...I just feel that not enough of my peers value marriage as the life-long choice that it should be.
Why should it be a life-long choice? Other than this is how it has typically been defined, what makes this a should?
Many say that families are the cornerstone for society, surely this drastic change in the family composition would yield an interesting shift in society :0 right? right?
My sense is that families are considered the cornerstone because humans have a need for social safety. I do not think that sense of social safety can only be achieved within a male/female lifelong committed marriage. I do think that there are social difficulties that come as a result of believing you are in a secure social environment and find that security disrupted, or if you never have the opportunity to experience a secure social environment.
I think that society unnecessarily intertwines marriage with family with social security. I believe there are other viable routes to the same end.
In our society, because as a whole we do intertwine these things, when in other aspects a divorce is amicable and a sense of nuclear social security is maintained, I think that the societal difference for those who no longer exist within a typically expressed family may be more damaging than the separation of the parent's marriage.
That's a very good observation. True, I agree that being married is not vital to what we perceive as a healthy family. For example: An uncle and aunt I have are not married but have been "living together" for more than a decade already with two children.
But even in this situation, a metaphorical divorce is very well possible.
Yep, exactly.
But apart of that. I am sure that being raised by a single parent all your life due to... one of your parents leaving you as a child (by death or something) Is quite different from experiencing one of your parents going through a divorce.
Maybe it's interesting to observe the two different instances. Both are lacking in a gender role model (to an extent) but how are the results different?
Probably in as many ways as the people involved are different.
The ideal divorce (lol is that an oxymoron?)
Now if we were to take into perspective a scenario where a relatively simple and relaxed divorce took place. (one where the child still had access to his/her needs without a violent/abrupt divorce) Would the child still be affected in any way?
I think in large part, my own divorce was an ideal one. It was amicable, there was little discord or fighting prior to the divorce, and my ex-husband and I are still friends. Love is communicated to my children regularly in both spoken and non-verbal ways by both my ex-husband and me.
Yet, they were previously in a vision of their secure social environment that unexpectedly changed. I suspect especially for my oldest son, that shakes a little bit his sense of security with social environments all together. He may be willing to trust that he will be secure, but only so far. I suspect it has instilled some sense of doubt about the permanence of these social environments.
I feel sad about that, but when I think about it, aren't they to some degree inherently insecure? I mean we can pretend that valuation of marriage makes intimate social environments secure, but divorce and separation has always existed to some degree. Often a technically intact marriage is just a social facade for a deep separation of intimacy in that social environment.
Overall, I do value marriage, but only so far. I don't think it is the social panacea that it is held out to be and I think that to some degree belief in it's ability to protect people from the hardships of life can actually cause hardship.
That's the other thing about all of this. Certainly there are detrimental effects to the separation of one's supposedly secure social environment. But there are multitudes of events in anyone's life, many of which can be perceived as difficult or detrimental. Divorce is just one of those events.
One can conclude that high divorce rates were a result from new-found freedom. How will the newer generations go about changing if the source of the problem seems to be the fact that they have the ability to choose?
I think one possibility is one we are already seeing evidence of: this generation is choosing alternate forms of socially secure environments and is choosing a perspective that accepts the impermanence of these social environments. I think there is a lower degree of trust that one will be securely supported by their social network and as a result a greater sense of need for strength in independent relationship with life. It could be one source of the hyper-individualism I've seen in a thread title here recently.
Is this really the source of the problem? Or perhaps is choice/freedom merely a factor that enabled the occurrence of a
different problem...? (Ooooooooh
spicy~~)
It is a source of the problem, if one chooses to define the results of this societal change as a problem.
Do you think that humans are responsible enough to choose what will bring them happiness? Or will they, in their folly, inevitably make wrong decisions that they will regret (generally speaking?)
No, I don't think humans know how to choose what will bring us happiness. But that opinion stands for every societal choice we as humans would choose to make, so we might as well just make the ones that seem best for us at any given time. We will, inevitably make decisions that come with benefit and cost. No decision will be different. Just because one person values this choice over another and the benefit of this one over the cost of that one, does not make this one wise and that one folly.
