Hrm…a few totally unexpected problems. Legitimate though.
What if someone commits adultery…what to do about that extra child?
I dunno. I was just thinking along the lines of this concept that marriage is an antiquated institution, and had too much to do with old “women are property” ideas. It got me to thinking about how best to make sure the family unit was maintained, without some of the other problems that arise from marriage in a world where women aren’t the stupid little homemakers that men used to make them out to be.
/tongue in cheek
Plus, those misguided gay people…trying to get in on this marriage thing like it’s a picnic. News flash! You’ve got the greener lawn…trust me.
ongue in cheek
Marriage is stinking hard. And with the exception of creating a family unit for the proper raising of children, I personally don’t see the purpose behind marriage unless you’re trying to force someone to stay in a relationship with your sorry ass when they really don’t want to.
Two people can choose to stay together without a legal contract forcing them to stay together…and if there are no children being raised then why force the two to go through any hardship to end their relationship? Why make it a legal matter when two grown adults stop loving one another for whatever reason?
So yes, there are valid points being raised, but I don’t think they make the idea totally useless. Tweaks are definitely required…
That’s what used to happen in the old days when divorce wasn’t possible. People just left. They may have been legally married, but they didn’t live together and had nothing to do with each other.
Of course, the biggest problem with this proposal is what happens to people who have children under 18 years old with more than one person. Which one are they married to?
Thing is, declaring people “married” just because they have kids together, and “unmarried” if they have no minor children together, is pretty silly. You can’t make people live together, you can’t make them share finances. And likewise, what’s the purpose of forcing them to live in separate households if they don’t have children?
What exactly does this proposal do that doesn’t happen today? If people want to get divorced after the kdis are grown, they can do that today. If they want to stay together, they can do that today.
I would say that if two people are living together, and have children together, and share finances together, and love each other, well, they can declare that they aren’t married, but in my personal opinion, they are married. That’s what marriage IS. You don’t have to name it “marriage” if you don’t want to, but it’s marriage in everything but name, and that means it’s marriage.
Look, if you don’t want to get married, then don’t. Nobody’s forcing you. But let those of us who do want to get married, or are happy we got married, alone.
Marriages are not created by the government. They are recognize by the government.
The reason for this is that the law recognizes that people have a fundamentally different relationship with their families than with people that are not your family. You can legally watch a strange child drown: watching your own child drown is a crime. If you die without a will, the assumption is that you’d want your stuff to go to a member of your family, not a friend or random stranger. If you can’t make decisions for yourself, the law assumes that you’d want a family member to make them. The law takes these family relationships very, very seriously: it is extremely reluctant to dissolve them (take kids out of custody, for example, or remove an adult child’s right to make medical decisions for their incompetent parent.
The family is also an economic unit: the law assumes that money brought into a family household is shared by that household in a way that it is not by roommates, and that economic decisions are made by the household–so if a person goes back to school and the other person supports them, or a person forgoes a career to follow someone’s military career, or whatever, the assumption is that the family made that decision and the associated opportunity costs.
Now, as long as families are strictly biological, this is pretty easy to determine. But the law also has to recognize that people add non-biological people to their families–that’s why we have marriage and adoption. When you marry someone, the government isn’t making them your family, it is recognizing that they are your family. It’s acknowledging that they are the closest “almost you” out there.
Changing the law won’t change human nature, and it’s human nature to pair-bond, to have a not-family turn into family. Having the law willfully ignore that would just end up with all sorts of unjust decisions, like having someone’s estranged mother be the one to decide when to turn off the ventilator while their partner of 30 years stands by. It just doesn’t mirror the reality.
Sure, it’s obv. quite a longstanding trend now. Of course the thing about the wealthier classes is infidelity needs to be waved in the partners face before divorce is entertained, discreet infidelity is preferable to divorce - esp. ‘for the sake of the children’.
Marriage itself (or its absence) seems to now be a key component in class categorisation.
I can’t imagine where that might be outside of a college campus or your early to mid 20s.
Even in NYC most people do seem to eventually get married at some point. They may get married later in life or wait 10 years to do it or openly have affairs on the side. But nearly everyone I know has eventually settled down.
I think what it ultimately comes down to is that most people want a partner to share their life with.
Well I see that I have done a poor job communicating my premise.
