Is Marriage Becoming Obsolete? More Americans think so

marriage = "boxed up" because you are now completely walled in by restrictions.

1. The partners are required to enter a formal contractual relation that cannot be dissolved without tremendous legal action and costs.
2. The number of partners involved must be two and only two, excluding wider intimacies.
3. No one may participate in more than one marriage at a time and will be punished by the law if he or she does.
4. No extramarital sexual relations are allowed.

by McMurtry in Monogamy: A Critique.

says who? Marriage partners routinely agree to plans that allow for other sex partners.

Seems like the bulk of the discussion revolves around stipulating the term "obsolete"...

I have been asking the same question which was led by "should same sex marriage be a part of the constitution?" Naturally one would have to define "marriage".

As the discussion here has made it clear, the definition, role, and nature of marriage is not the same as a century ago, which is a legal understanding of marriage.

Also mentioned in this discussion are its variance in value and purpose towards the notion of marriage, which is a personal understanding of marriage.

A discussion on the second topic, the personal understanding of marriage is very interesting, for we see people saying what they think of all positions (the lady who shared her experience from arranged marriage was very interesting to me), but as this discussion has proved, things can get quite controversial, shouting beliefs and ideas through experience and pseudo statistics and observations and assumptions. This goes nowhere, especially in this informal forum where credibility, argumentative structure, and "wiseness" of individual is ambiguous.

the legal understanding of marriage would be even more impossible since no one truly understands the nature and history of the constitution, its original purpose nor its current purpose and function.

seems like people here have been trying to "sound valid" by stating some random statistic or observation, but anyone who has exercised any appreciable level of critical thinking knows their comment is as thin as wax paper.

the bigger question that needs to be answered from the extension of your post is, so what?

it is clear that "marriage is becoming obsolete". you don't even need to explicitly articulate this fact. what is important is why. Why did we even have a marriage in the first place? why is it dissolving now? why is it still working for some? what is it about them that makes a marriage work, and about the other's who get divorced since they are both becoming married, same definition, same law, but some of us get divorced easily, some of us stay life long partners. What is it about us humans and our beliefs and behaviors that lead to these two outcome? From these we can perhaps extract the essence, reverse engineer, to a happy, successful, fulfilling marriage, rather than the forward process we have done where we first make a ideal "idea of marriage" then seeing the result of it exercised (which is 33% fail 33% success and 33% non-participant) =].


so rather than defending the notion of marriage, it would be more helpful to us all if everyone from here on out just list the things one have done or seen that works and doesn't work to be in a successful relationship/ partnership. and the accumulation of those actions and beliefs that are conducive to a successful marriage will be the new definition of "marriage". Since the constitution is an arbitrary, artificial, fabricated thing that humans made crudely based off of God and its ethics, we can easily change that if we can come up with a more rational, superior, insightful, well thought out rule to promote harmony and happiness.

yay xD

Well they do not stop but they do not permit either. The social pressure to persue monogamy does the trick.

isnt it?

what do you mean says who?

I CITED MY QUOTES; THE AUTHOR AND THE BOOK.

I don't see marriage becoming obsolete, especially now that we are living in a rather bad economy that could worsen. There was much talk about the end of the nuclear family back in the 1970s. Sure, Americans had so much money that many, many people could just live off the leavings, and they did. Yeah, what happened to that? Communes didn't work. But, even so, with so many people unemployed, some might have the time to think about whether or not they'll get a divorce!

There are certainly plenty of single parents raising kids. Now, anyone knows how tough that is. Maybe tougher than working on the marriage. Least of all I don't think marriage is obsolete. Could be that Americans are leaving very bad marriages, though that's been happening for some time. They are, however, also working more on the marriage even if it's counseling to leave the marriage.

Raymond McCauley loves Kristina Hathaway. He just doesn't want to marry her. For the last six years, the two 40-somethings have been living together in Mountain View, Calif., where they're raising their three-year-old twins. Why not tie the knot? They've been there, and done that, and for reasons emotional – and financial – they don't want to do it again. "This works for us and we're happy, so why get married?" says McCauley, a scientist in the biotech industry.
They're part of a growing minority of Americans who aren't sure they want to re-board the marriage train – and the recent economy hasn't exactly encouraged a change of heart. As financial issues take top priority for many Americans, the costs of getting remarried – losing benefits tied to an ex-spouse, for example – have grown to outweigh the emotional rewards. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, a little more than half of divorced men and fewer than half of divorced women are remarried, proportions that have been dropping over the last decade. And last week, the Pew Research Center reported that 78% of divorced and widowed survey respondents said they didn't want to remarry or weren't sure they wanted to. Remarriage, it seems, is no longer the brass ring it once was.

