Hitched By 22?

Mark Regnerus notes two things, that the average age of marriage is increasing and that the age gap between couples getting married is decreasing. These things are, apparently, something we should be very worried about. Regnerus seems to think that people are pressured to delay marriage and that they are hamstrung from tying the knot for fear of the label 'Mrs. degree seeker.' Perhaps most interestingly, while he says things like,

But according to social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, women's "market value" declines steadily as they age, while men's tends to rise in step with their growing resources (that is, money and maturation). Countless studies -- and endless anecdotes -- reinforce their conclusion. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet they largely suppress it during their 20s -- their most fertile years -- only to have to beg, pray, borrow and pay to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.

In other words, women are a commodity to be bought and sold, based solely on their fertility. I love consulting the Washington Post's wingnut columnists for my sense of self worth. Don't you? He continues to maintain that:

This is not just an economic problem. It's also a biological and emotional one. I realize that it's not cool to say that, but my job is to map trends, not to affirm them.

Sure, sure. He seems to think that the only value women bring to a marriage is their fertility, despite the fact that women make up a full half of the workforce and millions of families depend on women's wages as primary means of supporting the family. To say that Regnerus has a distorted sense of gender roles is an understatement.

He also seems to think that while women should hurry up and get hitched, men don't have to stress out about this:

Marriage will be there for men when they're ready.

Although he does note the caviat of recent research that shows men who wait to have children after their 40 put their children at risk for developmental disorders.

Regnerus' solution is a simple one: everyone should get married by 22. Seriously. After all, it worked for him:

My wife and I married at 22 with nothing to our name but a pair of degrees and some dreams. We enjoy recounting those days of austerity, and we're still fiscal conservatives because of it, better poised to weather the current crisis than many, because marriage is an unbelievably efficient arrangement and the best wealth-creating institution there is. Married people earn more, save more and build more wealth compared with people who are single or cohabiting.

Look, it's really fun to mock Regnerus' arguments that everyone would just be happier if everyone paired off by 22, leaving neat little family arrangements. But there's a real problem with his argument -- it is more or less the argument echoed through the years about women's worth equal to her fertility and that men control the game when it comes to marriage. His argument is basically the same one that's been used to make 30-year-old single women feel bad for decades.

Regnerus also doesn't even address gay couples. His notion that everyone should be married by age 22 seems to leave out many same-sex couples that don't live in Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, or Iowa. By leaving out so many couples, his argument seems even weaker.

Even though getting married early works well for some people, it's important to remember that it's not the thing that works out well for everyone. While Regnerus maintains that, "age-divorce link is most prominent among teenagers (those who marry before age 20). Marriages that begin at age 20, 21 or 22 are not nearly so likely to end in divorce as many presume." But that's a pretty broad statement. Some people may well be mature enough to marry by 22, but I was nowhere near ready to make such a financial, emotional, and legal commitment to someone at that age. I was still trying to figure my own life out.

If all Regnerus were doing were presenting trends, he wouldn't have brought such judgment to it. After all, I actually think it's a good thing that men and women are waiting longer to marry. It's also probably a good thing that the age gap is shrinking (although I know plenty of happy couples where the age gap is greater than two years); you tend to be able to meet challenges together as you age together. There's also something to be said for being young and single, experiencing life on your own and learning to be self-sufficient. In the end, that may make you a better partner in the long run.

It Ain’t No Culture War

Ann Friedman is right in her column over at The American Prospect: The battle over LGBT rights isn’t a culture war. By calling it such, we’re losing ground in the debate. The debate over LGBT is a matter of civil rights, not culture, and until the left can succeed in framing it as such, we well always be victim of those that prefer to remain on the sidelines, waiting to see who wins the fight.

In the aftermath of the election, many progressive pundits were eager to call the culture wars done and over, their influence no longer as strong. And yet, there are thousands in California whose marriages over the last several months hang in jeopardy. Single parents, including gay parents, have been stripped of the right to adopt children from Arkansas, and a judge in Miami just today ruled that gay adoption should be illegal. Thousands more aren’t able to stay with their partners in the hospital or share in employer health insurance benefits because the state refuses to recognize the union of two people of the same sex. This isn’t culture we’re talking about. These are people’s lives. Until we get Americans to recognize these battles as a civil rights issue, we’ll always be on the losing side.

Correction: This post originally said that a judge in Florida ruled that gay adoption was illegal. The judge actually ruled against a gay adoption ban, thereby making gay adoption legal in the state of Florida.

Cross posted on Pushback.

