Forward Thinking: The Purpose of Marriage

Forward Thinking is a values development project created in collaboration with Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers. Dan is introducing our next prompt today (head on over to see it!), but in this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month’s prompt: “What do is the purpose of marriage?” There was lively debate in the comments section of the original prompt, and nearly a dozen blog posts were written in response.

I was impressed by the number of posts this month, and am glad to have gotten people thinking. While the main theme of the responses was that marriage is about turning previously unrelated people into relations, the bloggers who responded varied as to whether they viewed marriage as a good thing or a bad thing, and with regards to whether the government plays the proper role in marriage. After offering excerpts from these posts, I will finish by adding a few of my own thoughts.

Slow Learner of Becoming Android emphasized the significance of marriage:

Getting married is one of the most significant decisions that you can make in your life. We only get so much time in life, and declaring that you wish to bind yourself to someone for all the time that you have is huge. Family is significant, and bringing someone into your family, joining theirs, and binding the two together is another big deal.

Declaring to your family and friends that you intend to, expect to, and will work your arse off in order to be with this person for life is a massive commitment, in my mind second only to bringing a child into the world.

And then add in all the legal aspects to it, the time and expense devoted to getting married in the first place (well, you can have a quicky Registry Office wedding for £100 or so, but most people don’t want to do it that way…) and you begin to get a sense of how much of a big thing it is to get married.

Kasey Weird of Valprehension, in contrast, describes themself as a marriage abolitionist:

Marriage is very often framed as an institution with a purpose of protecting children; it is discussed as an arrangement that supports the continuation of society. If we accept that the two-parent structure is a generally stable environment for children, then there may be some societal motivation to encourage people to get married, and to make life easier for them once they have made that commitment. Except that, really, this is just an argument for extending marriage-like privileges to people who are raising children together. If marriage (as it is civilly understand) is indeed all about children, why don’t we actually make it about children, rather than some commitment between two people that has nothing to do with children whatsoever? A different institution would better serve the purpose of supporting and benefiting children than marriage currently does.

But maybe the ways in which child-free couples benefit from marriage has its own social value, and thus it can still be considered a purposeful institution? I mean, I’m not arguing that the trappings of marriage aren’t important. I get that things like spousal health benefits and other legal entitlements that come with marriage are good things that make people’s lives easier. Part of why I am (legally) married is so that I can benefit from some of the protections that are afforded by that license. So, hey, I guess marriage helps make people’s lives easier, so it’s just a good thing and there’s no reason to change it, right?

Um, no. Not right at all actually. Because, yeah, the government extends some nice little bonuses and benefits to married people, but those bonuses come at the expense of unmarried people. As it stands, unless there is actually some societal benefit that comes from incentivizing marriage (unless there is a purpose to encouraging people to commit to one another), all that we are accomplishing by continuing to recognize these unions and grant them privileges is perpetuating a system in which, for no reason whatsoever, we prioritize and privilege coupled people over single people. This is rank discrimination. People do not deserve special legal status simply because they are in love, no matter how special and beautiful that love may be to them.

Matt Recla of Even the Bravest endorses the institution of marriage while pointing out how artificial that institution is:

The type of love I think about most often is in relation to marriage. I have been married for over sixteen years, since I was eighteen years old (no, I won’t recommend it to my son), so it is one area where I have a little more longevity than most my age. It is the also an area of love where you get the little help from pop culture. All the movies end at precisely the point where two free-spirited individuals overcome all obstacles (especially that climax point where she finds out about that horrible thing she thinks he did and he has to come find her in the rain on his motorcycle on the beach as she’s getting on a plane to fly to the other side of the world and never coming back) and tie the knot. So the popular message is that love relationships culminate in marriage and…good luck after that, because it’s too boring to be movie material.

