;-)

@wundayatta I think you misread the graphs when you said, “Only college-educated folks still believe in marriage at rates close to those in 1990.”

What the data shows is that college educated people ARE MARRIED at similar rates to what they were in 1972. I would hazard a guess that there are a substantial number of people who no longer believe in marriage but STAY married for one reason or another. And I have seen many marriages between college-educated people that were held together only by the high cost of divorce – which would often be borne by one party.

I’m sure there are Flutherites who are married but don’t see it as a necessary thing, or believe that it contributes substantially to people’s lives.

Where I live, people recognize coupleship however it occurs. Ethical people respect that boundary. Courts have decided that the legal document doesn’t mean people are married – it’s how they live that determines it. And how many Flutherites have reported growing up in damaging hateful households bound together by “The sanctity” of marriage.

I’m putting “Marriage” in the list with “Honeymoon” and “New Year’s Eve Party” and “Tattoos”. If you want it, fine by me, and I hope you enjoy it; and if you decide against it, that’s fine by me too. If it has value, it’s in your appreciation of it.

As for me, I could get married or not. The serious advantage I see in it is that “My fiance” wouldn’t get bent out of shape by someone referring to her as my “Girlfriend.”

Marriage is a property state. There is no reason to enter into marriage in order to set up property contracts with another person in a short or long term relationship. Doing so outside of marriage sets the terms of these property contracts in much finer detail and allows you to determine what breech of contract could involve. It allows you to set term dates on the contracts and dissolve unions without the total division of property demanded within marriage.
Abandoning marriage isn’t a statement of abandoning long term stable relationships within which to raise families. It doesn’t negate creating a safe base with another person from which to engage in life.
Abandoning marriage as the primary property state also gets the church out of your legal matters.
And the reason that already married people of certain education levels and class status err on the side of sticking with marriage is because they are already heavily financially invested in the way things are. It’s not good financial savvy to abandon a functioning financial system mid stream for something that might not serve you as well. consider that most people who file for divorce are women….women of the well heeled avoid making themselves less so by divorce. They can do the actual math and determine how divorce financially effects their children at this point. Had they never married then the effects would have been different because they would have done different things themselves like amass their own protected assets and credit. For example women have great difficulty getting credit just after a divorce…this would be true of women in every class. Smart women avoid that. But if marriage were abandoned than other discriminatory systems would need to change as well because the discrepencies and bias would become much more blatant.

Marriage itself was a legality and a special “binding” moment with my husband. No religion at all. Just a day for us to profess out love and devotion to each other. as anyone should be able to do
I just don’t understand why people don’t believe in it..maybe because of what it has turned into. The excessive amount of money spent on it, religion dictating who can and can’t get married. I think it leaves a bad taste in peoples mouth.

Once upon a time people believed that all sorts of good things came from marriage: being able to have sex legally, having “legitimate” kids, and being accepted by family, friends and church. In recent years marriage has served almost no positive purposes, the only definite benefits of marriage today are for florists and dress shops, and then later for divorce attorneys. Men generally believe the only thing that marriage will guarantee is that they will lose their house if they want to get divorced.

So many of the problems that people have with marriage seem to be mostly because people get married too early, and don’t talk about what they want to happen if the marriage ends at a time when it’s going well.

@iamthemob

Most problems that come with marriage is the belief that one person should fulfill another for the rest of their lives.

People change and grow, not always together, and often the partners we chose at 20 are not the partners we wish to grow old with.

Most of us that are 50 and over are but mere shadows of our former young and immature selves.

So true, the odds of marrying at say 21 or 22 and remaining with the same person for a lifetime are highly unlikely.

I was married from 21 until 43….and I outgrew the marriage and divorced.

‘Forever’ is a long time, maybe not so long in the eras where the average lifespan was 40 something, maybe. lol

Infact, I once read that the whole mid-life transistion thing never even existed in bygone eras when one or both partners were dead by the time their oldest child left the home.

‘Til death do us part’ was maybe 20 or 25 years. lol

About the time a lot of marriages break up in modern society.

