How About Making This A Law to Help Marriages

Great Debates
21

Marriage and divorce is really a side issue. As a citizen, I have no interest whatsoever in the details of the relationship of any couple. The duration and conduct of their relationship (excluding behavior which would be criminal in any context) simply does not affect me in any meaningful sense. Get married, get divorced, live together, homosexual, heterosexual, missionary position with the lights out, whipped cream, whips & chains, leather and latex, it is all one to me. Divorce per se does not threaten or diminish our society at all.

As a citizen, I do, however, have an interest in and a responsibility to the well-being of children. The parents naturally have the primary interest and responsibility, but unfortunately not all parents discharge their responsibility with even basic competence. We have a seeming consensus that parents are not given carte blanche in their treatment of their children; they are required to answer to their community for their basic conduct as parents: health, safety, nutrition, etc.

Tying the care of children to the details of two people’s sexual relationship seems without strong rational basis. It seems much more logical to allow (or require) that two (or more) people to enter into a civil contract to provide for the physical, economic and emotional care of their children. Naturally such a contract and its governing law must be carefully constructed by those with greater legal and political skills than mine. Still it seems we have quite a lot of experience in understanding contractual obligations, sufficient to develop reasonable strictures and defaults.

The details of two (or more) people’s sexual relationship and specific lifestyle really cannot form a legitimate basis for any sort of legal or governmental action (again, excluding otherwise criminal behavior). I see no reason why we should not focus our attention on securing and enforcing the well-being of our future citizens rather than on the trivial and private details of people’s romantic relationships.

22

Manda,

Yes It would have to be a state law not a federal law.

Pldennison,

You are funny. I am sorry I guess was attacking your stuff without cites but then I did not back up mine with cites. You definetely had some good info. But I still think divorce is a problem.

Quick and Scylla I have another question for y’all. It sounds like y’all don’t like the gov’t in peoples lives. I don’t either. So what do y’all think about the gov’t handing out welfare in this country? Are you saying the gov’t can do a better job of handing out charity than the American people do.

Also the gov’t gets massively into people lives already. They tell me that I have to wear a seatbelt and that people can’t do certain drugs(not saying I do)that don’t hurt anybody. So why couldn’t they institute a law to help people that lack common sense and get married on a whim. I really don’t see how this law would hurt anything and quite possible may help.

And scylla I have to give some more thought to the problem you brought up about being pregnant.

23

Bad marriages are horrific for the kids. They cost the community plenty. How much does it cost to send a crusier out to a domestic dispute? What about the trips to the emergency room to remove a toaster oven or a bullet from a persons headthat was placed there by his or her spouse? This of course leads to missed days at work and lower productivity on the job.
If the courts can step in and take a child away from people who the court think is doing a bad job as parents I think the court should be allowed to step in and divorce a couple that are doing a bad job as married people.

24

So that makes it right to get even more into people’s lives? Huh?

Personally, I don’t see why divorce is a problem. The problem is the persistence of the notion that marriage should be an inviolate lifetime commitment. Obviously many people don’t believe this is true.

Marriage is a contract between two people. Period. That contract can be broken by mutual consent. Period.

How does this hurt our economy, Bill? And how are our families suffering?

It’s not bad marriages that are bad on kids, it’s bad relationships, of any sort. An unhappy unmarried couple with kids is just as likely to yell, scream, and throw things as an unhappy married one. I’ve seen plenty of amicable divorces that caused no trouble at all to the children involved. But then, those parents also taught their children maturity and a sense of worth independent of the “need” for a spouse.

-andros-

25

Bill:

“So what do y’all think about the gov’t handing out welfare in this country? Are you saying the gov’t can do a better job of handing out charity than the American people do.”

Welfare has spent enough money since 1967 to buy the entire fortune five hundred today, outright. (Ibbotson & Associates 1999) As compassionate and caring people, America has not received good value for their welfare dollar. Clearly we have the funds. The way they’ve been spent though, hasn’t served to help the problem of interim and chronic poverty.

