What should be the “right” way to recognize marriage?
Readership: Christians;
Why is this important: An a-historic decline of marriage rates is impacting society. Determining the root cause is important to understand the social change and possibly find/create a solution. Concerns over the institution of marriage can be alleviated with legal changes and novel creativity.
The Dismal State of Marriage
Regular readers are all too familiar with the raw deal that is marriage these days. Anyone who doubts this should read a few of the following posts.
- Dalrock: Marriage strike? (2010 October 19)
- Dalrock: Driving a stake in the heart of the US marriage strike myth. (2010 October 27)
- Dalrock: Clarification on my position on a marriage strike. (2010 October 28)
- Dalrock: Supply and demand in the marriage market. (2011 March 29)
- Dalrock: Evidence of a “marriage strike”? (2018 August 30)
- Rob Says: Marriage (2020 September 23)
- Marriage, Sex, and More: Marriage Has Devolved Into A Temporary Arrangement… (2020 September 25)
In sum, the common advice to young men, even Christian men, is “Don’t get married!” But in spite of the inevitable travesty, men continue to be driven into the meat grinder of marriage as it is deemed a fundamental, even necessary element of life itself.
On this point, The Shadowed Knight offered this gem at Spawny’s Space.
“Marriage is all about sex and children. No matter how rich or poor, how dangerous, or any other consideration. If a man can be sure that he will have a woman that will have his and only his children, he will do nearly anything to make it happen. Without that, men go back to the hunter gatherer ways of checking out of society, joining a gang, and meeting only basic survival needs.
Men will create civilization if the only way to get pussy is by building and being civilized. Men will tear civilization apart and raze it to the ground if the only way to get pussy is to be a conqueror. Right now, we are building due to inertia, and that inertia is just about out. Unless men go back to hard paternal control over women, the decay and wear is going to tear this down.”
Ed Hurst goes further to explain that the male drive towards marriage, sex, and procreation is an integral part of God’s plan for us as human beings.
“Everything we can talk about regarding human existence in this world begins with the dire necessity of building a covenant existence, a critical element in shalom. It’s possible you will be alone in this endeavor locally, but the ostensible goal is to build a covenant community. That is the fundamental nature of your walk in Christ. Everything you do must be tied to that essential task in human life.
Naturally that includes sex. There is only one permissible motive in human sexual activity: building up the marriage covenant as part of a covenant community. All other motives make sex evil. Sex can never be right unless it serves a covenant purpose. And of course, Scripture makes it plain as day that the only legitimate sexual activity is between covenant husband and wife. Period. All those legally married couples out there having marital sex outside of a heart-led covenant endeavor are sinning. It’s sin because they are outside the covenant in the first place.
Civil marriage or church weddings are a poor substitute for a genuine heart-led covenant before the Lord. We can stand back and see how they do contribute to civic stability, but in the long run, that is a damned poor substitute for shalom.”
Christians are tempted to throw stones at those men who opt out of marriage (MGTOW), or choose to cohabitate in order to avoid the risks of frivorce and alimony. But the social context of a Covenant marriage, and the resulting Shalom has been completely forgotten. This failure to recognize God and His natural ordination has rendered men as a whole, and especially Christian men, stuck in a d@mnable bind. Something must change, and soon. God Himself won’t tolerate any more.
How I See It
I have sympathy for non Christian men who desire marriage. If 50% of marriages (or more) end in divorce, and 70% are initiated by women, a man has over 1/3 chance of being blindsided with divorce at some point in his life.
Laws and court rulings only reinforce this ruination. Our government encourages divorce by allowing “no fault” divorces, by allowing partners to lie about the root cause of the divorce, and by enforcing precedent that typically works against the male, regardless of circumstances.
How can you encourage God’s institution when our civil government mocks it by allowing frivolous divorce, and punishing the male regardless of circumstances?
Should we as a society discourage divorce by eliminating the benefits of divorce (alimony, spousal support, child support, division of property)?
In the Christian community, should we suggest that if the couple chooses, they don’t have to file a marriage certificate with the county in order for God to recognize their marriage? Should the Christian community find their manhood and protest/sue States over divorce laws?