Nothing is ‘forever’ and I think that mindset is behind massive amounts of relational suffering by clinging to the belief system of ‘until death do us part.’

It might happen that way but don’t count on it. lol

@Coloma Can’t some friendships last ‘forever’? I married my best friend at the age of 21. This April we will celebrate our 19th anniversary. Yes, there have been moments when we both thought of walking away, but we are happy we worked things out. If I don’t ‘count on it’, what hope do we have? I just need to stand up for those very few young relationships that do work, because some do. This thread is getting very depressing for me now. I’m out. :P

@jonsblond

Congratulations!

@JilltheTooth

You need some, yes! Talk about melting your heart… the first time one of my granchildren put their lil arms around my neck and told me they loved me… OMG! : ))

Not to mention the time when my older grandaughter and I were talking, and I told her that I had always thought of her as more my daughter than my grandaughter ( her mother divorced her father and moved back home and my ex and I pretty much raised the child ), and she grinned and told me that she had always felt the same way. : )))

@iamthemob I believe it’s a fallacy that people marry too young. Just how many Catholics are divorced? And how many of them are forced to examine every aspect of marriage through weeks of precana counseling? And it still doesn’t prevent divorce. Why? Because people are in the phase of marketing their best still…and then you seal the deal and you find out how they really operate once they think you won’t divorce them…or you have a couple of kids and that makes it really hard to walk away. Pair bonding is about psychophysiology and marriage is a property state. When we finally seperate the two things we all will be alot better off.

@JLeslie: Not all women are financially independent in their marriages. Some women give up work to raise their children. These women are dependent on their husbands, who, if they leave the marriage, often leave their wives with little. Alimony can be a small fraction of what is needed to live on. And the biggest surprise for mothers is that they are now facing a formidable legal system that believes that children should be shared, regardless of the age of the child. Sadly, that 50/50 share reduces the amount women get for child support by half. So, women fall quickly into poverty. Men have to give much less to their ex-wives, and do much better.
@iamthemob: these are some of the protections that I am talking about. Women have lost financial support, and often lose the opportunity to raise their children in the way that children really need to be raised, in one home. The traveling back and forth, while it seems more “fair” has nothing whatsoever to do with the mental health or comfort of the child. Only in the best of divorces, where there are mature people who can understand a child’s needs, can such an arrangement even remotely work, and that would be because the father would listen and understand when a young child does not want to be away from his mother for three or four days at the age of three. However, unfortunately, many of the fathers who walk out of a marriage do not have the maturity of those who remain in a marriage when it gets more challenging. And these are the same men who now ask for 50% child responsibility, since the laws now have combined the hours of care with the amount a father has to give his ex-wife. No doubt some of these fathers may be great, but I would wager that a large number care more about keeping their wives from getting their money, and if they have to keep the children 50% of the time, they will do it—regardless of the child’s needs.

I don’t think the idea of commitment is obsolete. But there might be several ways for two people making a deal.

@skfinkel

Women have lost financial support, and often lose the opportunity to raise their children in the way that children really need to be raised, in one home.

This is profoundly upsetting to hear – I don’t want to sound to critical, but I have to emphasize this. Women don’t need financial support any more than men do. In certain situations they do – and they should get it. However, it is not their duty to raise the children, or be in the home. And the idea that children should be raised in one home is fairly modern, and the nuclear family is not a global construct. Children used to be sent off to boarding schools. I was – I was out of the house at fourteen. Other societies keep three, even four generations under one roof. And others take a community perspective at raising the children. We even do that here – public school means that children are in the care of, essentially, random strangers more than half their waking day. Multiple environments don’t have to mean inconsistency – you can have consistency and variety, what matters is steady love and support.

The traveling back and forth, while it seems more “fair” has nothing whatsoever to do with the mental health or comfort of the child.

See above – you’re focusing on the worst aspects of it. When there is a split, you’re basically containing fallout, and that’s where the moving back and forth may or may not be the best solution. But we do the best with what we have.

Only in the best of divorces, where there are mature people who can understand a child’s needs, can such an arrangement even remotely work, and that would be because the father would listen and understand when a young child does not want to be away from his mother for three or four days at the age of three.

