Sir Xsarus wrote:
No one at any point in time sat down and said, hey I'd like to get more people to marry what incentives can I offer.
Um... That's more or less *exactly* what happened in the process of developing our tax code to widen the brackets for married couples. Same deal with common law marriage legislation. People did indeed think about the effects the legislation they were passing would have on marriage, and (in the case of common law marriage) wrote the darn things specifically to ensure that people who lived together without getting married were "forced" to be legally considered married.
Clearly, the state had some vested interest in making sure people of opposite sex who lived together for long periods of time were bound together. Or can you think of some other reason why common law marriages exist?
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What actually happened is that a significant portion of married people wanted a certain benefit and a politician thought, hey I bet that would get me their votes.
No. That's not really it. While I'm sure there was some political pressure, it was almost certainly from those arguing that if certain legal changes and benefits were not put in place that rates of marriage would decline and the good people of <wherever> would surely not support a politician who'd make it easier for folks to just shack up without marrying first.
You've also got to realize that in the US, about the same time frame at which we instituted most of the state benefits for marriage, we were removing the social pressures which had historically pushed people into marrying. We replaced the stick with the carrot basically, going from mob enforced shotgun weddings and social ostracism to financial inducements.
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Or earlier then that, a group of people who had enough power to affect change thought of something they wanted and made it happen. I guess that's pretty much the same thing.
That's why people might do it today in our society which seems to automatically look to the government as an entitlement vending machine. You do know that this is a relatively recent social concept, right?
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I think aside from the fact that I don't think benefits in marriage were created as an incentive, the biggest problem with your argument is that kids don't need marriage. If we're talking about early societies, children were a net gain. Children were essentially your retirement plan, and your free labour so they were sought out.
Of course. If the parents were married, they were a net gain. But if they weren't? Or some layabout who didn't have a career (and therefore nothing for the kids to help him do)? Then, they were a net drain. A whole lot of social rules and customs surrounding marriage involve making sure that the couple will be financially capable. Why do you suppose that is?
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There was no need to bind people to take care of their children because it was an investment. There is no need for marriage to enforce this, so there must be some other reason for marriage. Oh right, it's about the man and the women.
Really? Then why are 40% of children born in the US born to single mothers? If it's such an investment and such a great thing for everyone, why are so few fathers sticking around? The social issue is not new. It has always been the case that if men aren't forced to take responsibility for the children they produce, they wont (in large enough numbers to be a noticeable negative effect on society). That's why all those social rules existed. It's why we replaced them with financial inducements (which admittedly never worked as well as the social pressure approach).
As I touched on earlier. The great irony of all of this is that the traditional pressures and incentives designed to force marriage on couples were mostly eliminated as a result of the feminist movement. They were seen as trapping women. They were trapped by men in marriage, and trapped by children if they were single. So they eliminated the social pressures. Then gradually created counter-inducements to marriage (stuff like deductions for dependents regardless of marital status, and social programs designed to give direct aid to single mothers). Now, they've got exactly what they wanted. A society in which marriage occurs far less often than it should.
Are women better off? I think they got the shaft really. Just ask all those single women stuck on welfare supporting their children without the fathers in the picture. Job well done? I think not. So how about we not compound our social mistakes over the last century by further watering down the meaning, purpose, and utility of marriage by making it just something any two people get if they decide to live together. I don't hold this position because I'm mean to gay people, but because I honestly believe that our society, and especially the women within our society are vastly worse off the more we attempt to divorce the concept of marriage from the obligations of men with regard to child rearing.
Edited, Oct 6th 2009 7:22pm by gbaji
you're so funny. 
on gay marriage.