I’m 35, never married, no children, and have no plans to marry-in this country(USA), anyway. I’d side with those who hold that the only possible motivation for marriage nowadays in this culture is to raise children, and with the custody/child support situation such as it is the risks are huge.
In both sets of my grandparents, I saw a model of marriage. The men worked/pursued careers for the sake of the family-not personal aggrandizement. The women ran the household. And I mean RAN the household. Each looked after the other in what I perceived to be an equal partnership. Disagreements were worked out because divorce didn’t seem to even exist as an option. Work wasn’t the end-all-be-all of personal fulfillment, and housework/rearing a family wasn’t belittled or considered menial.
I grew up seeing family as the central lodestone of an individual’s life, and assumed I would marry once and for life. Then in the early eighties I started seeing my friends’ parents splitting up…with what seemed to be increasing frequency. The stigma against divorce grew weak then apparently disappeared. Confusion spread over gender roles (do we even have them anymore?)To simply be a male seemed to imply collusion with vast wrongs done womankind throughout history. Redressing these wrongs requires men to be ‘equal partners’ now. For many, that apparently means to fulfill the previous role of primary breadwinner willing to sacrifice for the family…but to expect absolutely nothing in return.
I don’t think that bias in the legal system(imagined or real) is the root problem. If only that were the case, it could be remedied. Rather, the sweeping social changes of the past fifty years have atomized traditional societal and family bonds, but have yet to provide satisfying replacement arrangements. I rather doubt we can go back,but I certainly can’t see a resolution to these problems in the near future.
Of 20 once or currently married coworkers in my blue-collar job, perhaps 3 or 4 are happily settled with their first and only spouse. The rest are divorced (some more than once,) or wish they were. With the 7 or 8 who have an ex and children under 18, it’s common to see them handing over a third of their check which she spends as she sees fit. Perhaps on the kids, perhaps on a shiny new car. I’ve watched two men go through unwanted splitups that were devastating, parting with over half their assets but loosing much more in terms of identity and meaning as husbands and fathers.
I’ve been in a steady relationship for ten years, living together for six. My financial contribution to the household is 10 to 1 compared to my partner’s, and I work longer hours to fulfill our financial commitments. I bought the house, I pay the bills. And yet we are supposed to share in household chores-living more like roommates. If we were married, the only difference is that she would legally own half. And I’m supposed to go for that?
