Tag Archives: Marriage

Commentary

National Review makes the case for marriage

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From National Review. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

It is true that marriage is, in part, an emotional union, and it is also true that spouses often take care of each other and thereby reduce the caregiving burden on other people. But neither of these truths is the fundamental reason for marriage. The reason marriage exists is that the sexual intercourse of men and women regularly produces children. If it did not produce children, neither society nor the government would have much reason, let alone a valid reason, to regulate people’s emotional unions. (The government does not regulate non-marital friendships, no matter how intense they are.) If mutual caregiving were the purpose of marriage, there would be no reason to exclude adult incestuous unions from marriage. What the institution and policy of marriage aims to regulate is sex, not love or commitment. These days, marriage regulates sex (to the extent it does regulate it) in a wholly non-coercive manner, sex outside of marriage no longer being a crime.

Marriage exists, in other words, to solve a problem that arises from sex between men and women but not from sex between partners of the same gender: what to do about its generativity. It has always been the union of a man and a woman (even in polygamous marriages in which a spouse has a marriage with each of two or more persons of the opposite sex) for the same reason that there are two sexes: It takes one of each type in our species to perform the act that produces children. That does not mean that marriage is worthwhile only insofar as it yields children. (The law has never taken that view.) But the institution is oriented toward child-rearing. (The law has taken exactly that view.) What a healthy marriage culture does is encourage adults to arrange their lives so that as many children as possible are raised and nurtured by their biological parents in a common household.

That is also what a sound law of marriage does. Although it is still a radical position without much purchase in public opinion, one increasingly hears the opinion that government should get out of the marriage business: Let individuals make whatever contracts they want, and receive the blessing of whatever church agrees to give it, but confine the government’s role to enforcing contracts. This policy is not so much unwise as it is impossible. The government cannot simply declare itself uninterested in the welfare of children. Nor can it leave it to prearranged contract to determine who will have responsibility for raising children. (It’s not as though people can be expected to work out potential custody arrangements every time they have sex; and any such contracts would look disturbingly like provisions for ownership of a commodity.)

When a marriage involving children breaks down, or a marriage culture weakens, government has to get more involved, not less. Courts may well end up deciding on which days of the month each parent will see a child. We have already gone some distance in separating marriage and state, in a sense: The law no longer ties rights and responsibilities over children to marriage, does little to support a marriage culture, and in some ways subsidizes non-marriage. In consequence government must involve itself more directly in caring for children than it did under the old marriage regime — with worse results.

Important to know how to defend marriage.

Commentary

Jennifer Roback Morse publishes an excerpt from a new book

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Dr. J the Shorter has a new technique where she weaves statistics into a story to show how bad things happen to people who don’t plan and prepare to have strong marriages. She’s got a new post up on her blog to show it off.

Excerpt:

Rather than regale the reader with statistics, let me tell the story of a hypothetical young woman named Lucy. Not all of the outcomes that happen to Lucy happen to each and every unmarried mother. Lucy’s story is a composite of the outcomes that are systematically more likely to happen to unmarried women, or to cohabiting women, than to married women. (I have omitted the hazards associated with drugs and alcohol, so as not to cloud the marriage issue.) Telling Lucy’s story illustrates what multiple partner fertility looks like in the lives of ordinary people of modest means.

Lucy has graduated from high school, has a job as a dental assistant, and lives with her boyfriend, Izzy. Lucy becomes pregnant. It isn’t entirely clear whether this is an “accidental” pregnancy. She has been on the Pill, but she missed one or two. (The failure rate for the Pill for low-income, cohabitating women younger than twenty is 48 percent.)44

Lucy is glad to be pregnant. She has always wanted to be a mother. Izzy isn’t so happy. He isn’t ready to be a father. Pregnancy was not part of the deal. He feels cheated. They quarrel frequently, and he sometimes hits her. (Domestic violence is more common in cohabiting couples than in married couples.)45

As her pregnancy proceeds, Lucy becomes less and less interested in sex, and Izzy becomes less and less interested in her. He has sex with a former girlfriend. (Cohabiting couples are more likely to have “secondary sex partners.”)46 He feels entitled, since he isn’t “getting any” from Lucy, and after all, she cheated him by becoming pregnant in the first place. They quarrel some more, and he moves out for a while. By the time baby Anna is born, Izzy has moved back in with Lucy.

