So where did we go wrong with marriage in our generation?

[Clockwork]

I'm group 3. I honestly don't believe in marriage and do not understand why people bother. It rarely works. I know it's cynical but I actually almost feel sorry for people entering it. A lot of the time it's for the big day and the security for the bride "I'm a mrs" no one stays faithful anymore or it ends up brother and sister type.

 

Tell me I'm wrong?

 

To an extent you are wrong. Some people walk down the aisle for the wrong reasons. Having a memorable wedding day is important, but having a loving marriage is VITAL. The latter is always more important.

[karnak]

I haven't read all the posts so forgive me if this has already been said.

 

Just because our grandparents "stuck it out" for 65 years doesn't mean that they should have or even wanted to.

 

There are some major socio-economic differences today vs 70 years ago.

 

- divorce doesn't carry the social stigmas that it used to and there isn't the shame and outcasting with it that used to take place. Moralists bemoan that fact and progressives praise that fact. regardless of whether that is right or wrong, it is still a fact.

 

- Women have more financial, political and social opportunities and resources than they used to. Women were almost considered property and most had no individual financial resources, job training, education or reasonable means to support themselves individually.

 

- Men were also very limited in their abilities to live as individuals with many having little upbringing and guidance in such domestic matters cooking, sewing (most clothing of the lower -middle classes were homemade as opposed to store bought up until World War II era) and most were simply completely clueless and disinterested in any kind of child-rearing.

 

-Also there was such a stigma and so much complete ignorance on sexuality that many people were simply unable to meet their sexual/intimacy needs outside of marriage. (again, some people today bemoan that fact as others praise it)

 

- The general economic climate was such that while an 18 year old man could make pretty much as good of a living as a 35 year old man, perhaps even more as he could physically work harder and longer as there was no 40 hour work weeks. People worked from sun up to sun down 6 days a week or as long as their bosses told them to at the dawn of the industrial age.

 

However, very few common individual man nor common individual woman had the economic status to own and operate their own home by themselves and it often took the combine incomes and work efforts of two or more people to buy/build, operate and maintain a home.

 

- physiologically people have changed too. Women often married at mid teens but didn't reach fertility until late teens.

 

- Average life expectancy was lower. In New Testiment times, "till death do us part" meant living together another 20 years, not another 60.

 

Add all those up and it's not really that marriage is any less sacred, it's just that divorce is a lot more practical. Divorce just doesn't have the same negative impact on people's lives that it once did and so people do not wait for such extreme circumstances to pull the ejection handle.

 

In days of yore, if a woman was divorced she was socially outcast and often untouchable. And unless her husband was actually wealthy, her standard of living went down considerably and in many cases to below poverty levels. She would have also been tasked with almost 100% of child custody and child rearing alone.

 

Men didn't fair a whole lot better. While they may not have had the same social stigma and may have still been able to remarry. Since many of the wives were not working outside the home and did not have outside incomes, alimony and child support also put men at great financial hardship and even poverty post divorce.

 

And while child custody was almost always given to the mother, many fathers still missed their children in their home but at the same time were completely overwhelmed and over their heads when they did have their children during their custodial visitations.

 

Divorce just simply doesn't suck as much today as it did back in the day. And the reason it doesn't suck as much as people back then got future generations convinced that it shouldn't suck so much and so these so-called, "children of divorce" are the ones that have modernized and adapted the divorce laws and the equality and opportunities for both men and women so that divorce doesn't have to suck so bad for everyone.

 

If people want to bitch about the divorce rate and moan that grandpa and grandma were married for 60 years they can. But they seem to forget that there were a lot of grandparents that were completely miserable and dysfunctional for at least 50 of those years.

 

One of the best insights so far.