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!

"... the patriarchal/capitalist drive for the nuclear family"

Could you explain more? I didn't realise the change to the nuclear family was a patriarchal or capitalist thing, I thought it was a consequence of industrialisation.

I think I agree with you about a broader definition of family helping children. On the other hand, I feel like people having separate households from their parents generally gives them more freedom to live the way they want. Also, how would you balance living near extended family with moving for better jobs and social mobility?

I don't understand why there is a need to have two seperate things civil partnership and marriage, when they're both practically the same. Why shouldn't a civil partnership be called marriage and vice versa?

As far as any legal rights and responsibilities are concerned, I think civil partnership was introduced to be the same as marriage. But because it's called something different, and carries different cultural baggage, some people aren't satisfied and they're arguing it in the European courts now. That seems to go both ways--there are some people on this thread who've said they wish the alternative of civil partnerships existed for heterosexuals, even though legally it's exactly the same.

As far as I know, civil partnerships were introduced as a compromise to give gay couples a more equivalent legal and tax status to straight couples, because many people weren't willing to just let gay people get married. So now gay people still want marriage equality, and those straight people who don't like the religious and traditional baggage of marriage want to be able to have civil partnerships.

This article lays out the main arguments for keeping marriage for straight people, made by the "Coalition for marriage" group, and also points out why those arguments are ridiculous.

Well, the first premise 'for life' is a load of bollocks, isn't it?

Don't most people go into marriage believing it will be for life?

What's the point otherwise? If you don't think that marriage is meant to be for life, you have no business getting married in the first place.

Just to clarify, that doesn't mean that I think people should stay in a bad marriage for life, but I do believe that marriage is a once in a lifetime deal.

I think that instead of committing to each other, in order to provide true stability to raise children there should be an enduring parental commitment to the children. This could remove any uncertainty in case of relationship breakdown and would ensure that children continued to be cared for and supported.

Keeping the two aspects separate could go some way to resolving the issues of infidelity and relationship breakdown. Also it means that roles and responsibilities would be formalised when children are born and (hopefully) parents are in a better state to think in their best interests, than in the midst of a messy split.

The legal and financial protections of marriage (such as they are) could be replaced and romantic couples could choose to celebrate or not as they wish.

There could be a standardised approach for parents, with the option to tailor agreements as suits a bit like is currently done for wills and inheritance.

MMMarmite - industrialisation is a direct result of capitalism. Indeed, you cannot have industrialisation without capitalism. As the means of production are almost exclusively held by men, women have been used to facilitate industrialisation and a capitalist society. Industrialisation would not be possible without a large, unpaid labour force (i.e. women) taking care of the next generation before they reach an age at which they can become 'productive' members of society. Until that point they are a drain on the economy and so it is worth outsourcing their care in the cheapest manner possible. Only when this causes problems (e.g. death and illness on on a massive scale due to poverty, an illiterate/incapable work force) does the capitalist model step in and help women. Indeed, the whole ethos behind the introduction of free schooling was to create a better educated (and thus more efficient and productive) workforce.

Feminism is not a homogenous POV, but IMO capitalism and feminism cannot be separated. Capitalism relies on the means of production being held by the few. Those few are nearly always men, so as women are much more likely to be poor than men, women suffer doubly under capitalism. The only way to resolve this fairly (in terms of gender equality) is that we start ascribing a hard value to the unpaid labour performed by women raising children and running households, without which the whole edifice would crumble.

Although I've got a very different POV about marriage compared to Malificence, I think she has a point. Marriage is an involved legal contract between two people that becomes ever more complicated and intertwined as the relationship endures. It was designed with lifetimes in mind. It has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with the permanent unity of two economic entities. That's why divorce is such a nightmare. If you don't want lifetime commitment, marriage is not for you. That doesn't mean you can't come up with a legal unity of your own, possibly for a fixed period, but that isn't marriage.

I think there's a lot to be said for completely separating legal obligations to children from legal obligations to each party in a marriage though. I don't think a commitment to your child should follow as a result of marriage. It should follow the birth of a child automatically as a legally binding commitment to the child irrespective of the relationship to the other parent, although a certain amount of respect and consideration toward the other parent should be necessarily included in that. I think we're slowly moving towards that model anyway, though it's slow because it's evolved as a battle between the sexes instead of what's best for the child - mainly because our society panics about the idea of family breakdown.

What irritates me is that it doesn't follow that 'family' breakdown is necessarily a bad thing. Lots of families are 'broken' when the parents remain together and are fixed once the initial heartache of divorce has been resolved. Many families provide an ideal nurturing environment for children but aren't conventional (i.e. single parents, same-sex parents or other 'alternative' set ups).

Thanks for the answer sunshine, that's definitely food for thought.

The marriage contract is breakable by one party, unilaterally. I understand that the statistics show that divorce is going to be running at 1 in 2 marriages very soon.

So no, it's not for life.

Parents cannot be compelled to maintain a relationship with their own children; so that's not for life, either.

I have often thought that it's harder to end a mobile phone contract than to end a marriage.

I have often thought that it's harder to end a mobile phone contract than to end a marriage.

sunshine* "The only way to resolve this fairly (in terms of gender equality) is that we start ascribing a hard value to the unpaid labour performed by women raising children and running households, without which the whole edifice would crumble."