Marriage is no guarantee of love, of the preference I referred to in my last post. Loveless marriages exist everywhere, as do loving pair-bond relationships outside of marriage. There are consequences to mandating marriage as the norm, which I have seen in the second-class treatment of adult single or divorced folks in Christianity. My argument, then, is not to let marriage do the dirty work of love for you. Love is a fragile thing, and belief that marriage is its only proper container is a denial of its nature. It is open, exposed, and vulnerable. Consequently, we can view the relationship between love and marriage as a beneficial one…as long as it is beneficial. We cannot overlook the fact that it has no sanction outside of what we give it. Why get married? There are certainly some societal benefits. But the safety and security that are thought to come with it have no standing of their own. They are projections of our own battles against uncertainty.

Olivia of Boredom Breeds Contempt illustrates how flexible marriage has become:



Gretchen Koch of Cheap Signals sees both pros and cons to marriage:

The purpose of marriage is to confer government and societal benefits on people who have established what they intend to be long-standing attachments to another person who isn’t a relative by blood or adoption, because these are considered to be the basis of new family units and turn individuals into households. Do I believe that should be their purpose? Sure, I suppose.

It’s awfully handy to have what you already consider a binding attachment to someone officially recognized, because otherwise the people with the most legal control over your life besides yourself, who will get to inherit your stuff and make decisions for you in the event of you falling into a coma, are your family. And family can be wonderful, but sometimes it isn’t. You didn’t choose your ancestral family, but you can choose your spouse– sort of. So marriage, as practiced in places where it isn’t arranged, can be a means for the individual to have some more autonomy that way.

But I think realistically, marriage results in less autonomy overall. When we think about freedom most of us don’t think first about who will get our stuff when we die or who gets to decide whether to unplug our brain-dead selves from life support if such necessity should arise, but rather our daily existence. And marriage gives another person, and the government, more control over our daily existence. Most people seem happy to make that trade-off, however, and sociological research says that married people are happier in general.

Lea of Unequally Yoked repeats an understanding of marriage that emphasizes its benefits and limitations without seeing either as a problem:

I tend to think that there’s a difference between love as something you feel and love as something you do, and marriage is the unique act of making an unrelated person part of our family. The author of the Times piece thought that, if someone said “Marriage limits your options” the two most plausible responses were to say “Not really” or to run. My response is more “Yes, and isn’t that wonderful?”

B at Celebration of Gaia leads us on a bit of a journey:

A thought experiment may muddy the waters instructively. Consider this simple question: Were Romeo and Juliet married? Search your memory. Some people will say yes, some no, depending on their recollection.

Memory can deceive us, so let’s consult the text of Shakespeare’s play. Act II ends as Friar Laurence leads the ill-fated couple offstage:

For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
Till holy church incorporate two in one.

It is not shown but it is strongly implied that the Friar performs a wedding ritual offstage. Does this information change your answer? Were they married? On the basis of this textual evidence, most people will say yes: They were married.

But it’s a bit more complicated than that. According to the law of the time, this marriage may not have been entirely legal. Given Juliet’s youth, parental consent was required. Further, a marriage had to be announced three times in church prior to the wedding ceremony. Neither condition was fulfilled, because the wedding ritual was done in secret.

Now let’s get experimental. Just to make it interesting, let’s imagine that their wedding was clearly and unquestionably illegal according to both Church and State. Friar Laurence was a rogue priest, acting outside his authority, perhaps an imposter, and he will be punished.

Does this change your answer? Were they married? Legally, they were not. But many people will assert that they were indeed married in spite of the law. This suggests that marriage has some other meaning besides a legalistic construct, that we can make some other sense of marriage, some deeper and truer sense.

George at Misplaced Grace starts by recounting an imaginary conversation between a father and son before explaining why he and his wife got married even though they originally planned not to:


So why get married?

We—my wife and I—asked ourselves this question. Are we somehow bowing to social pressure? Are we quantifying our relationship by a social convention? Is there any real value to choosing to be married as opposed to living as a married couple? For us marriage was still something that was meaningful—and I’ll tell you why:


To be unmarried is not to take away from the reality of being in love, or committed, or together- to be unmarried is merely to deprive us of our cultural language—It is to ask us to succinctly describe a sunset…..to a blind man……in sign language.