As far as I am concerned, I see no requirement in scriptures for a person to be married before the civil government (by filing documents). Referencing OT passages only muddles our understanding of this, as the government and faith were intertwined in ancient Israel. It is not clear in scripture how the surrounding nations and people groups officiated their marriages, but it was clear that marriage did exist, and there were well-defined guidelines for things of a sexual nature.
The challenge we face in implementing scripture is that the society we live in today is nothing like the Ancient Near East social structure. Even so, the intellectual problem of how to approach marriage exists, and this may be largely due to the fact that our society is so vastly different from the one our Fathers of the Faith lived in.
Seeking Input
We have seen an influx of churches demanding to be freed from state restrictions on gatherings due to Covid. Yet we don’t see Christians protesting unbiblical family laws that result in inequitable divorce decrees and custody rulings.
I’d like for commenters to share their thoughts on the following approaches towards marriage.
- Filing/recording their marriage with the government.
- Common law marriage (legal in fewer than 15 states).
- Having a wedding ceremony in a church.
- Any other ideas???
I see several sides, pros and cons to each approach, and I am not entrenched with any one view.
I’ll probably be writing on the subject of marriage more as time progresses.
Related
- Σ Frame: Lest we forget, Marriage was once intended to Glorify God (2019 August 8)
- Σ Frame: On the Concept of Sin and the need for Marriage (2020 April 24)
- Σ Frame: The need for Marriage Education (2020 May 15)
- Σ Frame: Only God can grant a successful marriage (2020 May 20)
- Σ Frame: Why is premarital sex a sin? (2020 August 14)
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In Catholicism and Orthodoxy there is sacramental recognition of a marriage. The (contemporary) practice is awful (if Catholic just game the annulment system, I assume Orthodox have an equivalent) but in theory these Churches have their own legal recognition of marriage (marriage tribunals render a legal verdict on validity) and it’s a real as anything. Maybe there could be a Protestant equivalent.
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It’s virtually impossible, given the degree of congregational autonomy in Protestantism, and the fact that people can and do easily move between churches within Protestantism with no issues. It’s more likely that the dinosaurs return to the earth tomorrow than that all Protestants, or even enough for it to make some difference, would agree to have this kind of a system.
Orthodoxy doesn’t have annulments per se (they can annul marriages, but it’s only in limited circumstances like mistaken consanguinuity, non-consummation, actual lack of consent — i.e., person was drugged, etc.). What they have is a “pastoral relaxation” of the bar against remarriage after divorce — this is either exercised by a Bishop himself (the Slav churches tend to do it this way) or through a tribunal (the Greek church does it this way, and will give you an “ecclesiastical divorce”, meaning you can remarry in the Church but your first marriage is not considered to be annulled). The Orthodox do use a different marriage rite for second marriages, however — it isn’t a happy-go-lucky rite, and has a significant penitential character to it.
The Catholic system is enforced very differently in different countries. The US has something like 10% of the Catholics in the world, but accounts for approximately 60% of the total global annual annulments granted in the Roman Catholic Church. In many Catholic countries it isn’t that easy to get an annulment — you have to actually show that there was either fraud, or a complete ignorance of what marriage was in order to say that there was no consent. In the US the tribunals have been convinced by the canon lawyer line of argumentation which says “in a depraved culture like the US, with the poor catechetical standards we have, many or most couples do not understand marriage as the Catholic Church teaches it in a sufficient way to have consented to the requirements of a Catholic marriage, and therefore they should be annulled, and in this specific case X we can see that by reason X …”, where reason X is typically either “one or both parties entered the marriage with the specific intent to contracept” or “one or both parties entered the marriage with the idea that divorce was always an option, regardless of what the Church teaches”. Either of those can be used to demonstrate a “lack of informed and full consent to enter the marriage” in an American Catholic tribunal, such that the marriage can be annulled. I think in the US the percentage of couples married in the Catholic Church who fall into one of those categories is between 95 and 100 percent, so in effect anyone who asks for an annulment and is willing to go through the process (the process is a pain in the *&^&, you have to testify about your marriage and so on) will almost always get one.
