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What should be the government's involvement in marriage?

What should be the government's involvement in marriage?

  • Make some specific changes only

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Arbitration in court

Which is different from arbitration whenever there is a contract dispute of any kind?

Does the government have to approve of a contract to buy or sell, or to provide service for remuneration?
 
Which is different from arbitration whenever there is a contract dispute of any kind?

Does the government have to approve of a contract to buy or sell, or to provide service for remuneration?

The question was what should the gov's involvement be. thats my answer
 
In a perfect world, no government involvement would be ideal.

Unfortunately this just isn't practical. There are divorces, taking place in government courts, along with estate disputes about who gets what because X was married to Y and then Z and has children by both, etc.

The State has a vested intrest in promoting family, as it is one of the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Without structures to support and raise and civilize children, the next generation will grow up to be a pack of barbarians and civilization will collapse. Therefore some kind of incentives to build families is in the State's intrest. This has been the case for millenia.

The details, of course, are up for grabs...
 
In a perfect world, no government involvement would be ideal.

Unfortunately this just isn't practical. There are divorces, taking place in government courts, along with estate disputes about who gets what because X was married to Y and then Z and has children by both, etc.

The State has a vested intrest in promoting family, as it is one of the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Without structures to support and raise and civilize children, the next generation will grow up to be a pack of barbarians and civilization will collapse. Therefore some kind of incentives to build families is in the State's intrest. This has been the case for millenia.

The details, of course, are up for grabs...

The state is not doing a very good job of promoting family one of the fundamental building blocks of civilization. 41% of babies are born to unwed mothers.

That statistic is, of course the root of many of our societal ills, no question. How, though, does the state being involved in marriage contracts help promote family?

Without structures to support and raise and civilize children, the next generation will grow up to be a pack of barbarians

Absolutely true. So, it would seem that the next generation is, in fact, growing up to be a pack of barbarians, or at least a large percentage of them are.
 
The state is not doing a very good job of promoting family one of the fundamental building blocks of civilization. 41% of babies are born to unwed mothers.

That statistic is, of course the root of many of our societal ills, no question. How, though, does the state being involved in marriage contracts help promote family?

To answer your last question first, by guaranteeing property rights and inheritances, and by tax incentives.

To answer why 41% are born outside wedlock, the single biggest reason is that a woman gets more Welfare/foodstamps/etc if she has lots of kids and no husband. At least, no husband-of-record.

The second biggest reason is that forty years of applying "critical thinking" to all the traditional institutions that formed the building blocks of our society have resulted in a loss of respect for all those institutions, including the institution of marriage and family. Granted, some of those institutions (like seperate but equal) were bad and needed to be destroyed, but we've thrown the baby out with the bath water.

Once upon a time, divorce and pre-marital pregnancy were heavily stigmatized and most children were born IN wedlock. How far we've come, eh?





Absolutely true. So, it would seem that the next generation is, in fact, growing up to be a pack of barbarians, or at least a large percentage of them are.

Absolutely. Erosion of the family unit, erosion of traditional values, erosion of parental authority, erosion of the moral authority of the values our society once held to.
 
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To answer your last question first, by guaranteeing property rights and inheritances, and by tax incentives.

OK, you have a point with property rights and inheritances, but those can be taken care of with a will. As for tax incentives, have they every eliminated the "marriage penalty"?

To answer why 41% are born outside wedlock, the single biggest reason is that a woman gets more Welfare/foodstamps/etc if she has lots of kids and no husband. At least, no husband-of-record.

Now, you've put your finger on a way in which the state is discouraging marriage and family.

The second biggest reason is that forty years of applying "critical thinking" to all the traditional institutions that formed the building blocks of our society have resulted in a loss of respect for all those institutions, including the institution of marriage and family. Granted, some of those institutions (like seperate but equal) were bad and needed to be destroyed, but we've thrown the baby out with the bath water.

Once upon a time, divorce and pre-marital pregnancy were heavily stigmatized and most children were born IN wedlock. How far we've come, eh?


How far indeed. It has become socially acceptable to have children with no father. How sad.





Absolutely. Erosion of the family unit, erosion of traditional values, erosion of parental authority, erosion of the moral authority of the values our society once held to.

yep. That hits the nail on the head, no question.

So, in the face of breakdown of the basic unit of society, what can we expect government to do to improve the situation? Is there anything really?
 