For starters, many couples don't want to deal with merging assets again. After McCauley's first marriage, he split everything with his ex-wife, which made the divorce even more difficult, he said, adding, "I don't want to go through that again." For other people, the loss of income — like alimony, or Social Security and pension benefits from a former spouse — have become a greater concern in the last few years, says Nicky Grist, the Executive Director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project. And there are other heady issues to wade through, like how child support or college costs are handled, estate planning, beneficiary designations on retirement and insurance policies, and more, says Rick Salmeron, a certified financial planner and president of Dallas-based Salmeron Financial. "Money is a big, sticky issue when it comes to remarriage," he says.
Meanwhile, it has also become easier to stay unmarried — but committed. Many companies now extend health insurance and other benefits to cohabitating couples who qualify. And living together has gone from taboo to norm: Cohabitation among Americans 50 and older shot up 50% from 2000 to 2006, according to research from Bowling Green State University.

This is a perfumous nicety for those with assets.

I see now what you mean, dys.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/16/ward.sears.marriage/index.html?hpt=T2

My sense is that increasingly the wealthy still believe in marriage, still do it because it is expected, where as the poor and now the middle class don't do marriage but still attempt long term committed relationship. However, there is no doubt but that a relationship that is easier to dissolve than marriage will be dissolved more often than marriage, so this animal that is presumed to exist....marriage in every way but for the formal contract on file with the state, might not be very common after all.

A study that looks at marriage and then make assumptions of the well being of individuals is flawed, but only slightly so. What is beyond doubt now is that marriage is less practiced and held in lower regard than it has been in a very long time, if ever.

Gays appropriating the term for what they do will only hasten the demise of marriage, which I now think is beyond saving.

The biggest problem with marriage, is that while everyone would want a love that lasts, the world around us suggests that it is less and less likely. With ever widening odds, people are merely opting not to take the risk. At least if one is your "partner" and not your "spouse" you can escape with but a few tears and an arguement over who gets the sofa.

It is like folding decent hands in poker, always stipulating that you will wait for rockets before you play a hand.

Never try, never fail. way to go philosophy.

But why is marriage so difficult to do now? There are many theories..trauma from childhood divorce keeps people from fully committing, people go into marriage expecting too much from it and their mate so when it fails to provide what was expected they depart, people are now too self centered to take part in a union, people have been taught by the feminists and other leftists that to be so intertwined with another person that you lose full control over yourself and your destiny is a failure to protect yourself, so people dont fully invest in a real marriage...they are always just two people playing house..., and I think that there is little support for the institution...there is little assistance forthcoming from any source in learning to be married and as soon as trouble appears the knee jerk response is almost always to leave the marriage.

Spot on, Because the heads of the majority have been turned. Agapé love has become underated, that is love based on principle. People believe that eros love, that is the romantic love that begins with that spark can last alone. But as flowers without root, so romance without principled love dies. Society in general degrades by the generation in terms of community and fellowship, which is where one learns to use agapé love, it is not all like they teach on the television. Another contributing factor is the ever rising belief that if you are unhappy in one relationship and another presents itself, you owe it to yourself to do what makes you happy.

You're not wrong about the lack of support within a marriage either, people do not realise that due to our natural imperfections, we have to work at it. When we are perfect, perhaps it will be easy

Where I live, in a 55+ community, there are a lot of unmarried couples. Many have eschewed marriage for financial reasons. The widow, receiving a pension from deceased husband, might lose it if she remarries. In many cases, there is the problem of passing on the estates to children. Often, social security from the current spouse would be less than from the deceased one.

There is also the phenomenon of couples being "together", but living in separate abodes. That arrangement is more costly, but is simpler in terms of what the couple wants to happen to their assets when they die.

Personally, I think that cohabitation is a viable alternative for older couples. I am less enthusiastic about it for younger folks, especially where children are concerned. I think that the "gestalt" of the nuclear family, everything else being equal, is superior for the positive development of children.

I am on the fence about younger couples who live together, but are not planning to have children, either ever, or right away. I know that in many cases the arrangement works well. My problem is an attitude that I have encountered that says something like, "Well, if it doesn't work out, we can go our separate ways, without any legal problems".

That is true, but I think that it turns the notion of marriage upside down. When one marries, there are still some folks who believe in "death do you part". I know that there are many divorces, but the bride and groom, at the getgo, have the attitude that they are going to make their marriage work.

Marriage is a process, and there are many problems of adjustment that one goes through, before the couple settles down to a high functioning relationship. If a couple take the attitude that there is a simple "escape clause", I am not so sure that relationships are entered to as seriously, or worked at as assiduously than a couple who has gone through the process of getting married.

I think that is often wrong, that what happens is that those who get married have no understanding that marriage is work, they have no commitment to do work, and they are not thinking of tomorrow much at all. They want the wedding, they want to be married, they want to be the center of attention for a day....what comes after the wedding comes as an unwelcome surprise.

What you say about older people is all true,but they still believe in marriage, they still value marriage as in institution. This is often not the case with younger people. Marriage has for two generations not been well supported, and has been often poorly done, and now it is dying as the young increasingly no longer find value in it.

I wouldnt say they see no value in it... The bride gets a day as a princess, They both get a cracking party, and they mark another "milestone" in their relationship. They seem to like it enough to spend a few grand on it, and you know the saying, you only get to do it thrice.