Marriage In Today’s World
By Julia A. Keirns
In view of the fact that so many marriages end in divorce, why do so many people continue to get married?
In the United States today, marriage remains an important institution. Experts note that getting married is one way people can show their family and friends they have a successful personal life. It is like the ultimate merit badge.
In the midst of the breakdown of the nuclear family, many couples today yearn for the 1950’s idea of a loving, happy family and think that marriage is the way to achieve it. Single people still need practical, financial and emotional support and think marriage gives them that stability. There seems to be the idea that the 1950’s nuclear style family is normal, and it makes people feel somehow that in order to be normal they must be married. Marriage just seems to be the natural next step in a relationship.
Additionally, if couples want to be parents and have children, there is also this idea that if they are not married their children will be born out of wedlock, or God forbid that bad word from the past (a bastard). America is still a “Christian” nation, and so a lot of people still hold to the Christian ideals that they should be married in order to be “right with God.” But Christian or not, divorce rates are still high.
Americans place high emphasis on the ideal of romantic love as a basis for marriage and other intimate relationships and on the importance of marriage. It is this high value placed on “romantic love” that seems to be part of the cause of the high rate of divorce and re-marriage to someone else. Romance fades with time and it is hard to stay infatuated with the same person for years and years. So, in the search for renewed passion, comes affairs, divorce and remarriage.
Another push for marriage is the legal aspect of benefits. Insurance companies, banks and other legal institutions have made it practically impossible for the co-habitating couple to legally have any rights to the other partners assets unless they are married and have that legal piece of paper stating the fact. So, people marry by law just for the benefits.
The view of marriage in the United States does seem to be changing and declining though with the rise of such movements as the Me Too movement and the LGBTQ movement. It is not so “normal” anymore to be a heterosexual couple happily married with 2.5 children and a house with a white picket fence. That idea of a family is becoming the minority.
I believe people still get married because they want to be (or feel) normal, they still believe that true love can last forever, and they still want those fairy tale endings. People want life to be perfect and so they do what they think they need to do to attain happiness. There is always hope that life will be good, and so they take that step of marriage somehow thinking it will make life better. Life is not always greener on the other side of the fence and people need to know that whatever type of family life they have is ok as long as they are happy. Truly, marriage does not in itself make a person happy. Anymore it really is just a piece of paper. The relationship is the same whether married or not. If you are not committed being an unmarried couple, then you will not be committed once you get married.
PS — My husband and I are fortunate enough to have been married almost 35 years. It definitely has not always been easy. There are good years and bad years. But it has been worth all the trouble and effort. He is my best friend and I would not want to do life with anyone else.