Marriage & Equality

Amanda Marcotte has a very interesting entry at Pandagon on the subject of marriage and equality. Specifically, she is critiquing an opinion column in the Washington Post by Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas who urges women (but only, apparently, women) to get married younger.

Marcotte, as I read her critique, asserts that conservatives want women to get married at a young age because this is an effective way to clip their wings and keep them malleable.

I suppose the good thing is that Regnerus is coming right out and stating a value that social conservatives tend to avoid baldly stating—they desire young marriage (for women), because it’s an effective tool at clipping women’s wings. But this is rarely stated outright. It is the whole reason for abstinence-only and other movements against making contraception available and acceptable to young people, though. The hope is that teenagers will get pregnant and “do the responsible thing”, i.e. they’re trying to use subterfuge to get the desired results.

It’s always tough to paint with a broad brush. I would not be at all surprised if a non-trivial number of social conservatives were motivated by exactly this. But, I suspect another non-trivial chunk of them have not thought deeply enough about their reasoning to have such explicitly sinister motivations. They have simply been taught that chastity before marriage, marrying young, reproducing often, and a structure where the woman’s unpaid labor supports the man’s career is simply the right way to do things and haven’t thought much beyond that. Sort of a “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” kind of dynamic. And there are others who maybe aren’t vigilant about women’s rights and personal development but who also are not motivated by antagonism toward those things who support the idea of a young, subservient wife because they see it as leading to a more stable society for a variety of reasons and (fairly or not) see the sacrifice of female prerogatives as a reasonable sacrifice.

Regardless of the motivation of those who want a culture in which women tend to get married young, I think Ms. Marcotte accurately describes some of its effects. Why should we bemoan the decline in marriage for women at a young age? Per Regnerus:

[M]arriage wisely entered into remains good for the economy and the community, good for one’s personal well-being, good for wealth creation and, yes, good for the environment, too.

And, particularly for women, per Regnerus again, their “market value” declines with age as does their fertility.

“Market value” depends, I suppose, on the nature of the market and what is being bought and sold. If what is being bought is youthful good looks, inexperience, and pliability, I suppose Regnerus is correct. On the other hand, more mature women probably bring to the table a lot of what more mature men bring to the table — money and maturity among other things. Fertility, it’s true, doesn’t have an unlimited shelf life. But waiting until 25 or 30 probably isn’t going to eliminate your ability to have children with your spouse.

As Ms. Marcotte points out, the critical caveat in Prof. Regnerus’s statement about “marriage wisely entered into” is wisdom. The younger you are, typically the less wisdom you have. More important than innate intelligence or wisdom is the fact that at a younger age you have less data with which to make a decision. You don’t know your preferences, you haven’t experienced the world, and you have less of a notion about the kind of person you are and ultimately would like to be. In the case of women, contends Marcotte, that is more or less the point:

But I’d suggest that Regnerus, especially since he advises that only women marry young and therefore that they marry men significantly older, is not saying that people should be formed by marriage. He’s saying women should be. And the form that forming will take is obvious—the more malleable you are, the more likely you are to give into the pressure to be the support system for you husband, to give up your hopes and dreams to support his. The problem with older women (well, not problem—I’d say solution!) is that they are set in their ways, and that means they have more bargaining power in their relationships. If you already have your career, for instance, you know what you stand to lose if you give into the pressure to give it up. But if you don’t have it yet, it makes it much easier to let your husband’s needs and desires dictate the entire relationship.

I have suggested before that I am a fundamentally lazy person. I will go so far as to work hard now to facilitate laziness down the road. I cannot imagine the work it must take to be married to a woman you have molded and made dependent on you. In my case, I married a woman who, if anything, has a stronger will than my own and who has very definite opinions. If I had not, it seems to me, discussions at home would be so boring as to be not worth having. Additionally, she leads her own life apart from me which relieves me from the responsibility of coming home at the end of the day and having some sort of responsibility to let her live vicariously through my day. Sure, I might end up doing more of the house work, participating in more of the child rearing, and running more of a risk of not getting my way from time to time but ultimately even these things are more rewarding in the long run.

I believe I have a more rewarding relationship with my kids than fathers acting in the traditional mold. When I cook, I find that (surprise!) I love what’s being served for dinner. And, when you don’t get your way all the time, you’re not always to blame when things don’t work out. (And, honestly, I’m laid back enough that I rarely care enough to have a “way” that I need to get.) I suppose the primary way in which my marriage seems to fit the more traditional pattern Regnerus urges is that I am several years older than my wife. We didn’t have kids until I was 32 and she was 27. In my mind, that worked out well primarily because I matured as slowly as I could. I don’t think she would have found me to be a great spouse and co-parent if we had married when I was her age or had kids when I was 27.

Because I was able to burn off some energy before settling down, I don’t have an exaggerated view of what life without those responsibilities is like. I can see that the rewards outweigh the responsibilities. And, I feel like the stability is returned on her side for similar reasons.

I know people who have gotten married young and had it work out spectacularly. And I know people who have gotten married after waiting awhile and had it not work too well. That said, on balance, I think the reasons for waiting awhile to get married tend to outweigh reasons for getting married at a young age and think that Marcotte has the better of this particular argument.