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I’d like to see Protestant churches adopt the letter of recommendation system that comes from Acts, where they require the previous church to endorse you.
Unfortunately, most Protestant churches are wrong on ecclesiastical issues (they refuse to connect themselves with churches elsewhere). Denominations were supposed to solve this problem, but they have literally all given in to false teaching
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“so in effect anyone who asks for an annulment and is willing to go through the process (the process is a pain in the *&^&, you have to testify about your marriage and so on) will almost always get one.”
And they have to pay. Big bucks. $10’s of thousands, sometimes much more.
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Had a relative go through it. Took years. Pretty dumb process for an unbiblical view of divorce
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@ Lexet
Zippy died almost 2 years ago.
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I wrote a post to note his passing. RIP
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That’s right. Got my guys confused. There’s another catholic dude who was famous for posting good comments on dalrock, but never started his own blog.
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Novaseeker:
Zippy Catholic expressed the opinion that most US Catholic marriages probably weren’t valid – you have to consent to God’s definition of marriage – if you think two men can marry you probably don’t understand God’s defintion of marriage.
Perhaps the mistake the Church makes is marrying them in the first place.
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Has zippy commented here? Haven’t seen them since dalrock eetired
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KHH — Yep, it’s expensive, too, that’s correct.
Cameron — Yes, I remember when he said that. It may be true, but the solution isn’t to keep marrying them and then keep handing out annulments. In effect, the current practice is to kind of give up on improving catechesis, marry people anyway, and hope for the best. I suppose given the civil divorce rates of Christians overall, including Catholics, that isn’t completely irrational from a pastoral perspective, but it is kind of waving the white flag in terms of trying to actually fix the problem.
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IMO, this puts the cart before the horse.
Strictly speaking, violating God’s standards will have consequences, but it is impossible to completely force those standards to be applied. To a large extent, they have to be embraced voluntarily. That means culture. Let’s walk through the options and see how this applies.
#1: Filing/recording their marriage with the government.
The standard method has all the obvious aforementioned problems. While there are theoretically ways to change laws, the sheer number of different areas that would need reform make the task too daunting. Perhaps you could enact reforms in one area, but pulling this off fully—without first having a widespread Christian grassroots movement in culture—is unlikely. Cthulhu always swims left and he ain’t dead.
#2: Common law marriage (legal in fewer than 15 states).
I see no benefit to the lack of clarity in Common Law marriage to men. Either get married explicitly or don’t, so you can clearly weigh the pros and cons.. Common law marriage is dangerous: it runs the additional risk of court-enforced involuntary marriage. Consider the sap in Canada who was forced to pay support despite being unmarried, having no children, and not even living together.
#3: Having a wedding ceremony in a church.
In states with common law marriages, this can be equivalent to the first two options. In states without common law marriage, let’s consider religious marriage to be a sub-set of this option:
#4: Private contractual marriage
Essentially what we want is to be able to form de-facto marriage based on private contractual terms and only rely on governments to help enforce those requirements without imposing their own standards (i.e. child support; alimony; inheritance). But like mentioned in the first case, this is unrealistic. Governments will regulate anything they can. This will fail for the same reason that prenuptial agreements are often ineffective. #4 is just #1 rebranded with slightly different paperwork requirements.
The elephant in the room is this:
Child and Parentage Rights
No modern society has laws that protect the natural rights of children to have two biological parents. In many cases, babies don’t even have the right to be born, let alone legal protections that ensure their access to biological parentage is prioritized. If they did, then in vitro fertilization would be outlawed and divorce severely restricted.
For example, activist Anne Georgulas was granted full conservatorship of her non-biological son in order to force her to gender transition, against the objections of the child’s biological father. This is a human rights violation of the child’s rights, but America does not recognize the right of a child to be raised by their biological parents. Moreover, in 2012 the Inter-American Court of Humans Rights declared Costa Rica’s ban on IVF to be a human rights violation. Let that sink in.
Read more on the ethical issues here and here.
In modern culture, children are commodities subject to the selfish whims of parents. Unless and until that changes, you cannot reform marriage.
