"Why marry?" they protest. After all, these days they can get all the benefits of being hitched (joint bank accounts, home grants, insurance, sex and kids) without actually tying the knot.
But it's not only the gents who are forgoing marriage in favour of all the benefits without the commitment. The other day, while sipping my coffee, I overheard a conversation that had me a little mystified. A woman (in her mid-20s) was telling a friend that, although she loved her boyfriend, she had no intention of ever getting married.
"I don't ever want to be tied down like that," she said. "Plus I've seen first-hand what a bad marriage can do to someone through my parents, and I definitely don't want my life to end up that way."
"And what if he proposed?" the friend asked incredulously, to which she responded, "I don't know. I just don't think he will."
These days, with the institution of marriage on the rocks and the words "till death do us part" being more flimsy than Paris Hilton's bathing suit, it comes as no surprise that the latest numbers show an increase in the no-marriage trend ...
According to recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 31 per cent of men and 26 per cent of women will never marry, while The New York Times reported that a whopping 51 per cent of women are now living without a spouse, compared to 35 per cent in 1950.
Demographer William H. Frey said: "For better or worse, women are less dependent on men or the institution of marriage."
"Amen to that!" concur the single, independent femmes who buy their own diamonds, pay their own bills and don't need a ring or a man to make them happy. Why suffer? Instead, modern women would rather be single than suffer in an unhappy marriage, despite the fact that society (and pushy mothers) still expect a ring on the finger by the time they reach a certain age.
Yet the sobering expectation that one-third of marriages could end in divorce now, compared with 28 per cent in the mid-'80s, shows there's plenty of reasons to shy away from signing that marriage certificate.
Recently divorced reader Peter (who was left with nothing and had to move back in with his folks), reckons that, while the institution of marriage is not yet dead, the need for it is.
He writes: "With equal wages for the women, and automated easy care homes for the men, neither gender NEEDS to get married as they did 50 years ago ... Some women still talk about getting married but men generally talk about getting laid. And, surprise, surprise, many modern women talk about casual affairs these days too."
Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History, concurs, yet says that the marriage backlash started back in the '60s with the invention of the Pill, domestic devices and more women going to work. The bachelors found they no longer needed a wife for domestic purposes, women found they could have sex without attachment and marriage no longer defined adult life.
Yet over on the other side of the sexual fence, it seems the battle to legalise same-sex marriage continues.
Evan Wolfson, gay rights activist and author of Why Marriage Matters, argues this: "Gay people have the same mix of reasons for wanting the freedom to marry and needing the protections and responsibilities of marriage as non-gay people do." And therefore governments should not prevent such unions.
It seems odd to me that, while some are so passionately fighting for it, others are fighting against it. But perhaps Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt had it right when he said: "Angie [Angelina Jolie] and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able."
Perhaps since he's already been married once, Pitt has taken on board the wise words of Oscar Wilde who said: "Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
No comments:
Post a Comment