"Also the gov’t gets massively into people lives already. They tell me that I have to wear a seatbelt and that people can’t do certain drugs(not saying I do)that don’t hurt anybody. So why couldn’t they institute a law to help people that lack common sense and get married on a whim. I really don’t see how this law would hurt anything and quite possible may help. "

Pretend you are having a party at your house. Now pretend this guy starts getting really drunk and rowdy. He breaks things, pees in the plants, assaults the guests, etc. etc.
He comes up to you as the ost and says “Gimme anudder drink, dammit!” “Well,” you say “he’s already drunk, another drink won’t do any more harm. It might even help because maybe he’ll pass out.”

Or:

“This car is out of control. I’ll just step on the gas and that way we’ll get where we’re going a lot quicker! Doesn’t matter because we’re going to crash anyway.”

This is not good thinking.

"And scylla I have to give some more thought to the problem you brought up about being pregnant. "

Good idea.

26

“Also the gov’t gets massively into people lives already. They tell me that I have to wear a seatbelt and that people can’t do certain drugs(not saying I do)that don’t hurt anybody. So why couldn’t they institute a law to help people that lack common sense and get married on a whim. I really don’t see how this law would hurt anything and quite possible may help.”

The gov’t being in everyones lives is a major problem. Everytime Joe Schmo has a problem he turns to the gov’t to help him out. Deal with your own f-ing problems people. The role of the federal gov’t is to facilitate interstate and international comerce, provide defence and foriegn policy. Thats it, nothing else, no social security, no medicare, no welfare, nothing. Life is a bitch deal with it. My money should not go to helping people that can’t take care of themselves. If I want to help someone then I’ll help them. I don’t need it mandated. People that want to exchang freedom for security deserve neither. If I want to mary the person I just met 5 minutes ago thats my decision not the gov’t not you nor anyone else. If the marriage fails thats OUR problem. If kids are involved big f-ing deal. If it doesn’t kill em it’ll make them stronger. Life is full of conflicts and unhappy endings. If you can’t deal with that thats YOUR problem.

27

Well andros for the most part I think divorce is a copout and is done way too much in this country. I think people get married without the notion of what a serious contract a marriage is. Divorce usually hurts somebody. One of the parties usually doesn’t want it so they get hurt. And since they are depressed or upset about it I bet they are not doing just a real great job at work.

Don’t tell me you think a kid is better off with one parent instead of two? Most situations(except for a abusive or chemical dependent parent) a kid is better off with two parents. A mother is important for nurchering(sp)and a father is important for discipline. Man, I got terribly messed up when my parents split up and I bet it happens to most kids when their parents split up too.

28

Bill:

This is one of these things where people say “What a horrible problem, we need to do something about it.”

It’s a compassionate and understandable viewpoint.

So we pass a law, give up some personal freedom, spend some public funds, and we feel better because we’ve done something about the problem.

The problem is that some things don’t have easy fixes. Passing a law or throwing money at a problem doesn’t necessarily make it go away.

It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is.

The only way we can help these problems is to try to be better people, individually. Uncle Sam can’t do it for us. If we try to become better people, perhaps that will be an inspiration to another person. Maybe they’ll do better.

Giving away our freedom (and our responsibility for our own failings,) to the Government will only do us more harm.

29

Well, the gov’t can almost certainly do better in almost all aspects of its functions. But the same is true for large corporations. I believe the church’s beaurocracy often fallsunder the same kinds of critique.

The trouble with very large organizations is that it’s exceptionally difficult to keep them running optimally despite best efforts. The reason is that the very same controls that are put in place to keep things running in an organized fashion are the ones that slow down the works of the entire apparatus. It’s a necessary evil until a better solution is found. Similarly, the appartus can only work at the maximum speed and efficiency of it’s slowest and least efficient component. It’s alot like your computer, the CPU is idle 98% of the time waiting for the far slower I/O interfaces to do their job - not to mention the operator’s limitations (no offense intended).