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I’ve adopted three children who are not biologically related to myself, my wife, or our families. They are not even the same race. When I say that children have a natural right to biological parents, I understand exactly what I am saying. Adoption, while wonderful, is not a replacement for children to be with their biological parents. It is only valid as a last resort because the rights of the child (should) trump those of parents or the state.
For additional context, see my arguments in response to Dalrock and commenters.
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children are commodities subject to the selfish whims of parents
And also subject to the selfish whims of those in government and the various bureaucracies/courts. Such as the lawyers and courts that gave Anne Georgulas conservatorship so she could mentally/physically mutilate the male child.
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children are commodities subject to the selfish whims of parents. Unless and until that changes, you cannot reform marriage.
Yes, we unfortunately have switched from a marriage model to a child-support model. This is one of the articles from Dalrock on this topic: https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/the-child-support-catastrophe/
Note that the article was written 9 years ago. We still have no correction for the state-enforced child-support model. Unfortunately I do not see women ever voluntarily giving up their rights to kill their own unborn children, to harm their children through depriving them of their father, or to destroy the man they vowed to “love”.
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Novaseeker touched on most of what I was thinking here, so I will forgo trying to express an opinion that I already know is unpopular in this space.
In a church and culture where there is a documented, witness verified, family agreed upon declaration of marriage apart from civil licensing, then I’m perfectly fine with forgoing civil licenses to marry. There also needs to be a fair number of hoops t jump through to end the marriage, and the church needs to erect those hurdles. Not gonna happen, as Novaseeker pointed out.
However, given the current zeitgeist, I say couples should get a license, Christian or not. In reality, the financial penalty to most men is extremely overstated by men’s rights advocates. Only families structured like ours, where I have been at home for the past 25+ years, spending my youth from age 22 until today in service to the family, are those where the husband would be subject to alimony. Most families aren’t so situated. Most wives work full time, and more and more middle class wives make as much or more money than their husbands.
When there are children, even without a recognized marriage of any kind, the man will be on the hook for a significant monthly payout unless he can manage equal custody. The child support model serves to act as an end run around alimony in a world where most wives work full time. In other words, it’s not the marriage license that causes the man to have to pay out. it’s the children. Men who have never lived with the mothers of their children can tell you that.
So if one rejects marriage licenses as a matter of principle, then okay, fine. Our opinion (and the husband and I were just discussing this yesterday in the wake of learning that our neighbors who has been together 19 years weren’t actually married) is that the piece of paper serves a purpose, even if that purpose is to remind both parties of the gravity of their commitment especially when children are involved, and serving as a barrier to a hasty departure in the heat of emotion.
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When there are children, even without a recognized marriage of any kind, the man will be on the hook for a significant monthly payout unless he can manage equal custody. The child support model serves to act as an end run around alimony in a world where most wives work full time. In other words, it’s not the marriage license that causes the man to have to pay out. it’s the children. Men who have never lived with the mothers of their children can tell you that.
Indeed.
There is a growing trend in some of the counties around here in the DC region for courts to be more open to joint physical custody (i.e., dual parenting) provided that it is the parents, and not the kids, who are shuttled around. In other words, the old marital home is maintained and the kids live there, while the parents are in 2 week (or some other) shifts. When the parents are on the “out” shift they either live in a jointly owned apartment they each use singly during the out shift, or they are in their own places. That kind of arrangement requires a high degree of cooperation, interaction and general amicability, which many couples do not have, but I have seen an increasing number of couples swallow their animosity down and do something like this in the past 10 years or so — the men financially benefit, and the women temporally benefit (more time to do what they want, not single parent almost all the time), and the kids don’t get shuttled around. It’s often more expensive, however, and I don’t know how feasible it is in places where there isn’t as much joint $$$ on the table, so to speak.
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Interesting, but who would share an apartment with their ex?
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I think here in Florida, 50% shared custody is the default. Sometimes, the more ruthless spouse, with a good lawyer, can do better than that and I’m not only referring to the woman – men sometimes win – I have seen cases where an asshole husband screws a wife over royally.
