Criticisms of marriage

[JosieRosie]

Since it's 29 Feb and all....

There's a very interesting thread open at the moment about all the patronising rubbish that goes with 29 Feb and women being 'allowed' to propose to men for one day only. There's quite a bit of anti-marriage feeling on that thread - most of which I share! - so just wanted to open it up a bit.

What bugs you about marriage? What makes you not want to be a part of it? What do you regret getting married/having been married?

Disclaimer - if you are married/getting married/hope to be married one day and are happy about it, good for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. However, not everyone shares this view and I would like to hear some different views on why marriage is a bad idea as far as some are concerned

Full disclosure - I am very pro civil partnerships and fully support the Equal Love campaign for civil marriage to be made available to gay couple and civil partnerships to be made open to hetero couples. I didn't mention that from the start on another thread and got flamed for it!

I am still working through my thoughts, but basically I see marriage as part of a wider problem.

I see it as massively problematic for both women and men.

Loss of identity (you become Mr&Mrs, you are defined more by your relationship than by yourself.) Loss of autonomy and independence. Strong pressure to fit in the box provided for you.

As I said on the other thread, infidelity is massively prevalent IME. I never realised how much. Eyes very much opened!

Interesting thread!

'Loss of identity (you become Mr&Mrs, you are defined more by your relationship than by yourself.) Loss of autonomy and independence. Strong pressure to fit in the box provided for you'

All of this bugs me hugely CrunchyFrog and is a large part of what I like about civil partnerships - there's no set expectation of how you will behave, it's very much left to you to decide roles for yourselves. There's no 'joining of 2 families together' (ghastly IMO) and no promising yourself to each other forever. And much as some people protest, plenty of people do still have set expectations of how a 'husband' and a 'wife' will behave once they are married, which shoehorns people into a role they may not be comfortable with.

I'm not entirely sure that marriage actually has any true and honest purpose. As an institution other than economic advantages I don't see anything in it for women.

Marriage came about in response to man's need to exert control women's rights to and ability to reproduce. As we developed the means to trade with other tribes, started to mint coins, divide of labour according to sex and the mechanisms were in place to encourage property ownership, women became property.

Man needed to ascertain that his son was in fact his son! and that is linked to property and power, something women didn't and still don't have equal access to.

The reasons that I think marriage is a dodgy institution is because it comes from a time place where women are property.

The social inequity is really what I would like to tackle though - the fact that women have rubbish pensions, that if they have careers that often nosedives after children, that gender roles are still so proscribed etc etc

I don't personally have an issue with people pairing off though - I am married myself and for us it's lovely

I agree with all you say SardineQueen. Also curious as to why you chose to get married since you have objections to it? Happy it's working for you though

Do we want everything handed to us on a plate, like setting targets for the amount of women on the boards at banks and businesses or do we want to actually tackle the real causes.

Women could have their pensions handed to them and some mechanism could be put in place to make up for the fact that we take time out to care for children or we could go the other way and say, can't beat them join them, so where's the free child care.

Child caring has been demoted to an unseen housebound activity that supports the formation of nuclear families and men's labour is in the public sphere and accorded greater status.

I think marriage is a dodgy institution but for us personally getting married has been very happy and cheerful

There is something lovely about standing up in front of people and declaring your commitment, if that is your thing, and if you want to. I am one of SGBs mundanes I'm afraid! We had a civil ceremony though and if civil partnerships had been available I might have preferred that route.

Also from the POV that we were throwing our lot in together and planned to have children and all the rest of it I wanted the legal protections that marriage affords.

I suppose I was never a very girly girl, and I never thought about what my "day" would be like or first dances or anything like that and TBH I don't really understand that at all. So it was just a really nice thing to do rather than my day to be a princess or any bonkerness like that!

Good for you SardineQueen and thanks for sharing. Agree 100% about the legal protection - we are in the fortunate position of not having children and not planning any either, so easier to maintain legal independence, but would probably insist on getting married before children if we were going that route. In the most low-key way imaginable though, as standing up in front of people and first dances and all that jazz makes me want to run screaming from the room!

I got married purely for legal reasons, a fact I acknowledged in my wedding speech. Not that I don't love DH and am happy enough to be married to him, but if it weren't for the tricky question of the nationality of our offspring, I don't think we would have bothered.

I think it's sad that it takes the institution of marriage to ensure that women are legally able to claim half the assets of a relationship, especially if they have given up a career to care for children.

Yes, I suppose at least I got custody of the mortgage.

I do feel for you linerunner.

I had more assets than DH when we got together as well so our wills reflect that with some stuff skipping him and going into trust for the children.