So why get this large and inefficient apparatus (the gov’t) involved for marginal gains. Would not the further loss of freedom to the individual far outweigh any speculative benefits of your proposed 6 month delay? And if you really do believe that gov’t involvement should be minimized in many situations, why propose the contrary?

If you could establish the impact this “considerable cost of divorce” has on society and show how the wait period would benefit both society and economy beyond just your gut feel and speculation, then you may have a viable argument. Until then it’s just your personal opinion and not one I can support in good concience.

As for your welfare argument, I see no logical links between it and the 6 month marriage waiting period. The gov’t does not impose an evaluation or consideration period on welfate recipients. They judge elegibility based on an applicant’s financial status. They don’t send them home to think about whether they really need financial assistance or not.

As for drug use. You’ll find me on the legalize drugs & prostitution debate. Legalize it. Regulate it (like alcohol, tobacco and gambling). Tax it as a source of revenue. Again, no correlation with marriage waiting periods.

30

Bill:

Fine. I disagree–I think marriage is a copout and is done way too much in this country. Having lived at times in communities with heavy Catholic, Baptist, and Mormon populations, I have seen all too often the damage caused not by divorce but by an unhealthy and unrealistic obsession with the institution of marriage.

I think people take it too seriously. Guess we’re at an impasse there.

To rip off the NRA, divorces don’t hurt people, people hurt people. Maturity, communication, and respect are essential in any relationship, whether or not it is formalized by the State.

Absolutely. A child is infinitely better off with a single parent who loves him (and can take care of him, but that’s another thread) than two who do not. And a kid is better off with divorced parents who respect one another than married parents who stay married “for the sake of the children.”

At the risk of giving offense, I find this laughable. if you intend to tell me that I, as a man, cannot nurture and that my SO, a woman, cannot discipline, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. In part, it’s antiquated and unfounded notions like this that cause so many acrimonious divorces in the US, IMO.

I realize that our views differ greatly here. Nothing I can say will change your opinion that the only good family is one man, one woman, and children, I suppose. I believe you are wrong in this.

31

Here is a link to a story about the effects of divorce on kids: http://www.canoe.com/TimeCanada0009/25_time12.html . I can say that from my own experience much of what this story says is true. Would a six month waiting period have helped my parents? I doubt it, they were married over 20 years before they got divorced.

32

Wildest Bill

Have you looked at the requirements for domestic partners? All of the requirements lists that I have seen require that the relationship to have been in existance for at least six months. I find it interesting that what you propose in your OP is already in place for DP’s.

Maybe we should just get rid of marriage in favor of domestic partnerships.

Some areas (like Oregon, for example) require the partners be homosexual. I guess the government in Oregon cares more for homosexual relationships than they do about heterosexual ones.

33

Great link, Adam. Thanks.

Dr M:

Amen.

34

Let’s look at it a different way, shall we?

In the past, when divorce was stigmatized and not as easilly accessible, you had people staying together because they had no choice. Some of these households were abusive, many im more than one way.

I think statistics will bear out that kids growing up in a dysfunctional family unit with two fucked up parents are worse off in terms of being “good” children and subsequently adults than kids who come from a single parent who is NOT fucked up and in a bad situation that is difficult to extract themselves from.

And maybe the rash of crappy parenting we have in our modern times is a result of all of these now-adults who were raised in fucked up households with two parents who shouldn’t have been together, and this is what they learned?

I don’t know how provable my hypothesis is, but it has a logic that makes sense to me, at any rate… And it seems as good an explanation as any…

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

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35

Satan,

Are you saying it is better for child to growup with one screwed up parent instead of two. I’m not following you.
It seem like on average mind you that a child is better off with two parents instead of one. Would you and others agree with me on that point?

And scylla,

I appreciate your last post. And I do not like gov’t intervention and peoples lives for the most part I just thought maybe this intervention would maybe have some positive implimentations(sp).