If you insert father for mother and vice versa, that’s how it should be. And that’s only if the child actually feels that way. If there is a primary caregiver (often the mother, true), that’s where the attachment often is. And courts take that into account.

This is also a fairly heterosexist perspective.

However, unfortunately, many of the fathers who walk out of a marriage do not have the maturity of those who remain in a marriage when it gets more challenging. And these are the same men who now ask for 50% child responsibility, since the laws now have combined the hours of care with the amount a father has to give his ex-wife.

Which is why these things should be discussed in a prenup, as far as I’m concerned.

No doubt some of these fathers may be great, but I would wager that a large number care more about keeping their wives from getting their money, and if they have to keep the children 50% of the time, they will do it—regardless of the child’s needs.

Again, this assumes that the mother should be the one in the home, and the father should be at work. This is often the case. However, we’re in a transition stage in our culture, and therefore we are seeing the problems associated with that. Once we actually do have a fair balance between men and women, we’ll also do away with the anachronistic, and paternalistic, idea that women “need protection” of the law.

@Coloma, @Joybird – we’re all kind of saying the same thing. Marriage is a civil contract that should be entered into with the knowledge that things change. Before, the idea of “till death” made sense because people died younger, and things changed less. Both the emotional nature of the relationship and the property/legal consequences of the legal state should be factors that people take into consideration before they marry – and when people marry too young, they don’t often do that. So, it’s not a fallacy that “people marry too young,” but it’s fallacious to say that it’s because they’re too young. It’s just that they don’t often have the perspective to look that far into the future. And, of course, they’re deluded by the myth of the traditional marriage.

Marriage can last forever. It often doesn’t. People need to realize that you don’t make the commitment once…you make it every single day. Because of this, they also need to revisit the legal issues they face regularly, as if it might end the next day.

Planning for divorce is, in many ways, like writing a will. Although divorce isn’t inevitable, it’s a possibility – and you need to plan for the negative as well as the positive.

@skfinkel I agree many women wind up with financial difficulties after divorce. In fact it hurts the man’s wealth also, but it is typically more devastating for the woman, which is one reason I think marriage is important if a couple is going to live together and the woman is going to possibly take a back seat to her husband’s career, espeically if children are involved. But, back in the day women did not work, or if they worked had jobs that paid half what a man earned, or if she chose to have a baby it was almost impossible to work at the same time, being married was the only thing that made sense if a woman wanted to have some money. Now that women are able to be lawyers and doctors and CEO’s, they don’t need a husband to acheive their financial goals, hell financial stability. If you think in terms of getting married, rather than getting divorced, the reasons for getting married have changed, especially in the minds of young people I would argue. First, I don’t think they understand the legal protections civil marriage gives them, and second they think more in terms of individual financial independence anyway I think. They are raised to have a career, not to be a wife.

Most of the women who have children without benefit of marriage are in the lower socioeconomic strata, and are also the ones least likely to have a decent-paying job. This is the epigenesis of persistent poverty patterns, inner-city violence and crime, and gangs.

I’m thinking about the difference between an official relationship that breaks apart and an unofficial relationship that breaks apart. I am considering three different cases for each: when the couple has no real assets; when the couple has assets that have to be split; and when the couple has children, whether there are assets or not. It’s a lot to think about, but I’m using it to help me organize my thoughts.

There are a number of women with children on fluther who are getting divorces. In every single case I’ve discussed, the husband is putting on the brakes; refusing to take any action and generally, in my opinion, taking a scorched earth policy. They want as much as they can get.

Some of these women try to be nice, hoping their husbands will try to see it from the children’s point of view. No dice. They haven’t done it yet, but it looks to me like things are going to get nasty, and lawyers are going to be involved. Zero-sum thinking.

At least with a marriage, there is a tradition of law about how to deal with these things. It is somewhat flexible, having to deal with all kinds of situations that are different from the past. Women may make more than their exes. The two parties may move and live far apart. I’m sure there are other things. With marriage, some rights or expectations are standard.

