MARRIAGE AND FAMILY:
Value. The utility of an object in satisfying, directly or indirectly, the needs or desire of human beings (Black’s Law Dictionary: Revised Fourth Edition)
Has anyone else noticed a pernicious, progressive devaluation of many things in our society that seems to be occurring all around us?
Who hasn’t heard the old saying: “They don’t make things like they used to”? Which of us has not witnessed inflation’s effects on our disposable income or been the victim of planned obsolescence in material and durable goods. Commentators like Andy Rooney have drawn our attention to such phenomenon as the shrinking candy bar that grows ever more expensive. Most of us have experienced “sticker shock” on auto showroom floors or been astounded, at least once, by a grocery bill. But how many of us have really stopped to consider this phenomenon of diminishing value in detail? How comprehensive it is? How insidious?
Is this progressive devaluation limited to material items or does it also extend to services and, perhaps, even to relationships? Let’s consider. Nowadays, when we fill our gas tank, does anyone check our oil or wipe our windshield? Probably not even at times when we are paying higher and higher prices for gas. Is this devaluation? How about when major corporations phase out older workers and replace them with cheaper less experienced workers and then raid pension funds which were supposed to support those older workers through their retirement years? Then there’s entertainment?
What sane television viewer over the age of sixteen does not harbor secret suspicions that our current rash of “reality” TV. shows stems, at least in part, from network reluctance to pay writers, producers and actors to create and star in “real” shows?. How about doctors? Remember, when they actually used to make house calls? Now patients come to their doctor’s office where they are steered down long hallways full of adjoining examination rooms filled with patients so densely packed that only the most articulate patient can spit out his or her symptoms before doctor scurries off to the next examination room (trying to comply with HMO mandates not to spend more than a certain number of minutes per patient).
Social Security is going bankrupt – threatening to leave throngs of elderly workers without adequate funds to retire. As for politics…well…, even that institution seems to have found ways to become more devalued. Most recently elected American Presidents have had to weather at least one major personal scandal while in office. These scandals have debased the office of the American Presidency.
No longer do we have we any underlying, if grudging, respect for politicians with whose philosophy we disagree. We don’t even like or trust the candidates with whose espoused philosophies we do agree. We, the American people, defile and then auto-detonate our own political leaders…routinely…because for us our entire political system has become so devalued that it is little more than a prime-time television entertainment.
Sometimes, this prevailing absence of substance in…well…just about everything, approaches humorous. For example, some years ago, I had occasion to call information (which, at one time, used to be free and now costs on average $1.00 to $2.00 a call). The call went something like this:
INFO: May I help you?
ME: Yes, can I get the number to the Crystal Dry Cleaners at North Avenue and LaSalle Street in Chicago Illinois?
INFO: Looking, looking. Sorry, I don’t seem to have any such listing.
ME: Would you mind looking again. I’m sure it’s there. I left off cloths there just yesterday.
INFO: Sorry, I have looked under “C” and “K” and there is no number listed for them.
ME: But there has to be. I’ve seen their telephone.
INFO: Well perhaps they have a telephone but have chosen not to be listed.
ME: It’s a business. Why would they do that?
INFO: Well, some people have to pay a price to be listed with our information service…if they don’t have their phone service with us.
ME: You mean you’re charging me to call you for information but the only numbers I can get from you are the numbers of your telephone customers or customers who have paid to be listed with you?
INFO: Oh, it’s not us that charges them. It’s their own telephone company that charges them if they are listed with us. That’s why some people choose not to be listed.
ME: So, you’re telling me “information” is no longer a true repository of existing telephone numbers and yet you continue to refer to yourselves as “information” and charge people for the privilege of accessing a partial set of numbers?
INFO: I never should even have told you, Mam. I’m not supposed to and I’m sorry I did. Is there anything else I can help you with?
While the fact that “information” is no longer truly informative could be amusing, other examples of what appears to be a systematic looting of content from within virtually every area of our society may have more serious, complex implications which may not be known or fully understood by even well informed highly educated individuals.
Take, for example, insurance. We believe that insurance is intended to protect us in case of accident or illness. That is why most of us pay premiums for hospitalization and automobile insurance policies. Yet, few people (other than physicians or attorneys working in the accident and injury field) are aware of how benefits under standard medical and auto policies have deteriorated over the last fifteen years or so.
