Death of Traditional Marriage a good thing for sex and happiness?

Found a really cool article today about how traditional marriage no longer exists, and how that ends up being better for everyone married.

Traditional marriage is dead. Let's celebrate | Jill Filipovic | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Basic summary, both men and women are waiting longer to get married, have kids, all that fun stuff. Mothers and fathers both spend more quality time with children if they both work outside the home. If both the man and woman work outside the home, the benefits to the marriage are great:

"And the more egalitarian the relationship, the better. Couples who share both paid work and housework have more sex. Children of women with college degrees do better in school. Women who are college-educated tend to marry later, and also have lower divorce rates; they are more likely to stay married than women who aren't highly educated and financially independent"

Also, fewer people are getting married and having children overall, which theoretically shows that those getting married are choosing to, rather than feeling social obligation, meaning the relationships are deeply meaningful, and children will be raised better than their social pressure counterparts.

What I found to be one of the most interesting parts of the article was the section on teen pregnancy statistics. Even though popular culture is currently glamorizing teen pregnancy, the frequency has actually gone down.

What do you guys think? Is this "death of traditional marriage" as beneficial as this article makes it seem?

 

I agree to the traditional part, even though I am a traditionalist by nature. I always thought that marrying young wasn't a good idea. most couples are just not emotionally mature enough to handle sharing their life with someone else. My first wife and I were high school sweethearts. but we waited till we where out of college. and it made a world of difference.

This is just a hypothesis. but I believe the idea of a traditional marriage was out of necessity. When the early settlers started to marry off their daughters at 12 and 13. To get them out of the household to lessen the need for food and money. Just from what little I know of history. And to base a marriage off an tradition started like that is just not good. after all. we don't marry at such a young age anymore. why should we base the whole idea as well.

 

Traditions start, and they eventually end. Good riddance. I wish the fundamentalists would recognize this fact.

 

Maybe my fantasy idea of a perfect marriage isn't reality, but I think the traditionalists are right. I am very anti-cheating too. I don't get why marriage is bad, and don't understand what changes from the first year to later years where people don't show they are in love very much anymore.

The law doesn't help either since there is nothing in it for a man to get married and a lot of financial risk. The pro-female crowd wants smart women who work all day, which shouldn't be a bad thing. But appearance still matters more than how successful a woman is. I would rather date a girl who works out 2 hours a day and has time to cook nutritious food, than someone who works in accounting sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, eating cheap fast food, but making money.
And kids ruin a lot because the relationship changes and there are more demands and the need for more stability.

There will be a lot of lonely people in their 70s-80s in a few decades too.

 

All of these articles and "studies" are such bullshit. Rich parents turn out crack head babies just as easily as the poor parents who have to scrape to put together one decent meal a week. Kids who go to a $30k/yr school aren't necessarily in a better position to exceed than the kid who has to walk through a metal detector every morning. The college educated woman who waited until her PhD was finished can marry an abusive asshole just as easily as the girl who finally got her GED in her 30's.

What makes a marriage? Shit... who knows. It's different for everyone and its up to the individuals to make the marriage last and work not their accomplishments. Sure, education and other factors can make financial burdens less obvious and can reduce stress to some degree, but this whole notion that if you wait, you become educated and you do an extra chore around the house will make your marriage great is pure bullshit. I'm guessing this article completely glosses over the fact that more and more men are becoming the caretakers of the family (i.e. stay at home dads), more same sex couples are raising children and multi-racial couples have the fastest growing segment of spawning. Why is this important? Well, because it shows that in fact, traditions are being wiped out, but these create a whole new set of problems and stresses that can affect a marriage. It shows that while modern approaches to marriage is becoming accepted on a larger scale, it may not translate to happiness or longevity. For someone to claim that certain tendencies are the keys to longevity is highly subjective as well as generalized.

So to answer the question simply - I think whether you follow the traditional or the "modern" approach to marriage, it's quite simply up to the two people to make their own lives and marriage work regardless of culture, education or financial standing.

Whatever. I need more coffee.