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Generally speaking, when the husband is an asshole that screws the wife over and the court sides with him, it’s because he isn’t an asshole, and the wife was a bitch
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Lexet —
You’re not living there at the same time, just like you’re not living in the house where the kids are at the same time. You jointly own both spaces and are in each “one at a time”. If you’re willing to share the house with the kids with your ex (which is how these situations work as well), then some people are more willing to share the “off shift” apartment as well. Others opt for their own, separate, places where they live when they are not living in the house with the kids — for the reason you mention.
It’s all fairly new, though, at least around here.
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It sounds like a concept a guy came up with, but not sure how it could work irl. I’m also not a fan of altering your entire existence so the children are the center of it. I’d rather have both people maintain separate homes and move the kids on a bi monthly basis.
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@ Lexet,
IDK maybe, I know two cases where the guy was a genuine asshole – there may be twenty cases for my two that are the other way around – who knows.
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“In other words, the old marital home is maintained and the kids live there, while the parents are in 2 week (or some other) shifts.”
Which will work only for upper middle class on up households where both parents work full time. You basically have to maintain at least two households. This is a practical impossibility for anyone else, because the money just won’t be there to do this. What’s more, UMC’s on up, dual income households, are the folks least likely to divorce, precisely because they’re trying to conserve and marshal resources for the kids.
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It would also only work if the parents maintained an abstinent, dateless free life after the fact.
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SO I’m trying to think about maintaining a 1 BR apartment in my locale. Projected monthly expenses:
Rent: $750
Electricity: $200
Water, trash pickup – included in rent
TV/Internet: at least $100
Food/toiletries: $300 (because whoever is living there eats and does personal care there)
Furnishings: $2500-$5000 (one time purchase) – includes full size bedroom set, living room furniture, TV, dinette, silverware, dinnerware, cookware, bath materials, bed linens. And this is on the cheap side, assuming you can get used furniture. And bath materials and bed linens must be replaced every so often.
Right there is $1250 per month, every month, absolute bare bones, bare necessities going through life (not counting TV/internet, but most people are not going to live without TV/internet).
How many married folks splitting up do you know of that can spare another $1250 every month for another place?
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Very few. That’s why the house is almost always sold, or one gets the home and the other gets everything else, or pays less.
Divorce and estate battles are the costliest form of warfare over the dumbest shit
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How many married folks splitting up do you know of that can spare another $1250 every month for another place?
Yes it only works where there is $$$, and the ones I have seen have two professional level incomes.
In one of these situations it can be better for the guy, and for the kids. Let’s say a situation where the combined household is 250k, split 125k each. Under the old approach, the kids go to ex-W, ex-H sees the kids two weekends a month, and he pays her 50% of the total monthly support amount — so if the formula in the state says the monthly support amount is 20% of combined gross income, the total support amount is 62.5k per year, and H pays W, $31k per year and he has to pay his own 1200 a month in rent anyway, because he is moving out of the house. In that scenario, with respect to the house, the house is either sold and the equity is divided or W either lives in the house and uses the payment from H and her own income to pay the mortgage, with the husband getting his portion of the home equity in the form of distribution of other assets or allocating more liabilities to the wife. Either way, W uses a combination of her income and his payments to her to pay for the mortgage of where she is living.
Under the new approach, the house is kept, each of H and W pay 50% of the mortgage payment, each lives in the house 50% of the time and is joint physical parent, so there is either no child support payment or a small one (to cover any income differentials that exist — people rarely have the exact same income as in my example) and the couple either shares the cost of a jointly owned “off shift” residence that they move in and out of, or they each shoulder the individual cost of a new place. The actual cash cost to the H is around the same in both cases, because he has to pay the cost of two residences anyway, through his own rent and child support (which is as expensive as a mortgage or rent is, if not more), and in this scenario he gets 50% of the kids and all of that time with them. It’s costly for the wife, though, because she foregoes the child support windfall, so women generally only go for this (courts will never impose this … it’s only done where the couple agrees to it themselves and proposes it to the court) where they have a high income of their own and are comfortable making the trade in personal/professional “time off” from being a full time single mother for no or little C/S. It also ties up the debt and equity of the house — again, this isn’t an issue for higher income couples, but in lower income situations, that equity will be needed by one or both parties to start over independently again, so it isn’t feasible to do. It also requires that everyone gets along, because everyone is tied together financially and in terms of equity ownership for some time while the kids are growing up. But from the H’s point of view it generally is not more expensive because for him it’s an exchange of his free time (which goes way down, and has costs on his career and personal life) for the cost of C/S, which also goes way down — the other side of the coin for the wife.