Of course we know many of us are no longer free to choose our own doctors. We also sense that when we are ill, doctors resist allowing us to have expensive diagnostic tests (perhaps fearing our insurance will deny payment). These are obvious changes within insurance of which most of us are aware. But to really witness erosion of insurance benefits in a way that is not so readily observable, let’s examine a hypothetical automobile accident to compare how insurance used to work and how it works today:
Let us say that you are a prudent person. Naturally, you always drive carefully and keep your insurance premiums up to date — including hospitalization/medical insurance as well as automobile insurance. You want to be fully covered in case of illness or accident.
One day, you are sitting in your brand new top-of-the line car waiting for a light to turn from red to green so you can proceed when you glance back into your rear-view mirror and see a huge semi truck barreling down on you at a high rate of speed. Before you have time to react: SMASH!! The next thing you remember is paramedics extricating you from what used to be your vehicle’s front but now appears to be it’s back seat.
As your stretcher is carried into a waiting ambulance you overhear police officers talking about how the truck’s driver is being ticketed for driving drunk on a suspended license. Settling in for a pain-wracked ride to the hospital, you comfort yourself with the thought that at least you are up to date on all your insurance premiums and fully insured. So money is one problem you won’t have to worry about.
Flash forward to six months later: You’re still dealing with permanent back injuries. You will need another operation to remove “hardware” from your leg (which, by the way, your doctor says will never be the same). You have frequent bouts of pain and some facial scaring that is going to require further plastic surgery. Because of the accident you were unable to be Best Man at your brother’s wedding, lost four months of work and were forced to hire people to do yard work, painting and household chores you would normally have done yourself. You miss all your usual pastimes like swimming, soft-ball and other of life’s little pleasures. That brand new car of yours was completely totaled. So you’re also out some money on a replacement vehicle. Reluctantly, you decide to bring a lawsuit against the truck company and it’s drunk negligent driver to recover some of your losses and to compensate you for damages such as your pain, suffering, scaring and permanent disability.
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In the old days here is how it would have worked: Your hospital insurance would already have paid your past medical bills and would be standing ready to pay any future medical expenses which might arise. Your automobile insurance would have covered all damage to your new car and also provided you with “med-pay” benefits which could be applied to your medical bills or, if you had separate hospitalization coverage, help offset some of your other out-of pocket losses. Meanwhile, your lawyer would sue that drunken, negligent driver to recover money for your pain, suffering, scaring and other losses. You would rather not have had the accident. But at least you would be secure knowing you will be compensated for all your losses. Having been a good, responsible, insurance-premium-paying citizen all those years, you could now sit back, relax and pat yourself on the back because your prudence paid off. You would be fully covered.
Now let’s examine your same accident in today’s devalued insurance climate. This is what happens: Your hospital insurance considers themselves “secondary” and may not even pay accident-related medical bills unless and until you have, in effect, assisted them in becoming a part of any claim you bring for your own pain, suffering, disfigurement, permanent disability and other out of pocket losses.
If they refuse to pay, perhaps you are now being sued by your hospital and doctors etc. even while you are still under their care. Your auto insurance carrier is also lurking around waiting for you to bring a lawsuit against that drunk truck driver so that they, too, can get in on the action and ride along on your coat-tails and get back any medical payments they have made. Your insurance companies are able to do this because of language contained right in your insurance policies which allows them to recover back monies paid out on your behalf thru a process known as “subrogation.”
Under subrogation, they get theirs before you see one dime for your own injuries. In this new “devalued” insurance picture, the amount of money remaining after you have paid back your insurance companies may not be adequate to fully compensate you for all your losses – even after your lawyer gets the drunk driver’s insurance company to pay up (which won’t be easy either). You may be lucky to walk away from your accident (presuming you can still walk) with all your bills paid. You will probably have to forget about being fully compensated for your pain, suffering, scars or other losses and/or inconveniences.
Truth is, after all your years of careful living and paying insurance premiums on time, you are probably in no better position than someone with careless habits and no insurance. Because an uninsured person who has an identical automobile accident will be able to access various types of free public medical assistance available to people who have traumatic injuries and no insurance. They can get the same emergency medical care at the same hospital. And when their lawsuit settles, they may end up with a similar final settlement figure as that received by you, an insured individual, because they will not need to pay off a bunch of insurance companies first before taking their share. You are left asking yourself: Why did I spend all those years paying into the insurance system only to be in the same position as an uninsured individual. It’s just one more example of devaluation of goods and services in our society.
