5 ms·

An interesting thought experiment: what would marriage have to be like to make marriage appealing again?

jdavis703 8y ago
It would need to be as easy as starting or quitting a job. There also couldn't be pre-conditions around it such as a limit of two people, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and bans on "adultery."
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  But then what are the advantages? I think we should have a few different types of marriage and then see what people choose. For example one marriage option could be the man gets automatic full custody of the kids in the event of a divorce. We could have another free and easy option like you are suggesting. Etc. Then we let the market sort it out.
- tptacek 8y ago
  You are describing an arrangement totally unlike marriage. If you want termination-at-will, don't get married! If there is some social pressure to get married when you don't want to, that pressure is wrong; you should only get married when you're sure it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, at least in the US, there are huge numbers of people who fought for decades just to have the right to enter into the arrangement we're pretending needs to be fundamentally re-thought.
  - jdavis703 8y ago
    The idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates depending on income situations. Past generations of my family were prohibited from marriage because of race. It took a lot of rethinking of what marriage was for them to be granted those rights, ditto for LGBT people who just got those rights a few years ago in the US. There's still no reason why the current definition of marriage is the right definition.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Can't you arrange to make medical decisions for each other without being married? Isn't that what an MPOA does? I'm not sure what tax benefits you're looking at but I believe we pay for the right to be married. From a formal perspective, considering marriage as a (very old) legal and economic arrangement, and stripping it down to its essence (without any of the bullshit about it being a means to bring children into the world or express Judeo-Christian values), marriage is about durable interdependency. You agree to combine assets and opportunities, in order to maximize those opportunities jointly and to bear the costs of misfortune together. Define marriage as an "at-will" arrangement dispenses with durability. A person in a transient marriage can't reasonably put their spouse through medical school, or help them start a company --- or, for that matter, raise children --- without an onerous set of additional contractual arrangements that would asymptotically approach what marriage already is. Again: it's totally reasonable to want a long-term at-will relationship, and to seek one out. You don't have to get married.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dabbledash 8y ago
I don’t think it would really make sense. Marriage places obligations on partners that should make it “safe” for the other partner (and children) to depend on them financially if necessary. Many people don’t want to take on those legal and financial obligations. You can remove the obligations, but then why bother with the whole marriage thing at all?
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  > Many people don’t want to take on those legal and financial obligations. But they used to so what has changed? And could it be changed back? Edit: If anything people used to jump into them too quickly.
  - dabbledash 8y ago
    Women make more money and effective birth control has reduced the financial risks of sex. Women have less reason to demand the financial protection of marriage and so men don’t have to supply it.
ravenstine 8y ago
Men and women would have to actually need each other for the contract to make sense. But, the toothpaste is out of the tube. I don't feel the need to get married because anything a wife can do, I can do with appliances and without breaking a sweat. Anything else can be supplemented by services. House dirty? My robot vacuum picks up a lot of the slack, and if I don't want to do the rest on my own, I can schedule a maid service. If I don't cook my own meals, GrubHub can be my personal chef. Something broken? Need some tough work done? There's apps that will hail handy-people for you. It doesn't end there; there's a plethora of engaging entertainment you can engage with and you don't even have to leave your home. This situation is salient to both men and women. I think marriage will continue to decline no matter what, but one thing that might make it somewhat more appealing is if western culture could do away with the needless expenses around the tradition and the ceremony. The amount spent on a mere ring is absurd(honestly wtf is going on here), but people want these crazy weddings where 3 parties, the couple, the wife's parents, and the husband's parents have to chip in. The dress has to be expensive, the venue has to be expensive and booked way in advance, the catering is expensive, etc. And I'm supposed to want all of this? Good grief. If it was not a disappointment that people have modest weddings, perhaps a few more people might get married? Eh, I don't really know about that. By the way, I'm in no way complaining. There was a time not that long ago when even men who weren't married by a certain age had a stigma against them. In some ways that stigma still exists, but it's largely been defanged as companies today are perfectly willing to hire men who don't have families.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I don't feel the need to get married because anything a wife can do, I can do with appliances and without breaking a sweat. It's more about sharing your life with someone than getting chores done. one thing that might make it somewhat more appealing is if western culture could do away with the needless expenses around the tradition and the ceremony...If it was not a disappointment that people have modest weddings, perhaps a few more people might get married? It used to be that only rich people spent $8k-$80k on a wedding. Most of the time in the US, it happened in the living room or in the local church, and the reception was in the backyard. Today's weddings are a fabrication of the wedding industrial complex. They're rich people's affairs sold to the common person as a necessity, much like the diamond engagement ring. Spending the equivalent of today's $300 all told on a wedding used to be the norm. The ceremony and the gathering of friends and community can be wonderful, even magic. I think the money and glitz get in the way. I've been in some bands that would get hired for weddings, and the most beautiful weddings I've been at were DIY affairs done at home on the cheap, but with sincere feelings and meaning. My own wedding was pulled off on the low end of the price scale. We hired a waterside Chinese restaurant, got good fuss-free catering, and got the day-of coordinator and linens for free. I hired musicians I knew and we went and got orchids from a nursery and bought our own drinks from Costco. The most beautiful wedding I've been to was a quaker wedding held in the back yard, completely DIY. Barely nothing more than a circle of chairs and home made decorations.
garenp 8y ago
If there are no children involved, none of the current onerous obligations and financial ruin should apply. The government should not be able to intervene and ruin one persons life by making one party an economic slave to the other. The gov't should not be able to be so asinine as to say something like "ability to pay does not affect obligation to pay" -- in other words when a (typically father) gets laid off or makes much less money, they will not lower his support payments to be in line with his new pay. This is how we get working, homeless men living in vans -- some of whom later kill themselves.

