An insolent libertarian talking point goes more or less like this: “we don’t take sides in the marriage debate; we think government ought to stay out of marriage altogether”.
But things are never that simple. Men and women committing to each other and raising children together cannot be separated from any conceivable debate. That’s the very heart of social policy; how children ought to be raised to become the next generations of citizens.
Over 90 years ago, in 1925-1926, a radicalized Soviet Union flirted with the idea of abolishing marriage. An influential minority within the Soviet leadership argued that the family was a bourgeoisie institution. In their minds, people should be free to pair with each other with no legal or societal penalties. Free love was the buzzword.
It was a disaster. Like in any revolution, there were winners and losers. The obvious winners were the most desirable men, who jumped from one temporary marriage to another with no penalty for their behavior. Losers included abandoned women, betrayed husbands whose wives didn’t feel bound by their marriage vows, and children condemned to be raised in a broken household. Free love carries a price tag.
Older peasants complained loudest. Peasants vigorously opposed, as far as they could, the radical marriage laws. Peasant households married their young people with the expectation they would stay together and give them grandchildren. The marriage law of 1925 disrupted village life to an enormous extent. Under Soviet rule, cheating on spouses became rampant, as did the breaking of marriages. Religious people fared badly; an Atlantic piece tells the plight of a young religious Cossack woman, abandoned by her husband, feeling guilty she was raising her child on her own. Her husband had left her for another woman, and she didn’t think she could pair with another man, because marriage is a vow.
You may think that I’m talking about ancient history, but it isn’t so. Because the Soviet marriage law of 1925, then a radical social experiment, have become enshrined in the Western world. We practice no-fault marriage. (What kind of contract is that you can abandon at any time with no penalty?) Single-parent households are practically a cliché. We hardly condemn people who cheat on their husband or wife.
The great Soviet experiment against traditional marriage failed. The birth rate cratered, and a panicked Stalin banned abortion in a desperate attempt to raise more Russians. (It didn’t work).
A stable family life, pair bonding and fidelity cannot be substituted. No social science experiment over the last century have been able to challenge the importance of a solid nuclear family. I suspect further experiments will fail too.
