“The real barrier is the soaring cost of marriage and child-rearing. Many young people simply can’t afford to get married. To truly raise marriage rates, the government needs to lower these economic burdens.”
“The real barrier is the soaring cost of marriage and child-rearing. Many young people simply can’t afford to get married. To truly raise marriage rates, the government needs to lower these economic burdens.”
I have never seen a relationship that was better in marriage than dating, regardless of the timeline.
Theres a few pretty critical things you get with marriage that you simply can’t with long term committed dating (in the USA at least). Such as:
You can get some of these things or versions of them with complicated legal instruments like Medical PoA and trusts, but many times they are a pale imitation and some things simply have no replacement. If you’ve decided to make your life with your partner these are important.
The fact that many laws are written to favor one form of relationship is just another data point that suggests that that form of relationship needed extra incentives for people to even consider it.
Also, in a sensible legal system I could name e.g. a doctor who is a personal friend as the one who makes health decisions for me even if they are not my romantic partner.
I think you’ve got it a bit backwards. Those things aren’t written into law to make marriage more attractive, marriage is just an easy litmus test that you like your partner enough that you’d want them to have those things. As I said, the State will let you replicate a number of those things with legal instruments, but the State also says, if you trust this person enough to be legally bound to them (and responsible for their marital debts too) then we know you would also trust them with these other things so you get them without asking for them.
You have got that backwards. Liking your partner was a thing that was very late to the marriage party.
You’re mixing other ideas now, muddying the waters if we’re talking about present day events. I’m not arguing about structures of marriage of history long ago. Yes, marriage has historically been a subjection of women where they had few rights and even those usually flowed through the relationship with a wife’s husband. Same sex marriage wasn’t legal in any form back then. I’m not talking about then.
I’m talking about modern marriage. I’m talking about, lets say, the last 50 years. Birth control existed, women could vote and open bank accounts. The Civil Rights act barring discrimination based on sex (1964) being in full effect etc. Further, I’m talking post-Obergefell supreme court where same sex marriage is legal. All of the points I made in my prior post are in reference to modern day marriage.
I got one anecdote but most I’ve observed fall under yours.