Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection
THE CASE AGAINST MATRIMONY
If marriage is risky, doomed and expensive, why bother?

By Larissa Phillips

Nov. 18, 1999 | The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University
recently announced the findings of a new study: The marriage rate has
dropped 43 percent since 1960, and increasing numbers of young people are
choosing to stay unmarried. The U.S. Census Bureau came out with related
big news last week: The number of babies born to unwed parents has
increased fivefold since the 1930s, owing, for the most part, to more and
more couples rejecting marriage, even after the birth of a child.

Suddenly everyone is scrambling to understand.

Well, I get it, and I didn't have to scramble to understand. In fact, what
interests me is not why the members of my generation (X, if you will) are
getting married less, but why anyone is surprised. What did everyone --
i.e., the baby boomers -- expect?

As the unmarried mother of a new baby, I am the object of much indignant
scrutiny among the older generations, who seem to have conveniently
forgotten the past 30 years, in which almost everyone I know has been
emotionally pummeled in some way by divorce.

As my boyfriend asked at a recent family gathering, while playing a board
game in which you have to prompt the other players to supply a particular
word: "What must you do before you get married?" The answer, of course:
get
divorced. My father and his wife thought this was hilarious.

And yet aging boomers seem shocked and befuddled that someone would choose
to avoid the whole swampy mess of broken vows and failed traditions that
they've left in their wake.

People over 40 flinched with disdain when I first announced my pregnancy.
"Oh," they would exclaim, barely masking their disapproval. "And ... what
do your parents think?" They struggled to understand my lack of panic.
"Are
you going to keep it?" they asked, wide-eyed.

As if the '60s, '70s and '80s never happened. As if at least one-third of
marriages don't fail. As if everyone in my family and my boyfriend's
family, grandparents included, hadn't broken their marriage vows. At least
once.

"What's with all these people in our family having babies without getting
married?" my middle-aged uncle (who is divorced and recently broke up with
his live-in girlfriend) asked my 40-ish aunt (who recently divorced her
husband because he'd taken up with a married woman, who is now his third
wife; my aunt is now living with her boyfriend).

The worst is from my parents. "Marriage is very important," my mother
said.
"It establishes a bond that you just can't get otherwise." I wanted to
argue with her, but she was getting ready to leave the country with her
new
husband. They spend their summers at their cottage up in Nova Scotia, a
good 20-hour trip away from the rest of us.

"Studies show that married couples are better off financially than single
people," my father's youngish second wife insisted. It's probably true
that
she is better off financially since marrying my father, but I wasn't sure
how that applied to me. When my boyfriend and I looked into getting
married, we found out that we would pay an extra $2,000 each year in
taxes.
If marriage is risky, doomed and expensive, well, why bother?

"You just should," my father offered in that magnanimous, ain't-life-grand
manner he developed shortly after re-entering the singles scene when I was
a teenager. My father is big on the "shoulds" of life, with some reason.
He
has always done everything he was supposed to, even as a divorced father;
he never even bad-mouthed my mom (nor did she ever trash him, for that
matter).

But the fact that my parents divorced well -- and they really did --
doesn't grant them immunity from their actions. The fact that my uncles
and
aunts and grandparents and family friends felt they had absolutely no
choice other than to divorce doesn't change the outcome. They still got
divorced, all of them. They still showed my generation, by example and by
forcing us to go along with their example, that marriage was something
easily and amicably exited from.

Marriage, they said, was not that big of a deal. Premarital sex is fine.
(Or at least that's what they implied when they presented their boyfriends
and girlfriends at the breakfast table -- before we were even out of high
school.) Families, they said, do not need to stay together if things
become
too boring.

I would have more sympathy for divorced people if their lives had improved
by getting out of terrible marriages that (apparently) couldn't be
survived
for another moment. But the ones I'm familiar with continue to associate
with flawed human beings.

These second and third marriages still seem to require work, and still
have
shortcomings. My mother and father, for example, still struggle with the
same issues that plagued their marriage to each other. The only difference
is, older and wiser, they both seem more willing to compromise, to
sacrifice and to accept.

I am not whining about or regretting the events of the last three decades.
When my parents divorced in the late '70s, we children went along with it
like troupers. When they started bringing home boyfriends and girlfriends
in the '80s, we ultimately accepted these new people into our family.
Sometimes, the new people went away. And we dealt with the divorces and
separations all over again. And accepted the new people all over again.
Fine. Exhausting, but fine.

It's a wonder we 18- to 35-year-olds even have the energy to date. (And
maybe some of us don't.) But for myself, the scattered, patchwork concept
of family I grew up with has only increased my quest for commitment. I've
seen firsthand the pain and futility of divorce culture and I don't intend
to relive it, or to drag my children through the nightmare of watching
their parents flirt with strangers.

My decision not to marry does not indicate a desire for a life of
debauchery and half-formed commitments. Quite the opposite: With our new
baby, our nightly sit-down dinners and our impending mortgage, my
boyfriend
and I are hardly bucking the system. But we also have no fantasies about
coasting through the next 50 years on the coattails of a weakened and
disparaged contract that, thanks to boomer innovation, now includes
options
like pre-nup clauses.

Considering everything we've seen, bearing the weight of our relationship
on our own backs seems a hell of a lot wiser than leaning on the
white-laced and satin-cummerbunded follies of our parents. Thanks, but
we're looking for more than just a party, a round of toasts and a validity
stamp from Uncle Sam to get us to that golden anniversary.

Our parents, on the other hand, seem to believe in marriage more than they
do in monogamy. Like I said, that's fine. Every generation has its torch
to
carry. But when this particular generation, which grooved to its own beat
and stomped on every tradition that seemed too square, too inhibiting or
just plain boring, turns around with nostalgia in its eyes and questions
my
choices, I have to protest.

My generation would just as soon steer clear of the fatuous, feel-good
mess
of getting divorced and remarried. The tradition that was passed down to
us
-- in which divorce is a logical and expected conclusion to a marriage --
is one we would just as soon pass by.

Boomers have as much of a right to get down on us for this decision as we
would to criticize our offspring for not working hard enough or saving for
retirement. What does everyone expect? For better or worse, you contribute
to the culture you live in.

Of course marriage is on the decline. But don't blame us.

The boomers started it.

salon.com | Nov. 18, 1999

Larissa Phillips is a freelance writer in Brooklyn.
Copyright © 1999 Salon.com All rights reserved.
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