Should marriage be scrapped?

As usual, Rob puts some interesting quotes on the "twentyninethehardway"... but I always want respond... this is the best way I can respond (not entirely satisfactory).

"Most marriages go through dull or wretched patches and some are a cloak for verbal and physical abuse."
Surely, this is actually talking about long-term relationships where the respect between partners has dissolved, where the passion has burned itself out and the day-to-day drudgery of bringing up families, stresses from work or the coma of the commute has taken its toll. This isn't an excuse to stop trying and marriage itself has nothing to do with the dull or wretched patches. There's no argument for marriage to be scrapped here surely?


"Children brought up in two parent families live longer, happier, more law-abiding lives."
I find this easy to believe, but again, I don't particularly believe it is related to marriage. I was the result of a seemingly happy marriage. I am not saying that my parents went round kicking leaves together every autumn and picking flowers in the spring, but I have lived as a part of a normal marriage which fell apart and I have lived with a single parent (although I wasn't always around and they weren't my formative years). I can say, that from my experience that although I can't say that my father has not had a large number of positive influences on my life, I can fully understand that the longer, happier lives is probably something to do with security. Financial security, emotional security and a moral security. It extremely difficult for a single person to provide all of this 100% of the time and therefore redundancy is the name of the game. Extrapolating this wouldn't make sense. For example, a four parent family (i.e. two two-parent families) would actually impact upon the security of the children by actually presenting two family units, which despite all best efforts, would provide a source of insecurity / instability and conflict.

Conflict begets conflict. (put that one on your site Rob!)


"Co-habiting couples on average break up much more than married couples. Why do couples break up?"

I find this the most interesting of facts. I can't explain it any other way than it possibly suggesting that the actual commitment of marriage does actually provide some impetus to keeping the marriage together. Putting this together with the previous quotes - it would appear that marriage is a good thing, not a bad one!

My personal view is that when I am in the lucky position to have a family, then I would like it to be within a marriage (doesn't matter whose marriage! Only joking). This is not because I am religious, and it is not because that I think without it I will be unable to hold together a family unit. Actually, it would appear that this may be social conditioning... which shows what a strong force that is in the light of me being a cast-off from a failed marriage!