Marriage a most unnatural state of affairs?

Just a side point, I think the communal living can be equally damaging for women as the nuclear set-up. Limited privacy, interfering/ domineering relatives...

IMHO I disagree with both romanticising or demonising monogamy, I think it's arisen more from convenience then anything else, easier to keep one partner then have a relationship, emotional,financial or otherwise, with several.

Artificial it may be, but marriage does make a union very public and it says 'this is it, come what may'. For me, having married in church with God's blessing (whoever you consider Him/Her to be) made it even more powerful, dh less so, but it's still all about the public declaration that we will not quit.
We have been very, very close to quitting and I think if we weren't married we would probably not still be together (I'm not sure at the moment whether this is a good or a bad thing). It's about the kids too now...
I would love to have the strength to be more radical and a bit more of a hippy about it all and share the love (been there) but I suppose I need that security and there is the need to conform and please the family.
Fascinating thread btw.

Do you know I'd never even thought of that connotation before. I'm renaming mine the mistress bedroom. Or do you think that conjures up images of a dominatrix-style lair? Perhaps the room-where-everyone-inevitably-ends-up,-including-the-bloody-cat bedroom might be more accurate.

Quite. IDS makes me seethe.

It is crazy really isn't it. Kids have so much more to keep in their rooms than parents.

I was thinking of a loo on the Norwich to Liverpool St train, but yes is usually nice to spread out a bit more than that

was just what mini said about the built environment, made me think of the master bedroom thing and have never quite understood that

Thinking of some of the cars I've experimented in, not a lot.

Saying that, I do appreciate a good amount of space these days...

it's strange isn't it, houses always have a sort of giant marital chamber and then all these smaller rooms that children (with loads more stuff) often have to share

how much space do you need to shag in, really?

I think it's really interesting to speculate what our economy would be like if the nuclear family only made up say 30% of society. I think that economically children would be much more of the state's responsibility rather than the parents, much like pensioners are not the financial responsibility of their own children today.

The growth in single parents, and the trend of so many parents not contributing to their offspring's upkeep and forcing the state to step in instead, may actually be the start of this. It would certainly explain why single parents are so often the object of wrath, as their very existence threatens that ultimate bastion of patriarchy and the status quo - government.

I dislike the reductionist aspects of evolutionary biology, which has focused inappropriately and anthropomorphically on a few species where males attack 'step' offspring. (Even the vocabulary is wrong.)

The anthropological and historical record does contain examples of polyandry - not many, but they are there.

Yes it all comes down to ownership of wealth doesn't it. And the easiest way to control that in a patriarchy is through ownership of women in a pair-bonding ritual. These days, men don't 'own' their wives, but the cult of monogamy continues. The trouble is, if you throw it out, the whole of society and the economy needs to change. I think it will change over time anyway, but it will be slow.

it's true isn't it? except the 'village' is, as you say, slightly different for each of us these days

Fwiw, we live very close to grandparents... So in a community of sorts, but it's not that easy for everyone. Anyway, off topic slightly.

x posts with Alameda there about the village thing.

Who has time with the ridiculous amount spent working and commuting...

I think marriage is entirely an artificial cultural construct. I also think there is no one way of organising society and relationships that will work for all. I think society would be a much better place if, for example, communal living was as normal as the nuclear family and every possible scenario in between was equally acceptable. People would then naturally gravitate towards the kind of living best suited for them, would find others with similar expectations and values, and everyone would be far happier.

In terms of best outcomes for children, current thinking is that the larger the unit the child is brought up in, the better, so extended families and communes are preferable to the nuclear family. Likewise, a happy, functional single parent family with a strong supportive network would provide a better outcome (statistically speaking) than a nuclear family with no family nearby and little support from friends, which is, of course, becoming more typical as people move where the jobs are. I guess it comes back to the saying of taking a village to raise a child.

well you make your own community of friends, don't you? would be lost without mine

Communities don't really exist anymore in the uk... India has the coomunity aspect to raising children.

I don't think the nuclear family (is that term still in use?) is a good way to bring up children at all, it's too isolated from the wider community and too many horrible things happen behind its closed doors. That saying about it taking a village to raise a child - if not a village then at least your wider family and friends, much better than two parents I think. Am I a hippy?