Without a marriage, what happens? In common law states, you may get the protection of the law. But without marriage, what do you get? Child support hearings? Anything else? Marriage is a legal contract and it seems to me that people without that contract can easily lose out.

Emotionally… well, it’s love. People don’t think about contracts when they are in love. Maybe they live together for a while. Ok, the bloom is off the rose, but people still don’t think that a contract is really necessary because they continue to be in love. Also, they think that if it doesn’t work out, it’ll be easier to split if there’s no contract.

All that changes when assets and children enter the picture. People aren’t so free to split and yet, there may be no way to work it through, legally (I don’t know the law for unmarried couples splitting).

And after a split? All these blended families?

I don’t think marriage is obsolete. I think it is better for some people than others. I think it may trend downward a little while more, but it’ll flatten out at some level. Although, I’d be curious about data from the Scandinavian countries and Europe. I’ll leave it there for now.

@iamthemob: I will be the first to admit that my ideas on the relationship between mothers and young children are not in vogue. Regardless of the society, and regardless of our own history, mothers are the ones throughout the ages that have usually been with young children—they are the ones that nurse their babies (and this activity, thankfully, finally, has been shown to be extremely important for both mother and child). Very young children need to develop trust—trust in their environment, trust that they will be cared for. This happens when one person cares for them and loves them. Usually the mother. The fact that many mothers now often work, taking time away from young infants, does not mean that this is good for children. The fact that there are wonderful caring fathers does not mean that babies and young children should be taken from their mothers in divorce. There are studies now coming out that show that some young children in the care of others (including fathers) than their mothers for more than 20 hours a week have difficulties. In the days when babies were sent to wet nurses, those babies taken away from their mothers died at alarming rates. Mothers in most instances, are the ones most fit to care for their infants, careers or not. Sadly, we have such a crazy inflexible work expectations in the US that we don’t take the needs of mothers or babies into consideration. And this is true for divorce as well. Mother and babies are caught in a very bad legal time—I have no doubt this will change eventually, but the people who are unlucky enough to divorce now run the risk not only of having the mother fall into poverty, but more tragically, having their children grow up split between households, as if they themselves were property and not developing beings with needs for stability.

@skfinkel “There are studies now coming out that show that some young children in the care of others (including fathers) than their mothers for more than 20 hours a week have difficulties” – link?...I do agree with you that at least one parent should be with a young child for the first couple of years of their life…I do not think it must be the mother although it is easier to breast feed if you are at home with your child – give reality, however, what needs to change is the amount of maternity and paternity leave given to parents rather than going back to traditional gender norms that were incredibly limiting and problematic.

@skfinkel – I think you’re totally right about the current state of things – but as I said, I think that it’s a transition thing.

I think part of the issue is that the numbers of families where there has been a father and mother in the families life are generally those that have gone through a divorce.

Therefore, it’s not really the case that we have any data about split mother/father households where there isn’t that element of animosity associated with most divorces (I could say all divorces…because I think that there has to be some little bit of animosity there, even in the best ones…but I’ll err on the sage side).

The thing is, a nurturing environment is independent of any bond between a biological mother and child. It’s true that there is a physiological bonding phenomenon between a nursing mother and her child. But that doesn’t stop strong bonds where there the child is adopted. And in the days when wet nurses were common, we also weren’t medically sophisticated. Extended families have also provided successful support for young children into their adult years (e.g., children raised by grandparents). So, I don’t think that the data or time suggest anything about the nature of the household a child is raised in.

What you are right about is that it’s a bad legal time for mothers (and by certain extension, women), but only due to the transition, in my opinion. I disagree completely that women are the “most fit” to care for their infants beyond anything closely following birth. I think that devalues the role that fathers could have. But I do think that that’s what society still thinks – and the work issue comes into it. Women are often discriminated against in high-level positions because of the fear that they will have families and therefore need to take maternity leave. I advocate halving the maternity leave offered and making paternity leave of an equal time mandatory. Then women are out half the time as before, and men are in the same position. Further, as soon as we expect fathers to take an active role in raising the kids, mothers won’t be the ones as viewed as responsible for picking them up from school, going to parent teacher conferences, etc.

