Wednesday, July 30, 2008
A Marriage Made in Eden, Part 3 of 15
Guest: Gay Hubbard
IDEA: Many people today seek to have the "benefits" of marriage without the constraints of marriage.
PURPOSE: To help listeners discern the values lying behind cohabitation.
Q: Yesterday we talked about why people jump into marriage. Why SHOULD people get married?
A:That's a question that cuts two ways. On the one hand, a lot of people today are saying that they can have the "benefits" of marriage without benefit of marriage. So the question could be asked by someone considering cohabitation instead of marriage.
But the question [Why should people get married?] cuts in the other direction by raising the issues of choosing the right reasons for getting married. Too many people jump from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.
Q: But let's go back to that first cut: What about the people today who are saying they can have the "benefits" of marriage without the benefit of a marriage license and a wedding ceremony? [On p. 62 in A Marriage Made In Eden you ask,] Why the dramatic increase in the number of people saying "I don't" to marriage but "I do" to cohabitation?
Gay, you wrote two outstanding chapters in this book on cohabitation in American culture today. What did you find in all of your research?
A:Back in May 2001 Dr. David Popenoe, the co-director of the Rutgers National Marriage Project, testified before the House of Representatives. He summarized the situation in America today in these words: "Marriage as the basis of family life continues to decline in America. Since 1970 the rate of marriage has dropped by about one-third, the out-of-wedlock birth ration has gone from 11 percent to 33 percent of all births, the divorce rate has doubled, and the number of people living together outside of marriage has grown by over 1,000 percent. "
Q: Those are staggering statistics. What seems to be driving them?
A:Three things seem to be contributing to this upsurge in cohabitation. The first is the fact that we live in a culture in flux and change. Everything is changing, so logically I need to structure my relationships so that change is easy. Changing cohabitation partners is presumably easier than changing marriage partners.
I think that a second contributing factor is that a lot of people recognize the risks and dangers of intimacy. They think that cohabitation is safer. I can more easily run if I need to do so. We want intimacy but we're also afraid of intimacy because maybe we won't be able to hide when we want to.
Then the third contributing factor is the way the definitions of "the good self" and "the good life" have changed. The current "good self" or "good life" is highly individualistic, focused on the individual's needs, on self-fulfillment. In the current culture, the "good self" or the "good life" is not a tired woman with commitments to do the family laundry, take the dog to the vet, organize the kids' car pool, who at the same time is willing to volunteer to work an extra shift for a sick colleague at work. Going home to a live-in partner seems "cool" – taking care of the individual self and nothing more. Going home to a marriage and a family—that's a role in the context of the common good and the welfare of others that people in our culture do not regard as "cool."
Gay, I think you captured this in a quote from an unpublished dissertation: "When the individual is a creator of truth, personal preference becomes the standard of what is right, personal experience becomes the standard of what is real, and personal desire is the standard of what is best." When these are the values people bring to relationships, then the goal of marriage becomes the personal quest for meaning and fulfillment. If a sense of the good changes, then everything is open for revision.
