Marriage a most unnatural state of affairs?

[MiniTheMinx]

The monogamous family seems to me to uphold patriarchy better than any other institution. Men have for thousands of years sought to control women's reproduction as a means of controlling wealth. The most obvious way in which they have done this is through marriage.

Having read quite a lot and of course experiencing first hand the joys and the lows of monogamy, with all the emotional fall out, the sense of ownership but also support, the security but also the boredom! (at times) I question just how natural monogamy is.

Women are brought up to believe in fairy tale endings, white weddings and happy retirements, men, meanwhile we are told are naturally less inclined towards faithfulness. Their behaviour proof of biology, our faithfulness and commitment is likewise biologically driven.

I don't believe biology drives our desire for monogamous relationships and think this a materialist social construct which can be accounted for by the study of our material and economic history.

www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/04/feminism_and_re_1

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm

jezebel.com/5339211/is-non+monogamy-a-feminist-relationship-choice

I am interested in hearing what others of you think, is marriage and monogamy an unnatural state of affairs?

Oh I don't know and I'm probably completely missing the point but, here goes.

I have brought up a child on my own with help from extended family. I managed to pay a mortgage and work so very little state involvement in my finances. I have brought up a lovely child to be proud of. I am self sufficient, own home, money etc, said child now grown up. Have had lots of different men come in and out of my life, mainly because I like and desire male company and want to have sex but didn't meet anyone I wanted to commit to in all that time. I didn't and still don't need a man for any reason other than I still want a loving, supportive relationship. I have met someone and I would marry him tomorrow if he asked. He is against the idea of a monogamous relationship so it's not going to happen.

Just saying .

Will add though that I struggled with working and still wanting a social life and the idea of communal living with other single mums when mine was little was a model I would have liked to have been part of. Everyone helping each other out.

Oops! Sorry...
Take my wedding band off as I have put on wight since getty married and it was really too tight.
I decided to get. A new one, t wasn't in a rush iyswim?
During my wedding ring-less period I had to attend a few meetings/docs appts etc and I was dealt with differently...definitely. I was even asked by a GP "who is at home too?" meaning did I have a partner/bf/dh. Wouldn't have asked that if I had been wearing my ring!
Marriage is hard work ime but I am sure cohabiting couples would say the same?

I'll dispute privacy being a modern concept.

Privacy, knocking before you enter private rooms, etc is actually discussed in the Quran (1400 years ago) and I'm certain that other cultures/ belief systems also had concepts of privacy. Again also, people have sought isolation for spiritual/cultural purposes throughout history.

This is what I mean about romanticising the past. Some of the ideas put forward here are starting to whiff of speculation akin to evo-psych.

GAG: how far was that concept of privacy extended, though? Slaves wouldn't have had any privacy: slave owners weren't expected to knock before visiting slave quarters. Most societies worked quite well for the privileged classes: as far as I know there has yet to evolve a stable, comfortable society that can function without a slave class that has been made to accept slave status.

SGB - I think we don't have a 'slave class' in modern Western society - technology, choice and contraception have pretty much done away with that for most people.

We each have the equivilent of 200 "energy slaves" based on fossil fuels and technology substituting for human work.

This gives a totally new set of problems. On one hand climate change, and on the other an economy that is making human workers obselete.

1. The state has no money and is going to have less so it will not be paying out even more to support people's chidlren.

1. Yes, marriage which is very different in legal terms than living together even in Scotland, does seek to even things out so that relationships where women give up working (or men) should on a divorce result in a split (and I know lal about that havnig paid out a huge amount to a full time working husband as I earned 10x what he did and it feels very unfair if the other person has not made any career sacrifice at all).

1. Bowlby - a bit off track - he charted chidlren taken from both parents and who did not bond with anyone. He di dnot look at children of working parents who do tend to bond with mother, father and their nanny or granny or whoever else is helping. I feel very bonded to all 5 children who I breastfed to 1 - 2 years yet I was back at work in 2 weeks and I don't feel less connected to the children because I took decisinos which meant I was able to support them and suffered no career income detriment. Indeed it's hugely benefited them.

4,. Privacy - I now live with adult and younger (pre school age) children. Thatr's not a commune but there are often are lots of people around even if it's also people like cleaners and work men as it's a big busy household. I won't say it's like a medieval one or a traditional country house but I certainly feel there are elements of those which mean my children have lots of benefits of influences on them other than just me. They are here 365 days a year which is probably unusual for a divorced mother and that has its pros and its cons. We certainly have more privacy than poor families from the old days when the only chance the couple had to have sex without a child in the bed was when they sent the lot of them to Sunday school once a week and got the marital bed to themselves.

Yes the state will have less and less money, agree, profits are privatised for the few and costs are socialised for the many. It will get worse.

Lizbee, do you think it's because the commune sits outside of mainstream society and is a bill false and forced rather than naturally evolving. I suspect that lots of "individuals" go into it with set ideas, like the hippies wanting self sufficiency and the spiritualists arguing for space to meditate but the socialists would prefer space for a library and so on.....

GothAnne, what is your problem with evo-psych, I am really interested to know more about evo-psych.

I think we do have a "slave" class in the modern world, very interesting article a few months back in the guardian about slaves in the sudan (I think it was sudan) where women were tending goat herds. Also capital goes to where the costs of keeping workers is socialised or unmet and labour is cheap, look at the south east, like indonesia. I agree though that technology is creating a huge surplus, profit sits side by side with unmet human need and high unemployment.