The study you mention is not proof of the cause of the developmental problems in children but rather evidence of the gender equality problems in society today. If the fathers that were taking care of these children were working, then the results are skewed. And it’s guaranteed that the results were skewed by the expectations of masculinity placed on men, and how this conflicts with any nurturing tendencies.

The fact that studies have also demonstrated that there is no developmental difference in children raised by gay men demonstrates that men are completely capable of raising healthy and developmentally successful children without mothers being involved. Professor Judith Stacey, of New York University, stated: “Rarely is there as much consensus in any area of social science as in the case of gay parenting, which is why the American Academy of Pediatrics and all of the major professional organizations with expertise in child welfare have issued reports and resolutions in support of gay and lesbian parental rights”.

I think you’re absolutely right about the problems in both the law and the workforce. But I think you’re incorrect that the problems are evidence of the unique role that mothers play in a child’s development as opposed to evidence of the fact that, as a society, we still do not expect fathers to be equal partners in raising the children.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir The long term child care study to which I am referring is the NICHD study—and they are now looking at the children who have grown up from the early days of childcare. The issues for young children that began in the earlier days remain as the children grow. As far as breast feeding goes, I don’t count pumping milk as “breast feeding.” The child is getting the nutrition with bottled breast milk, but not the physical, emotional, nurturing relationship between two living humans that happens with nursing. A fabulous account of this can be found in Woman, An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier, who documents that there is actually an exchange between the baby’s saliva and the mother’s nipple that helps determine the make-up of the milk. To pretend that pumping milk is like nursing is one more way of duping young mothers. It’s just not the same.
@iamthemob: Don’t get me wrong. I think fathers are critically important in the lives of their children. It’s just that I do not believe they should be taken from their mothers at a young age to be with fathers. And I know that in cases of adoption, and when mothers can’t nurse, bottled milk is a fine alternative. And I know that gay and lesbian couples do a great job with their children, are loving and nurturing parents. Rather than halving the paltry maternity leave that most women now receive, and often can’t even take since it is unpaid, I think we should make it much longer with pay, and give fathers time off too. In my ideal world, mothers should be able nurse their babies for as long as they like, fathers should not walk out of marriages about a year after the baby is born (which is when it happens statistically) and mothers (and fathers too, if they wish) should be able to work at a good paying jobs for the hours they wish until the child is in school. I also believe that all parents should get some education in child development and understand the effects of their own behaviors on their children. And, while I am at it, I wish that the legal system would understand the damage they are doing to children in the name of equality and focus on the needs of the child and not on the politics of the day.

@skfinkel I agree that there is an emotional connection and that breastfeeding is important but let’s not idealize too much here – pulling at heartstrings about this situation doesn’t solve the issue – what does solve the issue is understanding that not everyone needs to be obligated to breastfeed because sometimes women don’t produce enough milk, sometimes their breastmilk is not even healthy for the child (considering whatever chemicals and substances they might excrete) adn though it should be encouraged, going to the extreme of ‘you’re not perfect until you lay with your baby 24/7 and breasfeed on demand’ puts a prison around women, rather than liberate. We shouldn’t applaud people leaving babies in nursery care 3 weeks after giving birth either but there needs to be a reality-beholden, understanding middle ground. I was never able to breastfeed as much as I’d love because I never produced enough milk and it didn’t matter if I stayed at home or not (I actually produced more when I went to work, after my second was born) but because of my taking anti-depressants (I am very prone to severe postpartum depression), my breastmilk was not the best idea for my kids, anyway (though I took the risk, lowered my meds, and breastfed anyway). Anyway, as I said before, there needs to be policy shifts and global shifts to allow women the time to breastfeed without financially incapacitating them but this can’t be done at the expense of tremendous steps we’ve made towards equality.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir: We have made great steps toward equality. But equality does not mean the the sexes are the same—we have different roles to play. In fact, I think that until we come right out and admit this, women never will achieve full equality. Differences are not bad, but they exist. Only when we build this into a fair system, will women be able to achieve at the top levels. On the breastfeeding question, of course there are times when it is not possible, as when like you said, you are taking medication not good for the baby. But, many women are more than able to nurse but are deflected from doing it for a variety of reasons and told it doesn’t make any difference at all. And that’s just not true.