Still Fighting Old Civil Rights Battles

Femocracy points to an LA Times article that reveals for many of those gays and lesbians of color, marriage isn't necessarily at the forefront of their civil rights concerns. It's not because they don't feel marriage is important, it's just that it falls far down on the list of addressing other highly offensive things that happen to people of color every day:

At a time when blacks are still more likely than whites to be pulled over for no reason, more likely to be unemployed than whites, more likely to live at or below the poverty line, I was too busy trying to get black people registered to vote, period; I wasn't about to focus my attention on what couldn't help but feel like a secondary issue.

It's a fair point in this contentious post-Prop 8 mania. Many gays and lesbians of color still have a lot of civil rights to work through, and may not consider marriage at the top of their priority list.

Religion and Same-Sex Marriage

I largely agree with Emily’s post about same-sex marriage. As frustrated as GLBT activists might be, there are two important things to think about: First, attitudes about same-sex marriage are changing with younger generations. As those generations grow older and take more control, there is a great deal of hope that they will simply overturn the parochial notion of defining marriage as “one man and one woman.”

Second, it’s a good time for the LGBT community to take a long, hard look at its own movement. It needs to adopt some new, more inclusive and grassroots strategies. It’s a problem that the feminist movement continues to struggle with, so I’m not surprised that the LGBT has some problems with it as well. What will hopefully emerge is a better, stronger, more diverse movement.

But one thing I’d like to note is that Emily calls the institution of marriage a largely religious one, and one that the LGBT community shouldn’t bother to mess with. (Note: See my earlier post on how marriage historically hasn’t been much of a religious institution so much as means of making contracts and alliances between clans.) It’s understandable that many in the LGBT community have rejected religion in whole or in part, since many religions have more or less demonized gay people. But there are plenty of people out there that identify as both religious and gay or queer. Some religions have recognized same-sex marriage as a moral choice, and welcome those who choose to commit to one another openly in their parishes.

Furthermore, by rejecting all religion because some of it doesn’t accept same-sex marriage, LGBT communities risk alienating those who could be some of their strongest allies. Rejecting marriage because it has religious overtones lets those with the most conservative versions of the institution define it. Marriage is simply the legal joining of two individuals. Some people also attach a religious definition to it, but many others don’t. So long as we let the conservatives on the Family Research Council define it, the LGBT movement will have trouble growing.

Cross posted at Pushback.

Putting Same-Sex Marriage in Historical Perspective

As voters in California consider a ballot initiative that would define marriage as between one man and one woman, I would advise everyone to read this article from Stephanie Coontz. Coontz, who wrote the most definitive history of marriage as an institution to date, which accurately points out that the whole notion of a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is a historically new phenomenon.

Historically, marriage has tended toward polygamy, and the emphasis hinged more on reproduction so that families could ensure the retention of property more than anything else. A man could take a new wife or concubine if his first wife proved to be infertile. Additionally, she notes that the church’s involvement in marriage is also fairly new, “For the first 16 centuries of its existence, Christianity held that the validity of a match was determined by a couple’s stated intention to be married, rather than by any formal ceremony or licensing process,” Coontz writes.

Recently, the government and religious institutions have increased involvement in what has traditionally been considered a family or private affair, Coontz notes. After freeing individuals from needing parental approval to get married, the courts also struck down regulations that banned marriage with someone of another race, a “drunk,” or someone with a venereal disease. All of those have been systematically struck down by the courts.

Coontz astutely points out:

These two innovations—channeling more benefits through marriage than in the past while also repealing the denial of individual choice to most groups—have given gays and lesbians a strong socioeconomic incentive to demand access to marriage and a strong moral argument to press their case on the basis of equal justice. And contrary to “Conventional Wisdom,” their case is also supported by the Western legal and religious tradition, which has never made ability to procreate a precondition for marriage and which traditionally accorded legal rights to many unions that religious leaders considered illicit or immoral.

In other words, Coontz finds it something of a historical paradox that even as laws have tended to increase the autonomy of the individual when it comes to marriage, there are simultaneous attempts to rob certain groups of that automony. Overall, people tend to be happier with a more or less monogamous relationships and increased autonomy. But it’s important not to be selective about that autonomy and understandable that groups would resent that exclusion.

Cross posted at Pushback.

Ugly Betty's Cast: No on Prop 8

Via Feminocracy. Not only is Ugly Betty one of my favorite shows on television today, but the cast also made this great ad opposing Proposition 8 in California, which would eliminate the right of gays to marry.



The reason this strikes me as important is because it addresses the Latino community -- a heavily Catholic contingent. While research shows that Catholics are breaking away from the Church's political stances more and more, it's important to have Latino celebrities leading this progressive cause.

What's especially interesting about this commercial is that they directly point to the moral obligation to allow gays to marry and say that it destroys family. This directly assaults the language put forth by the pro-Prop 8 people.