MARRIAGE AS A NORM: Maggie Gallagher replies to Mark Barton

Mark says, "it's vague in that it's at best an it-would-be-nice-if claim."

Well, no. It's a norm that, if internalized and accepted, produces some pretty strong claims on how men and women attracted to the opposite sex should behave.

Logically (putting aside other competing moral issues) there are only five methods I can think of for preventing or reducing out-of-wedlock births: sterilization, abortion, extreme care at contraception, confining sexual partners to people you could and would marry in the event of pregnancy, abstinence until marriage and fidelity afterwards.

The default position for heterosexual is lots of babies out of wedlock. Absent strong social norms.

I happen to believe that the reason divorce rates are now declining mildly and that out-of-wedlock birth rates have stopped rising is that more people since the 90s have accepted and articulated this simple idea. It's a bad idea to deliberately get pregnant if you are not married. Divorce is a tragedy for kids which caring parents will avoid if possible. Fathers abandoning their kids is a bad thing, not a sign of social progress towards family diversity.

Stupid, simple stuff. But it makes a difference.

How and why the law and other institutions interact with social norms is always a more complicated question.
posted by Eve at 4:01 AM | link

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