This has nothing to do with sanctity, there is no sanctity in marriage. If you make marriage harder to get into and harder to get out of, more people are going to stop and think about the issue seriously before they get married, thus reducing the number of divorces and bad marriages to begin with. The reason there are so many bad marriages is because anyone with $50 in their hand can go get a license and get married tomorrow and get divorced the day after.

No, they aren't. Most people do think about it, that's the unfortunate thing. It's just that they make the mistake of thinking humans are life-maters. For the most part, we aren't. The entire institution is based on a fallacy, which is why I think it'd be better if we didn't have it. It's ALWAYS been like that, even when divorce was illegal or so frowned upon that no one did it. There's no way to stop most marriages from eventually falling apart. That's what happens when you pretend to be something you're not, and pretend to know something you don't.
 
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In a perfect world, no government involvement would be ideal.

Unfortunately this just isn't practical. There are divorces, taking place in government courts, along with estate disputes about who gets what because X was married to Y and then Z and has children by both, etc.

The State has a vested intrest in promoting family, as it is one of the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Without structures to support and raise and civilize children, the next generation will grow up to be a pack of barbarians and civilization will collapse. Therefore some kind of incentives to build families is in the State's intrest. This has been the case for millenia.

The details, of course, are up for grabs...

You really think marriage is holding society up? There are some societies that are already abandoning it (not in a legal sense necessarily, but the marriage rates are dropping even faster than here) because it's long since been out-dated. They just co-habitate.

Why can't families form without some piece of paper and some totally backwards perks? Why don't people who aren't married deserve to have that kind of control over their affairs? Why does the state get to decide who can get married? And if marriage is such an incentive for families, why do half of them fall apart regardless of if they have kids, or how old they are at the time of divorce?
 
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OK, you have a point with property rights and inheritances, but those can be taken care of with a will. As for tax incentives, have they every eliminated the "marriage penalty"?



Now, you've put your finger on a way in which the state is discouraging marriage and family.




How far indeed. It has become socially acceptable to have children with no father. How sad.







yep. That hits the nail on the head, no question.

So, in the face of breakdown of the basic unit of society, what can we expect government to do to improve the situation? Is there anything really?


There are a number of things that would probably help to some degree.

Phase out welfare-as-we-know-it. Don't penalize women for being married, but don't reward them for having more kids while on welfare. Turn Welfare into Workfare. Turn the other hand-out programs into hand-UP programs.

I think men are often reluctant to wed because there really aren't a lot of incentives for it unless you're religious. Typically, if a man's wife cuts him off there's nothing he can do about it. He can file for a no-fault divorce and she gets half; or he can cheat and get caught and lose even more. If there's a divorce he probably won't get custody of his children. She can frack with his visitation but if he doesn't pay child support on time in full he goes to jail. At present, virtually everything in marriage and divorce law is drastically slanted in favor of women.... no wonder fewer and fewer men want to marry. It ought to be a little bit more balanced, methinks.

Some better tax incentives, I suppose, though really I despise the practice of using taxes for social engineering.
 
You really think marriage is holding society up? There are some societies that are already abandoning it (not in a legal sense necessarily, but the marriage rates are dropping even faster than here) because it's long since been out-dated. They just co-habitate.

Why can't families form without some piece of paper and some totally backwards perks? Why don't people who aren't married deserve to have that kind of control over their affairs? Why does the state get to decide who can get married? And if marriage is such an incentive for families, why do half of them fall apart regardless of if they have kids, or how old they are at the time of divorce?

Who owns what when you go your seperate ways? If there are children, who do they go with? If you can't agree on these things, who will decide? If there is no legal, moral or societal incentive to stay in a relationship, won't children be more likely to be subjected to a series of temporary father-figures (or in a few cases, temporary mommies). Stability is important for childrearing. Once we had that stability, when divorce was more difficult and more stigmatized by society.

There's a reason why marriage has been the norm for thousands of years.
 
Who owns what when you go your seperate ways? If there are children, who do they go with? If you can't agree on these things, who will decide? If there is no legal, moral or societal incentive to stay in a relationship, won't children be more likely to be subjected to a series of temporary father-figures (or in a few cases, temporary mommies). Stability is important for childrearing. Once we had that stability, when divorce was more difficult and more stigmatized by society.

When marriage was about power not love.
 
When marriage was about power not love.

My parents were born in the 20's. They married for love. They stayed married for life, despite various ups and downs. My mother was never the same after my father passed; when her friends told her she should consider dating, she said that she had never wanted any other man and never would. 57 years.

