It's my paradigm, and I'll clutch it if I want to
No matter how much it doesn't work anymore.
We have a new survey on marriage that contains some interesting points and is causing some unrest.
The...survey on marriage and parenting found that children had fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of factors that people associate with successful marriages
The presence of children was #3 on the list as recently as 1990. The drop is very telling, since marriage used to be pretty much set up to produce a framework for childrearing. Now, however.
The survey also found that, by a margin of nearly 3-to-1, Americans say the main purpose of marriage is the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the "bearing and raising of children."
The family values types are having a non-surprising hissy fit about all this because being happy and fulfilled is a sin apparently.
"The popular culture is increasingly oriented to fulfilling the X-rated fantasies and desires of adults," she wrote in a recent report. "Child-rearing values - sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity - seem stale and musty by comparison."
Meanwhile, in 2005 37 percent of children were born to unmarried women although this is only up 5% in 1960, and doesn't strike me as THAT big of a gap.
What all this says to me is that there IS a change in society's structure in that marriage and child-raising are splitting off as entities. This change is neither good nor bad, but neutral, and it depends on the adults involved. If both parents support and care for the child, the presence of a legal marriage is pretty much moot.
It also brings up the question of the necessity of marriage at all. Mutual happiness and fulfillment should be easily enough found outside of an outdated ceremony that is denied to anyone who doesn't fit the heterosexual norm.
But the heterosexual norm is what everyone's clinging to so desperately, even as it slips away from them. The high birth rate to unmarried women is seen as 'a big problem' by 71% of Americans. However, with that high birth rate, there's bound to be some overlap. That is, somebody's both having a unmarried births and seeing it as a big problem. Maybe it's when those OTHER people have unmarried births.
What everyone needs to grasp is that, at this point, it isn't a problem. It's a fact. The two cohabitating parent + children set-up is going away, and everyone might as well just deal with that. Maybe when that happens, we'll stop getting situations like this.
...more than 80 percent of white adults have been married, compared with about 70 percent of Hispanics and 54 percent of blacks. Yet blacks were more likely than whites and Hispanics to say that premarital sex is always or almost always morally wrong.
Most people believe that sex outside of marriage is morally wrong, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing it. I'm reminded of Florence King's quote that "sex was more fun when it was dirty and sinful". People still want to sneak around with the only legitimate sex being married sex, which is unfortunate.
Perhaps, once we all face the fact that marriage is no longer the only acceptable path to sex, maybe we can get some comprehensive sex ed as a viable standard in the country and reduce the rate of UNWANTED as opposed to UNMARRIED pregnancies.
And of course, we can finally get over the OMGHORROR of homosexual marriage. Because while the survey says most people regard marriage as 'mutual happiness and fulfillment for adults'. 57% still oppose gay and lesbian marriage, which is so STUPID that it's incomprehensible to me. Why? Why does anyone care? You can't say it's 'for the CHILDREN' when children are no longer the central reason for marriage! Sorry, gay people. No mutual happiness and fulfillment for you.
My ultimate hope is that someday, marriage won't be seen as the way to 'mutual happiness and fulfillment' for anyone. Once we get marriage out of our heads as an ultimate goal, the sign of maturity and success, particularly for women, we can get some restructuring. We can stop indoctrinating our daughters with the idea that they are destined to be wives, with the added context of 'property' of men.
We have a new survey on marriage that contains some interesting points and is causing some unrest.
The...survey on marriage and parenting found that children had fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of factors that people associate with successful marriages
The presence of children was #3 on the list as recently as 1990. The drop is very telling, since marriage used to be pretty much set up to produce a framework for childrearing. Now, however.
The survey also found that, by a margin of nearly 3-to-1, Americans say the main purpose of marriage is the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the "bearing and raising of children."
The family values types are having a non-surprising hissy fit about all this because being happy and fulfilled is a sin apparently.
"The popular culture is increasingly oriented to fulfilling the X-rated fantasies and desires of adults," she wrote in a recent report. "Child-rearing values - sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity - seem stale and musty by comparison."
Meanwhile, in 2005 37 percent of children were born to unmarried women although this is only up 5% in 1960, and doesn't strike me as THAT big of a gap.
What all this says to me is that there IS a change in society's structure in that marriage and child-raising are splitting off as entities. This change is neither good nor bad, but neutral, and it depends on the adults involved. If both parents support and care for the child, the presence of a legal marriage is pretty much moot.
It also brings up the question of the necessity of marriage at all. Mutual happiness and fulfillment should be easily enough found outside of an outdated ceremony that is denied to anyone who doesn't fit the heterosexual norm.
But the heterosexual norm is what everyone's clinging to so desperately, even as it slips away from them. The high birth rate to unmarried women is seen as 'a big problem' by 71% of Americans. However, with that high birth rate, there's bound to be some overlap. That is, somebody's both having a unmarried births and seeing it as a big problem. Maybe it's when those OTHER people have unmarried births.
What everyone needs to grasp is that, at this point, it isn't a problem. It's a fact. The two cohabitating parent + children set-up is going away, and everyone might as well just deal with that. Maybe when that happens, we'll stop getting situations like this.
...more than 80 percent of white adults have been married, compared with about 70 percent of Hispanics and 54 percent of blacks. Yet blacks were more likely than whites and Hispanics to say that premarital sex is always or almost always morally wrong.
Most people believe that sex outside of marriage is morally wrong, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing it. I'm reminded of Florence King's quote that "sex was more fun when it was dirty and sinful". People still want to sneak around with the only legitimate sex being married sex, which is unfortunate.
Perhaps, once we all face the fact that marriage is no longer the only acceptable path to sex, maybe we can get some comprehensive sex ed as a viable standard in the country and reduce the rate of UNWANTED as opposed to UNMARRIED pregnancies.
And of course, we can finally get over the OMGHORROR of homosexual marriage. Because while the survey says most people regard marriage as 'mutual happiness and fulfillment for adults'. 57% still oppose gay and lesbian marriage, which is so STUPID that it's incomprehensible to me. Why? Why does anyone care? You can't say it's 'for the CHILDREN' when children are no longer the central reason for marriage! Sorry, gay people. No mutual happiness and fulfillment for you.
My ultimate hope is that someday, marriage won't be seen as the way to 'mutual happiness and fulfillment' for anyone. Once we get marriage out of our heads as an ultimate goal, the sign of maturity and success, particularly for women, we can get some restructuring. We can stop indoctrinating our daughters with the idea that they are destined to be wives, with the added context of 'property' of men.