 

snowy

spoon feed me here (I'm lazy today thanks). If the data is from a gov't report, what was the sample? I guess I'm trying to figure out why anyone should believe that just following the few guidelines pointed out in the article will make for a well balanced and happy marriage. Am I missing the forest for the trees here? It seems to suggest that by waiting longer before marriage, becoming edumacated etc will increase your chance of happiness and make you a better parent.

Now, I'm not saying that those things certainly couldn't hurt in the (very) broad scope of things, but I still stand by my thought process that all of these things depend on the individuals in the coupling, regardless of how many degrees you obtain, how much money you make or if you wait until 40 to spawn. :shrug:

 

So called traditional marriage has been on the ropes since the 60s and 70s. As the divorce rate climbed, so did the number of people who wanted to take a different approach to getting married in the first place.

For me, the ultimate change in marriage is this: People should be free to make their own choice. They should marry whom they want, when in life they want. The pressures of the past - marry asap, stay married regardless, etc. - should stay in the past.

 

When folks marry later, and both have careers outside the home, I think that's a good thing. I think same-sex marriage is a good thing. I think only getting married if you're pretty serious about marriage is a good thing-- otherwise, just live together or date.

I don't think these types of things threaten marriage, let alone "kill" it: I think they make marriage stronger. Marriage isn't for everyone. It takes dedication and commitment over the long term, real fidelity, and a substantial ability to make compromises and balance your life with your partner's-- to say nothing of kids. Some folks just aren't prepared for those things, and most people in their early 20s sure aren't. They should just have casual relationships and sex, until they mature.

 

If you're edumacated your more likely to make smarter choices. Stay in school, save money, raise kids at home with enough time because you didn't have to work two jobs. It's a domino effect, glory. Education is very important in EVERY aspect of life. I for one haven't looked at the article quoted but the OP alone makes sense that I have suspected for a while.

 

I thought the article brought up some interesting points, which is why I posted it. I think the phrase "traditional marriage" in itself is ridiculous. I think when most people use the phrase, it's in reference to the American 50s: Man worked, women cooked, cleaned, took care of the kids (which they had immediately after marriage at a very young age).

I think the entire idea of marriage is changing, which is a good thing. It's becoming less of an obligation and more of a choice as people become more highly educated. I think the way the article portrayed it as "death" was a little melodramatic, but it served an interesting point.

Personally, I want to be married. I want to have someone to spend the rest of my life with that has that piece of paper. With that in mind, I don't want to fall into the traditional gender roles, and if I have someone that appreciates that, then I believe I will have a strong relationship. I want us to both have career and be comfortable with each other before even thinking about kids. I'm a very analytical and systematic person, and my relationships are included in that part of my personality, which has its ups and downs. So I guess it was nice to read an article that quoted legitimate figures that support the fact that I want to think these important choices through before jumping right in!

 

I've never understood what a piece of paper has to do with my wanting to commit to someone. When I originally 'married' my wife, we had not religion and no license. I am an atheist so any vow before a deity in which I don't think exists would be meaningless. As for the paper, I never understood the need, especially when Canadian law puts common law marriage on equal footing.

This year we will have been married 20 years.

Other people I know who did it the traditional way, were divorced after a couple years. As I said above, it's about choice and what works for you.

 

I've been puzzling over this and thinking about what is meant by "traditional marriage". I'm now enjoying my second marriage. My first marriage lasted 30 years and I married young.

I'm 55 and was first married at 21. I'm not convinced that the institution or our approach to it has changed significantly in that time, but it has probably moved further along a trajectory that it was already on.

The discussion, I think conflates a number of issues and looks at them through the prism of marriage. That's not unreasonable, but what are we actually talking about? The marriage itself is about the two people who choose to make a commitment to one another and it's about the choices they make, the way they treat each other and adapt to one another and the life they create together (and with any new family they choose to create). I don't think there has been a sea-change in the way people love one another (or don't) and maintain a relationship. To that extent, I agree with Glory's Sun.

