Folks, marriage predates any sort of legal system. Every tribe of hunter gatherers, from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego to the Kalahari to Lappland to Siberia to Tasmania to the New Giunea Highlands to Easter Island has had marriage. Every recorded human society since the dawn of history has had marriage.
Marriage was not created by priests or accountants or The Patriarchy. Marriage is a natural human behavior that almost certainly predates Homo sapiens sapiens. The legal and religious aspects of marriage were attached to it by various religious and legal authorities, but religion didn’t create marriage anymore than saying grace before a meal created eating.
Explain how marriage is easy to get into and hard to get out of.
For the record, I disagree with this statement in its entirety. In my personal experience, the marriage took months and months of planning. The divorce, not so much. Ex filed and paid the fee, we produced financial statements to the court, time passed, made a personal appearance at the final hearing, and there you are, divorced. If you take emotions out of it, divorce takes very little work.
I am reading this thread with interest though, because having been through it once, I am not sure I want to risk everything by ever getting married again.
That’s what I found the last time that I figured it out. I’ve been living with my partner for over 15 years, we own a house together but we don’t see any important reason to get married that outweighs the tax increase. We’ve done all of the legal paperwork like wills and giving each other power of attorney, we aren’t religious and we don’t have kids. We’d get married if there was a good financial reason to but I think that we’re as committed to each other as married couples are. Now that I’ve retired our tax situation might have changed enough to make it worthwhile and if so we’ll go down to the courthouse and get married by a judge and skip the big expensive party. I know, I’m not very romantic when it comes to marriage.
I agree with this also. And to be clear “family” does not necessarily mean having children.
But still others must not see it this way. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that many married couples still keep seperate bank accounts and split paying household bills. Aren’t you a team now? Two become one? What’s yours and mine is now ours? Apparently not.
Well, I haven’t done either, but you don’t need to have a wedding to get married. You can apply for a license and go to the courthouse. In most communities can’t you accomplish this in 24-48 hours?
As for divorce, there’s hiring lawyers, paying fees, the waiting period, division of assets, custody of children (if applicable) and potential for compliation if either party wishes to fight it. Seems to me than on average it is MUCH easier to get married than to get un-married. Though if both people agree to the terms of divorce - especially if there are no children involved and you’re both broke - it’s probably about the same.
It always was economic. By marrying, a man got someone to manage the household and provide him with children to help work the farm (for that purpose, it really didn’t matter who the father was). In addition, there was the issue of dowry.
The ideal of romantic love was a relatively late development. Nowadays, the economic advantages aren’t quite as important (the tax break is nice, but if both spouses work, it’s a something of a disadvantage). The more common reasons are sex (mistresses/prostitutes are much more socially unacceptable in the US than they have been in the past), love, and companionship.
The belief that a two parent family is better for children is also a factor.
This is my opinion on the matter. It makes your relationship somehow more “official.”
Up until just recently, marriage has been primarily a contractual agreement. The husband provides his wife room and board, his name and protection, the wife provides him heirs and, in upper classes, a dowry, plus manages his household. Particularly in the wealthier classes, romantic love was something you found outside of marriage, not generally in it. If you found love in your marriage, you were lucky, but it’s my understanding that the goal was primarily to tolerate each other enough to be able to live together and procreate.
Oops, after I posted this, I realized RealityChuck already stated the above. So…what he said.
You are right, of course, about the marriage. I guess I was just objecting to the “absoluteness” of how a marriage IS (with the implication of always) easy to get into, and the divorce always being hard. For me, as I said, emotions aside, my divorce was crammed down my throat and my ex left with little more than his clothes - his choice, he just wanted out. He did the filing and fee paying. I was so numb I just went along with it. Neither of us hired attorneys. Which in retrospect was dumb. Thank god I am no longer that person!
How about ease of bookkeeping? It’s far easier for me to have Hubby in charge of two bills and his own spending, and me handle the rest. It’s still all ‘our’ money. It’s like dividing up chores.
To those arguing that marriage is economic, how can you explain marriage in hunter-gatherer societies?
There are no farms to work. There are no dowries. There are no inheritances. There is no inherited social standing. There are no contracts. There are no taxes.
And yet hunter-gatherers for some reason have marriage. Why would they do such a thing?
I would imagine a lot of it has to do with carrying on the lineage. Even if there are no inheritances, the guy (or girl, if the society is matriarchal) wants to make damn sure that the kid he’s providing for (i.e., feeding) and protecting is his, not someone else’s.
