Iconoclastic thinking about families and marriage.

[Cleita]

First, marriage and family are really two different institutions, so why do the moral, religious minority try to make us think they go hand in hand? Families get formed when children come into the equation. One doesn’t have to be married to start a family. One doesn’t need a known father to start a family. All one needs is a mother and her children.

In the animal kingdom, also an extended family could include grown male children and male siblings that stay with the herd or family until the matriarch dies and a new one takes her place. This is the natural nuclear family invented by Mother Nature.

Now marriage is a contract between two consenting adults who agree to share their lives and their property in an equal partnership. It doesn't have anything to do with creating families. Having children and creating a family traditionally is done within a marriage, but it’s not about starting a family. As I said before any woman can start a family without the conventions of marriage. I entered a marriage contract but I didn’t have a family. I promised the better and for worse, sickness and in health oath and this is really what marriage is about.

In the early years of my marriage, I went through some rough spots and couldn’t have really navigated them very well alone without the help and loving support of my spouse. He took the good along with the bad and worked to make it better. This was part of the contract. When he got old and fell ill, I spent a decade up to his death being his caregiver. Now it was my turn to honor the terms of the contract. This is what we signed up for.

This seems to be lost on the conservatives, whose personal lives are a litany of dumping their spouses when things aren’t going right, like the wife gets cancer, or maybe has a spate of alcoholism, they need help with. These are the things we are supposed to do when we get married. We need to try everything before we give up on the partner we signed on the dotted line to share our lives with, hopefully, until the death ends it part.

If one spouse doesn’t honor their part of the contract by being abusive, by not carrying their weight of the responsibilities of the contract, by being deadbeats, then there should be grounds for ending the contract. Yet, a divorce will not end a family. Mothers and fathers will still be that to their children. Siblings will still be related. The family will still be there intact, if the adults see to it that it continues to function in spite of the end of the marriage.

So you see family values and marriage have very little to do with each other. IMHO

[Deep13]

1. "why do the moral, religious minority "

The Fundies are a minority, but I don't know that religious people generally or those who purport to value "morals", whatever that might mean, are. Most people implicitly assume that a marriage is for procreation. That is not a view that I share and do not intend to have any curtain-climbers.

>>>"One doesn’t need a known father to start a family."

Depends what you mean by 'need'. Sure a mother and her children can survive without one, but that is hardly an optimal situation, either psychologically or economically.

My wife and I are a family. I have never accepted the idea of a marriage as a social contract. We are together because we want it that way, plain and simple.

[Cleita]

3. I was talking biologically, you don't need to know the father.

I know in our modern society it's far more complicated. This post really isn't about solving the problem but trying to break down why we think about this the way we do, when obviously it's pretty fallacious thinking.

[Deep13]

6. At what point do fathers, ...

and, therefore, men generally become obsolete? There will come a time when an entire man is not necessary for the production of a few nanograms of genetic material. Further, by then medical people can make sure that there are only XX zygotes. If men are obsolete, is that a bad thing?

[Cleita]

8. In many matriarchal arrangements,

where a woman's children are fathered by several unrelated men, the brothers of the woman and her uncles on her mother's side fill in the roles of breadwinners and male role models and teachers to her children. I do believe children should know their biological fathers and have a relationship with them in our modern day and age, but it doesn't have to be within a marriage arrangement unless two consenting adults agree to this and having and raising a biological family is part of the contract.

[Cleita]

2. Let me add to this.

I really believe that back in the days before writing marriages were contracts between chiefs to secure peace treaties by marrying a son and daughter from opposing tribes to each other. The fact that either of them previously had children or families had very little to do with the marriage contract or a merger of kingdoms so to speak.

When women and their children became chattel and part of the property exchanged in these contracts then we started to get the formula for our modern ideas of marriage and family. It is part of the way our society has kept women subservient traditionally.

[Deep13]

4. true

It was part of the tribal social structure. They still do it that way to some extent in some parts of the world. Rainforest Indians still raid each other's villages to 'steal' women. I think the term contract also comes from the fact that the couple was legally bound to their relationship. It comes more from the sense of contractual obligations than contractual rights, especially for the woman.

[Cleita]

5. See also SoCalDem's post here too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3469535

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cleita]

9. If this were true, why do gays want to get married?

It's because the legalities of co-habiting are a sticky wicket indeed.

