If anything, that is preferable to the traditional situation where couples really only begin learning about one another after making the lifelong commitment to a marriage. Finally, Congressman McDonald's point about childbirth out of wedlock ignores the tremendous advantages to children born in stable marriages and suggests that high rates of unwanted pregnancies among unmarried couples somehow negates the benefits of planned pregnancies within marriage.
The Functionalist Perspective Applied to Marriage:
In some respects, there are valid criticisms that justify reevaluating certain aspects of modern marriage, including the unfairness of child custody decisions that favor mothers and financial settlements that obligate married partners who supported the marriage financially to share more of what they earned than might be fair under more general principles.
However,...
It provides a means of combining the lives of marital partners that establishes their relationship to
society and it is the core of the basic family unit that forms the
framework of society. Formal marriage also provides a reasonable means of qualifying for social benefits, exemptions, and eligibility for various programs that society has created for couples who are likely (even if not necessarily guaranteed) to spend their lives together. Therefore, from the functionalist perspective, abolishing marriage based on high
divorce, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock childbirth rates is the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
