Marriage is an outdated institution that no longer reflects modern society

Thank you for your response. Having presented my initial statement, I will respond to your points and further evidence my own. Con presents a strong case that the prevalence of marriage is an indication that, despite its 'expensive, time consuming, and stressful' nature, it still remains relevant. They also have added that the data shows that 2009 had over 2 million marriages. However, in that same year, the data from the CDC also shows 840,000 divorces or annulments [1]. This would suggest that simply in that year, per 1000 people of the population measured, 6.8 people got married, with 3.5 getting divorced. The question, I suggest, should not be why did 2 million people do it, but who would the equivalent of 51% of them go through that inconvenience and expense at all? Couple this with the fact that the marriage rate is on the decline, and marriages represent the actions of only 0.68% of the population within my opponents chosen year for data, it would appear fairly irrelevant currently. My opponent also argued that married couples produce a more stable environment for children. While this is true on the baseline data, a further analysis offers a different conclusions. Factors such as cultural norms, race, age etc all make a difference. "Once we take these factors into account, there are no longer any statistically significant differences in these child outcomes between children of married and cohabiting parents" is the conclusion of the Institute for Fiscal Studies research into "Cohabitation, Marriage and Child Outcomes" [2]. If Cohabiting presents as much positivity as marriage would, what then is gained by marriage as an ideal? In relation to the way in which people in marriages tend to be (prosperous, well educated and have longer lifespans), there is little evidence in the sources provided to conclusively say that this is the effect of marriage. Rather, this shows a correlative relationship between these factors and not a causation one. Put simply, there is nothing to say that more prosperous people don't simply chose marriage, in the same way less educated people may chose not to be married. It goes towards the strength of an argument to say marriage is a social trend for specific groups of people, but says nothing as to the inherent benefit of marriage itself. As opposed to cohabitation, marriage has an added legal element to it. This added element of the need for divorce in the event of a permanent separation, creates a situation which I suggest is more difficult to leave from. We can agree that if the marriage is that of high conflict, there is the potential for further problematic issues, but i do not believe that these issues are fully transferable to cohabitation. In the paper "Prevalence of Domestic Violence in the United States" by Wilt et al [3] an important difference should be noted. The higher number of domestic violence incidences are shown by 'Husbands' as opposed to 'cohabits' and 'male partners'. If it can be agreed that modern society considers domestic violence to be a an ideal we should strive to distance ourselves from, then it is right that any institution which increases the frequency of that should also be considered something we should be moving away from. 1) http://www.cdc.gov... 2) http://www.ifs.org.uk... 3) http://www.hawaii.edu...