This used to be commonplace.
 
Who owns what when you go your seperate ways? If there are children, who do they go with? If you can't agree on these things, who will decide? If there is no legal, moral or societal incentive to stay in a relationship, won't children be more likely to be subjected to a series of temporary father-figures (or in a few cases, temporary mommies). Stability is important for childrearing. Once we had that stability, when divorce was more difficult and more stigmatized by society.

There's a reason why marriage has been the norm for thousands of years.

Even with marriage, those disputes don't seem at all immune to people being people. I think the expectation that goes with marriage actually makes it worse. Life-long happy marriages have always been a minority.

Things were no better before divorce was legal/acceptable. Unhappy marriages were just as common, and so were abusive marriages. The only difference was that they had no way of getting away from each other so they just stayed miserable longer, and dragged their kids down with them.

There's also a reason why marriage is virtually unrecognizable from what it initially was.

It's a faulty institution built on a faulty premise every step of the way. When it was basically a formal slave contract for women, well, the problem with that is fairly obvious. When it became merely a practicality, the problem with forcing people into life-long misery with strangers was obvious. And now that it's an institution of love, which are the best possible chances you could give a marriage, and it STILL fails most of the time, we see the real issue for what it is. It's just a poor idea.

For some reason, no matter how hard it tries or how many times it re-formulates itself, marriage as an institution just can't ever seem to get it together.

Just because it's been going on a long time doesn't make it a good idea. Plenty of bad ideas last for thousands of years. Humans just ain't that smart, especially in groups.
 
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Not really. Of course, theres no way to prove it one way or the other.

Really? Arranged marriages were largely a thing of the past by 1900. Let's look at divorce rates and some specifics:

According to the following site, the US Census Bureau says the divorce rates in 2000 were nine times what they were in 1950. The divorce rate in 1950 was more than 10 times what it was in 1900. Taken together that's more than a 90x increase.


According to statistics gathered by the US Census Bureau, in 1900 the rate of divorce for males was 84 per 100,000 and 114 per 100,000 for women. The rate grew steadily as the 20th century went on, and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was sitting at 489 per 100,000 for men and 572 per 100,000 for women.

After World War II, the divorce rate continued to increase. In 1950, the rate was sitting at 1,070 per 100,000 for men and 1,373 per 100,000 for women. Historical divorce rate statistics continued to rise steadily, and the numbers took a big jump in the 1970s. This may have been due to the fact that the Seventies were the decade when no-fault divorce was first made available.

Before that point, anyone who wanted to end their marriage was going to have to prove allegations of adultery or cruelty. Being able to get a divorce based on the fact that the marriage had broken down or irreconcilable differences may have been a factor in the increase in divorce rates during this decade. By 1980, divorce rates for men had grown to 4,539 per 100,000 for males and 6,577 per 100,000 for females.

According to the most recent statistics gathered by the US Census Bureau (2000), the divorce rate for men was 9,255 per 100,000 and 12,305 per 100,000 for women.

Historical Divorce Rate Statistics | LoveToKnow

My parents were hardly unique. The majority of their friends and siblings in the same age group had similar experiences: married for love, married for life.

It isn't a myth.
 
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Really? Arranged marriages were largely a thing of the past by 1900. Let's look at divorce rates and some specifics:

According to the following site, the US Census Bureau says the divorce rates in 2000 were nine times what they were in 1950. The divorce rate in 1950 was more than 10 times what it was in 1900. Taken together that's a 90x increase.

I wasn't just talking about arranged marriages. You aren't even mentioning the feminist movement, the equal rights movement, or the fact that women no longer have to rely on men for finical stability anymore. You also aren't mentioning the fact that people have gotten less mature since people largely start life later (25) now due to a myriad of factors.
 
I wasn't just talking about arranged marriages. You aren't even mentioning the feminist movement, the equal rights movement, or the fact that women no longer have to rely on men for finical stability anymore.

This is a really good point. It kind of changes things when you expect to be an equal partner. Also, let's remember how discouraged women were from reporting abuse or dissatisfaction within marriage. Raping your wife wasn't even a crime.

If you can't survive without your husband, what exactly are you going to do? Women of the 50's dosing themselves with booze and transquilizers (and men did the same) was largely due to miserable marriages they couldn't get out of.

That's nice that your parents friends were happy. The majority of people didn't feel the same. That's how divorce became acceptable in the first place. If most people had no reason to want it, it wouldn't have ever become acceptable.
 
