…then comes marriage…
I read this blog post the other day by V. of Violent Acres, and I could not believe how much I was agreeing and disagreeing with the material simultaneously.
Her first complaint was the way that many people consider marriage to be the end all, be all of commitments in life. Quite rightly she points out that having children is a far larger commitment of time as opposed to marriage. Of course we also shouldn’t ignore the amount of resources a child takes up, this weekend my sister-in-law was telling me how her nearly two and a half year old son will just not sleep without his main bedroom light on. They are a heck of a financial commitment as well. In all ways, a bigger deal than a marriage.
Then however there is a large shift in direction and complaints against those people who are not married, having kids. As if shaming those people who are not married will encourage them to get married. Which for some, maybe it will, but all it really does is add to the idea that marriage is a bigger deal than having kids, the exact issue the complaint was lodged against in the first place. People are going to think that marriage is the bigger issue than kids if everyone is always harping on this idea that marriage is the end goal.
For me the issue is null and void in the first place, marriage is really a silly prerequisite for having kids. A license and a ceremony really does not make one, as an individual or as a couple, any more prepared to raise children. It does not make a couple any more loving, or caring, or committed than they were beforehand. A loving person or a self absorbed twit are still, respectively, after a marriage ceremony, a loving person and a self absorbed twit (but possibly poor). You’re either good parent material or you aren’t.
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