Who benefits from marriage? Part II

In the first part, I covered the feminist belief that marriage is beneficial for men, at the expense of women. Here's another quote to that effect: "I'm turned off by the idea of marriage because I feel like the institution of marriage has tradionally given women the short end of the stick... marriage has traditionally meant giving up (or not pursuing in the first place) a career, taking responsibility for all of the household chores and child-rearing, and living to be sweet, comforting, and helpful to the husband."

Now, for men, marriage means responsibilities. You get the responsibility of providing for a woman who has "given up" her career, for the children that inevitably follow, and you have to do 50% of the household chores as well as 100% of the yardwork and DIY. (On a side note: This is why I hate Home Improvement. Along with presenting the men as idiots, the projects they undertake and the car maintenance they do are "hobbies" even though they probably save thousands of dollars every year due to the round-the-clock handyman in the house. Have you priced out a plumber lately? They are not cheap!)

If you ask a man whether he would like to be free of the need to work and still maintain their family's lifestyle, you are most likely to get a resounding yes. There are a few men who enjoy their work and there are some men who wouldn't do it because it goes against their idea of traditional masculinity. But the majority are going to say yes. So forgive us if we take the idea that women give up their pink collar jobs, err careers with a pinch of salt.

For women, marriage is a fantastic deal. They get to quit the workplace, live at home (the safest "workplace" of all) and they get to take care of the household as they wish. A recent study showed that even in today's equality culture, men and women consider the home to be the woman's domain. Examples were shown of women getting irritated when the husband loaded up the dishwasher in a different way, or hung up the ladles that were supposed to be put in the cupboard, etc. And of course, the classic "put your socks away!"

There are more benefits to marriage for women - since women are at the peak of their sexual attractiveness at adolescence and a few years after that, they can get a man to provide for them and their progeny even as they lose their attractiveness. Essentially, the man marries to get sex and companionship with a beautiful woman who gradually loses her attractiveness, and the woman marries to get support and protection from a man who gradually builds in attractiveness as he gets richer. This is why a man in his early 30s is at a high point in the dating game - he has not totally lost his looks, but is far richer than men in their 20s. A woman in her early 20s is in a similar position of power - she is far more attractive than women in their late 20s and early 30s.

So who does marriage benefit?

I think that marriage benefits society. I think that marriage benefits the products of the marriage - the children much more than the partners of the marriage. The evidence is clear that a child raised in a traditional family is far more likely to be successful in life than a child raised in a broken home without a father. Fatherlessness is a primary indicator of the likelyhood that a child will grow up to be an antisocial element.

Marriage benefits society by benefiting the building blocks of society - its children. If the children grow up lawless and fatherless, it is society that suffers. This is why marriage is a societal construct today that has been enforced in all "old" societies that are surviving today - since societies that did not have marriage or otherwise encouraged children out of wedlock or no children at all have not survived.