Now Lucy isn’t so happy. In fact, she becomes depressed. (The presence of children increases a cohabiting woman’s probability of depression. Children do not affect a married woman’s probability of becoming depressed.)47 Izzy is caught up in the excitement for a while. But the combination of sleep deprivation, a needy infant, and a preoccupied and depressed Lucy are more than Izzy can handle. He moves out for good when Anna is six months old. (Cohabiting relationships are less stable than married relationships.)48 He never offers to contribute support to the care of Anna. (Never-married fathers are much less likely to pay child support than fathers who were once married to the child’s mother.)49 Lucy finds that she can’t handle the demands of her job and the care of her baby by herself. She goes to court to try to get Izzy to pay child support.

Then the stepfather Tom enters the picture so things get even more interesting, and it goes on like that with more bad things that happen to Lucy. I’ve never seen this story/statistics technique done before – I think it’s a really winsome way to make the point to people who are skeptical about statistics. I am so going to steal this technique when I talk about these things to young women who don’t understand what marriage is for, what a man does in a marriage, and what decisions a man makes all along his life in order to take on the man’s roles in a marriage.

If I told you what young women look for in men and what they think that men do in marriage, you would laugh your head off. Women today think that men are best if they are handsome and fun – and that’s all men are good for! No wonder the out-of-wedlock birth rate is 40% and the divorce rate is 50%! But I have confidence in Dr. J – she can fix all of these problems. She knows everything there is to know about men and marriage and children. Every time I read anything she has written about marriage, it gets me really enthusiastic about getting married.

Commentary

My friend loves his wife because she defends traditional marriage

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Actually that’s just one of the reasons… you should hear this guy go on about how his wife encouraged him to learn apologetics during the run-up to their marriage.

Here’s an essay she wrote to a pro-SSM friend:

Marriage is the union of a man and a woman who are not already married. No one has the unrestricted right to marry whoever they want, male or female, nor should they. Otherwise where does it stop? Should there be group marriage? Marriage to or between underage children? Marriage with animals? Forced marriage? Well, some of those things already happen in other countries and cultures, and I would say they’re all a net negative on society.

I truly feel for anyone who has a desire for any such relationship, whether it’s that they were born that way or because of some type of past abuse, but that doesn’t mean society has to endorse it and call it marriage. Tolerance is not good enough for gay rights advocates – it’s all out approval or nothing. And don’t say the slippery slope argument is baloney, because it’s not.

What is the purpose of marriage? To provide the best environment for raising children and protection of women and stability of society. Study after study shows that children do best when raised in the home of their mother and father. It’s only recently that marriage was pursued by people because they were in love. Marriage has been in trouble lately in the US, and it’s no surprise that children are turning to gangs, drugs, crime, promiscuity and so on in the search for love and family. I’ve seen this over and over among my own relatives and friends. If you haven’t seen it, you’re pretty blessed, and rare.

I doubt you’re interested in my point of view or will even read this, but here’s a pretty good analysis of the issue:

Based on evidence, gay marriage would not improve society.

I don’t hate gay people (it’s ridiculous that I should even have to say this, but I do feel the need). As above, I even think it’s better for a child to be adopted by a gay person/couple rather than stay in foster care. I have gay friends, family members, blah blah blah insert disclaimer here. I’m just not afraid to say that some things are better for society, and this is the case here.

I think most Americans are like me in that we believe gay people should be treated with kindness, but that the term “gay marriage” is an oxymoron. Even in California, gay marriage was very recently rejected when put to a vote by the people, in spite of a huge campaign on behalf of it.

Don’t worry, I’m surrounded by your point of view all the time, so I’ve already heard all the arguments. ;) And the fact that many fail at heterosexual marriage is not an argument for gay marriage, it’s an argument to reform heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law and of society. ;) No fault divorce has been terrible for society, including my own immediate family. Some states now have what they call “covenant marriage” which is much stricter in letting people get married and the circumstances under which they can divorce. If that had been available to me, I would have done that.

Ah, she is marvelous. No wonder he loves her – who wouldn’t? When I read a woman writing about marriage, men and children like that, I can believe that lots of women do understand marriage, and that they really do care about their husbands and their children. She must be such a trustworthy and effective Christian mother – her kids are lucky that she can be so persuasive.

The main thing that I like is that she doesn’t think that marriage is some arrangement that is for people who are “in love”. It not about the feelings of the adults at all. There is a specific purpose for marriage, and that purpose is a social purpose. It’s not about individuals getting validation based on the sincerity of their feelings, it’s about bonding two people together who are going to stay together so that they can raise the next generation. It’s a commitment and it’s hard!

Women – if you want to make a man like you, try writing an essay like that to an opponent of your Christian or conservative or traditional views, and then CC your husband/suitor, and add a message saying you look forward to learning more about these issues together with him. Reading essays like this and see how proud her husband is of her makes me think well of marriage. It IS fun to be married and to talk about things like this.