Rachel Marcy at Ripening Reason emphasizes that marriage makes unrelated people into family:

At its core, marriage has always been about resource sharing. Marriage created extended, interdependent kin networks that increased the odds of survival for all their members. Later, marriage evolved into a method of organizing labor and controlling property. Unfortunately, this pattern also made society less egalitarian, as more wealth was concentrated in fewer hands, and women’s reproduction was regulated to produce legitimate male heirs.

So maybe I’m being a true traditionalist when I say that marriage is, and should be, a legally recognized resource sharing arrangement. Of course, I’m also in favor of egalitarianism and marrying for love. But it’s possible–and increasingly socially acceptable–to live in a committed relationship outside of legal wedlock. If the institution of marriage retains any relevance, it’s in the legal privileges that accrue to people who officially declare themselves to be a family unit. Marriage turns unrelated people into family, and families pool resources for their collective good.

Ozy Frantz distinguishes between marriage and sex:

And I want someone who’s my best friend. I want to read books or sit on the computer late at night in companionable silence. I want to play around with ideas with them. I want that sort of creepy hivemind you get where you can say “the thing” and they’re like “but what about” and you’re like “yeah, right, but still.” (Seriously, my parents do that and I can’t even understand what they’re talking about half the time.) I want someone who understands that I’m always going to be in a triad with my partner and writing and, ideally, is going to make it a quad. I want someone who complements my weaknesses and enhances my strengths, and to be a better person because I’m with them.

Things I don’t care about: sex. Really don’t care. I mean, I’m poly, I can get sex elsewhere, and sex really isn’t that important to me in a relationship regardless. I like holding hands and snuggling and kissing and having my head petted, but if we do all that and never interlock genitals I don’t care. It’s very odd to me to see people talk as if all marriages must be sexual relationships: why is a relationship of friendship and commitment and mutual support somehow less valid because you aren’t participating in one admittedly very enjoyable recreational activity?

Ginny at Atheist, Polyamorous Skeptics suggests a redefinition of marriage:


Finally, Marta at Faith Seeking Understanding wrote a number of posts on the subject of marriage and collected them together in a round-up post.

I found this week’s posts interesting and thought provoking. I rather liked Matt Recla’s reminder that love is not restricted to marriage and that marriage does not guarantee love, and I was challenged by Kasey Weird’s discussion of how government benefits to married individuals privileges the married over the unmarried. Then also, George’s point that in this day and age marriage, to the public mind, symbolizes the commitment of two individuals appeals to the pragmatic side of me.

Many of the bloggers who responded were quick to note that marriage has traditionally been linked to child rearing. They rightly pointed out that that connection today is not absolute or automatic—plenty of unwed people have children and plenty of married people don’t. I appreciated Kasey’s point that given that unmarried people bear and raise children, and that the government’s giving advantages to married parents means that unmarried parents are disadvantaged. I was reminded of reading recently about a growing number of individuals who, without any sort of romantic or sexual relationship, are choosing to conceive and parent children together. When you remove children from the picture, legal marriage nevertheless provides couples with tax breaks, power of attorney, and inheritance. And this reflects the way marriage currently functions in our society: as a long-lasting committed relationship between two individuals.

As Olivia pointed out, the purpose of each individual marriage is what that couple makes it—in many ways, marriage is today very flexible and individual. But then there is legal marriage. What is it’s purpose? In essence  it’s a sort of government incentive to make long-lasting commitments that are more permanent and harder to break. And of course, the government’s incentivizing of marriage is linked to child rearing, and is in some sense an attempt to ensure that the adults attached to any given child stay with that child and care for it until adulthood. Legal marriage, with the benefits it provides, is the government’s way of saying that it likes a given relationship and family arrangement. So yes, legal marriage disadvantages those who are not married, but this is a feature of the government’s involvement in the institution, not a bug.

