Dec 14, 2009 22:03
I thought I'd throw a concept out there that I've lately taken a liking to. It comes out of Heinlein's Time Enough For Love:"Let me spell it out. What you are joining is a family. What you are committed to is the welfare of the children. All of them, not just any that you may sire."
...
"But this is my house, in my name, and I've kept it that way because I planned it to house one family, not to make life jolly for goats such as Galahad, but for the welfare of children. I've seen catastrophe strike colonies that looked as safe as this one. A disaster could wipe out all but one mother and father in this family, and our kids would still grow up normally and happily. This is the only long-run purpose of a family. We think our setup insures that purpose more than a one-couple family can. When you join, you commit yourself to that purpose--that's all."
"Where do I sign?"
"I see no use in written marriage contracts...."
(earlier)
"Anyhow, Ira talked to Ishtar, then to Tamara; then we held a family conference and settled your fate. Lazarus confirmed it while you played with the twins--who were given a chance to veto it later. But they ratified it at once."
I expect you can see where I'm going with this: I want to abstract this simplistic and idealized anecdotal dialogue into an actual system. It's a form of polyamory, but it's also a lot more pragmatic than the shapeless concept that polyamory is.
The main thrust of the idea is simply: a person marries into a family, not into a marriage. There is no matrimony; there's just a group of people united because they like each other enough that they're willing to share the responsibility of raising any and all children they make together.
If they make no children, then it's no big deal: you live together as you like under what agreements you like and it's just polyamory without the now-unnecessary benefits of sharing parenting duties. If all your children grow up and move out, then same deal: you're together because you feel like it and you dress it up as you like to, no more.
There ought to be some ritual involved with joining and leaving. Few families will be so large as to make direct democracy inefficient; a session or two of trial togetherness so that everyone gets a feel for the newbie, and then a vote excluding the newbie. It would be better for a newbie to be invited than to apply: families interested in expansion would make it known; families that aren't would make clear the inverse.
How to handle leaving is a bit of a challenge, but I think I've covered all cases. When kids leave, then it's just a simple rite of passage to confirm adulthood and a celebratory send-off. When an adult leaves due to misbehavior, then there should be a brief commemoration and postmortem, but any actual broken laws is governmental jurisdiction, not familial. When it's due to necessity or differentiated interest, then a minor send-off is probably in order, to emotionally punctuate the change in membership, but probably not celebratory unless the occasion calls for it.
And of course, ritual ought to be decorated by cultural heritage to make it pretty. I particularly like sending kids out into wild forests to fend for themselves while searching for their manitou. Or send them to college, which amounts to the same thing.
If you reinterpret this to slice off all the bits about having kids and having more than two adults, then you get something closely approximating a traditional marriage, but without all the nonsense it comes with nowadays. The main advantage, here, is that you recognize that your relationship is just one of various forms a family takes, and it's no big deal to shift it around if you both agree to. A secondary advantage is that the focus is palpably not about two people being shining exemplars of perfection in complement, which is virtually never true anyways; instead, you're focused on the fact that what ought to be the focus is kids, even if you're not interested in having them. That means, if you decide you don't like each other, and you have no kids, then it's really okay to separate. And thirdly, you probably have a stronger model to rest economic and legal implications, though I couldn't give you any substantial arguments for that.
Whew.
That's the idea anyways. I'm sure it can be complexified a whole bunch, but it's an implementable skeleton. One thing that's missing is something in Heinlein's version: that one person owns everything. I'm leaning towards a corporate model where the family itself is a legal entity, but for reproduction, not production (couldn't resist), that's assessed its competence in parenting. But I'm getting way ahead of where I ought to be there.
The point is that it works, like polyamory, as a social construct that can be shoehorned into the existing legal model, but also is filled with ways to grow that legal model into something (I think would be) more reasonable.
Like? Dislike? Anything confusing? Obvious problems? I've only put a couple hours of thought into this, so it's probably riddled with issues.
love,
philosophy,
marriage,
friendship