Why Marriage Matters
Recent legal and sociological changes to the state of marriage..the very definition of marriage, begs the question of why such changes are deemed so urgent, and what it means for, not only individuals and families in the future, but for society as a whole. I should note that I am considering American society, as that is my own personal basis of understanding. As much as certain scientists and writers like to spin tales, we really have no proof that men wandered about in groups, raping women at will, but finally taking the hint that if they wanted a source of sex, they should bring food as a method of attraction and exchange, which allowed bands of women to raise some children to adulthood. That women developed secret ovulation and constant ability to have sex as a mean of attracting males; and that eventually even jealousy and hate served to bond men to women and thus ensured their offspring survived. http://parentingjournal.com/PAR0112_2.pdf This bleak view of human interaction is what I was actually taught in college and after college; definitely part of the feminist revision of the history of the world. There was also a popular theory that women learned about cooling in the ocean and getting food from the same source; that we lost all but our head hair because of this, and that, further, women initiated domestication of dogs and maybe some of the other animals and men just took that and learned how to use animals to their advantage.(that women did all the heavy lifting in changing society) We know, by studying what the same scientists and evolutionists have presented, that the great apes, even monkeys live in troops or family groups. Primates as a whole need a group; social interaction. Babies need the security of the troop while their mothers raise them. I just don’t see how you can accept part of scientific theory, bits and pieces that support your own ideas, and leave the rest as if it doesn’t matter. Humans are primates, primates live in groups. Every major religion talks about a first couple or a first group of humans…male and female. The idea of natural bonded pairs…marriage, comes from this basic idea. It was later codified in cultural mores or religious belief. Leaving a couple alone that were successfully raising offspring (no cheating,) offspring who could become contributing members of the clan and therefore, enhance the lives of the whole group (more food, more new ideas, more of everything) was widespread; the norm. As clans grew to tribes, and agricultural or hunting societies settled down into areas where it was easier to trade/thrive without as much labor, towns and then cities were born. And the rise of leaders who would control these groups, usually male. (There were examples of priestesses taking control as well; some of the first religious cabals to control their societies.) We have to conclude that dominance and control are seen as valuable by human beings as a means of survival. It also makes it much easier to enforce rules on the group; everyone wanting to be on the good side of those in charge. But with every interaction between humans, the likelihood of negative interactions increased. No longer bound by blood or familial ties, no longer bound by survival based on food limits, personal arguments to wars; humankind stayed aggressive. Marriages went from a biological-only strategy to ways to increase harmony and form new ties. Parents chose husbands or wives for their offspring based on advantage for the family. This reached its height in Europe during the Middle Ages; advantageous marriages among the nobility (also fostering; raising kids in someone else’s home to avoid “spoiling” them, and as, frankly, hostages.) Meanwhile the poor by and large learned to get along without the involvement of the church; they would live together as husband and wife without benefit of blessing. This was called common law marriage. It was somewhat accepted in the US until quite recently. Strangely, the English laws it was based on ceased to have validity in 1753. As well, the idea of romance took bloom in this period. The idea of Courtly Love; started by bored noblemen and women, of proving your symptoms were the most profound, that you were the most passionate lover ever, usually for a person with whom you could never legally involved ( i.e., they were married.) Lustful feelings were substituted as the epitome of love instead of a growing love and bond between marriage partners, which had been considered the norm for so much of human history (although, men of power and influence usually got the women who attracted them, beauty as well as power had its coinage.) All in all, marriage as protection for offspring (this would include inheritance laws) devolved into a formal contract in the West, for personal, professional, and social advancement. People of religious faith did still get their marriages blessed (the current term is covenant marriage for Christians.) Society as a whole desired stability; marriage was seen as a pillar of this stability. Divorce was available if you had money but not considered ideal. Deadly if you were a politician (Gerald Ford was the first divorced and remarried President. Ronald Reagan was the second) And yes, with such strictures in place, women and children did suffer if a man could not provide (based on economic downturns or what were called at the time, vices) or abused his family. In the 1950’s we had new highways, new cities and suburbs, new technologies, new ideas. Families were on the move, more involved in neighborhood or professional groups than in their birth families. The old ways, such as caring for aging parents, were beginning to give way. With pensions and social security available, it was felt the parents could take care of themselves. If not, the nursing home had finally replaced the old almshouse or poorhouse. http://www.4fate.org/history.html Parents could now focus on their own careers and try to ensure the future of their children with schooling, etc. the benefits of having grandparents, siblings etc. share in the care of children became a thing of the past. As well, moving from a rural society to a much larger proportion of families