Marriage may be good for men, but it is bad for women, damaging their health and self-esteem and limiting their opportunities. While the authors say this is the most powerful and widespread of the postmarriage myths, they examine the latest scientific evidence, which they say, will prove that everyone is a winner in a state of wedded bliss. Promoting marriage and marital obligation put women at risk for violence. 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. Today s psychologists, the authors claim, have played a key role in persuading Americans that the institution of marriage is primarily for and about adult happiness.
People are better off married.
That doesn t mean, Gallagher adds, that your life is not worth living if you are not married. Maybe it s something that you are still looking for, or maybe you are concerned about the marriage of your children, or your siblings. Gallagher admits that many people are not divorced by their own choice. We live in a culture and a society where it only takes one person to divorce, she adds. Life is difficult for single mothers.