WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SAY MARRIAGE IS ABOUT "TAKING CARE OF ANOTHER PERSON"?: GABRIEL ROSENBERG: (posted by Eve)

Maggie, you ask me two questions based on my theory of marriage as establishing a "taking care" of relationship. Why do we then not allow family members to marry? Why do we allow people to marry only one person?

First of all, we don't need to allow family members to marry, as those members are already family. They are already related and the law and society both recognize that relationship.

Not only is there no need for family members to marry, we don't want it to happen either. One societal benefit of marriage is that it brings two different families together, further uniting us as a society. More importantly, though, allowing family members to marry would harm all existing familial relationships. We simply could not develop the same familial bonds if family members were also potential mates.

The benefits of marriage stem from having a person to care for and the same person to care for you. So there is no need for allowing multiple marriages, and, furthermore, it would be a bad idea. You can't care for two people the same way you care for one, and your responsibility to care for another is different if you share that responsibility with another.

Yes, a parent can care for multiple children and share that responsibility with the other parent, but the parental relationship is different from the marital relationship. One key difference is the latter is an adult relationship.

Although that difference is relevant to this issue, I instead want to focus on another difference. Parents have the obligation to care for their children, and children have the duty to obey their parents. The marital relationship in our society, though, is one of mutual responsibilities and equality. Polygamy can only survive in a culture where a husband has the obligation to care for his wives, and a wife has the duty to obey her husband. I should emphasize also that even the thought that a spouse might someday take on another marriage harms all marriages in much the same way that the threat of divorce does. If the marriage is to succeed, neither spouse can be looking for new marriages.
posted by maggie at 4:07 PM | link

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