Breathing Life into Our Marriage CultureJoin now to read essay Breathing Life into Our Marriage CultureThe Slow Death of a Marriage CultureAngela DonnellA distressing number of children in this nation will go to bed tonight without the participation of both a mother and father in an important family ritual: reading a bedtime story, saying nighttime prayers, and being tucked in with reassuring goodnight kisses. This experience is more and more often a solo act for one reason: the slow death of a marriage culture. It is being replaced by a culture of divorce and illegitimacy, each of which now exists, in equal proportion to their opposites. Society has had to swallow the fact that divorce has become the answer to problems of stress and frustration in marriage, and is being made easier due to no-fault divorce procedures. The union of marriage needs to be taken more seriously and a reform on the current laws needs to be enacted. A divorce reform would clearly define marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman and require more pre and post marital counseling. It is paramount that we re-establish an appreciation of the value and virtue of marriage by enacting the option of a covenant marriage in all states not only for the individual and society, but for our children as well.
Divorce is a disruption of the collective interests of the family by the self-interests of one or both of the spouses (Davis, 1). Since the 1970s, all states have had virtually unrestricted no-fault divorces available to any married person who wanted one. The only restriction in most cases is a waiting period that can be as short as a few months and is rarely more than a year (Wright, 2). The institution of marriage has crumbled since California instituted the first no fault divorce law in 1970. The legal shift contributed significantly to America’s rising divorce rate, which surged 34 percent from 1970 to 1990 (Tyson, 2). On the grounds of a no-fault divorce, neither spouse blames the other for the breakdown of the marriage. Both spouses agree that irreconcilable differences have arisen and that neither time nor counseling will save the marriage, it simply will not work. In a no-fault divorce or dissolution of a marriage, the actions of the respective spouses in the breakdown of the marriage do not affect property distribution or spousal support rights. The grounds for fault could include adultery, physical or mental cruelty, desertion, alcohol or drug abuse, insanity, impotence or infecting the other spouse with a venereal disease. The respective rights to distribution of property and spousal support can be affected by a spouse’s fault in causing the breakdown of the marriage in most states (Knickerbocker, 2). In a no-fault divorce the institution could be dissolved a soon as 60 days. No-fault’s primary purpose is to empower whichever party wants out, with the least possible fuss and the greatest possible speed, no questions asked. Therefore, no fault laws discriminate against people who want to keep their marriage intact (Tyson, 1).
“No-fault” divorce is one of the main reasons why marriage in the U.S. now is virtually meaningless. When no-fault was introduced, no one had any idea what it would do. But now, liberals and conservatives, Christians, communitarians, and libertarians are all realizing that they made a huge mistake. The radical swing from 100% fault-based divorce to 100% unilateral non-binding marriage is a failed experiment. It pushed us into a whole new form of family life that is not sustainable; it just doesnt work in the long term. Marriage now is like a christening or a bar mitzvah, a nice ceremony for the family, but of no legal significance whatsoever (Crouch). Under so-called “no-fault” divorce laws, anybody can end any marriage simply by leaving. The social and cultural realities that used to keep most families together have disappeared, and nobody predicted any of these catastrophic changes.
No-fault divorce is itself a controversial concept. Among many feminists and other progressive thinkers, the old marriage regime was a prison that trapped women in lousy relationships. No-fault divorce made it much easier to terminate these relationships, thereby increasing womens options, and is therefore unambiguously good. On the other hand, among pro-family advocates and other traditionalists and social conservatives, no-fault divorce is seen as having created a “divorce culture” where traditional values of love, fidelity, commitment, and obligation are no longer respected. By making divorce so easy to obtain, the no-fault regime has ruined the lives of countless people, many of them children who are emotionally traumatized by divorce, and many women whose financial well being is ruined when their marriages fall apart. For many traditionalists, no-fault divorce has been the root of much evil and is unambiguously bad (Wright, 2).
The feminist’s view that marriage has been built on a set of values and principles, as we have explained, can be understood intuitively. That is, marriage is fundamentally a “living, breathing, consensual relationship” where any number of qualities and principles have been established.
It’s almost a contradiction to argue that in many cases the value of marriage is built up by cultural and historical conditioning, culture based in a priori ideology. This is because the value of marriage is defined by the “rightness of the partner” (Dreyfus, 1988). The “rightness of the wife” is, as we have explained, a value of the marriage. As we have explained, this, too, is not the case with regard to divorce. In any given relationship, there are the few basic steps in order of the quality of the relationship: the marriage, the children to be raised, etc. The family is a “right to be there in a way,” which is of no consequence to the woman, because her “right” is at the mercy of a mother. Her mother is not required to attend to the child’s needs, i.e., to be at home. She makes her own decisions. If my grandmother, a man-without-laws-to-be, had only been around when I was a youth, I never would have been married, because my grandmother is an educated daughter, and yet my grandmother would have made her own choices. In addition, her choice of age would certainly have made it difficult for her to attend her primary preschool for the rest of her life, and perhaps she would have spent her child’s life with a different mother. In other words, her choice of education would have made it even harder to achieve a better life for her daughter, which is not to say it’s good, but it is good nonetheless.
This notion of gender, one of the great forces that will free us from the shackles of modern family construction and human life, is fundamentally at odds with the social science of divorce. A majority of women see the term ‘choice’ as an insult, and many believe the term is harmful to the family, and the children.
When we talk about “choice” it implies that there is not a thing that can produce or change a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation.
This choice is the first point that makes sense. It implies that the individual will be assigned genders; this is because the biological sex of our children and their parents do not change. This second point requires that the individual’s sex be changed immediately in order to produce a new gender. For example, a man’s penis is not masculine; instead it is either “male” or “female”. For a woman’s penis, in general, the penis is either “female” or “male”. Both of these may come into play, but there is no reason to believe that one is necessarily male or the other is not.
It is true that this will make certain things seem more desirable and desirable to a person, whether they be biological or genetic. For example, if I put a certain amount of soap into your hair after you shave, you will not need one. It is true that an object that you put on your head or your hands before or shortly after your shower will do it. It is more of a question of if the objects will become more attractive to women or if it will make things better for them.
This second point makes sense to me because I do not see how you can define “choice” in a way that includes both gender identity and sexual orientation. <