So by now, when I finally get home from work and can blog, this NYT article has probably been commented upon to death. But I do have a few things to say (my point, and I do have one!) about it.
The NYT reports on the amazing fact that a whopping 51% (well, according to the boyking, that's a mandate) of women now live in -- gasp -- an unmarried state. Full disclosure: I am a member of the 51%. I've been married twice. Both times, it made me fucking miserable. I never, ever, plan to be married again.
The NYT notes that: "[T]here is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people'’s lives," said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. "Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage."
Further, "Although we can help people 'do' marriage better, it is delusionalusional to construct social policy or make personal life decisions on the basis that you can count on people spending most of their adult lives in marriage," said Professor Coontz, the author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”
I think this article is important because it points out just how wrong the wingnuts are. Continuing to insist that our society is "founded" upon a nuclear family is just wrong. Insisting that "marriage, between a man and a woman," as they always intone, must be "protected" because it is "crucial to our society" is bullshit.
Interestingly, in spite of all the propaganda that our society throws at women insisting that to be an unmarried woman is to be ugly, unfulfilled, unhappy, and a failure, women are slower to remarry after a divorce than are men. The article is replete with examples of women who are quite happy no longer being married. This has got to scare the crap out of the wingnuts who have (I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Edwards) invested all they've got in the myth that an unmarried woman is an unhappy (less joyous!) woman.
I can count on one hand the truly happy marriages that I really know. I'm not anti-marriage. But there are a large majority of us who are not married and who live in this society. It's time for society to take notice. And it's time for us to stop raising girls, from the cradle onwards, as if they were going to spend their whole live married. They're not.
Get over it.
9 comments:
"The NYT reports on the amazing fact that a whopping 51% (well, according to the boyking, that's a mandate) of women now live in -- gasp -- an unmarried state. Full disclosure: I am a member of the 51%. I've been married twice. Both times, it made me fucking miserable. I never, ever, plan to be married again."
Goddess, I hear ya.
BEEN there, DONE that.
And, when you get dumped after 24 years like I was, it's pretty bad.
A somewhat related discussion.
Another twice-married-and-never-again here.
My partner and I have been together over 7 years now-which is way longer than either of my marriages lasted.
I'm wondering why the hel we get ourselves into those things.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
What's really hilarious is that the wingnuts could "retake the majority" (probably still 51/49, but with the majority being married), if they would allow gay marriage!
I'm one of your handful, Hecate. We had a rough 10 years first, but we've been happy the last 25. And hell yes we should be teaching women *and* men to be functional adults first, and then if and only if the time and feelings are right, to get married. I'll throw in that it should be a civil contract first, and a church wedding if so desired afterwards.
The idea that we should raise girls to have their $60,000 weddings at 19 or 20 years of age, when neither party is likely to be coherent, let alone wise enough to choose a life partner, is insanity. If you are going to subject a girl to a forced wedding, then why wait? But if you respect a woman as a human and not a vassal, this push to idealize marriage and make it a holy grail is just sick.
> If you are going to subject a girl to a forced wedding, then why wait?
I think that one of the major factors here is the Judeo-Christian injunction against pre-marital sex. We (Western societies) have already pushed the age of marriage from a historical fourteen or so, to 21-25. As a result we have a terrible "problem" of teens engaging in pre-marital sex and having children out of wedlock.
Trying to push the age any later will result in even fewer virgin brides, which is not going to go over well in certain circles.
I'm with you; even 25 seems young to make such a decision in our society. But I think pre-marital sex is a normal, healthy thing (yes, yes the fires of Hell await, blah blah). Anyone advocating delaying marriages is going to have to address this issue, or spend a whole lot of effort ignoring it.
This is the kind of article that makes a feminist feel vindicated. Yes, marriage is a crappy institution for a whole lot of women and, yes, when women have more opportunities for education, employment, and legitimacy outside of marriage, they're less likely to marry. Why buy a crappy deal if you don't have to.
Another proud member of the 51%.
"Why buy a crappy deal if you don't have to."
I am SO sorry that I did!
As a happily single girl at 25, I agree with this article totally. I have no interest in marriage - the divorce rate in this country gets higher and higher everyday and it just seems like a miserable, pointless thing to go through. If I found a guy I was totally compatible with, living together would be an option, but there's no engagement ring going on this girl's finger.
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