Dear George,

Thanks for posting Brad Wilcox's remarks [at the Albemarle/Charlottesville Democratic Breakfast] on your site. The topic was quite a provocative one, particularly given some of the recent media attention given to marriage and the relative status of men and women.

For instance, the women's magazine Harper's Bazaar this month has a feature titled "why every woman needs a wife" (hey, sounds good to me!). The Wash Post's Outlook Section this past Sunday mentions a study that shows that men have increased the amount of time they spend on housework by four hours a week (since 1965) while women have decreased their weekly housework by 13 hours. The Wash Post also reported recently that the salary gap between men and women, which had been shrinking, is now widening.

I've given a lot of thought to the marriage issue over the years, both personally (I maintained for my whole life until I got married that I would never get married, because marriage primarily existed for the benefit of men) and sociologically (I majored in sociology and my studies focused on gender).

There are a lot of questions that occur to me around the institution of marriage, and Brad's talk made me think more about some of these.

For instance, I remember that years ago, a study was done that showed that women were usually the ones who moved to divorce. Is this still true? And, if so, why? (besides the obvious reasons, of course).

And, is it not rather a Victorian notion that women should be responsible for "civilizing" men? Should they not learn to be civilized on their own? Also, the very notion that men's behavior improves upon marriage may be mistaken. What if they are just displacing their antisocial and aggressive behavior from the venue of the "tavern" to the venue of the home? It may be less visible, but the consequences for society are no less great -- I would say, far greater, in fact, because at least anti-social behavior taking place outside the home is not affecting the children within the home.

The notion of a "marriage movement" to fix social ills is quite scary to me. Marriage, as Brad points out, is both public and private. Every society practices marriage in some form. And in almost all societies, marriage not only serves to formalize things such as consolidation and inheritance of wealth and property, paternal support of children, and control of sexual behavior, but also control of women. Maybe women are less willing to be controlled?

While I think that a formalized and legal relationship between two people, particularly that social unit that people consider to be the norm, a man and a woman, has many potential benefits for individuals and their children as well as for society, I worry that focusing on marriage as the way to fix society is going down the wrong path. Throwing a bandaid (billboards promoting marriage?) at people in our society who currently do not see marriage as beneficial to them does not seem likely to have much affect.

And, I worry about the women who stay in marriages despite the violent and/or irresponsible behavior of their husbands. Is the marriage movement going to make it still harder for them to leave? (think "covenant marriage.")

What about the social perception that when men marry they are getting a "ball and chain" and that women are just out to "snare" a man and finagle him into marrying her? This would indicate a deep-rooted ambivalence on the part of men in our society to marry. How is a "marriage movement" going to address this ambivalence, and the behavior of those men who are not "civilized" enough to either get married or stay married? Is promoting marriage enough, or are there real problems in our post-industrial society that need fixing? The Wash Post (again, past sunday's outlook section) reports that men get depressed when their wives make more money. When (if?) women have equal earning power, how will that affect marriage? And, while statistics may show that men who are married make more money, I doubt most young men have that perception. Is men's sense of entitlement affecting marriage? Maybe they'd rather spend their money on cars than on a family.

And why would a women's magazine tell women they need a wife, unless there was something fundamentally wrong with the structure of marriage in our society, and women's position within that structure? Maybe women are tired of being wives. Maybe they want partnerships in which they are treated as equals, with respect. Another study that was reported a few years ago (in the NYT, maybe?) showed that the happiest marriages were the ones where the husbands deferred to their wives in decision making -- or at least listened and gave them credence. Men who feel threatened if their wives gain in income or status relative to them, who feel they have to be the "man" and assert authority in the home, or who feel disempowered in the workplace and therefore act out their need for power and control on their families, or who feel they do not need to be equally responsible for family tasks, are not good marriage partners. If women are indeed the ones who precipitate divorce, maybe these reasons need to be addressed before we can expect marriages to last.

In short, I doubt a "marriage movement" focused on making more marriages happen will work. If people don't marry, it's probably not because they just forgot. If we're concerned about low rates of marriage because marriage is an important building block of society, then maybe we should see what's wrong with the brick factory instead of just saying "the bricks are crumbling, we need more bricks!"

Despite my own long-standing distrust of marriage as an institution of benefit to women, and despite my own bad experience of marriage, I actually have a higher opinion of marriage now than I did before. But I also have a greater understanding of why marriages fail.

Finally, I left with the Malvina Reynolds song echoing in my brain:

"It says in Coronet Magazine
June 1956 Page Ten
That married women are not as happy
As women who have no men.
Married women are cranky
Frustrated and disgusted
While single women are bright and gay
Creative, and well-adjusted..."

Sour grapes, no doubt.

Valerie L'Herrou (electronic mail, March 18, 2002)

P.S. The Sunday Post also (not Outlook this time -- A section if I remember aright) reported on the Delaware court decision to grant the female ex-partner of a woman visitation of, and mandate child support for, the couple's child (the biological mother retained custody). If the courts (not in Virginia -- but Delaware isn't exactly San Francisco, either) are recognizing both the rights and the responsibilities of parents in dissolved same-sex unions, does this not auger well for the fact that same-sex couples can provide similar benefits for society as do traditional heterosexual marriages? (someone at the breakfast pointed out that if a goal of marriage is to keep men out of "taverns" [i love that quaint term] then marriage between two men would double the benefit by keeping them both out of trouble).