Sociological Views on Marriage Argument

Sociological Views on Marriage

Argument Against Congressman McDonald's Proposal to Abolish Marriage:

According to California Congressman McDonald, there is no longer any use of the concept of formal marriage at law. His argument is based on three specific points having to do with the rate of: (1) divorce, (2) cohabitation amongst unmarried couples, and (3) childbirth outside of marriage. That analysis largely ignores the value of marriage for couples who do not divorce; likewise, it ignores the fact that cohabitation serves a valuable purpose as an informal trial of compatibility before marriage; and it ignores the important distinction between planned and unplanned pregnancy and the benefits of a traditional nuclear family to children.

If anything, the increased divorce rate is mainly the result of changed societal values and the fact that divorce is no longer associated with the same social stigma as it once was in society. Whereas prior generations of married couples may have had no choice but to remain unhappily married, contemporary married couples have the option of divorce to end unhappy marriages and allow both partners to go on with their lives afterwards. Many times, divorced people eventually find happiness in other marriages that they would never have had the opportunity to do without the divorce option. Therefore, high divorce rates are not necessarily evidence that marriage has become obsolete, particularly since most divorced people do eventually get married again.

Similarly, high rates of cohabitation are also more the result of relaxed societal values and norms than they are evidence that cohabitation is necessarily replacing marriage or that cohabitation necessarily fulfills all the functions and provides all the same benefits as formal marriage. In fact, the cohabitation option serves a valuable function for many couples, especially where living together allows them to discover possible problem areas in their relationship that would have made marriage a bad idea. 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.