living in suburban or urban communities, children ceased to be a source of income (working on the family farm or in the family store) and became a liability, income wise. You had to want children and be prepared to pay for them. We had, finally enacted child labor laws as well. We were forced to stop exploiting our children for the meager income they could bring in. With money and privacy (the suburbs) people could also explore options; options such as affairs, as well as hobbies, and yes, alternative lifestyles. The rise of serial marriage had begun, to be popularized with so many famous actors and actresses in the 1960’s. It was the first shot across the bow in the sexual revolution. Marrying for love. (It resulted in a higher divorce rate.) The push for virginity and celibacy was also giving way. Keeping yourself for an exclusive relationship was seen as..old fashioned and silly. With better birth control, women could “explore” their sexuality in relative freedom. This was seen as a great advancement. As new ideas and standards flooded our culture, marriage was already spoken of as a “doomed” institution by feminists and others. Abortion became legal in 1973. Once again, women could determine their own fate and men need not be involved. This was touted, along with the rise in women working, as the beginning of a truly equal society. Men were further “off the hook” for responsibilities towards their own families. While child support in the case of divorce was pursued, it was easy for men to change location and ignore their obligations. The advent of welfare however, did eventually force some changes. The government agencies dispensing welfare did begin to track down absent fathers. Of course, the government rules about welfare originally chased off many of those struggling fathers. Here is a history of welfare. http://law.jrank.org/pages/11266/Welfare-BRIEF-HISTORY-WELFARE-REFORM.html Leaving women and children permanently dependent on welfare, and culminating in teenage girls being given apartments to raise their babies separate from their families, was a further blow to family structure. Real reform did not start until 1996. By then, the damage done to children by removing their fathers was easy to see. http://fatherhoodfactor.com/us-fatherless-statistics/ Women were in essence taught they were on their own; to take advantage of educational opportunities if they had children, and to abort if a child stood in their way. Men were largely excluded from any thought planning or responsibility for their children. For far too many children, the feminist ideal of banishing men from the child rearing process was a reality. http://www.christianpost.com/news/raising-boys-without-men-151-the-new-feminist-fantasy-6470/ But it is not new. The idea of quashing all male characteristics to make “better men.” has been around for quite a while. We used to call these women “earth mothers.” They often lived in small rural places, raising the children without reference to fathers. Other attempted social engineering, to make “gentler” men, has in essence failed. Giving them dolls instead of guns only means they become more inventive and find other objects to turn into guns! We do know that as my daughter calls it, the “testosterone wash” changes the fetal brain. It is part of the process of sex differentiation. It is a biological fact, and attempting to ignore nature doesn’t really work. Instead, boys can be taught to care, to protect others, to be men of thought and responsibility. Not spoiled princes or bullies. Of course, religious revival and changes in politics have further muddied the waters at times. We do have a middle and upper class that seems to regard children as the perfect expression of themselves…after a perfect career start, a perfect ( and expensive) wedding, they have DNA tested children ( perfect) or have IVF procedures to, once again, have only perfect children. If they divorce, they choose “co-parenting.” It is the socially correct thing to do. And, frankly, some fathers do quite well in staying involved in their children’s lives. While the poorer classes, more and more often, simply live together and have children. (only 50 percent of couples in the US now get married) They may have to return to a parental home if there is not enough money to sustain a separate family. Meanwhile, older parents (now grandparents) become unable to care for themselves, and are also returning to their children’s homes (all classes.) The nursing home industry is booming but it can mean losing all assets in paying the bills. It is a tough dilemma for parents caught in the middle. In this case, after generations of the idea of privacy, these changes can be quite troublesome to those living in shared space. It might be far better for the children however; a return to a family system of the past. I do believe, in part that the reason younger/ less well off people are choosing not to marry is because of many reasons. One is a lack of religious instruction. With only the government rules about equality, self esteem, etc being taught, a watered down version of what it means to be an adult has emerged. With the rise of technology, teens can also take all their ideas from friends..silently, without any reference to whatever lessons their parents attempt to instill. the “good life” is now sex whenever and with whomever you like, video games and porn and expensive computers and phones….with no reference to how much they cost. Parents owe them, after all, the lifestyle their friends also have. Some will go on to try for schooling and a “better life..” but many fail at this stage, when the realities of paying off loans and the lower pay than expected catch up to them. As well, if you know money might be hard to come by, marriage, which might put your income over the limit for welfare or grants or food stamps, might not be so attractive. Neither is paying for a divorce. And the old idea of courtly love…the perfect romance, still seems to lead girls on a merry chase after their white knight, which of course, always fails. Without working towards the future, and the idea of marriage, there is no reason for these couples to sustain their relationships. This is touted as “healthy” by the media, the therapeutic community; the cultural mores of the day. Young men seem to only see an upside as they can have sex without responsibility. The heartbreak of losing your lover and friend, the struggle to maintain both economic stability and social contacts, is never mentioned. The war between the sexes has never been sharper. Nor is it a stable environment for children. More co-habiting couples end these relationships, than those who are married, leading to single parent homes at a higher rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohabitation_in_the_United_States http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm And there is a rise in men raising their children. