TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION: Nerve.com

[Nerve.com had a symposium on various marriage-related questions, with participants ranging from Margaret Cho to Maggie Gallagher. Some of the panelist selections seemed pretty random to me, and I would really have liked to see some... how to put this... black people. I got bored reading a lot of first-person accounts from roughly the same demographic spread. But there are some interesting bits nonetheless. --Eve]

The whole thing is here.

Excerpts from the segment on "The Future of Marriage": MARGARET CHO: The future of marriage depends on same-sex marriage being made legal. Otherwise, the institution of marriage will be null and void for everyone. Unless same-sex marriage is legalized, there will be no way to honor marriage and be an American at the same time. The Constitution wouldn't apply to the idea that we are all equal, because if gays and lesbians cannot be married, equality is nonexistent. That would mean marriage would be nonexistent, because it would divide the very nature of the statement "We the people . . . " It would be "Us and them the people..." or something like that.

DARCY COSPER: ...I don't want to get married, and I'm skeptical about the institution in general, but I'm also adamantly and actively pro-gay marriage. It seems to me this is an extremely simple, clear-cut civil rights issue, and that if church and state were truly separated by our legislators, there would be no debate left, just the obvious mandate to grant equal rights and legal protections to all U.S. citizens. ...

The issue gets more complex and compelling for me when some activists insist that to offer civil unions rather than marriage for gay couples is insufficient, even if those unions were to provide every single legal benefit of marriage except the term "marriage" itself. I don't disagree; to legislate only civil unions smacks of faux tolerance and ugly "separate but equal" bet-hedging.

But if, as suggested by gay-rights supporters' resistance to settling for civil unions, marriage isn't merely a legal liaison; if it isn't necessarily a religious institution; if it's no longer required to socially sanction sex or children; since it's not an economic need or social protection for women (because marriages are as likely to end as they are to endure); and as it's now perfectly plausible, economically, legally, and socially, for a couple to spend a lifetime together without marriage--then what is marriage for? How does it serve us? What real or symbolic power does marriage have that in this progressive, innovative era it persists as the one ancient tradition to which members of all strata of society so passionately adhere? I'd love to hear Nerve readers' ideas on this.

I can imagine one scenario about the future of marriage: Suppose civil unions, rather than marriages, are legislated for gay couples, as seems a likely intermediate step for U.S. voters and legislators. What if straight couples like as me and my boyfriend--monogamous, cohabitating couples who've made long-term or lifetime commitments to each other but resist marriage per se, with all its associations and implications--began to forgo marriage in favor of civil unions?

MAGGIE GALLAGHER: I am pretty comfortable with saying that in the long run, marriage will prevail.

The marriage idea occurs again and again in human culture, in widely varying places, and in widely varying form, but it always has something to do with bringing together the people who make the baby, so that a) society gets the next generation it needs and b) children get both a mother and a father.

You have to ask yourself: why? There aren't many ideas as universal in human culture as marriage. I think the answer is pretty obvious: a) sex makes babies; b) societies need babies; and c) children need mothers and fathers.

Successful societies (by which I don't mean "good" or "moral" societies, but simply societies that succeed in reproducing themselves through history) recognize the need to channel the energy of young men and women into this particular kind of relationship. "Marriage" is the word for the way we try to create and sustain this social ideal.

Societies that lose the marriage idea are replaced (and sometimes fairly rapidly) by people and cultures that manage to hang onto this vision.

I realize that all three components of what I am calling the "marriage idea" are now controversial. Many people claim that sex doesn't make babies (in spite of the fact that that half of our pregnancies are unintended and one-third of our children are born outside of marriage). Many people believe that overpopulation now threatens us and that babies are consumption items, or luxury goods, not an essential task any society must do. And some people still contest the idea that family structure matters, that kids really do better if they are raised by their own mom and dad.

Big topics for another day.

Marriage will survive. Whether marriage will survive in America, or American civilization can perpetuate itself in the long run without a stronger marriage culture, is another matter.

DR. SCOTT HALZMAN: People need marriage. Not cohabitation, not serial monogamies, not commitment ceremonies, but real marriage. Men and women need attachment; marriage is the means to fulfill that need.

Finding the right woman or the right man represents the termination of a quest that begins almost at birth, and takes on a new meaning when sex hormones besiege our bodies. Through fantasizing, flirting, dating and mating we cull through the possible candidates for a person to whom we want to attach. We want, more than anything, to make that person ours.

Need we be bonded to others, however, through government auspices and social constraints? Doesn't the very word "bond" run contrary to American ideals? After all, aren't permanent attachments unnecessary and archaic?