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If you are married fewer than 10 years with no children, yes, the financial impact isn’t much. If you have a child and are married for any term of years, you now owe child support (determined by the court, and it’s always way more than what it actually costs to take care of a child) until the kid is 18. Married more than 10 years, and now they have access to portions of retirement income, Medicare benefits, etc.
With divorce (let’s say 6 year marriage, 1 kid), presume the guy is going to spend 5-10k on attorneys to deal with custody, etc. that’s combined with a loss of discretionary income, as he has to move (presume another 5k in expenses), pay even than when he was married more to support his kid, etc.
Given that most women with kids move closer to her family after divorce, the man will probably have to follow for purposes of custody/visitation.
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A guy here at work got screwed by his wife – the child support judgement was so much that he lost his security clearance (defense industry) and thus his job. He was considered too much risk because of his new liabilities – she destroyed his ability to pay child support with the child support judgement itself – talk about killing the Golden Goose.
At that point, why not just go to jail – do they send you to a federal pound-you-in-the-@$$ prison for non-payment?
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State prison
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I know for a fact that a dad (if ever married to the mom or not) who wants access to his kid(s) and a decent settlement that takes into account all the variables on the part of both parents, can rack up legal fees. Not nearly as much as a man going through a divorce, but my point still stands: it’s not the marriage license that makes the difference legally, it’s the presence of children.
This is especially true since couples that aren’t wealthy are probably those where the man and wife have a similar income, or she may even make more if they both work full time. Over the years we’ve been in the social circles of all three. Couples like us, with husband as breadwinner and wife at home. Wealthy couples where the wife works (usually part time to stay relevant) but the man makes a lot more money, and a very common theme when both work full time but are not UMC+ is the wife makes as much, and sometimes even more, than the husband.
It’s not 1960, or 1990 even, and the economic landscape surrounding marriage is a lot more complex than it was just 20 years ago.
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An observation brought up here: the wealthy (millionaire) men I know who have working wives, all have wife’s who are professionals or high income earners (compared to rest of the market) in their own right. It’s a power couple thing where both parties are in different worlds but benefit off of their relationship
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Lexet —
Yes, although this depends on the locale. I think in some smaller cities it is still not uncommon for one substantial breadwinner (usually the man) to have a stay home full time spouse, without this resulting in the person/couple being an outlier against professional/economic/cultural peers.
In the larger cities, and certainly in the coastal metros, this is not the case, and hasn’t been the case for some time. 80%+ of highly-compensated men are married to women who at the time of marriage were either (a) in similarly highly-compensated jobs or (b) in lower paying jobs that require the same degree of prestige education and degrees as those in group (a) (i.e., folks who work in non-profits, or professional level in government agencies, or who are academics). There are very few guys in this category who are married to women who simply have a college degree, and no further education or prestige job (regardless of compensation) which is “on the same level”, socially/culturally, as the rest of the “educated metropolitan class”.
Now, after the wedding, it varies as to what happens next once the kids arrive. There are a number of cases where the wife (it’s almost always the wife, the number of cases where I have seen it in reverse is not zero, but it is very small) decides to leave her professional gig (again whether high-powered, non-profit, or academic) and be a full time mom, at least for a number of years. But this decision is “acceptable” in this social group because it is seen as being a “choice” — that is, it’s acceptable socially because “Jennifer could have become a partner at Dewey, Cheatham and Howe if she wanted to, but she chose to be a full time mother because she just loves her kids so much, isn’t that sweet?!?”, and not the case of “Julie never had the option of becoming a law firm partner, because she was never on that level, sadly”, accompanied by muttering and head-shakes, from the men and women alike. That is, Jennifer here has what Dalrock used to call the “feminist merit badge” — she could be as high powered as her husband, but she chooses not to be, and we have to respect her choice, don’t we — after all, she’s just as high powered as her husband is! That is contrasted with a choice to marry a low powered spouse, which is not socially supported in a culture where couples generally pair up by rather strict assortative strata based on education and professional level.
