Clearly, it’s way better to remain legally tied to a spouse who has decided to throw in the towel.

You do realize that being married does not (legally or magically) oblige one to live under the same roof as their spouse, be responsible with money or property, do a lick of parenting, etc., right? And that if one person decides that they don’t want to be married to the point that they’re going down to the courthouse and demanding to not be married anymore, being told that they have to secure the consent of the spouse they want to divorce in order to dissolve the marriage is not going to somehow make them change their mind about wanting out?

I know people really cling to the idea of an obstacle and extra time making people in rocky relationships remember why they fell in love in the first place, or finding new reasons to stick together, but that’s pretty much just a fairytale. And for the handful of couples where they remember why they fell in love and don’t wind up remembering why they wanted the hell out of there six months after reconciling, there’s hundreds more whose misery is being compounded and prolonged. Not to mention that it’s kind of like the enthusiastic consent thing–if your partner desperately wants out of the marriage, what sort of person does it take to refuse to let them go? How often is that refusal both productive and legitimate?

(Not saying that abandoning public school is the answer in all cases–but I know people who’ve pulled their kids out to homeschool them or give them correspondence school, because of the social pressures and idiotic students-as-prisoners treatment in public schools. But that’s totally off-topic and nothing to do with whether people should sleep around nor not. )

Yeah, a typo completely negates the point.

BTW, I think the argument against no-fault divorce is more along the lines of “one person decides they want to get divorced and the other person has no say whatsoever.” In other words, you can be divorced just because your spouse decides to throw in the towel. In Texas, you can get divorced in about 2-3 months. That’s a pretty short amount of time to break up a family. And please don’t tell me about how unfair it is for one person to be unhappy in the marriage. If it only takes 3 mos to get divorced, that’s not a whole lot of time to reflect on the consequences (oops, there’s that word again!) of the divorce, especially where children are concerned.

It’s like saying that the best way to go to college is to avoid getting through regular school.

This is the rationale of right-wing homeschooling (where the target college is Bob Jones or Liberty University), so they are consistent.

Entomologista
October 1, 2007 at 10:17 am

@ Mark Foxwell:

I know a family where the mother gets paid by the state (WI) to take care of her disabled son.
…
it seems like such a system could easily be translated into paying parents who stay home to take care of their young children.

That’s what has Schwarzenegger and our other dear, dear “conservative” “friends” so very, very afraid of course.

“MAINSTREAM” PERSON: “It’s socialism, I tell ya! Next thing you know, every family’s getting a welfare check!”

ME: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

I took great pride that I managed to land myself a “socialist” job right here in the good ol’ USA. I also refused to think of it as a typical capitalist “job” whereby I would properly regard myself as in it to maximize my income; I regarded it either as a (pathetically small) step into the socialist future in which people get taken care of on the assumption they are taking care of something useful, or alternatively as a sort of feudal/manorial throwback thing–Natasha being “my lady” whom I would serve with my every effort and she in turn would look out for me too.

In doing this, and because after all this particular “job” started out with her inviting me over to become her boyfriend with no plan for me to become a paid care provider, Adult Services and other bureacracies such as the Housing Authority sniffed at me for not being properly “professional,” and some schools of thought among disabled activists endorsed the concept as well that personal care provision should be thought of as a “job” during which I ought to efface myself as a person, being myself “on my own time.” And legally I was not supposed to be on call 24/7 either. But in fact that is what was required, and I took great comfort in other views from other disabled people and their advocates that what Natasha and I were doing was a good and beautiful thing, and felt very vindicated when I found out how the program originated, precisely to enable people who had a relationship of interpersonal caring to enable the one they cared about to live independently.

By greatly reducing the need for institutions, we care providers have been saving local, state, and Federal governments tremendous amounts of money. (And this would still be true if they paid us decently instead of strongarming us into accepting pitifully low wages and refusing to recognize the actual scope of what we generally did too. There is considerable margin for raising wages and benefits and still coming out ahead versus the tremendous costs of institutional “care.”)

And at least in principle, we greatly elevate the quality of life of disabled people, by providing for them to live their lives independently, at their own direction. Natasha valued that aspect of the program passionately. I think it clearly saves lives. When Natasha was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia back in the early ’60s, her parents were told she’d be dead within a decade or so, long before she could reach 30. This was based on statistics, and those statistics assumed that severely disabled people would of course simply be incarcerated in institutions. Which, Natasha always pointed out, was basically the same thing as a life sentence in prison for the crime of being disabled. Quite naturally, human beings who are told that their lives have no useful purpose and they are being kept on ice until they have the grace to die and get out of the way already tend not to thrive in captivity. This is true even if the institutions are nice and decently funded and provide for outings and the like; your life is still nothing but an extended nursery school session. Since in reality the cost-cutters will always go after programs to benefit those who have little political voice the reality of institutions tends to be far more Dickensian and the outcome is comparable to a concentration camp.

This is the only reason that Republicans and other such life-forms can pretend that personal care providers under the direction of the recipients themselves are a costly proposition–because under more authoritarian, “efficient” forms of care, the disabled don’t live as long. Year by year institutional “care” is clearly, by any measure, way more expensive–but there are far fewer years per person, you see. So it seems “smart” fiscally to resist community-based care, even when we can show how much cheaper it is per recipient-year.

Ironically, back in the 60s and early 70s, California’s move toward community-based care on several fronts, which put us decades ahead of most other states at the time, had strong bipartisan support; some of the key bits of legislation, such as the Lanterman Act which is the foundation of Developmental Disabilities services in this state, were authored by Republicans. Then they recognized the line-up between such programs and “Republican values” such as personal independence and responsibility and fiscal frugality. Also, they were moved by personal relationships with disabled people, for of course disability affects all classes.

Well, I didn’t mean this to be such a long sidebar on disability issues as such. Nor do I mean to suggest that IHSS or other such community-based programs are perfect, infallible, or even sufficient in every instance. But I do think they raise the questions that have been addressed in this thread about the value of work that often goes un or under paid.

On an unrelated topic - on your previous blog mousewords you sometimes wrote snarky reviews of MSN articles on dating & relationships. I really enjoyed laughing at them. It’s pity you stopped writing about them - they were better than anecdotes.

Oh, sure, it’s not a universal. My parents had a more “traditional” type of pre-marriage period and they’ve been hooked up for 38 years and I’m thinking they’re in it for the long haul. Many of my family members didn’t do the living together thing. Even I fall into that category, although my wife of 10 months argues that given I spent several multiple-week long vacations at her place and she’d known me for 20 years before that sort-of counts. On the other hand, I mentioned my brother’s case where I suspect that had he actually not jumped the gun on the proposal (although to be fair I don’t know how mutual a decision that was) and they’d spent some time together it would have fallen apart for the same reason before the relationship formalized.

Like everything, there are always exceptions and variations, but on the whole I consider it more beneficial. Heck, even my mother agrees, and I’ve heard her state numerous times that shacking up before marriage is the way to go.