However, the world has changed somewhat, travelling further along that already established trajectory I mentioned earlier. In particular, the way society looks at gender roles has changed and this has brought about significantly greater choice for women (and for men, though that is more gradual). The assumption that all women are going to become child-raising nurturers has diminished. While women are the only ones who can actually give birth, it is becoming more acceptable for men to take on the nurturing role - or at least to share it. This wasn't so different in my first marriage. I think the real change in that regard had already happened, though it depended on the individuals concerned as to whether they had internalised that change. As it happened, my ex-wife had no desire for a career and stopped working duirng the childrens' early years, returning to the world of work later, once they were in full-time school. This was a choice, and a conscious one, which would have maybe been an unquestioned fait accompli a generation earlier.

More women are going to university. I think I'm right in saying that women now outnumber men in further education. This brings more choices and more pressures on women. To be seen as a success, the expectation is now that they should build a career too. This is progress, I think. However, we probably won't have fully "arrived" until we equally respect the choice not to follow that path and young people are less driven by the weight of expectation - if that ever happens.

People are getting married older, partially because of the demands of higher education and the need to establish a career. While I wish that the choice to not attend university and to join a company that trained you, learning "on the job" still existed in the way that it did when I left school, the decision to postpone marriage is a good one for many people. Our brains don't fully mature until we are about 25, after all!

Does this all make for stronger marriages? Or does this make marriage a better institution? I'm not so convinced. Divorce rates are pretty high, after all. There remain pressures on the couple who have married - many of them are the same as they have always been and some are different.

We change as we get older and have life experiences. Child-rearing changes us. The responsibility for providing for a family changes us and limits the choices we can make for ourselves. Ageing changes us. We fear that we are becoming grey, invisible and boring and that our lives lack aspects we enjoyed in our youth. Men and women can both experience "mid-life crises", seeking out validation that they don't feel they are getting in their marriage elsewhere. Our future appears to hold less promise than our past and we can resent that, feeling imprisoned in a marriage that demands that we give less than we think we receive. There are also abusive partners, difficulties with money, addictions and sexual incompatabilities to deal with. It's messy, and it has always been messy.

What is new is that we live longer. When our children leave home we can be looking at another 40 years with our partner when we have changed and they have changed - and it's not always an appealing prospect!

The expectations placed on us are also different, I think. We are expected to be youthful for longer, to acquire and consume more and to achieve (both genders) to a greater extent than in my grandparents' day, for example. We are still driven by what society expects, even though the expectations have maybe changed.

None of this makes marriage easier in my opinion.It's still a challenging road that two people walk and, to that extent at least, I'm with Glory's Sun. It filled a few column inches in a newspaper, though.

 

if your definition about traditional marriage is couples remain with each other till the end, the wife's role is limited to household, she will have a lot of kids, the couples are of different sex, then it is obvious that traditional marriage, is this better ? I'm not sure if you look at nowadays those marriages are getting more fragile

 

I have been thinking about this a lot, as we are a state which is considering adding a same sex marriage ban to our state constitution. (I'm entirely, completely, adamantly opposed and will vote NO!) But last week, at a discussion about same sex marriage, in which I kept hearing people say "we are redefining marriage" and "this is a really big deal" - it struck me that we are not redefining marriage, we are just talking about WHO can call themselves married.

I think that many many, if not most, humans have trouble with monogamy, or at least, with remaining happily connected with all the constraints, to one person for their entire life. I, too, married at 21 and my first lasted about 28 years. I'm now in a much different kind of relationship - one in which we are open and honest with each other and regularly disclose our desires and fantasies, and they often include sex with other partners (so far just talk, btw.)

But the fundamental question regarding marriage seems to me to be: Why is it so hard for so many people to remain happily married to one person for their entire life?

Someone above said we should separate sex from marriage, and I think that idea has merit.

I just read a few minutes ago that Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative commentator, producer of the very conservative "2016: Obama's America" and president of a conservative Christian college, has just announced that he is divorcing his wife of twenty some years and has taken up with a woman twenty years younger than he is. No one is immune to desire!

If we want to talk about "redefining" marriage, we need to consider the possibility that open, honest, consensual non-monogamy and polyamory might be good for marriage - I don't know if they'd work but it is pretty clear to me that monogamy isn't working.

Bottom line: I think we need to talk about some things in this culture, and our attitudes towards sex and sexuality are at the top of the list. I don't expect that to happen in my lifetime, though. I might just have to move to France or Sweden.