Inc. Photocopying and data processing storage of all or any part of this issue may not be made without prior written consent. These soundbites from The Case for Marriage tell, in the authors own words, that they have found that marriage is highly beneficial to most persons. The headlines are by the staff of Massachusetts News. For perhaps the first time in human history, marriage as an ideal is under a sustained and surprisingly successful attack. Sometimes the attack is direct and ideological, made by experts who believe a lifelong vow of fidelity is unrealistic or oppressive, especially to women.
Divorce is usually the best answer for kids when a marriage becomes unhappy.
Marriage may be good for men, but it is bad for women, damaging their health and self-esteem and limiting their opportunities. Marriage is essentially a private matter, an affair of the heart between two adults, in which no outsider, not even the children of the marriage, should be allowed to interfere. They not only have sex more often, but they enjoy it more, both physically and emotionally, than do their unmarried counterparts. When it comes to educating and launching children into the world of work, the structural supports marriage provides are more important than the emotional ones. Both men and women live longer, healthier, and wealthier lives when married, but husbands typically get greater health benefits from marriage than do wives.