There is a lot of discussion around the issue of marriage at the moment. Let’s get one SotBO said at the start: there should be no difference between same-sex and not-the-same-sex marriage or civil unions or registrations in any way at all.
One solution that has been proposed to The Problem Of Marriage is abolishing the concept of marriage or domestic partnership altogether.
This sounds superficially attractive, to me – why do we have the legal concept of marriage at all, except for historical reasons to do with women and children as property? Why do we need it now? So long as countries like the USA fix their schemozzle of a health insurance system, and everyone else makes sure there’s a structure in place for people to allocate legal and medical powers of attorney and inheritance, we could just get rid of it.
Separating religious from civil partnerships? Opening civil partnership to any adults who want to connect themselves? Ensuring there’s no legal difference between post-wedding marriage and de facto marriage? I’m on board with all of that.
But there’s a catch to abolishing domestic partnerships altogether, and I’m not sure how to solve it. One thing that marriage and de facto laws still do is go a little way to ensuring that a partner who has earned less income, because she has contributed more to household and family maintenance, has a legal option to access some of what she has missed out on should the partnership dissolve.
Yep, I said “she”. No matter how much we talk about the at-home-dad boom[1], no matter how many fabulous work at home or part-WAH dads I have on my flist (Hi, you two!). Here and now, the people who miss out on income and superannuation and career-building because they are child-bearing and family-raising are overwhelmingly women. So the people left financially high and dry if domestic partnership laws evaporated overnight? Women. Specifically, mothers[2].
While we’re still living in a capitalist patriarchy, while domestic work is undervalued and underpaid, while the mummy-track and the glass ceiling are entrenched: where would suddenly abolishing domestic partnership laws leave mothers? It’s just not that simple.
Marriage is a feminist issue, but the answer isn’t as clear-cut as it looks.
This is also when I get stuck when I try to outright reject the idea of polygamous marriage laws. Yes, polygamy as practised is usually one powerful men with several less powerful women – not at all surprising in the patriarchy. However, not every poly relationship is like that, and polygamy laws themselves aren’t the cause of that power structure. I worry about financial protections for second, third, fourth wives, when polygyny is practised underground, and don’t have a good solution for that either, except the knowledge that we as a society need to go further and deeper, not just fiddle about the edges. Legal reform is only one tiny part of the puzzle.
[1] I confess that I’m picturing mainly women in het partnerships here, and I’m aware that my heterocentrism is showing. However, a similar inequity can take place in lesbian partnerships where one partner bears and breastfeeds children, or in any relationship where one person takes the majority share of other domestic work.
[2] And a few dads – though that doesn’t actually alter the thrust of my argument. I totally agree that if you’ve missed out on a lot of income and superannuation and career advancement while you’ve been doing family work, no matter what genitals or chromosomes you’ve got, you deserve exactly the same protections accorded to other people who are in that situation.
Categories: gender & feminism, relationships, work and family
96th Down Under Feminists Carnival 
DUFC #69 
BFTP: Who moved that apostrophe? 
Does Keynes still have the secret to happiness? And even for parents? 
Hoyden About Town 
I’ve been giving this issue some thought myself lately. And one thing that I find interesting is that in states and countries which have either legalised same sex marriage or created a legal partnership type arrangement, demand seems to have always exceeded expectation, even in areas where economically people are better off (financially) not forming a legal union. This suggests, to me atleast, that however fraught with difficulties marriage is, it still holds an enormous attraction. I think that ‘marriage’ symbolises something that most people yearn for.
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It shocked me, after my son was born, how totally vulnerable I felt about not being married. That isn’t any sort of policy argument, but did give me an insight into how a lot of other women have felt through the ages. I’m inclined to agree that marriage, with all its social expectations of men, is something to work with rather than against. I’m not married, but if I lived in a country where it was required to get health insurance, or inheritence rights, or a fair deal in the family court I certainly would be. I’d feel bad about getting married while my friends in same-sex relationships aren’t allowed to, but I’d do it anyway. I don’t think I’d be able to make a political stand when it invovled taking a risk on my son’s behalf.