[Cleita]

12. In answer to your edit.

Women as a whole do not purposefully have babies because it can be *done*.

However, claiming a woman can't raise a family without a man certainly is insulting to all the divorced, widowed and other single mothers out there, who through no fault of their own are raising children alone.

Also, what's going to happen to all those women who might be forced to take a baby to full term once her abortion and birth control rights are taken away? Is she going to have to marry the father in a shotgun sort of way?

[rene moon]

16. Uh, my husband is my family

We got married because we wanted to---not because we wanted to have kids. This still makes us a family, we are no less because we don't have little Jr's. running around.

The whole idea that "You get married to have children" is antiquated at best and demeaning at worst.

[Cleita]

19. Didn't I say that?

You entered into a contract with your husband. Yes, it makes you a family and if things don't go well and you divorce, the family you made by contract will be dissolved. On the other hand biological families whether created in or out of marriage are there forever.

[Pool Hall Ace]

21. Yes, you did. rene moon was replying to zyzxx.

But back to the whole values thing, I did a Google search for "What are family values?" and the first hit was this entry from doaskdotell.com:

Family values – A social paradigm that expects individuals to establish themselves as adults through legally marrying, having children and remaining monogamous and faithful. Family values is often discussed in terms of divorce or having children out of wedlock, but sometimes it also criticizes cultural values that minimize the importance of having children. This latter observation may become more important is demographics (lower birthrates and aging populations) change.

So there ya go.



Edited to correct poster's name.

[Withywindle]

20. Result and purpose?

No, not just that at all. People get married because they want to make a commitment to *each other.* It is done for emotional, legal, and economic reasons. I think the emotional commitment is the primary driving force for a lot of people but there are also insurance, next-of-kin and health-decision-making factors, inheritance rights, citizenship, etc, Children are just one of many reasons people might want to get married.

I know many married couples who have no interest in having children. I know many couples who got married after childbearing age. I know lesbian and gay couples fighting for the right to marry (and they may well adopt children--or they may not).

[MissB]

22. Women should not be purposely having babies without men?

Pray tell, what sort of misogyny is that?

[Pithlet]

23. What a load.

Two people who love each other get married. If they want to, they have children.

No one is saying children don't need fathers. That is a deliberate misconception used to feed your agenda, and nothing more.

[smirkymonkey]

24. Uhh...Men can't have children w/ out women - it's biologically

impossible. "Where's the fetus going to gestate? Are you going to keep it in a box?" - Reg, founding member, Peoples Front of Judea

[Pool Hall Ace]

10. Wrong.

My husband and I are a family.

One doesn't need children to make a family.

[Cleita]

11. Well, my nuclear family were of the tail-wagging variety too.

But, my husband had a family of human children from his first marriage who pretty much remained together as a nuclear family with their mother after the marriage was over and dissolved. So one really didn't need marriage to make them exist, other than than poof, poof, piffle, the family disappears?

[Pool Hall Ace]

13. True

The sentence that bothered me was:

Families get formed when children come into the equation.

The rest of the OP makes sense to me.

Of course, what exactly are "family values" ??

[Cleita]

14. Well, I was hoping someone would examine the concept

of family values as presented by the right. My opinion is that the neo-cons don't believe any families can be good solid families unless they are like "Life With Father" or a sit-com of a fantasy family. It's so wrong on so many levels and not even a good example of what a model family would be like. Many, many families don't fit that mold and yet it's what is being pushed. Also, like I said marriage is another concept, a legal concept and nothing more nor less. It doesn't mean two people can't nest and take on being a family without the requisite children and dog.

[Cleita]

15. Untangling some misunderstandings here.

Families exist without marriages. It's a biological process. Marriages, on the other hand, may generate families, or families may generate marriage, but they are not dependent on each other. So to say that marriage is needed for a proper family is very far from the truth and has it's roots in sexism and anti-feminism.

[lawladyprof]

17. Families-shmamilies

I am a single immigrant in my late 50's who just discovered, in my country of origin, many first cousins once removed (my father's cousins), second and third cousins I never knew I had (it's a long story), but I feel now (and for the first time in my life) like I am part of a family. Families are more than a couple or a couple with children. Using the word "family" so narrowly changes its meaning.

[Cleita]

18. True, but now

you are talking about extended families. Also, my post says that families aren't formed by the legal contract of marriage, but in spite of it and often instead of it. We need to understand the distinction.