I see this stuff as sensible, it annoys me when people get talked out of protecting themselves / their children on the basis that it's not "romantic".

Oh, fuck romance.

Do you know I had honestly never thought about that before - that whoever gets the house (great) also gets 100% of the mortage (not so great)? And if it's proving impossible to get money/co-operation out of the NRP, 100% of the bills and childcare too. No wonder these awful mothers are on a mission to falsely accuse fathers of all sorts and kick them out of their childrens' lives eh?

'Oh, fuck romance'

And this will be on the front of the next T-shirt I get printed up

'Romance' makes me barf. Seriously. Being kind, being thoughtful, being fun, being spontaneous, spoiling each other - great! Those are all things you could do for a friend or other loved one too. But why invent a special category for partners - it kind of infantilises what is just nice behaviour and special time together. Ick.

OP, that's a very astute comment.

Btw by the time my ExH has taken out his tax, NI, pension contributions, work clothes and travel costs and overtime payments from his wages, the children actually see about 5% of it each.

But they see about 90% of mine in their lives.

It's these structural inequalities that stick in my craw. But that's about having children, not marriage and divorce per se.

Yes it's the children that is the real spanner in the works.

As long as we have a society whose fundamental building block is the nuclear family, marriage will always be a popular option. Our economy requires people to bond together in economic units - certainly once they have children. That's why single mothers are such a problem for successive governments.

The nuclear family (as opposed to the extended family) is pretty unsuccessful. The Children's Report showed how the decrease in the extended family in favour of a nuclear unit following economic success means less protection for children from abuse and poverty. Likewise, women have been particularly badly affected because they have lost their wider support network in the home (and often have to move away entirely if their husband's career demands it). Men, however, have retained all the domestic service provided by that network (except it's now all done by the one woman) while benefitting from the freedoms that losing the extended family network can provide. Is this part of the reason that PND and depression are much higher in post-industrial Britain?

Obviously some gross generalisations going on there and many, many marriages are much more equal and mutually respectful than this (or even subvert the usual roles). However, I think it holds true in the main.

I'm not actually sure that a society structured solely on the individual would ever work. We are a social, co-operative species. However, I'd like to see a much broader definition of family, that encompasses different styles of living at various stages in life. Why can't two or three friends living together be considered a family for example? I'm not suggesting communes for the massess (though I think they also have a place), but more thinking outside the box would benefit society hugely I think.

I never really (as an adult) have wanted to be married. For lots of the reasons mentioned already.

As a single parent, it's also occurred to me that if I did decide to in the future - as any legal arrangement would have to take into account the fact that I have a child that isn't my partner's and would have an entirely different family structure - so it's not like becoming a married couple would cut out all the negotiating and getting stuff put down on paper anyway. Obviously the way a partner treated my child would be a massive part of if we're together or not anyway, but they'll be a friend to her not a father because she already has one.

Do blended families actually benefit from marriage in quite the same way that a couple traditionally have (legal protection, inheritance etc) I wonder? Or does it actually cause some problems too, if a marriage is seen to place that person higher in the hierarchy of kin than other previously existing relationships? This isn't a thought out thing at all, just random musings about it.

I also think that when it comes to tax and benefits, we need to decide on 'household' or 'individual' and stick to it for both. It is bonkers that you can be taxed individually but receive benefits/tax relief as a household. It simply fosters an unfair dependency (as opposed to a mutual one).

Totally agree about the household thing sunshineandbooks!

It seems that governments seem to define it in the way that financially suits them best in each set of circumstances

Very good point about PND sunshineandbooks. I think you're right that the situation you described is how it works for most people.

I consider DP and I to be a family. Not being a family would suggest to me that something is missing and I don't feel anything is!

Also to add that I think civil partnerships should be extended to pairs of people who are not partners - friends, long term housemates, whatever. Unlike marriage, there's not requirement that a CP be 'consummated' (what a chilling term that is!) and I don't see any reason why sexual, possibily-child-bearing relationships should be given special status over other types of relationships.

JR - yes I agree with the extension of civil partnerships to non-sexual/romantic relationships. In fact, I think a lot of people would rather like to get 'married' to a good friend in terms of creating a rock-solid economic unit together but each having freedom to follow whatever romantic encounters they wanted. Quite a lot of people no longer want to live with a sexual partner ever again, but neither do they want to be celibate, and because it's a longer-standing non-sexual relationship I think they could give each other much more space than the average sexual couple.

I never wanted to get married and I'm happy I'm not.

The problem with marriage is that traditionally it is an institution which enables men to own women hence women having to take men's names or men being able to rape their wives up until about twenty years ago. From that point of view it's best steered clear of if you're a woman.