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Date:         Wed, 9 Sep 1992 09:37:00 -0400
From:         KILBURN@WVSVAX.WVNET.EDU
Subject:      Re: let's rephrase the question

My esteemed running mate writes:

>Let's try "to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of
>liberty to ourselves *and our posterity*.  Posterity requires a
>male/female union for the production of offspring, in which the state
>has a long-term survival interest.  So, to encourage this activity,
>and to make it as streamlined as possible, we provide incentives to
>marriage and the bearing of children.

OK, I'll buy having a posterity as a state interest.  I can also think of
some economic interests that are furthered by promoting partnerships among
individuals.  However, if posterity is the interest, then why do we give
benefits to married couples who don't have kids?

>Besides which, this privileging of marriage is a custom we share with
>most societies.  Important rites of passage (such as marriage--the
>lifetime commitment of two individuals from different families to an
>entirely new family, for the purpose of creating more families down
>the line) are always marked by greater benefits and responsibilities.

Neat idea.  Let's agree that important rites of passage (whatever the
ceremonial aspects associated with them may be) *should* be marked by
greater benefits and responsibilities.  How is a lifetime committment
between indivuals of the same gender different from that between
individuals of opposite gender?  And why should the latter be given greater
benefits and responsibilities than the former?  Again, if the interest
we're promoting is the having of kids (rather than other benefits derived
from the joining of two individuals), why do we give benefits to married
heterosexual couples without kids?

>What seems to be occurring now, in this society, is that increasing
>numbers of people have lost interest in continuing the line, but
>are wild about the idea of having sex.  Somehow we have begun to
>believe that marriage is somehow about having sex, rather than
>contributing to the continuation of society.  And now we've decided
>that sex is too important to be confined to marriage, and that families
>aren't important enough to preserve.  So we've made it easier to get
>out of marriage, easier to have sex, and harder to find anyone in this
>society with a clue as to what a "long-term commitment" might mean.

I'm not convinced that it's any easier to have sex now than it was in the
past.  And I don't know when the "link" between marriage and sex arose.
Maybe we've decided that sex and marriage *shouldn't* be linked, and that's
why we see sex without marriage and easier divorce laws.  In any event, we
need a lot more information about sex/marriage practices, here and in other
places, past and present, to tease these issues apart.  For example:  here
in WV (from what I've read and seen), within what might be called
"traditional Appalachian culture", sex, marriage, and having kids don't
necessarily have much to do with each other.  And this pattern obtains
among quite fundamentalist Christians.

>Plus which, we've passed all these wonderful ideas on to the few
>children we actually managed to have (while simply choosing to
>dispose of the other 2/3 of them), and now *they* don't want to
>stick around *our* families either (ingrates.)  Not that it matters
>much, since we managed to educate them amazingly well about only
>2 things:  sex and abortion.  They don't know enough about anything
>else to contribute much to mom and dad (or dad and dad, or mom and
>mom, or dad and mom and their friend Lassie) and the family, and they
>aren't really all that fond of them anyway.

I agree that the "disintegration" of the family, or whatever you want to
call it, is problematic.  Do kids know more about sex now than they did in
the past?  Well, they might know more about things like pregnancy risk (but
maybe not).  I doubt they know any more about how to go about doing it than
they did in the past (sorry, but I knew how intercourse worked long before
it was covered in biology class).  If the numbers I've read are correct,
kids are having intercourse at earlier ages, but I'm not totally convinced
this has much to do with the idea of personal committment to one's partner
and/or one's family.

Tell you what:  I'd be interested in trying to find out the correlates and
causal factors responsible for the kind of breakdown you're discussing, and
what kinds of policies, etc. we might propose to fix it.

Kerry
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU