Saturday 18 April 2020

The End of Marriage

The institution of marriage has been in the news a lot in recent years, what with Supreme Court rulings and the culture war issues surrounding them.  Even before then, however, and spread over several decades, the purpose of marriage seems to have been pared down to any two people in love wanting to live together, more or less committed to each other - at least for awhile.  This is a long way from the traditional purposes of marriage in most human societies.  To annotate the changes, I'd like to look at some of the original purposes for the almost universal institution of marriage.

The family, normally in the form of mother, father and children living together, often with other relatives, has been the principal building block of stable cultures for millennia.  Parents, acting together, are the first and most important educators for their children, teaching them language, life skills, appropriate behaviour, and passing down knowledge and values.  Utopian dreams of perfect societies without families filling those roles are unrealistic when not implemented, and generally disastrous when seriously attempted over a long time.  Just as the family is the building block of society, marriage of one man and one woman has always been the basis and cornerstone of stable families.

One purpose of marriage in many societies through time is to protect the woman being wed.  Pax to any feminists who may bristle at that statement, in the past, women were considered as little more than chattel and dependants, under the care of their parents, until transferred by marriage to their husbands, who were then responsible for them.  An unattached, unmarried woman would be at significant economic, physical, and moral risk, having few rights, opportunities or legal protections.  Marriage before God, family and friends, therefore, provided a legal and moral support structure for women in that, at their weddings, their husbands promised to be responsible for their safety, well being and support.  The extended family and surrounding community would hold the husbands to that commitment and monitor the well being of the couple.

Now you may pooh-pooh this idea as being old fashioned and way outdated, but consider that single mothers are a large fraction of the poor in today's Western nations.  They often are left with minimal support, while having to look after children.  And being thereby unable to work full time, they are often forced into low-paying, part-time work, or placed on welfare, both of which largely guarantee they remain in poverty and marginalized.  They are also at increased risk of physical and sexual abuse, mental illness, and a host of other problems.  Contrast their situation with that of women who remain married, and as a result, generally tend to be better off, more economically secure, healthier and happier.

Another even more impolitic purpose for marriage is to domesticate men!  In the past, without tight societal controls, single young men could be rather rowdy: sowing their wild oats, spending their pay on booze, living an energetic, perhaps frivolous and risky life with their buddies roaming around the towns and country, and often getting into trouble.  Military service, religious life, moral norms, or supervised hard work had the partial purpose and benefit of keeping a lid on the worst effects of testosterone in immature - say under 25 year old - males.  By such means young males could mature under the direction and monitoring of their own families and other older, more stable men.

Marriage also served to clamp down on such young-male tendencies.  The community expectation that you would plight yourself to one woman only, and that you would promise to be faithful and supportive for the rest of your life, was a strong incentive and force to make the new husband settle down, become more responsible, a better citizen, and an upstanding contributor to society.  That is one reason it was called "wedlock"; the man voluntarily agreed to the marriage, and the community norms and strictures enforced the bond.  Men were watched and expected to fulfill the role of husband and father, and divorce was rare and looked down upon by everyone as a personal failure.  Adultery too might occur, but was generally condemned, and so kept under wraps.  This model of marriage was not perfect, of course, but it worked for most people in most contexts.

Of course, human nature does not really change over the centuries, so today, as the community, religious, legal and moral constraints have been stripped away, we also have gangs of youths getting into trouble; inner city unattached males who prey on women and sire children out of wedlock; and deadbeat dads who leave their erstwhile sex partners with the children and without money.  Of course, there have always been such problems, but it seems they have gotten much worse in many ways, and the legal, economic and educational solutions now implemented to quell them do not seem to be particularly effective.  I won't bore you with studies and statistics pointing to the scale of such problems; they are all wide spread and well known if one goes looking.

The main purpose for marriage, of course, was (and should remain) the raising of children.  Stable couples are needed to effectively reproduce the human race.  Any loose man can "beget" a child, but it takes commitment and faithful work to raise children over 20 years or more until they can successfully leave home and fend for themselves.  This too has not changed much.  While there are heroic single Moms and Dads who effectively raise their kids, it is clear that children generally do best when their biological mother and father are married and remain together until (at least) the children leave home.  Claims that other arrangements are just as good, or that divorce in many cases is better for the children are not supportable when all the evidence is examined objectively.  Dozens of studies clearly show that having faithfully married parents is the best way for children to start life and grow up healthy and happy.

You may notice that I have not yet mentioned "love".  The idea that people need to be in love to get married, while certainly preferred, is not universal, as proven by arranged marriages in many cultures, and the "mail-order brides" phenomenon that still sometimes occurs (mostly online now).  While love is certainly beneficial to build a marriage on, it is not essential to a successful marriage undertaken for the purposes noted above.  If the partners are open and willing, love may develop before, and grow after the wedding, and there have been marriages of convenience that serve both partners' purposes - and their children's well being - even though they may never actually have been in love.

Recent relaxations of societal norms and related laws have undermined marriage, perhaps irretrievably.  Living together out of wedlock, birth control and abortion, serial common-law marriage, easy no-fault divorce, same sex marriage, hook-up arrangements, and pornography have each whittled away at the original purposes.  All that seems left now is that any two people can be "in love" and choose to get married for whatever reason and for however long they wish.  Some people have serial marriages, others decide marriage is irrelevant and just live together.  There have even been cases of people "marrying" themselves.  How long will it be until bigamy laws are struck down and we have legal "marriages" of three or more?  One might ask whether there is anything left of marriage today?

The effects of these societal failures are evident all around us: broken families, litigious custody battles, single mothers in poverty, bitter single dads locked in animosity; rampant loneliness, alcoholism, loose sex, and short-lived, empty romances;  confused, insecure and hurting children; reduced self esteem, purposelessness, mental health issues, anxiety and stress; the list goes on.  For most people, a stable marriage is the best way to a good life.  Of course, marriage is not for everyone, and there have always been failed marriages due to adultery or abuse, but they were much rarer in the past than today.  With fewer true marriages and many broken ones, women today are having fewer children.  Indeed, with most wealthy countries now reproducing themselves well below the replacement level (2.1 children per woman), the culture of some countries is on track to fade away.

The benefits of traditional marriage norms also flow beyond the family to the entire culture.  A century ago, anthropologist J.D. Unwin studied many societies throughout human history.  He found that societies adopting "absolute monogamy" (one man, one woman married for life) were the most prosperous and productive, economically, artistically and scientifically.  Those that did not either remained primitive or went downhill within three or four generations.  We can pretend that our world is somehow immune to this trend, but Unwin's results do not bode well for our countries and Western culture in general.

It may now be too late to save marriage in its traditional form in Western societies.  However, those who are truly married can still adopt the above principles and purposes for their lives together: living faithfully, committed to each other, and thereby accepting the benefits of a true marriage.  Here too, numerous studies show that faithfully married couples tend to be healthier and happier in almost every respect.  Finally, given the downfall of traditional marriage, perhaps we should rename it "holy matrimony" for those who wish to live that way and thereby reclaim the stability, security and joys that true marriage can bring.

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