The science is NOT clear. This whole area is very complex and anyone who thinks it isn’t is not being scientific.

You might as well say that perfume sales have increased at the same time as divorce rates so marriage breakup is caused by buying perfume.

Life - especially ralationships - cannot be stripped down to simplfied “scientific” analysis like this. No-one can explain love.

I beleive marriage is a vital glue for society and it plays a part in creating stability - something we desperatly need.

But hey, the post got lots of hits so who cares if it’s wrong…

Blood is thicker than water. We need families, therefore we need marriage.

In your arguments you also ignore several things:

One, the divorce rate is higher today in the West, mainly because divorce isn’t a social taboo. A divorce does not mean the marriage was not a success at least in some ways. A married couple does not, by definition, mean the marriage IS a success. There are plenty of people who stay married and absolutely hate each other, there is domestic abuse, etc. Infidelity also does not mean the marriage is a failure; everyone screws up sometimes and it doesn’t always mean the end of the relationship. And what about open marriages?

Second, there are sound biological reasons for demanding monogamy in one’s partner and secretly cheating. I refer you to The Red Queen, by Matt Ridley.

Third, and probably most important, marriage is a legally binding contract and one of the strongest legal contracts one can enter into - it gives each spouse a set of rights, including hospital visitation rights, choices about long-term invalid care, the right to attend the spouse’s funeral and make decisions about it, as well as property rights and provisions for each spouse in case of divorce. Historically in feudal Europe, it was the property rights that were the reason for a marriage contract, and in India that is a common reason for arranged marriages even today. A religious ceremony could be performed but conferred no legal rights. Unless you could own property you didn’t need a legal marriage, and serfs typically did not get married. When feudalism ended, and everyone could own property; you can see why then everyone wanted a marriage contract. The marriage laws here in the U.S. typically also provide for the case where one person abandons a career in favor of being a stay at home parent - in the case of divorce, then he or she has a right to be supported until they can reacquire job skills or get married again. This is only fair.

Marriage as a legal institution could even be MORE important to retain today. In fact, the rights I outlined above are exactly why gay couples want the right to marry. Currently a gay couple could be living together for 20 years, but if one dies, his or her family has the legal right to swoop in, ban his or her partner from all funeral arrangements, from the funeral home, and to kick the partner out of her home if it was owned by the deceased.

Bottom line: Don’t like marriage? Don’t have one.

I see nothing based in science to show that marriage needs to be eradicated. Using that argument is like saying that all men should be excused for infidelity because evolutionary biology says that men can’t help it but want to spread their genes. Please.

And that link that was provided– it’s a CNN article and we’re supposed to take it with great seriousness? Are you kidding me? Hand me a few scholarly journals and I’ll hear you out, but a media article that glazes over the facts to gain attention with soundbites? Sorry but that’s not much for proof.

Marriage was never meant to be an “institution”, institutions were the places that they put mentally unsound people in back in the day. Marriage is part of our social structure for people to be able to publically declare that they two only belong to each other and noone else. This will entail legal aspects and sometimes religious as well.

Everyone keeps slamming marriage from the Christian standpoint but Christians aren’t the only ones who like marriage. I’m Hindu and marriage is important and is regarded much differently from western culture. I think that’s the problem lately: western culture has no respect for what marriage should ought to be. I don’t think it has so much to do with divorce being more accepted, it’s just that laziness is more accepted.

People have a plethora of resources to seek out to repair a relationship, yet they choose not to seek them out. Instead, they’d rather pay the thousands of dollars to divorce and the paperwork rather than seek out the marriage and family therapist who can help them once or twice a month for half a year or so to work out their issues in a nonbiased and healthy manner. Our society is just unhealthy, that’s what the problem is. Look at it this way: when a couple decides it’s better just to do a bunch of horrible paperwork and fork out several grand instead of sitting down like adults and working out their problems, what does that say?

There is hardly ever anything wrong with many of the social structures or things that humans come into contact with, but there’s a lot of things wrong with people.

-Charles

Or whatever happened to the position that there is simply less commitment or willingness to work things out? The family structure is indeed an artificial construct. In ancient times, before civilization, we lived without marriage. And we will turn to it again in the next few decades when Western society is faced by emerging powerful countries with far more stable and stronger social structures.

There’s no life manual on how to get it right and it’s reasonable to assume more people will be bad at it then good. The question then is what does make a marriage work? How do people who get it right deal with life stresses, each other etc. Is this inate or something that can be learnt. If you truely want to engage in science, learn to use the tool first….

I would like to point readers to a couple of blogs, those of Debbie Maken and Captain Sensible. I won’t publish web addresses, as you can find them via google search. This stuff is unbelievable. They are pushing the notion that single Christian women are being openly abused by a lack of Christian men begging and falling all over themselves to marry them. They go further on to call any man who denies his “Biblical Masculinity” is in a state of arrested development, and are being cruel by turning away from marriage as a responsibility. These blogs are worth a read for laughs, but you won’t be able to comment on them if you disagree with the owners in the slightest way…so much for cogent arguement and discussion.

I haven’t been inside a church for a long time, but I imagine that what these people attest to is nominally true. In all, it’s just another attempt at shaming people to do something against their better interests, only now it’s using the Bible as a source for slander.

People have always been exposed to temptation. In many ways, we’re more atomised as a society than ever before.

As many have commented, the reason that so many marriages stayed together in the past was down to social pressures against divorce, and there were very many unhappy marriages. Before that, women had less power in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century to take divorce action when the husband was unfaithful.

In the UK right now the Conservatives want to bring in a new incentive to marriage in the form of a payment of £20 a week to each married couple. Is this the start of a new trend to actually recognise that the idea of marriage needs help, rather than expecting people to marry and pay more tax than do the unmarried, as at present?

Also in the UK there are plenty of couples that live together. They both have council homes, and if they were to marry they could no longer pretend to the authorities to be single/living alone - hence marriage means losing one of the council homes, and to be taxed more, and lose (for the mother with children to care for) far more allowances paid by the government for the children, as well.

See The steps to Get Married web site.

first of all, I want to say: I’m against all kinds of religions. God is extremely bigger and stronger than what the churches-man say

and before saying what i really want to say, I also agree with some points.

BUT, now i’ll give my true opnion:

1. The world, today, is extremely confused;
2. The division between war and peace is just a small little line that is hard to see;
3. People are just wanting to be happy, or at least to have what they call a real life;
4. Many, many things were lost during “evolution”;
5. Lies are so convincing that almost everyone thinks that truth is a bad, ugly and mean boy with a rock in the hand.

what i mean is: people really don’t know anymore what REALLY should be marriage. Ok, i agree that in different cultures and ages, it was just for power, or money, or whatever… but what have happened to us, is that we’ve forgotten, or just don’t want to see, that things won’t be over here…

and even if things really finished in this life: you’ll get old someday. who do you want at your side? a nurse? or a 20-year-old girl that wants something you own? i prefer to have someone i really love, someone i really care than having no one.

anyway, very nice point of view!