[UUPoly-L] New Article: What If Marriage Is Bad For Us?

[John Ullman <jsu627@earthlink.net>]

This is in the current issue of Chronicle of Higher Education. I saw 
it on the Alternatives to Marriage Project ATMP-TALK list. (To 
subscribe to ATMP-TALK, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG 
that says (in the message text) SUB ATMP-TALK. )

http://chronicle.com/article/What-if-Marriage-Is-Bad-for/48640/

Since it is a pay per view article, I've taken a paragraph to give 
you the gist of it. The overall idea is that marriage might not 
really provide the benefits it's supporters tout, and a lot of people 
seem to have figured that out.

What If Marriage Is Bad For Us? by Laurie Essig and Lynn Owens, 
sociology faculty at Middlebury College

Too often we are presented with the false choice between a lifelong, 
loving marriage and a lonely, unmarried life. But those are far from 
the only options. We should consider the way people actually live: 
serial monogamy, polyamory, even polygamy.

Instead of "blaming the victims" for failing to adopt the formative 
lifestyles of the white and middle class, we should consider that 
those avoiding marriage might know exactly what they are doing. 
Marriage is not necessarily good for all of us, and it might even be 
bad for most of us. When there is broad, seemingly unanimous support 
for an institution, and when the institution is propped up by such 
disparate ideas as love, civil rights, and wealth creation, we should 
wonder why so many different players seem to agree so strongly. 
Perhaps it's because they are supporting not just marriage but also 
the status quo.

John U