It would need to be as easy as starting or quitting a job. There also couldn't be pre-conditions around it such as a limit of two people, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and bans on "adultery."

sheepmullet 8y ago
But then what are the advantages? I think we should have a few different types of marriage and then see what people choose. For example one marriage option could be the man gets automatic full custody of the kids in the event of a divorce. We could have another free and easy option like you are suggesting. Etc. Then we let the market sort it out.
tptacek 8y ago
You are describing an arrangement totally unlike marriage. If you want termination-at-will, don't get married! If there is some social pressure to get married when you don't want to, that pressure is wrong; you should only get married when you're sure it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, at least in the US, there are huge numbers of people who fought for decades just to have the right to enter into the arrangement we're pretending needs to be fundamentally re-thought.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  The idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates depending on income situations. Past generations of my family were prohibited from marriage because of race. It took a lot of rethinking of what marriage was for them to be granted those rights, ditto for LGBT people who just got those rights a few years ago in the US. There's still no reason why the current definition of marriage is the right definition.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Can't you arrange to make medical decisions for each other without being married? Isn't that what an MPOA does? I'm not sure what tax benefits you're looking at but I believe we pay for the right to be married. From a formal perspective, considering marriage as a (very old) legal and economic arrangement, and stripping it down to its essence (without any of the bullshit about it being a means to bring children into the world or express Judeo-Christian values), marriage is about durable interdependency. You agree to combine assets and opportunities, in order to maximize those opportunities jointly and to bear the costs of misfortune together. Define marriage as an "at-will" arrangement dispenses with durability. A person in a transient marriage can't reasonably put their spouse through medical school, or help them start a company --- or, for that matter, raise children --- without an onerous set of additional contractual arrangements that would asymptotically approach what marriage already is. Again: it's totally reasonable to want a long-term at-will relationship, and to seek one out. You don't have to get married.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

dabbledash 8y ago

I don’t think it would really make sense. Marriage places obligations on partners that should make it “safe” for the other partner (and children) to depend on them financially if necessary. Many people don’t want to take on those legal and financial obligations. You can remove the obligations, but then why bother with the whole marriage thing at all?

sheepmullet 8y ago
> Many people don’t want to take on those legal and financial obligations. But they used to so what has changed? And could it be changed back? Edit: If anything people used to jump into them too quickly.
- dabbledash 8y ago
  Women make more money and effective birth control has reduced the financial risks of sex. Women have less reason to demand the financial protection of marriage and so men don’t have to supply it.

ravenstine 8y ago

Men and women would have to actually need each other for the contract to make sense. But, the toothpaste is out of the tube. I don't feel the need to get married because anything a wife can do, I can do with appliances and without breaking a sweat. Anything else can be supplemented by services. House dirty? My robot vacuum picks up a lot of the slack, and if I don't want to do the rest on my own, I can schedule a maid service. If I don't cook my own meals, GrubHub can be my personal chef. Something broken? Need some tough work done? There's apps that will hail handy-people for you. It doesn't end there; there's a plethora of engaging entertainment you can engage with and you don't even have to leave your home. This situation is salient to both men and women. I think marriage will continue to decline no matter what, but one thing that might make it somewhat more appealing is if western culture could do away with the needless expenses around the tradition and the ceremony. The amount spent on a mere ring is absurd(honestly wtf is going on here), but people want these crazy weddings where 3 parties, the couple, the wife's parents, and the husband's parents have to chip in. The dress has to be expensive, the venue has to be expensive and booked way in advance, the catering is expensive, etc. And I'm supposed to want all of this? Good grief. If it was not a disappointment that people have modest weddings, perhaps a few more people might get married? Eh, I don't really know about that. By the way, I'm in no way complaining. There was a time not that long ago when even men who weren't married by a certain age had a stigma against them. In some ways that stigma still exists, but it's largely been defanged as companies today are perfectly willing to hire men who don't have families.

stcredzero 8y ago
I don't feel the need to get married because anything a wife can do, I can do with appliances and without breaking a sweat. It's more about sharing your life with someone than getting chores done. one thing that might make it somewhat more appealing is if western culture could do away with the needless expenses around the tradition and the ceremony...If it was not a disappointment that people have modest weddings, perhaps a few more people might get married? It used to be that only rich people spent $8k-$80k on a wedding. Most of the time in the US, it happened in the living room or in the local church, and the reception was in the backyard. Today's weddings are a fabrication of the wedding industrial complex. They're rich people's affairs sold to the common person as a necessity, much like the diamond engagement ring. Spending the equivalent of today's $300 all told on a wedding used to be the norm. The ceremony and the gathering of friends and community can be wonderful, even magic. I think the money and glitz get in the way. I've been in some bands that would get hired for weddings, and the most beautiful weddings I've been at were DIY affairs done at home on the cheap, but with sincere feelings and meaning. My own wedding was pulled off on the low end of the price scale. We hired a waterside Chinese restaurant, got good fuss-free catering, and got the day-of coordinator and linens for free. I hired musicians I knew and we went and got orchids from a nursery and bought our own drinks from Costco. The most beautiful wedding I've been to was a quaker wedding held in the back yard, completely DIY. Barely nothing more than a circle of chairs and home made decorations.

garenp 8y ago

If there are no children involved, none of the current onerous obligations and financial ruin should apply. The government should not be able to intervene and ruin one persons life by making one party an economic slave to the other. The gov't should not be able to be so asinine as to say something like "ability to pay does not affect obligation to pay" -- in other words when a (typically father) gets laid off or makes much less money, they will not lower his support payments to be in line with his new pay. This is how we get working, homeless men living in vans -- some of whom later kill themselves.