Starter marriages
I first heard about starter marriages a couple of Saturdays ago on Fox and Friends. This is something that Ayn Rand might have appreciated. I can't say that I will ever be in favor of starter marriages. I thought about bringing this up then, but definitely wanted to do so after richrobinson's post about his grandparents.
You may recall Dennis Prager lamenting a degradation of the culture via a secular philosophy instead of a religious-based philosophy. I am not going to defend him here, but this is undoubtedly one symptom of what Prager was talking about.
I would like to hear people's opinions on the effects of starter marriages on any children born of these relationships as well.
You may recall Dennis Prager lamenting a degradation of the culture via a secular philosophy instead of a religious-based philosophy. I am not going to defend him here, but this is undoubtedly one symptom of what Prager was talking about.
I would like to hear people's opinions on the effects of starter marriages on any children born of these relationships as well.
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:) Sci-Fi is often a surprising predictor of cultural as well as scientific changes to come..
"required to assure a prosperous future"???
Sure: 'if we do all this and have a nice wedding, we'll have a prosperous future.' .... with unicorns, rainbows and a white picket fence around your fantasy.
You can't 'assure a prosperous future,' for one thing, nor can anyone 'assure' that, as life goes on, "things won't change" in ways that make your marriage become a Not-Good Thing, either!
That's sort of why divorce was 'invented,' eh?
Calling it a 'starter marriage' may be cold and cruel, but it might also be an acknowledgment by 'the young' that they're interested in a lot of the good aspects of marriage (sex, tax deductions, sharing living expenses, and all that,) but they're not sure of the "'til death do us part" part.
Maybe a nice Reality Check for them after watching what the last few generations have done in the way of marital success or stability.
Not to even mention the Hollywood Marriages and such... :)
The arguments for 'tradition' or 'cultural disaster' are like all the others. You/we won't know the real effects of these 'experiments' for decades or generations.
Look at the increase in 'age at first marriage.'
Look at the increase in the number of "Unmarrieds-at-all."
Japan's youth has been reported as becoming 'disinterested in sex'... in a nation that's dropped below 'replacement rate' already!
Lots of things change.
To use 'we've always done it like that' as a justification or foundation for rejecting Starter Marriages is, to me, a joke.
OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
courtesy of a justice of the peace and her neighbor
(a witness) -- to make our union legal as I went into
the usaf. . we grew apart when she wanted animals
and I wanted children. . we were together 15 years,
and parted still in love. . neither of us ever had
kids, though. . I desperately wanted to have
natural offspring, but it's too late now. . my second
wife and I have no kids. . it's just life ... and the second
marriage was in a church ... but the promise which
we made to one another was nothing like that which
my first wife and I made. . more like "'til death."
it turns out that my first was a kind of starter marriage,
but we held on too long. . I just couldn't leave
until she was standing on her own two feet, firmly. -- j
.
Marriage is not a "throw away" commitment...if it were, the vows would say "Till 2021 do we part", rather than "death".
My thought is if people would return to taking responsibility for their actions, the divorce rate would drop to nearly nothing.
But a "starter marriage" to, I guess, "get your feet wet" just to walk away because, well, she or he is cuter/hunkier than my current spouse, this cow will drag me down, this guy will never be more than a fat janitor...
It's the ultimate failure of taking responsibility for your actions. And what this - shitcanning a marriage for trivial, "sparklepony" reasons, teaches kids is why get married, when it will all just fall apart, anyway... and if you make a bad decision, you can always tale a mulligan rather than make Limoncello out of those lemons...
Rand said a lot about children, actually. She said it in her novels and even in her essays. She talked about teaching children self-reliance and a consistent view of the world that would enable them to make sense of it. But she never once considered what a gut-wrencher divorce really is for a child. I am not speaking of the custody warfare, though that's bad enough, but of the Great Shake. Divorce teaches impermanence and an overwhelming sense of hazard. It teaches tremendous risk aversion, to the point where marriage becomes impossible to contemplate.
This has nothing to do with social decadence or West Coast airheads. This label has all the reality of global warming. Yes, the Earth does warm (and cool), but, no, we do not need to reduce our carbon footprints. Similarly, young people start out life along many paths. So what?
Here's one for you. Have you ever learned about The Panic of 1857? Google it. I have 19th century history books that do not mention it. Maybe it was real; maybe it was not. So, too, with "Starter Marriages." The only "reality" might be on Fox.
A starter marriage is a California airheads first go round of a planned three to four to ensure money to live on in more aged and mature (strike that) years.
It's spread to Fox already???
Back about ten or fifteen years ago it was a full blown wedding, honeymoon and the whole bit, very expensive as a preference that was planned to fail - other than a lot of expensive gifts.