Marriage, American Style

I'm listening to a very interesting discussion about the marriage and divorce rates in the US. It seems that compared to the rest of the western world, we marry more, divorce more, and generally have more romantic partners moving in and out. In short, we have high turnover compared to others. A child with married parents in the US has a higher chance of seeing his parents break up than a child in Sweden with parents who never marry.

A sociologist has written a book on the subject, "The Marriage Go Round." He's been explaining his theories about why this phenomenon exists, but has been very polite so far. Here's my less polite take on it:

1. We treat marriage as a path to personal happiness (selfish, immature). Thus when either partner stops being happy, they feel that a divorce is appropriate. At the same time that we all say marriage is good for kids, we act like it must be good for us, or it's worthless.

2. We have very confused sexual attitudes (prudish). We tend to feel that sex partners should be married or marriageable. This results in people marrying because they want to have sex, and getting divorced after the infatuation with the partner dies.

3. We have no idea what a marriage is (naive, thoughtless). We are unsurpassed at creating special weddings, but we have little idea of how to forge long term partnerships with sexual relationships that may wax and wane.

4. We marry for legal and financial benefit (mercenaries who can't stick it for the long term). Actually, this isn't so much jerky behavior as it is necessary because of our legal code. There are many benefits that you can only get through marriage and many others that are easier or cheaper if you are married. Turns out that our government is the only western government to specifically encourage marriage. It's not really working that well. We are also the only ones without some sort of universal healthcare, so we get people marrying for the sake of insurance.

Lots of us like to think that we get married because we so moral and religious and whatnot, but it seems our motivations are much less noble than that.