>CB: Yes, however, along with the advantages of marriage go the disadvantages
>of divorce: alimony,loss of half pension, of half property and of custody of
>children for one spouse, and payment of child support thereby; one person
>in the world who hates you especially or your own personal enemy. Half of
>marriages become divorces ( divorce being an ongoing relationship ). That's
>officially. Some divorcers remain married, and live their unpleasure
>together.
>
>"Marriage" is marriage/divorce, a unity and struggle of opposites.
>
>And , serious question, is marriage no longer a male supremacist institution
>? I assume we all agree it was at one time.
Sure, when it meant transfer of custody / power over women from the father to the husband, including power over her earnings, any assets, her labor, her every move, children, etc. But there was really no free state of 'not marriage' for most women in these situations as the family, mostly the father but also other relations, had control until marriage, so I'm not sure it's marriage per se but the system of male supremacy as expressed through it that is the culprit.
I think marriage now affords important protections to women (or to the more powerless spouse, usually the woman). Mostly, it provides some pressure on the man to not up and leave at any moment he is dissatisfied (and some guarantee to the woman), which is why there are so many jokes about balls-and-chains and marriage being like prison; it really does have some restraining effect on men. It affords women some protection and guarantees when we put ourselves in a state of dependency by having children--especially in the U.S., as there is no paid parental leave or free childcare--it's very hard to have a child without some other income coming in. So women are taking a bigger risk, it pushes men to have a stake in the whole operation.
Marriage affords legal protections, the same ones that you list as liabilities are safeguards from the woman's standpoint (1/2 a pension--in the face of otherwise, no pension for years raising children or working some low-pay, no pension woman's job; in states with divorce laws that take into account the work a woman does at home as well as at her job, the divorce means she at least gets some of the money/ assets accumulated during the relationship.
Unfortunately, it's still true that on average men's financial situation improves after divorce while women's suffers. Of course, the sexist stereotype is that she 'took him to the cleaners.' The stats just don't bear this out. What's really going on is a devaluing of women's work in the home, so he thinks he owns everything cause it was bought with 'his' paycheck so if she gets *anything* it's regarded as highway robbery.
>In terms of the basic right to sex and pleasure,as discussed on this thread,
>isn't promotion of marriage a capitulation to "puritanism" and sexual
>repression, in some ways ?
Well, I saw a study a few years ago that married people have more sex than unmarried people. (I assume the sex was with their spouses.) Also, the Puritans get a bad rap on this, someone did a book--I remember she/he quoted a Puritan preacher that husband and wife owe each other, as a fundamental right, the 'pang of pleasure.' Here it is, Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (JHUP, 2002). I think he says that denying 'conjugal fellowship' was grounds for excommunication and divorce was permitted from an underperforming husband.
>Isn't promoting marriage kind of like supporting Kerry ?
I think it's a bit more like supporting affirmative action in that we wish men were better on these issues of commitment and sharing work but they aren't, so we have to have some legal framework to encourage that or, if it doesn't work out, compensate the spouse who's doing the childrearing/housework.
I think divorce is much more an ongoing thing where there are kids involved. Without children it can have an ending.
In terms of it being a dialectic--couldn't marriage/singlehood (to use Lise Vogel's term) be the basic opposition? And couldn't it be like peace/war--peace doesn't necessarily lead to war although it precedes and (we hope) follows it. So marriage might not be the cause of divorce, other things could be (male supremacy, imperfect empathy, outside pressures that make people crazy or cruel, changes in our life goals and desires over the decades). You also imply all divorces are terrible bitter things--that's not my observation. Or, at least, are divorces worse than breakups where marriage was not involved? And if so, was the marriage certificate to blame for the discrepancy, or was it just a sign that both parties had invested more hope in--and displayed more public commitment to--the relationship, so it was a harder letdown?
Jenny Brown