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This is a complete bullshit argument. If you hate the person you are married to, the marriage certificate will not prevent you from leaving. If you love the per

This is a complete bullshit argument. If you hate the person you are married to, the marriage certificate will not prevent you from leaving. If you love the person who you are with but are not married to you don’t need a marriage certificate to stay. Most jurisdictions will absolutely enforce child support regardless of marital status. The “strong families” argument is decades outdated and has always been designed to oppress women. There is zero reason to follow that logic today.

umvi 5y ago
Just my opinion of course, but I don't think it's BS. The piece of paper has nothing to do with it. It's the attitude of the two people going into the relationship. If both people go in prepared for full life commitment through thick and thin you'll get a different outcome on average than two people going in with one foot out the door ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. The latter is a recipe for weak relationships and families - kids deserve to have stable parents who are fully committed to each other, not volatile parents who re-evaluate their commitment every year and break up if either isn't "feeling it". Marriage is not a chemistry coin toss where the marriage automatically fails due to "irreconcilable differences" if you get bad RNG. That's an excuse. Stable marriages aren't chance, they are hard work. It's like building a house, or software. You have to constantly pour work into it to fix issues, strengthen the foundation, etc, or it will fail under load later. IMO if people looked for partners with the right attitude and committed to each other with the right attitude and put in in the work to back up their commitments, divorce rate would be a tiny fraction of what it is. I argue the divorce rate is so high because the people getting married are doing so with flimsy commitment, unwilling to put in the work required to build a solid foundation. Your solution does not help the commitment problem at all, but exacerbates it by making it even easier for relationships to have flimsy commitment levels ("let's not go all in, let's just commit to each other for one year, and then we'll break up after the honeymoon stage is over").
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  You can have the attitude without the piece of paper, no? Your point about people getting married without it proves my point: don’t get married. At best all you need is the long vault attitude. At worst it is much easier to end a relationship.
lurquer 5y ago
> The “strong families” argument is decades outdated and has always been designed to oppress women. So, a legal system - namely marriage - that guarantees a woman a large portion of the property earned by the man during the marriage is “designed to oppress women”? How is that? What legal rights is a woman deprived of in a marriage that she would otherwise have being single? The entire point of marriage is to give the ‘weaker’ member of the relationship rights to the property and earnings of the ‘stronger’ member.
- Notanothertoo 5y ago
  This made a lot more sense imo when rights were less equal and the expectation was for the wife to stay at home. I think as thinks become more equal the more irrelevant an doutdated the current legal expectations are around marriage. Especially because the state will enforce child support regardless of martial status. At some point the narrative has to change when things are more equal. I think there is a lot of data supporting that they have in many ways changed already. Women are more educated on average and more are completing higher education degrees than men and have been for the last few years.
endisneigh 5y ago
No offense, but your advice sounds like it's coming from one who doesn't have kids, let alone someone in a long term (10 year+) relationship. There are far more benefits to marriage than merely child support. There's alimony, spousal support, survivorship, power of attorney, the list goes on. You can do all of this without being married, of course, but at at that point you might as well be married anyway.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  I have two kids, had a 14 year marriage and many relationships after that :)
- Rucadi 5y ago
  So basically your point is that the government takes your money, and when they return something to you obviously not all that has been taken from you you are grateful. The gov should be out of your relationship, there is NO valid reason for it to be in there.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    What? That's not my point at all.

umvi 5y ago

Just my opinion of course, but I don't think it's BS. The piece of paper has nothing to do with it. It's the attitude of the two people going into the relationship. If both people go in prepared for full life commitment through thick and thin you'll get a different outcome on average than two people going in with one foot out the door ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. The latter is a recipe for weak relationships and families - kids deserve to have stable parents who are fully committed to each other, not volatile parents who re-evaluate their commitment every year and break up if either isn't "feeling it". Marriage is not a chemistry coin toss where the marriage automatically fails due to "irreconcilable differences" if you get bad RNG. That's an excuse. Stable marriages aren't chance, they are hard work. It's like building a house, or software. You have to constantly pour work into it to fix issues, strengthen the foundation, etc, or it will fail under load later. IMO if people looked for partners with the right attitude and committed to each other with the right attitude and put in in the work to back up their commitments, divorce rate would be a tiny fraction of what it is. I argue the divorce rate is so high because the people getting married are doing so with flimsy commitment, unwilling to put in the work required to build a solid foundation. Your solution does not help the commitment problem at all, but exacerbates it by making it even easier for relationships to have flimsy commitment levels ("let's not go all in, let's just commit to each other for one year, and then we'll break up after the honeymoon stage is over").

IgorPartola 5y ago
You can have the attitude without the piece of paper, no? Your point about people getting married without it proves my point: don’t get married. At best all you need is the long vault attitude. At worst it is much easier to end a relationship.

lurquer 5y ago

> The “strong families” argument is decades outdated and has always been designed to oppress women. So, a legal system - namely marriage - that guarantees a woman a large portion of the property earned by the man during the marriage is “designed to oppress women”? How is that? What legal rights is a woman deprived of in a marriage that she would otherwise have being single? The entire point of marriage is to give the ‘weaker’ member of the relationship rights to the property and earnings of the ‘stronger’ member.

Notanothertoo 5y ago
This made a lot more sense imo when rights were less equal and the expectation was for the wife to stay at home. I think as thinks become more equal the more irrelevant an doutdated the current legal expectations are around marriage. Especially because the state will enforce child support regardless of martial status. At some point the narrative has to change when things are more equal. I think there is a lot of data supporting that they have in many ways changed already. Women are more educated on average and more are completing higher education degrees than men and have been for the last few years.

endisneigh 5y ago

No offense, but your advice sounds like it's coming from one who doesn't have kids, let alone someone in a long term (10 year+) relationship. There are far more benefits to marriage than merely child support. There's alimony, spousal support, survivorship, power of attorney, the list goes on. You can do all of this without being married, of course, but at at that point you might as well be married anyway.

IgorPartola 5y ago
I have two kids, had a 14 year marriage and many relationships after that :)
Rucadi 5y ago
So basically your point is that the government takes your money, and when they return something to you obviously not all that has been taken from you you are grateful. The gov should be out of your relationship, there is NO valid reason for it to be in there.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  What? That's not my point at all.