Of course, marriage doesn’t necessarily confer those legal or social protections to all women in all countries.
With defacto laws that dissolve the legal line between marriage and just having a relationship, so that even if you don’t live together you are still legally treated as if you were married, marriage is meaningless beyond a symbolic gesture.
Keep in mind however, the legal concept of marriage only came about in the 19th Century when governments started wanting more control over its subjects.
Also polygamy is not about powerful men having access to less powerful women, but women having access to powerful men. There is only so many rich men to go around, and polygamy was designed so women didn’t have to marry poor men.
Agreed. Many (not all) of the “abolish marriage� folks I’ve encountered seem to have an unduly utopian view of romantic relationships (and/or an unduly utopian view of how easy it is to put together and make use of a do-it-yourself legal contract), and thus don’t fully appreciate the legal protections that official marriage can afford.
Cite? The number of dramas from the Renaissance and mediaeval periods alone that focus on the problem of the bastard son wanting an inheritance to which he wasn’t legally entitled would seem to refute your claim. The Romans had at least 3 legally distinct forms of marriage which determined whether or not a couple could divorce, what entitlements each had, and what status their children would hold.
You may be onto something if your claim is actually that the State only took over registering marriage from the Church in the 19th century, but that’s far separate from there being no legal concept of marriage earlier. Canon law was its own area.
It’s interesting to look at different forms of pair-bonding and group-bonding scenarios that science fiction and fantasy authors have come up with over the years, and how they envisage the legalities of those working in terms of mutual rights and responsibilities, property inheritance entitlements, medical decision-making and all those other things that are tied up with the legal concept of marriage. For most sf writers, exploring what legal changes would make different family structures pragmatically socially recognised is a crucial part of positing the alternative society.
Here’s a few links to related articles:
A summary of the sf anthologyMarriage and the Family through Science Fiction (1976) Section titles are: The Nature of Family Organization, Cross-Cultural Family Perspectives, The Sociology of Courtship, The Sociology of Marriage, The Sociology of Family Dissolution, Alternative Family Forms
Science Fiction or Science Fantasy? The Gendered Portrayal of Aliens and the Discourse of Dominance in Outer Space
Influence of the Science Fiction Writings of Robert A. Heinlein on Polyamory
Sorry people, there are heaps of things I’d like to respond to here, but I’ve got a sick kid at home and am finding it hard to concentrate.
But thanks for the splorf on how traditional polygyny is all about women gaining power. Hee.
Well, I see what you’re saying but marriage/domestic partnerships isn’t the only way to solve the problem you’re referring to. In fact, it’s not actually the way to solve it at all, in my own thinking:
But there’s a catch to abolishing domestic partnerships altogether, and I’m not sure how to solve it. One thing that marriage and de facto laws still do is go a little way to ensuring that a partner who has earned less income, because she has contributed more to household and family maintenance, has a legal option to access some of what she has missed out on should the partnership dissolve.
This could be solves by registering relationships of economic dependency. such relationships would not deed to be intimate in nature and could be familial. The problem with conflating such relationships as “domestic partnerships� is that DP’s are based on a marriage model. Typically, to be a DP, you can’t be blood related, you have to have joint property, bank accounts, etc. In other words, a) sex is assumed, b) cohabiting with intimate partner is assumed, c) being financial interdependent and cohabiting with your intimate parter is assumed. Sounds too much like marriage.
Further, I think these relationships (as should marriage) ought to come not with a license but with a contract of sorts.
There needs to be a way to “register� economic relationships and to “register� long-term partnering relationships–sexual or not–to cover things like hospital visitation, etc. Most importantly, we need to remove the assumption that these 2 relationships are necessarily the same thing.
Economically, and in an American context, it would also help if house-spouses weren’t unrecognized in the economic or social welfare system at all. Some days I think that the breadwinner should be paying the house-spouse a wage so they can get Social Security on their own and not as a benefit of the breadwinner’s income.
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“so that even if you don’t live together you are still legally treated as if you were married, marriage is meaningless beyond a symbolic gesture.�
Yes, but it is a symbolic gesture that holds enormous attraction for an awful lot of people.
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