Talk:Marriage in the United States

message: The vast majority of the history section, including claims about the current status of marriage ("Assuring stability in the family has now become a main focus"), it sourced to a book over half a century old, which obviously cannot be a reliable source for the current status. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have deleted this, as discussed below.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  A problematic sense of "current" 

message: I'm concerned that the content in the History section is theory, rather than factual information. One can't say that there have been three types of marriages in the US as a fact. Also, this theory doesn't seem unique to the US, but rather would pertain to western Europe as well. Seems to be a repetition of another author's argument rather than encyclopedic.
Smtology (talk) 20:20, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The section also distorts the sources. Martinson talks about romantic love in medieval Europe - hence the reference to troubadours. This is a sociology text from 1960, rather than an up-to-date historical survey. The other author mainly used is Coontz. The initial statement is sourced to her: "Rarely in American history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married". However, she actually says "Rarely in history", and from context is talking about world history. This should be balanced by the fact that in the same chapter she says that romantic love is not a modern, Western invention. Also, in the statement about "candor", she says "lovers", rather than individuals, which completely changes the meaning. As the United States did not exist in the "early eighteenth century", I don't think this reference is particularly relevant. I am going to remove most of the text on the grounds that it misrepresents the sources and is not about the United States. I'm leaving the quote by Adams, though I'm not clear why the sentiments expressed could not be expressed today. According to their pages, John and his wife Abigail Adams were very close. This section needs to be expanded using relevant sources.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:02, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: History

message: This section is prejudiced. It implies that all green card applications based on marriage are fraudulent, which is how green card marriage is defined on its own page. I have changed the heading, but the rest needs work.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:26, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Green Card Marriage 

message: Whts next? Meaning for Kim Davis? Patrick Jay D Malinowski  16:25, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gay males and females getting married and divorced  

message: In Marriage as a fundamental right section we can see list of some important cases, but I can not found Obergefell v. Hodges. Why?? M.Karelin (talk) 12:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Because you didn't add it.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marriage as a fundamental right 

message: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_marriage
2606:6000:FECF:4100:6057:54D2:211B:7BDF (talk) 03:44, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs info on covenant marriage 

message: There is a lot of content sourced to this report, which was generated in 2008 and is based around data that is older than that; a quick glance is that most of their trend charts end in 2004 or 2005. As such, we are closer to the date being forecast than we are to when the forecast was made, which means that any such forecast is increasingly irrelevant - particularly since even in the forecasting they note as variables such things as changes in immigration law. In addition, a lot of the content here taken from that material is not about "marriage", per se, but about "family" (how many of us are going to be great grandparents, which is a fact independent of whether anyone in the chain is in a marriage) or less relevant stuff (what percentage of Americans are immigrants.)
To a certain degree, much of this feels like leading an article on the 2016 presidential election with 2014 predictions of its outcome. And perhaps as a clue to how non-vital this is now... the original link to the report is a dead link, I just had to replace it with an archive link. (The organization does have a 2011 paper that appears to build on the 2008 one.)
My instinct is that most or all of this stuff should be gutted. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:12, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, speculation isn't very useful.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:27, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  All the stuff about 2030