@skfinkel No doubt some of these fathers may be great, but I would wager that a large number care more about keeping their wives from getting their money, and if they have to keep the children 50% of the time, they will do it—regardless of the child’s needs. I hardly think it is because they care more for money than their children. I would not care if she got the lion’s share of the cash so long as I got the lion’s share of time with the kids. I would even earn just enough to survive and not have all the bells and whistles so long as I am with any children of mine. Those who seem that way are maybe that way because there is no accountability, even when she was the cheating b****. The court tells a man “you will go out and work 60hr weeks and make this money then just hand it over to your ex-wife ”for the children”. I have seen it, the dad asks the kids why they have such crappy shoes or lacking a better coat for winter and the kid says because mom didn’t have the money. Yet, you see a newer car in the drive way, a new big screen which the kids can hardly use unless mom says so, other fancy “toys” not counting a getaway or two. The court don’t check to see if the money is really being used even 80% for the benefit of the children. I have seen where the ”child’s money” has gone for gifts to the man she cheated with that ended the marriage; talk about being rewarded for being a cheating douche.

@skfinkel – I think that we’re almost on the same page here. My only problem with your assessment is arguably semantic…but I think that the way the problems are framed here is essential to moving towards the solution.

I don’t believe that men and women have separate roles to fill in that the roles are not different enough to make it a focus. There are biological differences between men and women in terms of childbirth and initial rearing, but those are differences that we should be, really, controlling for with our policies.

I think that breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, but it may be one of the things that we do end up sacrificing in some cases to get to true equality. This only means that some people will suffer additional obstacles in their career if they choose to breastfeed. But that leaves the choice to them.

In the end, I think that the goal that we both agree on is that it should as much as possible be a free choice as much as both legally and practically possible.

@Hypocrisy_Central – clearly the system is abused by both sides, mothers and fathers. Again, society is figuring out how to adapt. Neither men nor women are at fault – let’s get to the system that’s fair for people.

@Hypocrisy_Central : Yes, that sounds pretty lousy. But I am talking in general and not about any specific case. If a woman is not using the money she receives to care for her child, she should definitely be accountable. There are always people who will abuse the situation they are in for selfish purposes—and women are not immune to such behaviors.
@iamthemob It would be very sad indeed if we “give up breastfeeding” for the elusive goal of “true equality.”

@skfinkel – Just to clarify – we wouldn’t be giving up breastfeeding. We just wouldn’t explicitly protect it, and therefore it would be up to the mothers and their employers how to handle breaks or leave for it based on internal private, rather than public, policy.

@skfinkel I don’t think equality is about ‘erasing difference’ and I don’t understand why people fear that. I want people’s issues addressed no matter what those issues are around childcare – equality, however, also means not pigeonholing peole – you can’t assume that the mother must take care of her child and assume that a father can not – my husband has been a stay at home parent for our second for the past 2 years and I will be the first to say that he was a much better choice than I – he’s much more patient, resilient and can hang around the home – I’d have anxiety, I’d want out, I’d want to work and do my activism, etc.

@skfinkel There are just so many factors, I hope they are accounting or them. Day care children with married parents, with single parents, with divorced parents, all different. There are studies that show children of divorced parents do as well as married parents in almost all parameters looked at, but children of single parents, being born to unwed mothers, do worse statistically. Single parent, and a mother single by divorce or widow was very different, and I think people rarely make the distinction. And, I am not sure how that all really divides up, because single parent high income might have different results than low income, or age of the single parent, etc. In fact, I would love to see a study regarding the age of the parents when the child was born, and how well the kid does. Anyway, my point is averages and stats can be misleading.

