The implications of this would of course be taken by some to be a call for the growing necessity for social programs, but this isn't where I'm trying to go with this. My focus, rather, is to suggest that the so called "collapse of the family", or of family values, or traditional morals, or whatever you want to call it, is really just not happening. There may be some shift in our cultural assumptions about gender roles and the necessity of marriage, and this would easily account for the small decrease in marriage rates seen across the economic spectrum, but by and large people still today, and will always in the future, intend to carry on monogamous relationships.
It need not even be morally motivated, rather, it is in our genetic heritage to wish these things for ourselves. But in situations where we might find ourselves with no marriageable material around, we may have no choice. Would you rather your daughters marry a poor man who possibly has a criminal record? Or would you rather them remain single? Of course we would hope they would have other options, and I'm sure they will. However, the dilemma remains - is it really worth getting married if you are neither committed to the other person nor gaining any material stability from the relationship? To preempt a possible romantic objection about me including material stability as a qualification for marriage: you probably aren't going to be committed, or even attracted, to someone you see as unmotivated, unproductive, and untalented, regardless of material stability.
There is much to be said about the situations leading to such poverty and delinquency, and the solutions are also convoluted, but I think this is pretty strong evidence that what many people are interpreting as a collapse of family values is really just a collapse of worthwhile candidates for marriage.
EDITOR'S NOTE: I've added this graph from some Econ journal (I forget which) about marriage rates over time because I wanted to test the economic explanation on the Great Depression.
I think that this article makes a few really good points. The first one is, would you rather marry for the sake of marrying and enter into a bad relationship or just be single. I would personally just rather be single. Marriage is something that I think people take way less serious than they should these days. Just like the speaker we had on Thursday who was Agrarian said, "marriage means something!" I think that if you have parents who have stayed together then chances are you will want to get married and do the same thing. I wish that more emphasis was put on making marriages work rather than just getting married.
ReplyDeleteI liked your short mentioning (though you quickly discarded the notion) of social programs as an answer to poverty resulting from divorce. A fundamental shift has happened in America where we not only are over-reliant on out government, but we also have set unrealistic expectations for our government. Morality is at the center of marriage, and if it were not, we would have no reason to commit to one person, and instead we would sleep around with whoever we wanted to for the rest of our lives. Once you can see that the act of marriage is moral situation, you should have no trouble understanding that divorce, it's frequency of occurance, the reasoning behind it, and the economic impact it has on America, is also a moral issue. The government's job is to seek justice and protect, but morality is the burden of the people. People must take responsibility for their actions, and not rely on government help when their personal issues caused their economic downfall.
ReplyDelete^ Comment by David Tate
DeleteFirst of all, David, to think that the economic "downfall" of many individuals in our country is caused only by "personal issues" displays an incredible lack of appreciation of the economic situation. Even without getting too deterministic about being born into poverty and whatnot, there are the factors of globalization, contracting growth and employment, and the shifting structure of our economy away from manufacturing that you ignore completely only to put the onus on the individual.
ReplyDeleteMy point was not, as you seem to realize (though you quickly discard the notion) about social programs as a solution to poverty. It was simply to make the point that perhaps the decline in marriage is not attributable to strictly moral issues, but also to economic ones. I am not in any way trying to make the argument that the lack of activist government is the cause of our marriage woes.
In closing, your focus on morality as being at the center of marriage is somewhat disturbing to me. To speak of morality in this sense, as a limiting force on what we actually want to do (sleep with whomever) is to bastardize the notion of marriage. This is to make it a limiting of our desires rather than an expression of them. I see this as profoundly pessimistic, though in keeping with the general rabinical-judaic trend in conservative moral thought, which focuses on law and limitation of desires. If I never meet someone that doesn't so wholeheartedly captivate me with their presence of being as to make me NOT WANT to remain single and sleep around, then I'll gladly remain single and sleep around. To think that marriage only occurs out of recourse to morality is to ignore the most meaningful dimension of human relations. It isn't all about sex, David, there are other ways to gain pleasure from interactions with others. The development of relationships is always somewhat self-intersted, a factor which cannot be disentangled, however, to come to know someone on such a profoundly intimate level, to respect them, to understand them, to bask in their vulnerability and to return the favor, is a joy of almost spiritual proportions. Marriage should not be some masochistic limitation of your desires, some burden you self-riotously bear for the benefit of society and the fulfillment of your cultural values, it should be a deeply held desire, a longing for and connection with someone so profound that you desire no others. If this is all just idealism and the reality is closer to your conception of marriage then I want no part of it.
Daniel