Andros, Man dude. How come you hate the institution of marriage so much. Did you go through a bad divorce or did your parents split up or something? I think marriage can be a wonderful thing.(not all of the time mind you but I wouldn’t trade my wife in even for a Farrari.)

36

Short of someone’s rights being violated, the government has absolutely no right to be involved with the decisions made by any family. The sheer thought of it disgusts me. If you want to wait six months, fine. But don’t you dare propose that the same restriction be placed on people who are more certain about their future.

My parents were divorced as well, didn’t mess me up in the slightest because my parents and I were emotionally compotent enough to deal with it.

37

Setting aside the question of whether the government SHOULD add a waiting period to getting married, I’ll ask whether that would help at all.

I don’t think that it’s been demonstrated that most divorces are a result of hasty marriages. At least in my middle-class experience, people a) date for a period of time; and b) get engaged, with an additional wait until the wedding. Since I have no figures whatsoever, I don’t know if this is more or less common than quickie marriages. I also don’t know whether quickie marriages are more or less likely to dissolve than those with a protracted engagement. However, until we know the answer, it is really premature to start imagining remedies – we don’t even know what the problem is!

My pet theory is that marriage is a lot of hard work. Okay, that’s not the theory part – that’s just a fact. The theory part is that marriage isn’t the necessity it once was. Socially and economically, our situations have changed to the point where men and women don’t HAVE to get married. Since people aren’t getting married out of necessity, they’re getting married in search of happiness. We have a romantic ideal that we expect to be fulfilled through marriage. However, marriage is also a lot of hard work, and a lot of compromise, and there are so many other ways to make ourselves happy. So, people who have unrealistic expectations from marriage and don’t do enough of the work to make it successful end up disappointed, and then decide to end the marriage. After all, if you’ve married someone so you could be perfectly happy, and you’re not perfectly happy, you must have married the wrong person, right?

Okay, now that I think about it, this really only covers a subset of marriages that go bad. But, even if it’s true, I don’t see how a government-ordered waiting period is going to help. I’m sure my statement that “marriage is hard work” didn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Everyone has heard that. It’s just that you don’t really understand it until you experience it for yourself. Having the government tell you marriage is hard doesn’t make it any more real to you than hearing from everyone else you know.

Finally, I’ll need some social scientists or psychologists to bring in the facts to refute me here, but I don’t think that we’re capable of predicting which marriages will end in divorce. There are certain factors which make divorce more likely, of course – but I’m sure if I asked for anecdotal evidence, many of you have parents who married too young, had crappy jobs when starting out, had kids too early, or whatever, and had successful marriages – at least successful enough to raise one well-adjusted child who spends all of his or her time debating complete strangers. Okay, scratch “well-adjusted.” But government approval isn’t likely to result in better marriages.

38

Ok, I give up. I thought the gov’t might help the family unit for once.

Seems like waiting 6 months would just be a good idea anyway.

But since most of y’all think it is wacky idea, just forget it.

39

Nothing at all wrong with proposing a new idea. It takes courage to do it, and it takes courage to admit that it has flaws.

I’m sure your next idea will kick some serious ass though!

40

I’m sorry if you received that impression. I do not hate marriage in any way. I simply think it’s not the be-all and end-all of existence. And for that matter, I don’t much consider it an “institution.” I also think that the traditional view of marriage is increasingly outdated and harmful.

When people get married because societal pressures tell them that they will be lesser beings if they dont, or when people have an unreasonable, unhealthy, or immature view of marriage, or when a lack of communication between spouses leads to differing views of what a marriage should be, they and their children suffer. Divorce is a symptom, not a disease. Change attitudes toward marriage, and you address the disease. Have the governement stick its nose into marriage, and you’re only addressing the symptoms.

I think it can be, yes. And I think for some it is. But I simply do not understand why two people who decide to enter into a contract with one another should be coddled by my tax dollars. (Conversely, I do not in any way understand why marriages must be mandated by the governement to consist of one man and one woman.)

-andros-