@Hypocrisy_Central I do know people who are pissed about the 50/50 child custody thing, mostly women, because they don’t like the kid being shuffled back and forth so much. I do know men who fight for custody, get to pay less, and then let their wives have the kids most of the time. I know all sorts of situations, some good, some bad. I do understand why men hate to pay money when they rarely get to see their kids, that situation would be frustrating for anyone if they want to see their children more. I have a girlfriend who left her husband because he was a loser, and in the end she has to pay him child support and it pisses her off. She left the guy because he never got his ass out to get a full time job, and now she has to pay him after the divorce. She would much rather have custody.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir: Yes, so many situations where the father is the one who is more patient, etc. but you are talking about in the context of the children being in their own home, where you, the mother, is around every day—after work. That’s different from children being taken from one parent to be with the other. There is a danger of pigeonholing that I can easily get into—but when you think of young children in the aggregate, it is their mothers who are the ones who care for them. (The movie Babies shows four infants from four countries in their first year—the fathers were sometimes present, but not the main caretaker—just another example.) I have trouble seeing why we are resistant to the notion that it is “natural” to have a mother care for her young infant and child. Does it really undermine the strides women have made in other ways?
@JLeslie I would like to see the studies that show that children from divorced families do the same as children from parents who have not divorced. I have not seen such studies. When I looked at some studies that are used to justify 50/50 laws for custody, I was appalled at how weak those studies are—both in the numbers of cases they looked at and at the situations for the children. So, even if someone says there are “studies,” it is worth looking at them closely to see if they actually are good studies. So many childrens lives are being affected by sloppy research.

@skfinkel I heard it from Ann Coulter, I know she is a crazy right winger, but she wrote a book about single mothers, and this was a distinction she made when doing her research. She has all sorts of stats about the prisons being full of people who were raised by single mothers, and those type of stats are readily available, this website quotes her, but that stat does not tell us what percentage of children raised by single mothers wind up in prison compared to divorced parents, or how many wind up impoverhed, dropping out of high school, etc, which I think is a more valid number.

Ooh. I’d better give Katawagrey a strong talking to.

@skfinkel I wanted to add that I saw Ann Coulter on a show whee she made the distinction between single mothers and divorced and widowed mothers, but most of the right wing blogs have taken her statistics and not bothered to define single mothers appropriately related to the stats she gathered.

@JLeslie I just copied this from the link to Coulter. She blames the single women for their kids ending up in jail—blaming the victim of abuse for having kids that end up being problems. You don’t have to delve too deeply here to see the problem in her logic. Women who are being abused by their husbands or boyfriends will leave the relationship (to protect themselves and their children). They then become “single women.” These victims of abuse are the same individuals whose children end up in prison…Could that be the result of the abuse by the father and not simply the “singleness” of the mother? Coulter sounds as if women just waltz out of relationships willy-nilly. And she completely blames the women here. This convoluted use of statistics on Coulter’s part is intentionally misleading.
“According to the US Justice Department crime statistics, domestic abuse is virtually nonexistent for married women living with their husbands. From 1993 to 2005, the number of married women victimized by their husbands ranged from 0.9 to 3.2 per 1000.
“Domestic violence was about 40 times more likely among divorced or separated women, ranging from 37.7 to 118.5 per 1000. Even never married women were more than twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence as married women.”—P.57–58

If I was feeling optimistic (which I rarely do), I’d posit that more and more Americans have come to recognize the hypocrisy involved in an institution (marriage) that is withheld from one population (gays and lesbians), and yet is treated so cavalierly by those who do have the right to marry (re: the divorce rate).

I doubt that the reason is quite so high minded, however. I think we’re merely seeing the end result of a slow cultural change that places less emphasis on marriage. When my mother divorced 40 years ago, she faced a huge social stigma. That pressure no longer exists. The Catholic church seems to have less influence. Women are now much more prevalent in the workplace and so are less dependent on a husband for support. I think all of these things have reduced the emphasis that is placed on marriage.

And as an aside, what is this “sanctity”? What is it that so desperately needs to be protected from the scourge of homosexuality? Marriage through the ages has been a method for the transfer of chattel (i.e. women as property), hereditary transfer of property (to produce an heir), and political expediency (to create allies). It is only in very recent history that the romantic notion of “love” has become involved in marriage. What is it exactly that’s going to create the downfall of Western society if two people, for whatever reason, want to enter into this contract, even if they are of the same sex?