Oh, I thought the only way to resolve this fairly is moving away from the model that raising children and running households is woman's work.

I hope that SGB won't mind me quoting her from the February 29th thread, but what she said was so spot on I just had to share it here:

"Look, marriage was set up by men because it's advantageous to men (they get to control women's breeding potential *and get a free, live-in domestic servant) And then men arranged things not so much that being married was good for women, but that not being married was awful. And then we had some feminism, and women started realising that actually being married is not all that, and quite a few stopped doing it, and quite a few more made it clear that if they were going to do it they were going to get benefits from doing it and if it wasn't good for them they'd walk away, and the patriarchy hive-mind went, OH NO WE CAN'T HAVE THAT!!! and all the propaganda started about how marriage is women's destiny and dream and yet it's also a privilege that they will only be allowed if they are sufficiently abject and self-denying and obedient and 'worthy'. So the idea of asking for marriage, the Great Goal, had to be forbidden to women as well except under Special Privilege Status. If you keep telling people that something's really wonderful but they can't have it unless they are permitted to have it, and the giving of it is in someone else's power then many of them will go beserk with wanting it without ever actually wanting to have a look at it in more detail.

Only because this bullshit is bullshit, it has to be reinforced continually in different ways. That's what this Leap Year Proposal shit is about. It's another way of going 'Look, it's a smelly cock but we've put a ribbon on it and you reeeeeaaaallly want that ribbon, don't you? Well today we've made the ribbon long enough for you to reach it.'"

Her point that marriage isn't good for women, it's just better than the other worse alternatives is such an important one and one that women really need to be aware of.

Widow, I disagree (though I think what you're saying is also desirable).

The thing is, someone has to care for the children and run a household. Why shouldn't it be given a value? It's as necessary as producing food, harnessing water and providing shelter, all of which have an economic value.

Yes, it would be great if men and women shared caring responsibilities equally and more couples are, but it's always going to be the case that some people end up shouldering more than their fair share. I think it's natural for many women to want to be the ones who take on the greater responsibility of child-caring and I see nothing wrong with that. What could possibly be wrong about caring for your own child? There is something bonkers about a society that actively penalises those who care for the future generation before that generation becomes economically active. Why should carers be punished by a society that doesn't value what they do? The need for caring isn't going to go way, so let's make sure that those doing it don't get shafted, then it doesn't matter what the gender of the carer is. I think it would make for a much nicer, better balanced society. I for one am heartily sick of the completely false association between value and monetary worth.

PMSL at that SGB quote, she has such a way with words.

I think it's useful to remember that lifetime used to mean about 10 or 20 years as well, with a few notable exceptions - the average age people died in the 18c. was in their thirties FWIR. Granted, pre-industrialisation the age might have been higher (although pestilence, plague and violence were pretty endemic) and women always had a jolly good chance of dying in childbirth.

So marriage wasn't actually designed for a generation of people with an average life expectancy of late 70s/ early 80s.

"The thing is, someone has to care for the children and run a household. Why shouldn't it be given a value? It's as necessary as producing food, harnessing water and providing shelter, all of which have an economic value."

You know it is not compulsory nor neccessary to have a SAHP. The whole idea that one parent must stay at home is the one which holds people back. We outsource childcare during working hours and share household tasks 50-50.

If you want to stay at home, fine, but all this "assigning it an economic value" doesn't do anything for equality. How do you want to "assign it an economic value" anyway? Currently the burden of childcare cost is so high for our family (two children below school age) that it wipes out about 80% of the take home pay of one of us. And that's pay which is taxed, and pays for someone else to earn taxable income. That's certainly a higher contribution to the economy than staying at home and not earning/paying taxes/NI.

True, Basil. I'm very much looking forward to my upcoming marriage, but don't think it hasn't crossed my mind a few times that we could both easily live to 95 and be tethered together for a good 60+ years. F!*king hell.

Sunshine isn't arguing for a SAHP.

She's arguing for an economic value being put on the work that currently, mainly SAHPs or other women do. The invisible work that allows everyone else to make money, because they are not preoccupied with caring for their children and environment.

If women stopped doing the invisible unpaid work they do for one week, the whole of society would be massively disrupted. Far more than any trade union could disrupt anything. (And lots of children might die, which is why we won't do it.)

i am married but i would probably have got 'civil-partnered' if there had been that option available to me/us.

we took marriage and moulded into something suitable for us - and in doing so dropped most of what people consider fundamental to it. it was just us in a registry office, arrived together in a taxi. parents there but no silliness. i haven't taken his name. we're in scotland and were able to choose some very sensible and reasonble vows from a list of choices given to us.

it might have been easier to 'start afresh' with a civil partnership without the patriachical overtones... but on the other hand, why not make marriage what we want it to be? so i am somewhat undecided.

being married does not affect how others see me, because i use Ms and my maiden name so strangers and acquaintances don't know... my family don't really care (love DH but never expected me to 'marry') and in my circle of friends nobody can generally remember who's married and who's not, it's not a big deal.

What you mean by "stopping that invisible work" -If people put their children into paid childcare instead of doing it themselves I actually can't see that hurting the economy, but much the opposite.