After reading these posts, I tried thinking outside of the box and asked myself what things would be like if the government stopped being involved in legal marriage. I found the thought experiment interesting. For one thing, the government could move its involvement in child rearing—tax breaks, legal paternity, the right to make medical decisions, etc.—away from its current married/unmarried dichotomy, and streamline it, so to speak. Perhaps, too, there could be some way to stipulate your power of attorney and legal next of kin, outside of the biological default. No longer restricting your next of kin or power of attorney to biological or legal relatives could prove interesting, allowing people to more easily build upon already solid friendships and community connections.

Without government involvement in marriage, most people would still form committed relationships, and couples would still have commitment ceremonies. Some would stick with one relationship and some leaving old ones and forming new ones over time. Leaving a partner might be easier without the legal hoops, but societal pressures and family realities would remain. People in bad relationships might feel less like they’re stuck with their partner, and children might grow up in an even greater variety of family situations. Even without legal marriage, the formation of close relationships and families, which I see as the heart of marriage, would go on.

I’m not saying that the government should stop incentivizing and prioritizing marriage. I would want to look more about the statistical evidence that suggests that married people are happier and more financially stable (is it correlation, or causation, or both?) before staking out a position there. I’m married, and obviously, I like being married. I like the perks, I like that no one questions my husband or my legal connection to our children, and I like that marriage signals a commitment that my husband and I have made to each other. I’m not opposed to divorce and remarriage, but I do think that marriage signals that a couple has signed up to give the relationship their best shot, and to try to work through hard times rather than just moving on. And personally, for myself, I like that.

Having read all this, what thoughts do you have to add?

About Libby Anne


  • http://Alisoncummins.com Alison Cummins

    Sexual relationships are inherently potentially exploitative. Marriage sets out legal obligations to mitigate any damage.

  • MM

    Based on Kasey Weird’s comments, I find the “marriage abolitionist” argument to be quite ridiculous. While she correctly identifies the incentives provided to married couples, she completely ignores the generally positive influence married couples have on society as a whole. In addition to creating an organized institution for the transfer of property/goods/wealth, married couples tend to be healthier (fewer hospital visits means lower insurance/healthcare costs), they tend to build more wealth (more taxes for the government and more spending), they’re at a lower risk of domestic violence (less crime, less police), etc…so yes, there does seem to be some good reasons for the government to incentivize couples to formalize their relationship through a legal contract. Of course, the government shouldn’t dictate which consenting adults can and cannot get married, but providing tax breaks (which is the primary incentive) seems like a reasonable measure. I don’t see how that’s “rank discrimination.”

    It’s not “rank discrimination” against my wife and I, as a childless couple, that we pay property taxes that fund schools…schools have a positive benefit on society, they have a positive impact on property values, and they make neighborhoods more liveable in general, so I’m willing to pay to incentivize child-rearing (people with kids get “free” schooling for their kids) even though I don’t directly benefit from it.

    • http://alisoncummins.com Alison Cummins

      MM, how much are the health and domestic violence benefits associated with the legal contract and how much are they simply an outcome of stable relationships generally? Where I live — Québec — 50% of people aged 54 or less who are living with a partner are *not* legally married (as are 17% of people aged 55+ who are living with a partner). I can’t tell the difference. In french people will refer to their “conjoint,” “conjointe,” “tchum” or “blonde” (spouse/partner, boyfriend, girlfriend) and that reveals nothing about their legal status.

      There are different reasons for this — the most notable is the violent rejection of the intervention of the Catholic church in people’s daily lives, the Quiet Revolution of the 1960’s. This meant both rejection of the right of the church to sanction people’s private relationships and rejection of the homemaker and breeder role for women. Another aspect is that Quebecers were traditionally poor and working-class and as such not particularly concerned about property rights.