I wasn't just talking about arranged marriages. You aren't even mentioning the feminist movement, the equal rights movement, or the fact that women no longer have to rely on men for finical stability anymore. You also aren't mentioning the fact that people have gotten less mature since people largely start life later (25) now due to a myriad of factors.

Well you aren't wrong. You are aware that there is a backlash ongoing against the brand of feminism that crashed through society in the 60's and 70's? The new feminists are far less radical and more open to traditional ways as a matter of choice.

As for women not having to rely on men for financial stability anymore... well, the potential is there, and some women achieve it, but the honest fact of the matter is that the majority of women remain dependent on the husband's income to support themselves at the level they have become accustomed to. Typically, one parent has to take primary responsibility for the children, and that means putting career second. Most times this is the woman. This, plus childbirth and other factors, usually means an on-and-off career, frequently part-time, that typically is less than 1/3 of the household income. This isn't a result of sexual discrimination, its a result of factors pertaining mainly to being the primary caretaker of the children. I would know; I've had to pass on many career opportunties because of being a single father for 13 years.

That people are less mature now than 50-100 years ago I can readily believe. I'm not positive what the answer to that is. Some have suggested a mandatory 2 years in the military at age 18 for everyone... seems a bit drastic, but it is a thought.
 
I am divorced.

I have asked myself many times what might have happened if I'd stayed put and toughed it out. Would things have gotten better? Perhaps, perhaps not. Things were very bad or I would never have considered divorce. Still, divorce leaves scars. It is hard on children. Statistics show that most women are worse off financially after a divorce.

Still, I'll be second-guessing myself for a long time. It was a hard thing to do. It was like sawing off my right arm with a dull knife, even though that arm was trying to destroy me.

On the flip side, I've known so many people to get divorced for frivolous reasons in recent decades. People are spoiled. They think everything is supposed to be all joy and no pain. They walk at the drop of a hat, often uncaring what it does to the children. It is appalling.
 
Many times during SSM debates it comes up whether the government should be involved in marriage at all or whether certain financial benefits should be offered for being married.

Yeah and I wish you people would stop pretending this is a new topic. This has been don soooooo many times.

No one has anything new to say, this thread is just going to be another re-hash of the same 'oll thing.
 
The government's role is that of recorder.

As such, it should be completely indifferent to who signs the contract, as long as the contract is between two consenting adults.

Furthermore, laws forbidding polygamy and polyandry, and chain marriages, etc, are equally irrational, assuming the legal framework is established to define ownership of property in those more complicated forms, how community property is distributed upon dissolution of the marriage, and child custody issues, to be determined, of course, on the best interests of the child.

Anyone that cares if someone is married to someone else is probably jealous.
 
I dunno, there's a scary misandrist and hyper-PC tone moving through some threads of the new feminism. I'd say the more moderate feminists are more common, but the fringey folks are loud. Not really doing us any favors.

I don't think later age of marriage indicates lack of maturity. Modern societies have gotten more ethical, less violent, etc. If anything, I think it means people are considering things more carefully. Considering their finances, the solidity of their relationship, etc. That this is going on and it still isn't changing the stats is telling. The idea of a golden age is mostly a fantasy.

I really don't think too many people apart from celebrities divorce frivolously. Most divorce stories I hear are more like yours than any celebrity. Why do you assume most people are so much less considerate than you? Divorce represents the failure of something important to the people involved. And yes, it often involves children.
 
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I don't think later age of marriage indicates lack of maturity. Modern societies have gotten more ethical, less violent, etc. If anything, I think it means people are considering things more carefully. Considering their finances, the solidity of their relationship, etc. That this is going on and it still isn't changing the stats is telling. The idea of a golden age is mostly a fantasy.

Not sure if this was directed at my statement or not; however, what I was saying was that people start life later than they did back in the 50s due to societal pressures/necessities to go to college before entering the work force.
 
Not sure if this was directed at my statement or not; however, what I was saying was that people start life later than they did back in the 50s due to societal pressures/necessities to go to college before entering the work force.

Nope. :) But that's cool.

This is true. It's probably something where people pit the loss against the gain. It's true the earlier the marriage the longer. statistically, it will last (though it may or may not make it any happier), but that sort of puts career and other achievements on the second wrung.

To be honest, marriage not being part of my equation, I've never really done that particular cost/benefit analysis. I do, after all, think it shouldn't exist as a legal institution.
 
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