Someone actually read Ann Coulter’s hateful drivel?!?

@skfinkel But, if those women are more likely to be single, isn’t it connected? If these women planned their families once in stable committed relationships, maybe the entire situation would be better for them and the children, rather then, oops, got pregnant and had a baby, and now I’m kicking that abusive guy to the curb, or he drops her. Maybe it is not the singleness, but the woman who is more likely to be a single parent? On another Q once a person who grew up middle class, but spent a lot of time with poor people, because of the work his mother did said that poor people do not plan when to have a baby, it does not occur to them, it is not in their minds, their culture.

Of course there are single parents who are middle class, and there is abuse in all classes, but single parents are more likely to wind up poor.

@syz – that’s on point. I love the idea that there is a traditional idea of what marriage is that’s lasted for thousands of years. Especially that it is an argument that has been used on the floor of Congress.

I really would like to also address the fact that marriage is about creating a family, but not necessarily having children. This is not a certainty for any married couple, and therefore we are considering two adults who are consenting to legally share assets and liabilities.

@iamthemob can you explain that to the right wingers, that civil marriage is two adults who are consenting to legally share assets and liabilities? I think once we gave clergy power by the state to perform a civil marriage in America, a portion of our population forgot civil marriage is a legal contract.

@JLeslie – I would love to…but it would more than likely it would be in the context of a same-sex marriage discussion. And once the DOMA folks here about the gays…all they think about is sex.

Ironic that they are just so obsessed with the gay sex. They make us seem like choir boys (pun intended).

@JLeslie It could be the young woman who is abused herself is more likely to pick a partner who will abuse her, and then continue the cycle again with her own children. These are hard questions, who to blame for the problems of abuse, unwanted pregnancies, criminals. It is not one group, it is a system, lots of us contribute to it, and we are all its victims.

@skfinkel – I find the people that attempt to blame one thing or another for the issues to be completely terrifying. How there could be a single cause to any pervasive social problem escapes me.

@skfinkel Sure, but if that young abused girl did not have a baby before the age of 20, she would have a better chance for herself and her future children. The baby really makes it difficult, and affects the next generation. Of course, some young women overcome, get very focused because they have a baby, grow up fast. But, a large percentage don’t if they are already in a bad situation. They stunt their ability to get out of the circumstance they have always known, it is frustrating.

@skfinkel We’re resistant because not every mother feels this ‘natural’ urge.

The feminist movement was all about choice, not pitting woman against woman for their individual choices.

In my experience, and that of many of my friends of my generation, the first generation post feminism, we got SCREWED, big time! lol

We were expected to work and still manage all the domestics of home and hearth and child raising while many of the men, most I would say, while paying lip service to equality, still absolutely believed that the woman was to do it all.

They did what they always did, went to work and came home to their dinners and all their socks rolled up in their drawers and kids bathed and fed and ready for bed.
And expecting lavish praise and appriciation for their ‘help’.

Doing a load of laundry or running the vacuum around was afforded epic proportions and acknowledgment of what a great guy he was!

AND, inspite of the lip service, it was an unspoken, but very clear message that they were still the SUPERIOR party!

I have found this mindset to still be quite prevalent in the 50 something segment of the male population.

They all want women that still look like centerfolds, independent with good incomes, so as not to be ‘burdened’ with any dependancy, BUT…they also want the mega nurturing, caretaking and admiration for their royal maleness.

Gah!

@Coloma We were expected to work and still manage all the domestics of home and hearth and child raising while many of the men, most I would say, while paying lip service to equality, still absolutely believed that the woman was to do it all.
Because many of the loud and vocal women said they could; that they did not need a man.

@Hypocrisy_Central I don’t recall any of the loud and vocal women (I’m in charge of them, btws) saying they wanted to work and have a second or third shift at home and be with a partner that doesn’t carry their weight. And, in general, many women don’t need a man and many men don’t need women. It’s not about need, it’s about wanting to be with someone and being equal.