      Still, people in Quebec have children; not by the bucketload, but they do. Children are mostly raised in families and they mostly do well.

      This is different from the social situation in other jurisdictions where marrying is the default, meaning that couples who do not marry are less invested/ stable/ prepared to begin with. I’m not sure a legal contract would be effective in making these less-desirable relationships more desirable.

      • MM

        Admittedly, I don’t have access to the full study…



        Now, don’t take that to mean I don’t support cohabitation. My wife and I lived together for almost three years before we got married and I’m glad we did it. Also, a growing number of studies on cohabitation are showing that it’s leading to marriage and healthy long-term relationships, so I think the correlation between cohabitation and domestic violence may become weaker in the future.

      • Christine

        MM, I’m with Alison on this one – that study was specifically done in the US. If getting married is the norm, then people who choose to not marry are more likely to have some sort of problem. This is only going to hold in the face of strong societal pressure. The study specifically states that it’s American. You can see this sort of thing in the statistics for longevity of marriage after cohabitation – in France a marriage is no more likely to break up (it might even be less likely, I apologise for not remembering the numbers or where they’re from) if the couple lived together before getting married.

      • Kris

        One could also consider that in Canada common law couples receive many of the benefits normally only given to married couple under our laws. They are considered spouses after living together for a defined period of time -often six months to a year, they can file taxes together no -different than married spouses, can make health care decisions and can get spousal health benefits in some cases and I if their relationships end, they have legal recourse to split assets. Perhaps these accrued benefits also reduce the incentive to be legally married?

      • http://alisoncummins.com Alison Cummins

        Kris, in Quebec we don’t have common law (English tradition) we have a Civil Code (based on the Napoleonic Code). So no, common-law couples do not have access to legal protections here.

        Ironically, in the rest of Canada they do have common law and the rate of marriage is *higher.* Paradoxical but true!

        Health care benefits are not such a big deal here. We are all covered by single-payer insurance, so a partner’s benefits package is not a life-or-death matter. My package covers medication and dentistry and some other nice things. When I put my partner on it I pay the rate for the family plan, that’s all. Nobody asks for a marriage certificate.

  • lucifermourning

    the abolitionist arguments also ignore the huge benefit of legal divorce.

    legal divorce means the government is much more able and willing to get involved to ensure fair division of property – which is vital if one spouse has significantly more assets, higher income, etc. considering how often that higher income is there because of a spouse willing to sacrifice his/her own career – whether to be a stay at home parent, or work shorter hours, or move around, or handle the social calendar, or whatever.

    legal divorce means a spouse can’t just walk away with whatever he/she owns and leave a destitute partner behind.

    could arrangements outside marriage work to mitigate this? yes – benefits could be extended to unmarried couples in various ways. the question is, what is the point at which those benefits phase in? how long does a couple have to live together first? do they need to have children?

    marriage has the advantage of both parties having made a clear choice to enter into a contract, giving a clear reason for the government to be involved in the event of its dissolution.

    • http://patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism Libby Anne

      Excellent point!

  • Martin

    I sometimes play with the concept of legal marriage having an expiration date. It seems a little bizarre that the default assumption is that the person you choose to marry at 25 is the same person you’ll still want to be with at 75. It’s wonderful when it works out, but our divorce rate indicates that it’s hardly a given. It also seems to be an inherently religious assumption – “soulmates”, “what God has joined together”, and all that.

    Instead, marriages could last for 5 years or so. If a couple wants to remain married, they just re-up periodically, like renewing a driver’s license. If they prefer, they can let the marriage expire and go back to being unmarried without the trauma (and expense!) of a divorce. Of course, divorce would still be a possibility when one or both parties can’t wait until the expiration date arrives, for whatever reason.