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/07/02/the-rise-of-single-fathers/ Enter friendship marriages. The idea, not of passion, but of liking each other. Of shutting the world out and raising a family. While it sounds good, it is an attempt not to have to deal with social change and uncertainty. Time will tell if the children do well out of such marriages and if the marriages themselves last. With so little personal investment in the relationship, I have my doubts. Given the dismal history of natural marriage, why would the courts of our land overrule the vast majority of voters and rule that there is no difference between gay and straight relationships? By and large, gay couples have been able to live together just like straight couples for quite a long time. There used to be some rules about the nature of relationship in some housing units. But I have not heard of problems of that sort in quite a while. There can be losses with inheritance (which used to be solved by one partner adopting the other) and with medical power of attorney. These problems could have been dealt with separately and should have been, with the demise of straight marriage. So many Americans choose not to be married, these laws should, indeed, have been written to accommodate a changing state of personal affairs. If our state and federal laws still attach so much importance to marriage, why is there not a government effort to promote and encourage families? Child tax credits really are not enough. If gay parents can raise children successfully, having them by natural birth, surrogacy, or adoption, just like straight parents, where is the discrimination in law? Instead, we have a Supreme Court judge talking about love, that all love is equal, and that any who oppose gay marriage are unethical. This is what Judge Kennedy said in 2013. “DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives. It should follow, that polygamous, even incestuous relationships will also be upheld by the courts as “of equal value.” I have no doubt that many of the couples we are talking about have a great deal of affection for each other. But as “love” is now the basis of relationship, a feeling that can disappear at any time, these relationships, like straight relationships, are a disaster waiting to happen. Especially for the children. Marriage, as a social contract, demands a partnership, a pooling of resources, and a personal commitment to staying in the relationship. Quite frankly, today the marriage vows should read “as long as we like having sex with each other.” The idea of sacrificial love, of doing what it takes to raise your children, is virtually nonexistent. ”what have you done for me lately” is more likely to be heard. Selfishness is far more common than selflessness. Actually, it is seen as a part of “low esteem.” The chickens have come home to roost. We have taught selfishness for nearly 50 years. With the rates of child rearing and desire for marriage among gay couples being so low (646,000 couples recognized in 2010 by the Census report, with 23.5 percent having children in the household) while the number of people reporting themselves as GLBT being about 8 million ( the highest number I have found; about 3.5 percent of the population.)This means that a little over 12 percent of gay couples have married. It means we have approximately 150,000 homes where children are being raised by gay parents. Who are, like other parents, just going about their daily lives with their children. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/11/politics/btn-same-sex-marriage/ (Strangely, the public, when polled, seems to believe it is about 20 percent GLBT in this country) The gay marriage/equality movement is not about enriching the lives of children raised in such unions, nor is it about ensuring equality for the couples in this country who identify as other than heterosexual. It isn’t about love or marriage at all. And that should worry every thinking gay person as well as every straight one. What we have is social engineering at its finest. By further watering down the meaning of marriage, the default to government control, suppression of free speech, and raising of humanist/socialist children, able to shrug off parents’ religious or other ethical framework, thinking themselves as adults by indulging in whatever they wish, is nearly complete. Every parent should be concerned. Every parent should be finding ways to incorporate steady, intelligent men and women in the lives of their children. They need good role models…of both kinds. They will have to deal with, and work with, both. Biological fact. Every parent should attempt to build bridges to the family of both parents..and by that I mean both mother and father, the actual relatives of a child. Grandparents can be wonderful resources in many cases. Aunts and uncles too. I would suggest we quit thinking of ourselves and our love lives, our boredom and need for romance, and consider how to best help every member of our families. And of building the bonds to a whole family for our children. It is not up to the government to tell us how to arrange our families. Despite enormous pressure, we can give our children the loving and stable environment that worked for so long in all human cultures. We can decide who controls the future of our children and our relationships; us, or bureaucrats and politicians. |
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