Marriage a most unnatural state of affairs?

It concluded that the most pertinent fact was the number of adults invested in caring for a child, and that it did not matter what the relationship was between those adults, the adults biological relationship with the child, nor whether they actually lived with the child. What mattered was how much contact they had with the child and what they did with it. That would rather support lots of different ways of bringing up children, including, as I said earlier, single parents with a good support network who can actually offer a much better likely outcome than an isolated nuclear family. It's time we stopped looking at 'best'. There is no such thing. There is certainly 'wrong' (e.g. abusive) but there isn't a right. There are lots.

exotic - The Children's Society report would disagree with you.

'IMO the ideal would be for the parents of a child to commit to the child/children as co-parents regardless of whatever romantic relationship may exist between them at the time of conception or afterwards'

Completely agree solidgoldbrass. I think the parents' relationship should be a completely separate issue to their commitment to parenting their child and that their commitment to parenting a child should be a legal commitment, rather like committing legally to a partner in marriage.

Personally I am very anti-marriage due to its sexist patriarchal history. Seeing traditions like white dresses, engagement rings and name changing continue today give me the shivers and makes me wonder why the heck, in this day and age, marriage is still seen by so many people as on the main achievements of a woman's life (the other being motherhood).

I have been with DP for 7 years and we have a much healthier, happier relationship than virtually all of the married couples we know. That's not to say that you can't be happy in marriage, but if you are, it's all to do with your relationship and how compatible you are as a couple, and not to do with some words you spoke to each other one day or the ring on your finger. IMHO! I will never marry him but would love to have a civil partnership - it's not the monogamy or the commitment that bothers me, it's the lack of equality which for me is inherent in marriage. I have no desire to be a 'wife'.

The collective looking after of children didn't work and they stopped it. It has been proved that 2 parents are the best way to bring up a DC.

"this idea of the perfect couple-partnership in which each person finds all their social, emotional and sexual needs met by the other person is not only not natural by any description"

SGB - this is really interesting. I do find it strange that once in a relationship or married, that person is supposed to then be able to meet all your needs forever. I was on a thread on here about emotional affairs and it seemed clear that for some people, having a close friendship with someone of the opposite sex with whom you discuss things more meaningful than the weather and what's on TV, is equivalent to cheating on your partner. I found that very strange - that once you are in a relationship you are meant to eschew all other relationships of any kind with the opposite sex.

Goth, you wouldn't have to live in a commune though. That's the point - that everyone could choose what they want.

Marriage can work very well. But the rate of marital breakdown and the level of abuse would suggest a lot don't, and of those left, no way are all of them happy. Empty nest couples, couples who stay together out of principle rather than desire, etc. I'd actually say happily married couples are in the minority.

Which isn't to say it isn't a perfectly valid lifestyle choice. It just shouldn't be held up as the only or ideal way to live.

Single women are only allowed to be single without children. Single mothers are demonised. And if you look at media portrayal of say Bridget Jones and eccentric old bats with cats, I'd say single women are mocked rather than hated, but not encouraged or even treated with indifference.

The reason people talk about the romantic commitment they share with their spouse is because sometimes theory clashes with what people are witnessing in the real world. And in modern Britain, marriage is not the same as the style of marriage feminists attack.

In the 1950s a married woman was considered to be the property of her husband, but after the first big feminist wave that wasn't the case, and the ideal now is for equal partnerships where both people try to help each other develop and improve. Yes women tend to be the lower earners, do more housework but that is generally the post-children shift in division of labour. Not that men are marrying for a domestic wife.

Sometimes it goes skewy, and domestic abuse is a problem, but we try to set up institutions to protect against that.

Sgb - I agree entirely with that. Also agree that idea idea of needing someone to "complete you" is unwise, to say the least. I also dislike the holding of the romantic relationship to be more important then all others.

Mrs Hoarder - yes, I think you can make the traditional system work for you and certainly comes with built in legal protection (to an extent), which is not to be sniffed at.

Himalaya - (sorry I missed you before). I think serial monogamy is often the reality, but "til death do us part", is still the ideal.

Yep, the problem with a lot of the communal arrangements that have been set up so far is they have all pretty much been about one man (being Leader or Preacher or whatever) setting up a personal kingdom. And the women who joined them have always been seen as a resource rather than members.

I don't think that romantic heteromonogamy is inherently wrong, just that it very,very clearly doesn't work for everyone. The only thing that will work is an acceptance that people are different and want to live in a variety of ways.
IMO the ideal would be for the parents of a child to commit to the child/children as co-parents regardless of whatever romantic relationship may exist between them at the time of conception or afterwards.

But do bear in mind, anyone who wants to go on and on about the wonderful romantic commitment you share with your spouse - fine if it works for you, but this idea of the perfect couple-partnership in which each person finds all their social, emotional and sexual needs met by the other person is not only not natural by any description, but in evolutionary terms it's really, really recent. Up until about 50 years ago marriage was predominantly percieved as an economic transaction; way back it was about land and resources, then after the industrial revolution meant that nearly every man was going away from his home to work for wages at an employer's place of business, it became important that the woman was in the home taking care of domestic stuff in order to enable the man to be away from it. So the deal became that the man provided the money, the woman provided all the domestic, social, emotional, childrearing and sexual services. So women were supposed to pick a man who was solvent and hardworking, men to pick a woman with good domestic skills, who was inclined to obedience. Romantic love was widely regarded as a sort of temporary sugar-coating on the whole business.

