As got buried in my first reply: "I wouldn't want to make it mandatory." I think it would be a good idea; I don't think legal sanctions are in any way appropriate.
I also would like to clarify that I am not talking about parents, as a complete class -- I am talking about the class of people who are having/building a long-term family together that includes raising children as a joint enterprise. This excludes 1a and 1b and any other cases of absent parentage.
Case 1c is pretty much the crux of my argument, actually. If getting married is something that actually makes people's lives harder, for people in any of those categories who are trying to form a family together, then marriage is not serving those people well, and it should be fixed so it can. There are many ways in which not being married in a legal sense does make their lives harder, and that's a problem.
On the social side, I think in much of U.S. culture we're pretty much at the point of marriage equivalent to some past cultures, where the requirements to be married were simply "set up a house together and tell people you're married", at which point the community treated them as a married couple. I guess functionally from one perspective what I'm arguing is that legal marriage should recognize that situation; its function is to be the legal/contractual counterpart to that community recognition.
(Edit to add: Also, to clarify, I'm debating here -- this is a position that I believe in to some extent, but I am not certain of my opinion on how its merits compare to the merits of the opposing positions, so mostly what I'm doing is exploring the idea by defending it, rather than saying "this is absolutely what I'd do if I were king".)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 07:39 pm (UTC)I also would like to clarify that I am not talking about parents, as a complete class -- I am talking about the class of people who are having/building a long-term family together that includes raising children as a joint enterprise. This excludes 1a and 1b and any other cases of absent parentage.
Case 1c is pretty much the crux of my argument, actually. If getting married is something that actually makes people's lives harder, for people in any of those categories who are trying to form a family together, then marriage is not serving those people well, and it should be fixed so it can. There are many ways in which not being married in a legal sense does make their lives harder, and that's a problem.
On the social side, I think in much of U.S. culture we're pretty much at the point of marriage equivalent to some past cultures, where the requirements to be married were simply "set up a house together and tell people you're married", at which point the community treated them as a married couple. I guess functionally from one perspective what I'm arguing is that legal marriage should recognize that situation; its function is to be the legal/contractual counterpart to that community recognition.
(Edit to add: Also, to clarify, I'm debating here -- this is a position that I believe in to some extent, but I am not certain of my opinion on how its merits compare to the merits of the opposing positions, so mostly what I'm doing is exploring the idea by defending it, rather than saying "this is absolutely what I'd do if I were king".)