rodgerd

This would be fine if marriage looked, across much of Western history, anything like the 50s nuclear family you are apparently assuming as the norm. The reality is that for much of our history, common-law marriages (de facto relationships), divorce, polygamy, temple prostitution and the like have been parts of orderly, functional societies such as classic Greece, Rome, down through to pre Victorian Europe.

Those societies managed. In fact, the biggest shift in family patterns - away from living in communities with one's extended family - actualy happened with the suburbinisation of the 40s and 50s in the West, and the rise of the nuclear family, disconnected from broader roots and ties.

If you're appalled by social changes since then, I suggest you spend a lot more time researching how people actually lived prior to the mass migration to the suburbs; it was very different, and very much not the classic nuclear family model. People who feel that's the solution to all our problems are, I would suggest, drawing the wrong conclusions. It's the starting point for most of them.