Before continuing with this series, you should really read this, this, this and this, if you haven't already. They sum up my views on marriage, however, they are quite bound to my circumstances at the time.
The first question:
| Is marriage dead? What is the future of marriage? Where is it going — or is it too far gone?" |
Originally, marriage was a way to ensure procreativity, status, and wealth. The last century has shown us that as people become more individually empowered, they require marriage less as a necessity for these things and more as something they can pursue because they have the means to do it. Rich people can do it because they can get richer, or because they can concentrate on more idealistic things such as love and eternal happiness. Poorer or middle-income people do it for these same reasons, although I suspect that the poorer you are, the more it is done for stability and status rather than love and happiness. Moreso if you are poor and female.
Middle- or lower income singles have a harder time achieving the same levels of respect, status and stability than married people do. People consider the marriage unit as somehow better than unmarried units. Yes, I did say "unmarried units", but I'll get back to that. Married units are considered more in love, more committed, more mature and more defined than unmarried units. Married units are something special, superior, different and unique than the rest of those heathen-type relationships (read: gay or single or anything else). This is why they have special status. This is why they get formal government-sanctioned benefits. We like to exclude.
Unmarried units are singles and anyone else that contributes to society as a unit, more or less. An unmarried co-habitating couple with common goals, dreams, motivations and actions is a unit as much as a married couple, possibly moreso. My brother is part of an unmarried unit. They have a son, a home, cars and lifve exactly the same way as my married sister. I cannot believe that his commitment towards his family is any different than my sister's to hers simply because of the existence or absence of the wedding band. If being a unit of more than one person is so important, it is equally important to realize that there are many types of such units. In such a realization, I can't believe that marriage has anything to do with it.
Even though marriage no longer has a real function except to exclude others and make some people feel secure, snug and smug, marriage is like candy. Not necessarily good for you, but oh, so sweet. Oh wait, I am confusing marriage with weddings. That's another reason why marriage won't go away: there's too much money in it. Jonathan Ames said: "The suppliers...would all rally in a great show of unity and say that marriage must continue." De Beers (great article) would freak out if anything were to happen to marriage. They would have to come up with a whole other ad campaign. People spend so much money on weddings that the sheer economics of a serious downturn in getting hitched would have many people scrambling for work. $60 billion is a lot of money by any standards, and that doesn't include honeymoons. I was out to lunch with Rose, my ex and her sister. My ex, Andrea, work part time at a banquet hall. The last wedding she worked at had 1000 guests at $250 a plate, plus presents. Dat's clazy.
Lastly, we are undergoing a conservative upswing, I think. More and more people are actively trying to return to the "old values" of monogamy, marriage, and so on. Old-style marriage is like new-age hocus-pocus spiritual whatever. People are flocking to it as though it is the alternative for those seeking some kind of higher state.
No, I don't fear for the future of marriage, and even me, jaded as I am, would worry if it were to actually disappear completely.
As someone who is getting married fairly soon, I waffled between having a wedding or a justice of the peace ceremony. Ultimately, I chose the latter because the simplicity of it appealed to me. Not to mention that a wedding is supposed to be the physical demonstration of the two families coming together, and that just wouldn't happen for me.
I do see marriage as something exclusionary. I choose to join those ranks because I want to be taken seriously as a couple, and I am hoping that I change the stereotypes from the "inside".
Perhaps I should just write my own damn entry.
I have three weddings to attend this summer. One is a couple who don't necessarily believe it's required, but wanted to do this with each other as a gesture. They're getting married on Thetis Island, a little one that she grew up going to camp every summer. The second is a full catholic wedding. You can imagine how that's happening. I'm a bridesmaid in this one. The third is my cousin, and she is the last of three daughters. The other two are married, and where they come from, outside the city, it's 'the thing you do'. I don't know her husband to be. The other two are both great relationships that are only going to get better, in my opinion. They'e both relationships revolving around being best friends as well as lovers. Very cool. On the flip side, my mother's wedding was to ensure security. So there you have the business transactional side of it.
Liz says she chose to get married because she "wants to be taken seriously as a couple". How true! At least in an English-speaking world.
Am I mistaken or marriage is much more valued by English-speaking people than it is by French-speaking people (I should say French Canadians, perhaps)? I've seen people in a couple describe themselves as single and start flirting with somebody else because "hey, I'm not married yet".
As a French-Canadian, I never thought that marriage could ever be important for me but now, under those circumstances, it has become.