And, even if there are no farms to work, no dowries, etc., there are still some limited posessions and household duties to take care of, such as food preparation. One could still consider the situation to be economic, only you’re trading in kind more than in goods.
Government sanctioned “marriage” is a contractual agreement, conferring various legal rights and responsibilities.
Churches view it as something else/more, which IMO is of no interest to the state.
That is why I prefer that governments get out of the marriage business, and just recognize “civil unions” - whether between different- or same-sex couples.
Then let churches apply whatever standards they wish to recognize “marriage” within their faiths.
In my scheme, people who choose to go through a church ceremony will likely be parties to a civil union AND a marriage.
But a civil union alone would be sufficient to confer all relevant rights and responsibilities under law.
I would simply say we have moved beyond the stage of bonding as mates to something tied into civilization and thus tied up in laws, tradition and religion.
I look at marriage strictly from the civil standpoint and thus I came to realize that my old objections to gay marriage were foolish and without merit. They should be allowed to marry. My wife convinced by about 7 years ago how I was being illogical about it, especially as a non-religious agnostic.
The anti-gay marriage religious folks should just worry about whether their own religion will sanctify the marriage and not worry about the civil aspects and ceremony. The need to understand that gays (or atheists or agnostics) marrying does not diminish their own marriage.
I think this is a wonderful idea and a genius evil plan. Okay, not evil, but genius nonetheless. I kind of understand why the religious consider marriage such a holy sacrament, but at the same time, marriage was a contractual agreement and the “real” and official portion of that process has typically been the part where both parties sign the contract. To some people the church part is important as well, but for many people - especially now - that’s not the part that’s most binding. I don’t see why gay couples can’t make the same arrangements, particularly when many couples own property or have children or simply want to make a legal declaration of their intention to spend their lives together, whether for tax reasons or otherwise.
Money and how to spend/save/use it is one of the main reasons for conflict in marriage (shocker, I know), and if dividing this up saves a lot of trouble and is mutually acceptable, why not? It’s not like they can’t decide to mingle the money for a joint purchase, or help each other out in an emergency, job loss, etc., situation.
But why not just call the government recognized institution of civil unions “marriage”? What’s so special about the word marriage that it can only be used by the religious?
How many times can I say this? Marriage is not a religious concept. Marriage predated every known religion. Some religions have some supernatural views of marriage, but so what? All that means is that people recognize marriage as an important life change, and so religious rituals and beliefs got attached to marriage, just like they have to birth and death and sharing meals.
There are many species of animals that have social structures that include something akin to marriage. And human beings happen to be one of those species. Our closest relatives of chimapanzees, gorillas and orangutans don’t, but human marriage didn’t get invented in the recent past, it is part of human nature, part of our instinctive human behavior. Marriage doesn’t happen because people sat down and figured out that there were rational economic benefits to marriage, marriage has existed for as long as fully modern human beings have existed.
I’ve always liked the way some European countries do things - for example, in France and Germany, the only marriages recognized by the state are those done by civil authority. Religious ceremonies are not recognized by the state, and if done at all are held after the civil ceremony has been completed.
I think it’d be just grand if we could do the same thing - have a civil union for the legal protections and call it that. Then the religious folks can keep the word ‘marriage’ for their ceremonies if that’s so important to them. That should keep everyone happy regardless of what they think the purpose of the union is/should be.
No the “real” part of the marriage is when two people commit to each other. The public part where they sign a contract or exchange oaths or get annointed by a priest are secondary.
If the contract is what “really” creates marriage, how did people get married before the concept of legal contracts existed? How do New Guinea highland tribespeople get married? How did Thag the Cro-Magnon marry Thagette?
The contract that people sign doesn’t create the marriage. The religious ritual doens’t create the marriage. The two parties to the marriage create the marriage themselves. The legal part and the public part is just a way to inform the rest of us that the marriage has come into existance. The religious ritual is just a way to inform various imaginary supernatural entities that the marriage has come into existance.
It’s not just the two parties creating the marriage. It’s their families and the social group they live in as well. Many marriages, up until recently, have been arranged - by each parties’ family and not the parties themselves. So I would disagree with you that the two people committing to each other has always been the real portion of the marriage. Often, the meat of the marriage has been the the two families agreeing to a continued association. Even in hunter-gatherer societies.