Posts by B Jones
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Sacha,
Exactly the problem with the local response from Family Fist, Colin Craig et al.
But it wasn't really a response - the whole story was generated by them and their mates. The link above doesn't give a byline, but the original Waikato Times story does, and it's this former Maxim communications officer who wrote the original (well, inspired by UK stories) piece.
It's all very nice sharing our stories about names and kids etc, but I can't get past the fact that this friendly discussion has been prompted by people trying to whip up condemnation and discrimination against our families. Isn't a little outrage in order?
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I used to have a workmate who felt that Ms was for divorcees. It seemed a bit of a conservative approach to me, much like wedding invitation rules where a divorced couple is indicated by the ex-wife using her first name, eg Mr John Smith and Mrs Joan Smith, rather than Mr and Mrs John Smith wish to invite etc.
As someone who's written lots to people I don't know, I'm very much in favour of a general purpose title that doesn't require you to know much about the recipient. Dear firstname lastname sounds too impersonal, Dear firstname too informal. Dear title surname is usually much better sounding, where you have that information.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Hopefully it was clear by the context that I too consider it a noxious racist bullshit trope, repeated only for the purpose of illustrating that where data is absent, people's bullshit fills the gaps. Not that I think there's any point collecting racial purity data, but I so wish there was a silver bullet for that nonsense.
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It did used to matter for property inheritance - "illegitimate" children couldn't inherit. Back in the day, surnames were a lot more flexible too. I seem to remember characters in Jane Austen books who were sort of openly adopted into a rich but childless sponsor's family, and took on the sponsor's surname in recognition of that relationship. TE Lawrence's parents weren't married - his father was Sir Thomas Chapman and his mother was born Sarah Junner - they became the Lawrences after they ran off together, named after the family Sarah used to work for before she was a governess for the Chapmans. Chapman-Junner of Arabia doesn't sound nearly as cool, though.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Amy Gale,
Amy:
I’d really like to see this meme go away.
Amen. I've only ever heard it from conservative blokes; it strikes me as an attempt to convince a strawfeminist.
Phil:
If the info is not collected it cannot be reported.
No. Nonononono. The problem is that the data is too coarse-grained, not that there's data at all. I think the community has a legitimate interest in making sure children's family relationships are positive and enduring, but that doesn't mean "marriage" is a proxy for that. And the problem with the news article is that reporters chose to frame a story in a way set by a whole other country's politics and data collection - the UK statistics highlight births out of wedlock, and members of their conservative government are using it to justify marriage incentive tax breaks. Changing the way we measure data here doesn't protect us from that; it just allows a blank space in which urban legends can propagate, like the one about there being no full-blooded Maori left.
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Looks like the original story is part of an international trend. Of media coverage, that is.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Yamis,
What are the divorce rates for couples who have had children together vs the separation rates for unmarried couples who have had children together?
I think there are subgroups within the latter that would be hard to disaggregate, eg long term relationships where children have been planned as well as people making a go of cohabiting to support a surprise baby, or people who aren't married because they can't afford a big ceremony, and there would be different outcomes for each. It would take some effort to dig into those.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
But the stats seem to support my view that people are reverting to more traditional aspects of the marriage ceremony.
I'd love to see them. Because the last 150 years of history points to a steady retreat from the traditional position that marriage was the transfer of the legal responsibility over a woman from her father to her husband. Married women first had the ability to own property, then had the ability to engage in the public world through voting and employment on the same terms as men, then had the ability to divorce at will. Marriage stopped being a legal defence to rape surprisingly recently, and property division following dissolution has changed. Now you don't even need to be a man and a woman. It's not expected you'll be a virgin on your wedding night, and kids from the marriage, or previous ones, are regular participants in ceremonies. Big churchy weddings with white dresses might be in vogue, but that doesn't paper over the structural changes underneath.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
And so it is the same for taking your husband’s name. It is a deeply held tradition in a ceremony that has proven to be largely resistant to change for five hundred years.
The concept of marriage has changed radically in the last hundred and fifty years and is still changing. The ceremony has changed radically - no two ceremonies I've been to have been quite the same. I don't recall a single one I've attended which included the old "obey" business, and I'd be very interested to see data on how many marriages are performed by religious versus secular celebrants.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Nicely observed.
Comes from having grown up with parents who weren't married (well, they were originally, but not to each other), and having them separate just like about half of my friends with married parents. Thirty years ago.