Is marriage an outdated system?

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It seems that marriage isn't what it used to be. Divorces seem to be on the rise and more people are focusing on their careers and other hobbies/interests than starting a family. Back in the olden days marriage was something everybody did. Women were expected to take care of the kids and do household chores and men were expected to go to work. A woman was dependent on a man. It is not so much that way anymore. More women are going to college and pursuing a career. Women are realizing that they don't need a man to take care of them. Also, divorces are costly and the courts favor the woman. Men have to pay their ex-wives and they usually get nothing. Many relationships also fail because people don't want to work out their differences. I also hear that more people are choosing not to have kids. I read an article last week that the birth rates in the United States in 2016 were the lowest they have ever been.

Marriage is ridiculous.

It is still very important to some (if not most) people. Many of my friends insisted that it made them feel more secure in their relationships. They applied a lot of pressure to their boyfriends to propose. One of my friends even broke up with her boyfriend of 5 years because he wouldn't propose. They eventually ended up back together and are now married.

This doesn't make much sense to me, as you can always get divorced. But I guess that marriage means that they will try harder to resolve their differences than if they aren't married?

I think that if both people want to do it and are ready, then why not? But it seems strange to me to believe that a relationship isn't real or valid if you haven't walked down the aisle. Especially because married people cheat on their spouses.

I agree though, divorce seems to be unfairly in favor of women. I don't think it is fair to make a man pay for all of your living expenses for the rest of your life because your relationship didn't work out. Especially now when most women work and are able to financially support themselves.

I agree, my sister is finally marrying her guy at my Mom's behest and now they are both miserable planning the wedding based on the most asinine Irish Catholic values we don't even have, but now need to have because Mom's family is coming and expects it. Meanwhile the family on my late father's Swiss side of the family is jsut happy to be invited and happy for my sister...

an I am in the middle of this because I have to minister the wedding.

I don't believe marriage is outdated, but I do believe people have a lot of misconceptions about it. Divorce rates are high among baby boomers, who married in the "free love" drug fueled hippy days, however divorce rates for younger generations are lower than they were in previous decades, and more similar to divorce rates of the mid 20th century.

If a person wants children, the ideal environment still seems to be that of a fairly traditional marriage, where two parental figures become a single financial entity and one parent is the primary care giver and the other parent is the primary wage earner.

As far as women not needing men, is that really a bad thing? I don't think so. I don't think anyone should be forced into a relationship, and when people say "Women don't need men anymore", I envision an era where women had little choice but to marry if she wished to avoid poverty or having to sell herself into prostitution. These days, in western society, when a woman marries a man, it's a choice not made under duress. She marries him not due to any expectation of society or to avoid certain poverty, but because she loves him and wants to make a life with him. At least in more instances than in the past. And he does become a very important person. The modern married man is no less important to his family than married men in the past were. Men are still more likely to be the wage earners and also play a very important parental role, particularly in the development males. When I asked my little nephew what he wanted to be when he grew up, he told me "A daddy like daddy!"

Then there's the fact that most people still prefer to have partners in life, and the notion that marriage offers some stability to those unions and some reassurance that people are a little more dedicated to trying to work through difficulties rather than just picking up and leaving.

I've always felt that marriage was one of those things that I just didn't "get". While I like the idea of being in a long term relationship, I don't view marriage as being a necessary part of that scenario. I honestly think that most people today get married because marriage is viewed as just one of those things that successful adults are supposed to do. Also, there is an idea perpetuated in our society that marriage is equivocal to love. As far as practical purposes are concerned, I think they have died out. I can understand why some women who want children might want that extra level of commitment before bringing the children into the world, but with divorce always being an option for either party, I can't see that it really means all that much. Obviously the legal benefits that the government attaches to marriage are a plus but they can be obtained through other means.

This notion that divorce unfairly favors men tend to be held by men who have little insight into what divorce is like for women. I can tell you what divorce is often like for women, because both my mother and grandmother are divorced.

In the case of my grandmother, my grandparents had 5 children together. After the divorce, my grandfather remarried...he married the woman he had had an affair with and had impregnated. I don't know the financial arrangement he had with my grandmother. She received full custody of the 5 children (I doubt my grandfather objected) and I'm sure my grandfather was required to pay child support and alimony, but supporting six children and two women was surely outside of his financial capacity and my grandmother, who had been a house wife since she married at 19, and had no formal higher education or work experience, had to work two low wage jobs, often 14 hour days, to make ends meet. She did not have anyone to watch the children, and they got into their fair share of trouble because of it.