DEVALUATION OF LOVE, MARRIAGE & FAMILY:
Perhaps there would be no need for alarm if devaluation merely meant smaller, costlier candy bars and knowing after accidents that we may not be in the best of hands with insurance companies who are there for us like good neighbors. Unfortunately, these may be superficial symptoms of a social ill that is vastly more pervasive and deeply entrenched – extending from our loftiest ideals down into the most intimate areas of our lives.
Beauty and fame, for example, appear to be becoming increasingly devalued – perhaps in part because anyone who does not like their appearance can easily surgically alter it to conform with current popular preferences. In its September 2004 issue, Vogue Magazine responded to readers wondering why models rarely appear on their covers by stating:
“[C]elebrated artists these days have a greater and more immediate appeal than models….[W]hy so?…[O]ur appreciation of fame is being revised….Reality television has made it possible for practically anyone to capture mass attention overnight. This cheapening of fame – hitherto a precious commodity associated with substantial achievement or charisma – has, I think, diminished the luster of the red carpet and other forums of fabulousness.”
Truth, too, seems to have lost value according to Milton Glaser who in a public television interview in June 2005 stated:
“[T]here’s been a kind of shift, it seems to me in America, from an idea that truth is valuable to an idea that entertainment is more valuable. And as a result of that, it – lying in public no longer has any consequences, because you get crazy in thinking about all these public lies. You know with – They use the term spin, and of course spin is just a nice way to say lie. But everything is spun in order to achieve a certain result. The fascinating thing about it is that the public who has grown up conditioned by advertising perfectly accepts political misrepresentation this way.”
So, we see, this problem of progressively declining value in things reaches well beyond mere material goods and services into ideal standards such as truth, beauty and fame. As we shall see, it also affects those very institutions within our society upon which everything else rests – institutions such as love, marriage and family.
A recent issue of “The New Yorker” ran a cartoon which joked about this phenomenon: It shows a man and women standing in a living room. The front door and an exterior hallway can be seen behind the women who has a suitcase in each hand and is addressing her husband. “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage” reads the caption, “but the specter of gay marriage has hopelessly eroded the institution.”
This cartoon seems to have accurately pinpointed a problem — devaluation of marriage – but has failed to correctly caption causality. In fact members of the gay community, ironically in tandem with the Christians Right, continue to demonstrate ongoing respect for the institution of marriage. While conservative Christians advocate a new, more permanent, form of marriage (covenant marriage) in which people agree that “forever after” really means “forever after,” gay Americans are campaigning for the right to be married. Their fight suggests their abiding respect for the value of this institution. It is the escalating heterosexual divorce rate that stands as an apparent rejection of, at least some, marriages.
Is it possible that devaluation of marriage is a reflection of an overall diminished respect for long-term committed relationships? Has the availability of birth control joined together with relaxed sexual mores to obviate peoples’ need for long-term commitment? If so, does this mean that “love,” too, has become diluted such that it is no longer expected to be an epic adventure but rather merely a short-term pleasant interlude (one among many such interludes) valued mainly during its early, passionate, stages? If “love” is being viewed as transitory and marriages are no longer permanent, what, then, must become of “family”? It would seem that family too must be weakened and devalued.
What are the implications of such a pernicious devaluation of long-term committed relationships? Looked at from its most fearsome aspect, could a trend toward progressive devaluation of “love,” marriage and family threaten to catapult us backwards towards points in time when male/female bonds were based upon more fleeting, self-serving exchanges between the sexes? Do we presently stand in danger of erasing centuries of social evolution and backsliding into what might be a “Dark Ages” in human relationships? Before attempting to answer this question, we might want to review the origins and history of committed human relationships, marriage and family.
The Origins of “Love,” Marriage & Family:
To understand the potential danger of current trends towards devaluing human commitments such as “love,” marriage and family, it may helpful to first consider possible origins of these cultural institutions. Anthropologist Helen Fisher did just this in her books: “The Sex Contract” and “Anatomy Of Love: The Natural History Of Monogamy, Adultery And Divorce.” Fisher draws upon a myriad of disciplines — including primatology, archeology, psychology, cultural anthropology, and paleontology — to trace human pair bonding and family relationships over time and space.
