This is Part 2 of the article; read Part 1 here. What was its meaning before government incentives and creative desperation got their hands on it? Is it romantic love, as most Americans suppose? Zug nods to popular opinion first comes love, then comes marriage , but holds that. Marriage is an imprecise and unfair method for determining the allocation of rights and benefits.
Decoupling these rewards from marriage would alleviate this unfairness. It would also, truly, make love the purpose of marriage. It might also make marriage obsolete. I agree with Zug that marriage was not originally for romantic love, even though love makes it bright and beautiful. The central component that makes marriage make sense historically is its procreative potential and caregiving responsibility.
Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition.
It is primarily a license to have children. In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage and only marriage unites the three core dimensions of parenthoodβbiological, social and legalβinto one pro-child form: the married couple.
Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other. She seeks to reduce harm to people who fall outside the social norm of heterosexual marriage. Zug agrees that children need government support, but she wants to subtract marriage from the equation and simply benefit parents, treating marital status as irrelevant.