Yet those social and governmental intrusions serve a critical role in providing structure and definition to the relationship of two people. When I met my wife seventeen years ago at a Club Med, I wanted to go beyond telling my friends and families that I found a great gal. I wanted to make it official, have the world know, and, in kind have the world sanction it. I wanted to bond with her; that bond was my choice. In short, I wanted to marry her. Marriage elevates the relationship of a man and a woman; it brings them closer to God. It also gives them a unique social status; I no longer have a "babe," I have a "wife." And for anyone that's been married, there's a world of difference.

ETHAN WATTERS: This generation has delayed marriage longer than any generation in American history. This in itself is remarkable and has led to innumerable changes in the manner and meaning of young adulthood. But the fact also highlights the question at hand: what does this mean for the future of marriage? There are two possibilities. Some sociologists assume that we here in America are moving the way of Europe, which has steadily devalued the institution. Perpetual cohabitation is now an accepted long-term outcome for heterosexual relationships. The other possibility is that marriage will swing back into style, driving the average marrying age down.

I believe that the idea of marriage is far too deep in the American psyche for us to give it up anytime soon. As the lead cohort of marriage delayers hits their forties, I believe there will be a rush back to the altar. The average marrying age will come back down by a year or two (but never back down to anything near the 1950s and 1960s levels). We will still have a large group of single adults but the vast majority of us will invest our lives in our new marriages. My guess is that we’ll be good at being married. Having waited to become fully formed adults, we will have maturity and composure to weather the tough spots. The irony is that the generation that has delayed marriage might also reinvigorate the institution.

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And from question four, "Unmarried... With Children?":

ETHAN WATTERS: Marriage is due for a comeback in the next few years. I would guess that this will lead many cohabitating parents to tie the knot. In the long run, however, I think we will get more and more used to families assuming a variety of forms, including single parents and cohabitating parents. As these forms become more mainstream, the experiences of the children in these situations will similarly normalize. A child of a single mother in the '50s would have suffered some of the marginalization experienced by his mother. This will be less true of the child of the single parent who is born tomorrow. This goes for cohabitating parents and gay parents as well.

MAGGIE GALLAGHER: I never met a single mother who said, "I can't wait until my child grows up to be an unwed mom." Or, "Goodness, I'm looking forward to my son having children with three women in two different states."

Both common sense and social science show that children really do fare better in an intact family, with their own married mothers and fathers--in a decent, average, loving marriage.

That's the ideal. That's what children want. That's what the human heart wants.

I think we are in the process of rebuilding a marriage culture, unless ideological and legal elites intervene to deconstruct the marriage idea.

DAVID MOATS: The instinct of traditionalists that the nuclear family is best grows out of the sense that there is a role for a father and a mother in a child's life and that anything less is not good enough. But even in a traditional family, fathers and mothers sometimes let their children down and fail to provide the love that is expected or desired. Family structure is varied enough that we are all likely to find ourselves at one time or another in a nontraditional situation. If we are single, we may form a parental relationship with the child of a lover. If we are remarried, we may end up adopting the new spouse's children. With greater freedom of choice in marriage and divorce, families are taking different forms, and children are feeling the pain of unsought changes. It is hard to imagine a return to the old days, but it is not hard to imagine a renewed emphasis on commitment and a willingness to work through problems, especially among children of the much-divorced baby boomers. At the same time, there may be children of baby boomers who are afraid of commitment, which makes commitment all the more difficult and may make divorce more likely. Children are resilient and tough creatures. They are acutely attuned to bullshit. Having fatherly and motherly love is important, whatever the shape of the family. Even in non-traditional families, it is possible to provide it and for children to thrive.

DARCY COSPER: Two of my best friends are currently preparing to have a child out of wedlock, not because they're not committed to one another, nor because they don't plan, as partners, to raise the child to adulthood--they absolutely are and do. They're just not interested in the trappings (and traps) of marriage, and it's not clear to me how this disinterest on their part could have any bearing at all on their child's well-being.

My hunch is that the key to a child's short- and long-term well-being is to be raised by loving, devoted adults, whether single or married parents, gay or straight parents, biological or adoptive or step-parents, immediate family or extended family or community.

I grew up in very nontraditional households, first in a community in which there was a lot of collective/collaborative child care, and after my parents' divorce, in a loose-knit group of recently divorced, newly single mothers and their children--the "Kramer vs. Kramer" generation. I haven't turned into a psychokiller yet; in fact, I seem to be a relatively happy, useful member of society, and some of my finest, fondest memories from childhood have to do with these two dangerously, wackily untraditional, it-takes-a-village type communities. So my personal experience suggests that the hetero/nuclear family unit isn't the only way to ensure that children grow up to be relatively happy, useful pseudo-adults--and may even be inferior to other possible configurations.

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posted by Eve at 10:57 PM | link

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