Tressy, I agree, although not single, that communal living could be hugely beneficial for single parents to gain support and security. Will you continue with your relationship and how do you feel about it?

bill false!!! bit false

Mini -

It's too simplistic to say that capital goes to where the labour is cheap.

Capital goes to (if the market works) where the risk-return return rail is best. This depends on a lot of things - consumer demand, natural resources, stability, ease of doing business, education and productivity of the workforce.

Hi Mini, probably won't continue it. I have been used to total control over my own life and emotions and cannot relinquish that power to someone else.

Yes of course Himalaya, but if I don't use short hand I could write pages Of course things like containerisation and transport, technology and systems for communication have meant that workers are further alienated from the product of their productivity and the profits............ so we can make the component parts in one place and assemble nearer to the point of consumption. It is too simplistic to just state labour costs, into that we should add, education, docility of the work force, deregulation of labour and so on, government subsidies, tax rates and the countries infrastructure such as roads and water.

Back to marriage and monogamy, it seems from reading about history and reading Engles that monogamy was something that was forced upon women whilst men through their public lives and wealth had greater freedoms. In ancient times the practice of "Hetaerism" co-existed with marriage, so that prostitution and marriage became two sides of one coin. Of course there is a class element to this, the keeping of female slaves, the wife also property of the husband, the husband embodied the bourgeois the wife the proletariat, prostitution replaced the freedom that women had experienced in previous generations. So women as a class were denied freedoms they had once experienced whilst simultaneously made use of in the public sphere to further the wealth & power of men.

So if they stopped being housewives their husbands (and they) would have to pay for nannies and nurseries and women's worth would be recognised.

Yes, the money is there, $50 trillion of surplus capital, we have a surplus capital consumption crisis but the uber wealthy, the share holders, the owners are not interested in paying taxes and meeting unmet social needs. capitalism is very good at creating the need for a welfare system, not so good at financing it. The costs associated with the creation of the surplus workforce (unemployed), the need for an educated and skilled workforce, health care to keep the workers healthy and reproducing themselves, childcare and schooling, these costs must be born by the worker himself we are told implicitly and explicitly through either government policy towards those on benefits (just one example) or the acquiescence to the capitalist class interests in terms of tax avoidance and subsidies.

Could you employer pay for childcare? No because to do so would piss off the shareholders. Did factories once provide schooling for the children of the workers? yes they did. It goes from bad to very much worse.

Hothead, you have knocked it on the head! society doesn't want to pay, two reasons maybe, men do not want to pay towards the costs of other children but also we have been socialised into thinking only of ourselves. We are all individuals in competition to each other.

Mini

" Of course things like containerisation and transport, technology and systems for communication have meant that workers are further alienated from the product of their productivity and the profits............"

You always make it sound so baaaad

.... As if we'd all be better off un-alienated from the products of our labour tending sheep, being cobblers etc...rather than making widgets, being accountants or whatever and enjoying the modern electricity, healthcare, transport, food supply etc ... that goes along with that.

I think generally the things that make people independent - education, their own capital/savings, rights and ability to work in a high enough productivity job to afford their cost of living (which generally implies capital investment and/or professionalisation). You can have that in a modern marriage (but there are pressures not to). I think communes (as well as making me personally itchy) tend to work by enforcing
an artificial degree of interdependence through low productivity.

The most obvious example is the Amish who so restrict their use of technology in order to stick together. Hippy communes also seem to involve a lot of busy work. Local big man politics in Africa and Latin America is a variation on this - where politicians would rather scupper the chances of outside investment and trade which would make people less dependent on them.

I think that's a false dichotomy.

There is no reason why technology can't develop and productivity increase to generate more profit. The point is that a greater part of that profit should be used for the greater good. It is obscene that billions are made in profits that line the pockets of shareholders while there is so much deprivation. I am all for a meritocracy where talent and effort are rewarded, but there should be a minimum standard for those at the bottom of the pile, which should be met before even greater profits are allowed for those at the top.

I always get the impression that Himalaya thinks I would like to see a return to living in mud huts
I agree with you Dahlen it is criminal that profit sits side by side with unmet needs. However one of the contradictions of capitalism is that in order to invest in technology, jobs and infrastructure the capitalist must create the surplus, this is done at private or institutional level not at governmental level. The surplus has to be created before it can be invested which is why we now see innovations such as Daves Big Society bank. One of the new solutions to the capital surplus absorption problem is to invest in social enterprise. Of course this creates profits that are then privatised to create more capital surplus and so it continues. Whilst some good may come of capitalists making money out of meeting social need, as the wealth grows the inequality actually widens. That is the greatest contradiction. There is no way of mitigating against this, if there was it would have been done.

Mini ...I am sure you don't, it is just that is where the 'problem is that workers are alienated from their labour' line of reasoning always seems to take me.

It always seems to me (as with discussion of patriarchy) that the argument is saying 'wouldn't it be great if we could have got to this situation of having internet, medicine, advanced economies etc...but have done it some nicer, fairer way than we did', or forgetting altogether how amazing and unprecedented the current situation in industrialised economies is, and just saying capitalism/patriarchy is 100% shit, lets rip it up and start again.

It seems to me that the good and the bad are so deeply intertwined that all we can do is mitigate and evolve it.

Agree with your post himalaya.