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I know several couples where the wife left their profession by letting credentials lapse, essentially forcing husband to be sole earner. Guess what the women later did? Divorced them.
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Yep, that’s always a risk where you are the sole earner — she will decide to cash out, and the system is set up to let her cash out extremely well under those specific circumstances. You’re basically sunk if that is your scenario unless your wife is an axe-murderer or something.
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So what typically happens when the woman is a stay at home, uneducated type, say high school only? She can’t claim she forsook a high-paying career?
“That is contrasted with a choice to marry a low powered spouse, which is not socially supported in a culture..”
Al Bundy told you what to look for in a wife:
“Hooters, hooters, yum, yum, yum! Hooters, hooters on a blonde that’s dumb!” – Ed O’Neill/Al Bundy
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So what typically happens when the woman is a stay at home, uneducated type, say high school only? She can’t claim she forsook a high-paying career?
The women in the peer group kind of shun her (“she isn’t one of us”), while the men in the peer group often privately either lust after her (if she merits that) or envy the guy, while publicly supporting their wives disdain (of course). Some of the “true believer” type men will try to dissuade guys from marrying such a woman prior to the fact (“don’t you think you’d prefer someone else as the mother of your kids? I mean, you went to Harvard …” type of line), but it isn’t that common — guys are generally still hands-off more or less with each other. The reprobation comes primarily from the women, which should not be surprising. In general, and involving things far removed from this issue, women are the ones who set the social rules and enforce them through social passive aggression like shunning, and men enforce that by going along — it only rarely originates with men, if ever.
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I guess I also mean “what typcially happens to a husband when an uneducated wife divorces him?”
I assume she can’t claim she was going to go to Harvard and become a neurosurgeon or whatever.
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Ah. No, the argument used for support is different — it’s not based on foregone income as much as it is based on de facto long term dependency and a reasonable expectation for that to continue for some period — this is a stronger case if the marriage was longer, and the dependency/support during the marriage was longer, thereby creating a greater expectation of continued support (per the argument).
Generally speaking, if you have a SAHM spouse and get divorced, you’re going to pay, regardless. If you live in a lifetime alimony state, it’s worse, and if you live in a state that cuts off alimony, it’s better, but either way you’ll pay.
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Well I’m channeling my inner @$$h0le and going on record (bravely under a pseudonym) to say that men should only have to pay for 25% of the basic expense of raising each of their children unless they marry a unicorn/virgin since we can’t be sure we have complete paternity. Losing 25% should be the fair price that women pay for micro-cuckolding men through hypergamy-AF/BB. Maybe a Chad tax can make up the difference.
Click to access Telegony,%20the%20Sire%20Efect%20and%20non-Mendelian%20Inheritance%20Mediated%20by%20Spermatozoa.pdf
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Child support payments are based on magical charts that require you to pay more if you make more.
There should be a standard payment across the board, which is Essentially a poverty line for raising a kid.
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Click to access Telegony,%20the%20Sire%20Efect%20and%20non-Mendelian%20Inheritance%20Mediated%20by%20Spermatozoa.pdf
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Can’t seem to post link to pdf so search for “Telegony, the sire effect and non-mendelian inheritance mediated by spermatozoa: a historical overview and modern mechanistic speculations” and “pdf” for the full text.
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Standard payment across the board should be 50% of poverty line for raising a kid when the wife is a unicorn, with said unicorn supplying the other 50% since women are equal. The other 99% of women should get 25% of poverty line for raising a kid with the other 25% coming from an AF/BB-strategy tax on strong and independent women and/or from a Chad tax.
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Info on marriage licenses:
http://www.freedom-school.com/lewis-mohr/concerning-marriage-license.html
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You can have private covenant marriages, but the state will still be involved if these private covenant marriages end. That’s because the state and court systems will be called on anyway to resolve disputes where the church cannot or does not. The state got into the marriage business and outlawed common law marriage for this reason: “If you’re going to ask us judges and lawyers to determine divorce rights, we have to be able to determine with certainty who’s legally married. So if you want us to decide what divorce is, we have to be able to determine what marriage is.”