My bad. I’ve got something worth discussing here, but I don’t have the time to figure out how to explain it in a way that won’t end up with so many absolutely different (and wrong) misconceptions about what I’m saying…
So I’ll just leave this figurative piece of chum in the shark tank to be ripped to shreds by those people who get all ornery over discussing such matters.
Ahhh. We have our answer. What problem does the OP see being solved by this? Well, obviously that homemakers are stupid, little, and property. And all this is the fault of men.
Many people believe that marriage is primarily for the expression of love. I find flaws with this, as love can be fleeting and if a family is formed it is at risk of being destroyed over love, either with another outside the family, or lack of it within. I do have concerns if love is replaced by utter hate; but if it is mere indifference I do think that two people should raise the kid they brought into the world. Personal fulfillment can come later, after the child is not so vulnerable.
But what is wrong with the fictional Vulcan model?
Why do not we train ourselves to engage in marriage when reason demands it, rather than love?
Because it wouldn’t. Someone motivated by cold blooded reason probably wouldn’t ever marry, or have children for that matter. Where’s the rational self interest in having children? Where’s the rational self interest in sharing all your accumulated wealth and goods with someone else?
Manda JO pretty much covered what marriage is about; it’s a legal and ritual acknowledgment of the human pair bonding instinct. Not cold rationality.
I think it’s more about providing a settled - and therefore safer - environment so your genes might better survive, and might better flourish. Basically a business arrangement with a front-loaded chemical imbalance.
Kind of made more sense once we stopped being migratory and began farming. Seems to be making less sense again now.
Not this particular situation, but we have had a bunch of ideas about restructuring marriage as a jab to people who are against SSM. Sort of “lets have a creative and new law that screws with heterosexual marriage, so that maybe they understand what they are putting gay people through by denying them marriage.”
I’m with others here. The OP’s proposal does not even solve the non-existant problem that he is trying to prevent.
The desire to have children may not be rational (but that’s a whole 'nother question. Let’s not debate it here), but it’s pretty strongly enforced by genetics and society. Given a desire to have children, getting married is pretty rational. You get a firm commitment to raise the kids and a bunch of societal bonuses.
Married people tend to be wealthier than single people. There’s a lot to be said for the economic efficiency of a combined household. Wealth is not a zero-sum game.
As a homemaker I have to say I take offense to your ideas. I am not a talentless hobo who managed to trick a man into marrying me so I wouldn’t have to work. I actually left a $50,000 a year job to stay home with my daughter. Financially it was the better move, once we took taxes, insurance premiums, and day care costs out of my check.
What we found out after I had been staying home for a few months was that there are incredible benefits to having one partner in charge of the household that can’t be measured in numbers. How awesome would your life be if you never had to spend your evenings grocery shopping or doing laundry again? My husband and I spend an extra 4-6 hours a week together since we don’t have to waste precious time when he is off work running to the hardware store or Target or sorting laundry. We’ve each lost about 15 lbs and his cholesterol is down 20 points because I’m cooking every day instead of us being too tired and ordering takeout. Our sex life is better because we have more time and less stress (even with a 7 month old in the house.) Pretty much everything is better now that my job is Family Captain instead of schilling insurance for 40 hours a week. It is rude and demeaning to say I have no skills or value because you can’t measure it in dollars just like it would be rude or demeaning to say that a woman who works full time doesn’t value her children or family enough.
I said the opposite - that women are NOT the “stupid little homemakers” that men used to make them out to be. And that this is one of the reasons that the current institution of marriage is getting out of date. But it may be wrong to think that, hence the thread in great debates. Other opinions and all.
I guess you’re kinda touchy about this subject? You’ll live. You seem like a smart person. Think first, feel later. It helps keep “offense” at bay.
Anyway I’ve written off this thread - there’s no hope since the well’s been poisoned by my own poor choice of words in communicating my ideas. Maybe I’ll take another stab at it another time. I’m just checking in to see why people are still replying to it - and I’d hate for you to be all irritated because of a misunderstanding.
Okay, I get that this is a joke but it’s not actually funny. Marriage is an important and valuable right, and in most places same-sex couples are cut off from it. Joking about how you have a special right that a lot of people want and are working hard to get but don’t have is kind of tacky.
