The War Over Marriage Is Raging; Single People Are Winning by B. DePaulo
(Link): The War Over Marriage Is Raging; Single People Are Winning
Excerpts:
Once again, the claim that marriage is greedy has people riled up
July 11, 2019
To everyone who has been rooting for, and working on, the telling of a more accurate and affirming story about single people, and the shattering of myths about married people, there is good news: We are winning.
The latest victory comes from a most unlikely place – the National Review, that conservative bastion of pro-marriage ideology.
The (Link): article just published there is framed as just the opposite of what I have suggested. “What you lose when you diss the public good of marriage,” by Alan J. Hawkins, is a response to Mandy Len Catron’s important and attention-generating article in The Atlantic [and excerpted on this blog], (Link): “What you lose when you gain a spouse.”
It is intended as a critique of Catron. As such, it gets a lot wrong – very wrong – as I will explain later.
…The crux of Hawkins argument may be the very first line of the article: “If ‘marriage’ were eliminated today, society would still value loyalty, sexual fidelity, partnerships of reciprocal support, and stable parenting – which are best produced by … marriage.”
Considering the (Link): high rates of divorce, it seems odd to tout the success of marriage in promoting loyalty and partnerships of reciprocal support.
Surely, American society has done more to promote marriage as a space for all of these characteristics that Hawkins admires than any other kind of relationship, starting with the 1,000+ federal laws that benefit and protect only people who are legally married.
Married people, who are the beneficiaries of all those legal advantages as well as the respect, celebration, and admiration of our matrimaniacal culture, (Link): should be doing better in all those ways.
Read the rest of that page (Link): here
Related Posts:
(Link): Do Married Couples Slight Their Family Members as Well as Their Friends? / “Greedy Marriages”
(Link): Yes, You Need to Prioritize Your Marriage Over Your Kids by V. Pelley
(Link): ‘Why Are You Single’ Lists That Do Not Pathologize Singles by Bella DePaulo
(Link): Five Things Single Women Hate to Hear
(Link): Pat Robertson’s Incredibly Insensitive Advice to Gail the Unmarried Woman
(Link): Love Couldn’t Save Me From Loneliness By M. Puniewska