This worked well enough for men and quite well for children too. But the problem was that it didn't benefit women - it's not good for a human being to be reduced to the status of something between a pet and a servant, with no prospect of improvement.

Sometimes marriage gives the individuals more freedom. I could not have had a year off with DS, before spending another year retraining without the security of marriage as a safety net.

As for wider community and other adults children can turn to, are you advocating a system much like the one the church has of godparents? Because that's what my godparents have been for me (still are, even though I'm an adult, married and with a son). So maybe the traditional system isn't too bad as long as the adults are treated as equal partners, which is how the law now treats marriage.

Dahlen - there's still issues of individual freedom and privacy.

Considering how it tends to be women who are made to compromise and give up/ limit their happiness for the benefit of others, I doubt even supposed equalitarian ideals would lead to better outcomes for women.

Full disclosure: The idea of communal living gives me the shivers. I can just about cope with 1 child, 1 husband.

Also important note: many women are living alone now, yet this is almost never praised or not condemned, either by the right or the left.

Goth, but that's because they've still followed patriarchal values. If we're talking about what future society could look like, then we'd surely want to improve things and not replace it with an equally outdated, misogynistic way of living? Why can't we adopt some of the newer styles of communal living (which don't actually mean all living in dorms or anything), which can be very beneficial to women? People still have their own spaces, can often live in pair-bonds if they want, but the pairbond is not the economic basis on which the community is based.

I think there's rather a lot of romanticising going on here and not of monogamy.

Mini - Communal living can be very bad for women because there is often hierarchy and women can be on the bottom of it, particularly if you have joined a family and are not a blood relative. Over-crowding and a lack of personal space are also huge issues.

The extended family models I've known have often featured women being treated like unpaid servants, particularly because that's the view of women in wider society.

Likewise, if children are not really taken seriously in society communal living is no better for them and they can be just as at risk of abuse.

Kibbutzem were generally agreed to be disastrous for children, so I'm not sure why people are viewing them fondly.

I think arguments pro/anti any form of living are again trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution, which isn't ever going to work because people are unique.

It's difficult to know what society would look like without the constant bombardment of messages about romance and 'the one' we are always subject to. But I strongly suspect, given the biological imperative to reproduce, that pair-bonding will always play a part in it. Whether that's monogamous and life-long is open to interpretation though.

I certainly think the world would be a much nicer place if we stopped telling people there is only one good way and let them get on with whatever way worked for them.

Himalaya - interesting point about communal living. There are many different forms of it, of course, but very few that have been set up affording women truly equal status or taking into account their differing needs compared to men.

The isolation of individual nuclear families is terribly unfair for children, if only materially. The more I think about it, the more bizarre it seems that these tiny vulnerable people land in our midst, and are allocated to all-powerful parents who have sole responsibility for them, and some of them will never be able to go anywhere, not even a weekend by the sea, and some of them will be taken skiing and snorkeling every year. Some of them won't even be properly fed. It's absolutely bizarre.
I mean I don't want people coming and snooping around going "eggs again? Really?" but it seems horrible that my children have so little recourse to external support to make up for our failings (which aren't that bad I hope in the grand scheme of things, but you know what I mean)

We also don't come in isolation-we get each others parents, uncles, cousins, great aunts, old family friends etc etc etc which it lovely.

Am I alone in that I got married because I loved DH and wanted to grow old together? He did the same-I can't see how it is controlling my reproduction and wealth. People's happiness depends on the little things and how they handle boredom. Only boring people get bored.
I expect that some people-male and female-are not suited to monogamy. It suits me and I wouldn't want anything different.
However I don't see a wedding as a fairy tale-it really doesn't matter if you go down to the registry office on a wet Monday in jeans, as long as it is what you want.
I also wouldn't put up with abuse and wouldn't be with DH if I didn't trust him 100%

You do not have to get married! It is personal choice.

GAG - don't you think serial monogamy, rather than one partner for life is the accepted norm nowadays?

I think the whole community/village/extended family model is worse-more constraining - for women (as opposed to the community you cobble together yourself, which is great but not so stable).

SGB - but I'm not sure poly relationships are anymore stable. Certainly, I think that they are probably more time consuming.

Then if you look at things like swinging, often people involved in that have as many rules (if not more) then monogamists.

Just a question, is that you think people should accept that relationship are often serial, as in people should stop focusing on the idea of having one life-long relationship? Or do you think that some form of polyamoury would make people happier?

SBB: I take it you're pro-choice then.

I can't conceive of ever having had a child unless I was in a stable monogamous relationship. I'm old fashioned and married, but can understand people who make equally firm private promises.

Yes relationships fall apart, but I believe DCs should start life with "parents" who are willing to support each other (inverted commas because I'm quite happy to accept that with adoption, donation and same sex couples these may not be biological parents)

It takes a village is a lovely concept, but I think we all need the support of one special someone.

Thing is 'marriage' hasn't always meant 'monogamy'. Even the Christian Bible features men with lots of female possessions wives who the Christian god didn't get all snitty with. Marriage, whatever form it takes, has always been a legal matter, to do with ownership of property, whether that was taken to mean land, money or the bodies of women and children.
I don't actually have a problem with 'marriage', heterosexual, homosexual or more-than-two-people. You can marry a cardboard box or your invisible dalek pal and it's fine by me.

The thing about romantic heteromonogamy ('true love') whether or not marriage is involved, is that it doesn't usually work very well or last very long in terms of making people happy. The reason it's pushed so hard is that it benefits men more than women, and it's nowadays (post industrial revolution) a matter of enabling every man who wants, to aquire the domestic services of a woman.