When my parents divorced, my mother received full custody, which no one disputed, and my father was required to pay child support though he was unable to do so at the time. My mother could have requested alimony but did not because she did not want to hinder my father from getting on his feet financially. We had been on welfare previously, which offered a small amount of assistance, and my father was responsible for paying it back. My mother was able to work for a time though she had no where near the earning power of my father and could not afford day care, so she often had me look after my youngest sibling. She eventually received some help from family. My father was able to get on his feet financially and started a successful business but my mother had difficulty getting child support for my youngest sibling from him. There were no assets to split as my parents didn't own anything and had no investments.

As you can see, in neither of these situations did anyone "make off". The divorce was a financial strain for both parties involved, and I believe this is the rule rather than the exception. Most couples with children under 18 are not rolling in money. They are one or two pay checks away from homelessness. If they own a home, it's often actually still the bank's, and selling it doesn't bring in much profit. The person who was the wage earner gets stuck with increased expenses because their expenses are no longer combined....they pay two sets of bills, and the person who was the care giver often finds the contributions by the wage earner insufficient, and has to juggling working and care giving to make ends meet. That's the reality of divorce for most Americans.

Last edited by Chronos on 09 Jul 2017, 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

...Well, love and marriage...Dad was told by Mother, you can't have one without the other ! !! !! !! !! !!

Your father sounds like a good man.

well a HUGE piece of this is change in values and economics. less and less young people are religious and less and less people can actually acquire the wealth to afford a family much less afford rent in a gentrified area. In the case of the Japanese, birth rates a plummeting just because of the work culture. the work culture is very brutal in terms of hours and obligatory participation that young Japanese simply can't have the time to have a social or love life outside of work. I think that is the case for American millennial too though the economics are a little more dire here than in japan.

is it an outdated system? well yeah, it basically was originally a legal agree meant between families and passing on of wealth through kids. it got prettied up over time, but still has no pragmatic place today other than traditionalism. (ie, my Mom wanting my sister to get married and the detail of the wedding needing to please my Mom's FAMILY rather that her daughter. they have been fighting about this for six months now... )

Just wait until you pass 30, 40, then 50, still alone and unattached, as all your friends pair off and raise families and no longer have time to spend with you. Then forget you exist entirely.

If you think the autistic difficulty meeting people and making friends is a handicap now, you'll really enjoy your declining years, when what looks you have begin to fade, and you're living as a hermit, only leaving the house to grocery shop.

Sitting in your own space without anyone to bother you may sound like heaven now, but eventually you'll be sitting there, mumbling to yourself, watching the days pass in shadows while you wait to die (and let's not even talk about when your health gradually begins to fail). Having a loyal, committed partner to share those hours with may not seem like such an outmoded and cumbersome institution anymore. Faceless strangers on the Internet are certainly no substitute.

Gods forbid you should have a crisis, legal or financial, that's beyond your own executive function capacity to sort out, and your folks have passed on, so there's nobody you can even call for advice. Homelessness is always just one bad decision (or indecision) away.

Marriage. Pfft. Who needs it?

and that's where the Fentanyl comes in....

Yes, but do you think that if the couple does not have children that spousal support should be granted? I should have mentioned that I don't believe that child support is unfair, but spousal support surely can be. My parents were also divorced, so I have experience of my own as well.

Marriage seems to work better than the alternatives right now if your partner gets sick and dies. It is a real mess if you aren't.

Marriage is still pretty common to be honest, especially those who live in rural communities where often times the kids don't go to college and they live in small towns with nothing else to do. In fact, most of my cousins were married by their early or mid twenties. My sister was 25 when she tied the knot, and that's considered pretty normal. One of my cousins got married at 27 and compared to his siblings and where he's from, that's considered late.

If anybody has the most potential in the family to buck the trend of getting married in their twenties, it's me.

If they they had an arrangement where one person was the bread winner, and one person was the care giver, and by care giver I mean that person dedicated their time to caring for their spouse and the household at the expense of building a career, then yes I believe spousal support is appropriate. And this is regardless of the sex of the care giver. Believe it or not many childless couples have an arrangement like this.