I received 2 wedding invitations (out of state) this week and was asked to play music/arrange songs for another. It is indeed, that time of year when the mail carries with it the obligation to choose beef, chicken or fish and pay $500 for a plane ticket, and buy a gift. Why are people still getting married? It's not for the tax break! I mentioned on Hubski before that my wife and I have to file separately to avoid paying a huge student loan increase. Because we file separately, we incur an extra $10k in tax burden. We have literally considered a divorce (on paper only) just to ease this tax issue.So how about it? What's the case for marriage these days? I recently read that the percentage of adults that are married is the lowest it's ever been in the US, 51%. I'm sure the religious element will say it's because we no longer have "God" in our society but maybe it's more simple than that. Maybe it's just not practical, in fact maybe it's stupid.
b_b: I agree that marriage is silly. I have a live-in GF, and neither of us seems to want to make it legal. My brother got married, because otherwise his wife would have had to go back to Japan, so it was a practical consideration. But outside those type of circumstances, I think the wedding itself is what drives marriages at this point. My experience, from the friends and family whose weddings I've observed, has been that as soon as an engagement happens, full planning mode begins: food tasting, hall choosing, music selection, and, of course, the dress. Its a sickness that women suffer from because they're engendered to want that from the time they are conscious of the world around them.Historically, it seems to me that marriage was (and still is in some primitive places) just another form of subjugation, more akin to slavery than love (for instance inter-spousal rape wasn't a crime in most states until the 1970s or 80s). The woman was passed from being owned by her father to her husband, and for taking on this "burden", the husband was compensated in the form of a dowry.
Admittedly, I am from a household of divorce, so I think that my view on the topic has been soured, but I just can't find any objective reason why we still do this, unless its to pacify one's religious guilt, which, thankfully, I don't suffer from.