Stripped to it’s barest bones (no pun intended) Fisher’s theory appears to be that millions of years ago protohominid females evolved the ability to remain more continually sexually receptive — loosing limitations of estrous periodicity found in other primate species — which in turn prompted protohominid males to offer, in exchange, prolonged, sustained companionship as well as assistance with survival and caretaking of young. Fisher calls this “sex for caretaking” trade the “sex contract.”
Within this protohominid “sex contract” may lie origins of human love, marriage and family relationships which, of course, over time and space within human populations have manifest into numerous complex variations. There are cultures where men may take more than one wife. According to Fisher 84 percent of all human societies follow this practice (polygamy). There are cultures where wives take more than one husband (polyandry). This variation is rare occurring in only about 0.5 percent of human societies – perhaps for reasons related to species perpetuation. Then, of course, there is that configuration which is most familiar to Americans: The Nuclear Family (One husband, one wife and their children).
While many of us associate marriage with romantic love, historical data suggest numerous other social, political and economic reasons why human marriages have existed over time. One writer who has considered Western/European marriage from an historical perspective is Blaine J. Fowers, psychologist and author of “Beyond The Myth Of Marital Happiness.” Fowers has reviewed the institution of marriage from the Middle Ages thru the present. He notes that marriage was formerly “primarily an economic and political union, usually arranged by the fathers of the bride and the groom and closely supervised by the clan and the neighbors.
There was little privacy, nor was there much expectation for emotional fulfillment in marriage.” As societal interests fell into less importance and individuals gained greater say over choice of partner, Fowers points out, individual satisfaction with marriage became paramount…” correspondingly “restrictions on divorce were progressively relaxed, until no-fault divorce laws were enacted.” Fowers concedes that our current “romantic, satisfaction-oriented approach to marriage has created serious difficulties for us.” He describes present day marriages as “fragile.”
Clearly if the union between parents is fragile, offspring of that union are in a less protected position than if that union were strong. For this reason, Fowers encourages people to practice the virtues of friendship, loyalty, generosity and justice and courage in the shared pursuit of our deepest ideals. He urges couples to extend themselves and their views as to what constitutes a good marriage beyond concerns for their own gratification and to gain strength from their extended families and communities. We might do well to ask ourselves: is this the direction in which we, as a culture, are proceeding?
Do our laws and customs support a view of marriage that recognizes this institution’s importance to persons other than the bride and groom to or do our laws tacitly presume romantic “love” to be the primary justification for marriage? If romantic “love” is presumptively considered to be our primary justification for marriage, then does it follow that divorce is appropriate where romantic “love” is absent? What if one spouse feels “love” and wants to remain married and the other does not feel “love” and wants a divorce? Whose preferences do our present laws protect?
If we believe that divorce and destruction of family is appropriate even where only one spouse is no longer “in love” how are we defining this all important concept, “love”? Is our definition of “love” a uniformly accepted, well researched definition based or is “love” simply “whatever you want it to be”? How about the impact of divorce on future generations?
Does our culture give the discarding of spouse and family the same degree of analysis as we give, for example, the environmental implications of our methods of garbage disposal? Or, do we champion the right of individuals to pursue their personal desires regardless of the needs of family and culture? If we, as a society, believe divorce should be a “right” (available to anyone quickly and without blame) what do we propose should be done with spouses and children of former unions? Do our laws take adequate steps to protect them or are they being left to wander aimlessly through a fractionalized, alienated society – in a modern Western equivalent of “sati” the ritual immolation of Hindu wives upon the departure of their spouse from earthly life?
Especially for those of us who are parents, it is distressing to consider the possibility that we, as a society, could be backsliding towards earlier points in human social evolution where male/female unions were less stable, of shorter duration, and more unabashedly self-serving. It is important to consider whether that is what we, as individuals, want for our children…or for ourselves? When we marry, do we believe our relationship will be temporary or do we believe we are entering a union that will endure “for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…till death do us part?” If we do believe we are marrying for life, are our expectations being met or are we experiencing a series of shorter, less deeply committed unions…an era of “serial monogamy”?
If the specter of replacing “forever after” with some form of serial monogamy does not seem like an evolutionary step forward and the institutions of “love” marriage and family are threatened, what steps, if any, are we taking to protect them? Marriage, divorce and family are legal institutions. In today’s society, the presence or absence of romantic “love” is considered a primary justification for marriage and/or divorce. Thus, for an answer to this question, we might turn our attention to our legal system…our divorce and family laws…the laws of “love.”