The state also doesn’t want ex spouses and kids going on the public dole because breadwinners aren’t supporting their kids. Alimony is largely a thing of the past except where one party functions primarily as breadwinner and the other is a financial dependent. Almost all the time, that’s the husband. That’s why alimony and child support are what they are, together with the “deadbeat dad” phenomenon. The attitude is “men who sire children need to be required to pay so that they don’t become welfare or charity cases. Where a responsible man is found who can pay, he must be required to pay.” The emphasis is on getting money from them so the State does not pay.
The point is that the State will be involved in this no matter what Churches do.
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The point is that the State will be involved in this no matter what Churches do.
Yep.
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Covenant marriages only function as such as long as both parties abide by the covenant. The minute one party decides to break it, it’s only a matter of time before the State gets involved.
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“Consider the sap in Canada who was forced to pay support despite being unmarried, having no children, and not even living together.”
State gets involved when there is no marriage, kids or co-habitation.
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It probably has Canadian PayPal donors trembling. Haven’t read the case, but Canada has had palimony for a long time
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Some states have covenant marriages. Not sure if that’s what you are talking about. In those, the state is more involved, as the divorce process is longer. Even if one cheats, and gives you cause to divorce, you still have to go through 1 year of counseling (increasing the cost).
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State gets involved.
Various cultures have wrapped their own traditions around marriage, but none of them are normative. What matters is that all parties hold to the covenant. It is the only ‘approach’ to marriage that can work. Changing the way marriage is established (per the examples listed in the OP) can only have a minimal impact. I think we all agree that any improvements involve getting the State less involved in all facets of marriage.
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“The state also doesn’t want ex spouses and kids going on the public dole because breadwinners aren’t supporting their kids”
Just the opposite. The state encourages this. As do all employers and colleges. I know couples that gamed the system by not legally marrying.
Only downside is you lose a small amount on deductions- which over a 10 year period won’t cover divorce anyways (I’ll have to post on this in the future, it’s in draft stages now. Essentially: no tax benefit to marriage).
The only time you benefit from legally marrying is if one spouse will stay at home and either not work or work from home on a part time basis.
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The state will be involved in child support (should the woman make it an issue) regardless of marital statuts
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I’ve heard that a lot of people in Australia prefer a common law arrangement over marriage simply because marriage puts them in a higher tax bracket with fewer government benefits. This of course leads to some men having children with more than one woman and all kinds of living arrangements.
Without laws and customs in place to shape the institution of marriage, human mating reverts to a state of nature (e.g. soft harems, hypergamy, extended families, etc.).
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Some rapper in Atlanta has ~ 35 kids by 7-8 women I think.
Not sure what the living arrangements are, just know he’s not paying child support for 35 kids, but the tax payers sure are.
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One would think that we would have a marriage benefit that actually benefits the couple. In the US the only benefit comes when combined income is 50-70k
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The fact that the tax codes of most nations in the Anglosphere, if not the rest of the western world disincentivize marriage should serve as a pretty solid indication of the State’s overt hostility toward the institution.
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In general, and involving things far removed from this issue, women are the ones who set the social rules and enforce them through social passive aggression like shunning, and men enforce that by going along — it only rarely originates with men, if ever.
I know that this happens, but I find it stunning nonetheless. My husband would never in a million years support my shunning of a woman for education/class reasons. Not overtly, and not tacitly as such a thing is a clear violation of Scripture. But even if we weren’t believers, he’s not built such that he would support and allow his wife to behave that way unchallenged.
He would however, have grave reservations (and I’m being mild here) if I attempted to continue a friendship with a woman who frivolously divorced or committed adultery, and it wouldn’t matter how many women in our social circle supported her in it. I’d have to find new friends.
It sounds like high school.
The sheer stupidity and lack of congruent thinking among our current educated and so-called leadership classes should be enough to make any person think twice about wanting to socialize with them anymore than absolutely necessary.
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