For Better or Worse?

[Loretta]

@Tyc00n

So Loretta, how do you factor children into the above equation, given that in today’s society its the responsibility of both parents to bring them up?

Personally I don’t, but I can see it would be an issue for some people.

How many Taiwanese do you meet who tell you that their fathers are in China, more or less permanently? There’s a hell of a lot of them, and even if they are being faithful to their wives the fact of being married isn’t sheltering them from the economic realities of the world we live in. Kid’s don’t always get the benefit of a two-parent family just because their parents are married. (Or are we going to define marriage more strictly to make it impossible for one partner to do what they feel necessary to provide financially for the family?)

Also, you don’t have to be married to be in a long-term, stable, monogamous relationship. I’ve known various people who have seemed to be able to raise kids together without signing any agreement to spend the rest of their lives together.

Consider this:

You become sexually active in your teen years and have your fun until, say, your mid-twenties. Then you meet someone special and settle down together in a relationship that looks set to continue forever. You have kids, and provide a happy, supportive, stable home, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do.

At some point you and your SO discover that you’ve run out of things to say to each other, or you’ve grown apart. There’s no animosity, no recriminations, maybe neither of you have even met anyone else. You just aren’t committed to each other any more.

So you stay together, because you have kids and you have a responsibility to them. At some point those kids are ready to start living independently, and there’s no need for you two to stay together any longer. You’re both under 50, with a whole lot of living still to do in the second half of your lives.

Your kids understand that you’re going to go your own ways, still be friends with each other and still be their parents. They’re mature enough now that your needs are greater than theirs and they agree it’s the best thing.

But you’ve signed a bloody contract which says “til death us do part”, and promises are made to be kept.

Marriage was (possibly) a necessary institution in the days when lifespans were shorter. I believe that in the modern world it would be insane to make a lifelong commitment to anything, because that’s a mighty long time and the rate of change in society and the individual is much higher. You can get married today, give it a quarter century and come out of it a totally different person with another 50 years of life ahead of you.

I don’t envision getting married because it’s a commitment for the rest of your life, and mine has barely started yet.

[Bodo]

Of course you couldn’t, because it’s a completely looney idea. Surely the statistics on spousal murder before divorce was made legal don’t even remotely compare to today’s number of divorces. I’ve never heard anyone make this claim before.

[url=CNN - Bride-burning claims hundreds in India - Aug. 18, 1996]NEW DELHI, India (CNN) – In parts of India, husbands regard their wives as property that apparently can be disposed of at will. Indian police say that every year they receive more than 2,500 reports of bride-burning – a form of domestic abuse often disguised as an accident or suicide.
These women are burned to death over wealth – because their husbands or in-laws are unhappy with the size of the dowry that accompanied them into the marriage.

The number such cases reported to police is rising, due either to an increase in the number of burnings or to more willingness by victims to report them. And should the woman survive, the toll is heavy. [/url]

Maybe not in the U.S. or the Commonwealth countries, but I do think other parts of the world have too many instances of women/wives being murdered in order to get out of a contract of marriage. I imagine back in the good ole days (in the West) these types of abuses were more common, maybe even widespread. Marriage as it is in the West today - for love, where the 2 individuals choose each other - is a relatively new practice. Nuclear families, I understand, are too.

Bodo