We tend to forget that marriage used to perform functions for society that have since been displaced by governmental social programs. A mere hundred years ago, women on the average lived shorter lives than men due to the complications of child birth. The need to address issues like property were less pressing. Women didn’t vote and had restricted contract rights let alone right to property, as they themselves were often treated as property. To protect one’s daughters, one married them off to someone to manage what ever the family gave them. If a women were to survive her husband, the possibility existed that the eldest son or another male member of the blood family would make play for the assets. Government was rather unconcerned about one’s existence other than as part of the 10 year census for apportionment because there was no income tax. So, if the birth was of a girl, the birth was just as much recorded locally in the parish records or family bible, cause dad wasn’t about to hitch up the buggy for a long trip to the county seat to file an official record when property was not going to be in issue, because a hundred years ago most Americans live in the country, on small farms, villages and towns. To protect females and their human rights within the context of the period, women were given the exclusivity of sex. While not perfect and saddled with a lot of hypocrisy, people a hundred years ago were prosecuted, harassed, and ostracized for sex outside of marriage. The imperfect institution meant that women were provided for in a world that did not integrate them as equals in the market place.
Give us the vote and subsequent property contract reform. Give us Social Security and lessen , if not remove, the need for the next generation of family to care for the elders. Systematically disassemble the monopoly on sex. Give us no fault divorce and cultural acceptable serial polygamy and polyandry. Give us open sex between consenting adults. It appears only commercial sex still carries the stigma society operated under a hundred years ago. Now throw in the negatives as so amply demonstrated, the real question is why does marriage survive?