    By no means perfect, especially when there are children involved, but I don’t think it would work out to be any worse than divorce today. There would probably need to be some sort of legal defaults for parents to share custody, etc., and relatively easy ways to adjust these defaults in individual cases. As long as I’m fantasizing, there would also be legal defaults regarding property, bank accounts, pets, etc. that again could be adjusted as needed in each case.

    Couples who renew their marriages would be actively affirming that they want to stay together rather than simply doing so out of duty or inertia. Religions could still perform marriages “for life”, and observant couples would just need to fill out a form once every five years to keep it going in the eyes of the law. Finally, those couples who might be considering divorce may be inclined to just ‘wait it out’ if they only have a year or two until the marriage expires anyway… and some of those may, in that time, figure out how to work out their issues and decide that they truly want to remain together after all.

  • Imperious Dakar

    From the old patriarchal perspective (which was also essentially the traditional one in the West), the purpose of marriage was to secure property rights for individuals and their families (or at least fathers and sons) and as a way for a man to officially claim a woman and any children she bore him as HIS.

    Women and children were considered the husband’s property (or at least possessions) and it was generally accepted that a rich man would sleep around (although it was intolerable for a woman to do so).

    Generally speaking, those who argue against gay marriage in favor of ‘Traditonal Marriage’ don’t know what the fuck their talking about. Because traditional marriage was all about the man’s property rights and ownership of HIS women (wife or wives, daughters, etc.). As well as any male children until they came of age.

  • Carys Birch

    MM how much of marriage’s benefit to a couple’s healthcare cost do you think comes from the fact that married people on the whole have better access to health insurance than single people? (double coverage when both spouses work, spouse’s benefits available in case of unemployment or other loss of coverage, etc.?)

    Is it fair to incentivize something based on benefits that arise out of those same incentives in the first place? People who start out in a better position tend to have better results? Who knew!

    I do think incentives for marriage discriminate against unmarried people and legitimize an already nasty social stigma against single people. It’s an artifact. We don’t have to do away with it, it means something to us culturally, but it should be a cultural tradition. Decorative, but mostly symbolic.

  • http://www.fidesquaerens.org/blog/ Marta L.

    Libby, I hate to be nitpicky, but could you edit this post so my names correct? (It’s Marta, not Mart.) Thanks!

  • Pingback: Faith Seeking Understanding » Forward Thinking blog round-up

  • ecolt

    I’ve never been a big fan of marriage as an institution. As an atheist I don’t think there’s any god that has to approve of my sex life. As a feminist, I have issues with taking part in something that has traditionally treated women as property. And both my partner and I dislike the idea of more government involvement in our personal lives – I don’t need a piece of paper or a costly ceremony to prove that I love him. However, we have talked about getting married.

    Why? Well, my partner is on permanent disability. He receives a monthly Social Security check which, while not a whole lot, is enough to live on (albeit not that well, but it’s better than nothing). The number one motivation for us getting married isn’t that we love each other (which we do) but because of finances. If anything were to happen to him, as a widow I would be entitled to a pension from his benefits. It wouldn’t necessarily be a whole lot, but it would be a way for him to know that I’d have some measure of financial security if he wasn’t around.

    The other issue is that he is divorced and has three children. Under current law, if we were unmarried his ex wife would actually still be entitled to his benefits. His children would be provided for until they reach maturity, but ultimately their mother would control anything that went to them. He and his ex have a very had relationship, and he’s already seen from existing child support issues that she can be very selfish and that his money isn’t necessarily going toward taking care of his kids. He believes, rightly so, that should anything happen to him I would do a better job of making sure his money went to his kids in a fair way, even after they reach age 18. Getting married wouldn’t only protect me, but would protect his kids.

    I hate that we’re talking about marriage just for financial reasons and that I would have to go against what I consider to be one of my fundamental beliefs so that he can have peace of mind about me and the kids, but that’s just the system we have to deal with. It’s not the most romantic thing, but it’s what might be necessary given his health issues and the problems he has with his ex.

  • Pingback: The Inaugural Patheos Atheists Blog Carnival!