Breathing Life Into Our Marriage Culture

The Slow Death of a Marriage Culture

Angela Donnell

A distressing number of children in this nation will go to bed tonight without the participation of both a mother and father in an important family ritual: reading a bedtime story, saying nighttime prayers, and being tucked in with reassuring goodnight kisses. This experience is more and more often a solo act for one reason: the slow death of a marriage culture. It is being replaced by a culture of divorce and illegitimacy, each of which now exists, in equal proportion to their opposites. Society has had to swallow the fact that divorce has become the answer to problems of stress and frustration in marriage, and is being made easier due to no-fault divorce procedures. The union of marriage needs to be taken more seriously and a reform on the current laws needs to be enacted. A divorce reform would clearly define marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman and require more pre and post marital counseling. It is paramount that we re-establish an appreciation of the value and virtue of marriage by enacting the option of a covenant marriage in all states not only for the individual and society, but for our children as well.

Divorce is a disruption of the collective interests of the family by the self-interests of one or both of the spouses (Davis, 1). Since the 1970s, all states have had virtually unrestricted no-fault divorces available to any married person who wanted one. The only restriction in most cases is a waiting period that can be as short as a few months and is rarely more than a year (Wright, 2). The institution of marriage has crumbled since California instituted the first no fault divorce law in 1970. The legal shift contributed significantly to America's rising divorce rate, which surged 34 percent from 1970 to 1990 (Tyson, 2). On the grounds of a no-fault divorce, neither spouse blames the other for the breakdown of the marriage. Both spouses agree that irreconcilable differences have arisen and that neither time nor counseling will save the marriage, it simply will not work. In a no-fault divorce or dissolution of a marriage, the actions of the respective spouses in the breakdown of the marriage do not affect property distribution or spousal support rights. The grounds for fault could include adultery, physical or mental cruelty, desertion, alcohol or drug abuse, insanity, impotence or infecting the other spouse with a venereal disease. The respective rights to distribution of property and spousal support can be affected by a spouse's fault in causing the breakdown of the marriage in most states (Knickerbocker, 2). In a no-fault divorce the institution could be dissolved a soon as 60 days. No-fault's primary purpose is to empower whichever party wants out, with the least possible fuss and the greatest possible speed, no questions asked. Therefore, no fault laws discriminate against people who want to keep their marriage intact (Tyson, 1).

"No-fault" divorce is one of the main reasons why marriage in the U.S. now is virtually meaningless. When no-fault was introduced, no one had any idea what it would do. But now, liberals and conservatives, Christians, communitarians, and libertarians are all realizing that they made a huge mistake. The radical swing from 100% fault-based divorce to 100% unilateral non-binding marriage is a failed experiment. It pushed us into a whole new form of family life that is not sustainable; it just doesn't work in the long term. Marriage now is like a christening or a bar mitzvah, a nice ceremony for the family, but of no legal significance whatsoever (Crouch). Under so-called "no-fault" divorce laws, anybody can end any marriage simply by leaving. The social and cultural realities that used to keep most families together have disappeared, and nobody predicted any of these catastrophic changes.

No-fault divorce is itself a controversial concept. Among many feminists and other progressive thinkers, the old marriage regime was a prison that trapped women in lousy relationships. No-fault divorce made it much easier to terminate these relationships, thereby increasing women's options, and is therefore unambiguously good. On the other hand, among pro-family advocates and other traditionalists and social conservatives, no-fault divorce is seen as having created a "divorce culture" where traditional values of love, fidelity, commitment, and obligation are no longer respected. By making divorce so easy to obtain, the no-fault regime has ruined the lives of countless people, many of them children who are emotionally traumatized by divorce, and many women whose financial well being is ruined when their marriages fall apart. For many traditionalists, no-fault divorce has been the root of much evil and is unambiguously bad (Wright, 2).

On August 15, 1997, Louisiana made an historic change in its domestic relations laws by enacting the nation's first "covenant marriage" bill (Benedict, 2). Arizona followed their lead and passed their covenant marriage act in 1998, as well as Arkansas in 2001 (Huckabee, 2). Couples wishing to marry in Louisiana, Arizona, or Arkansas now have the option to choose between two marriage regimes: the standard marriage with virtually unrestricted access to no-fault divorce or a covenant marriage designed to be somewhat harder both to enter and to exit. The covenant option specifically acknowledges that marriage is a lifelong commitment and differs from conventional marriage in a number of additional ways (Wright, 2).

A covenant is a threefold chord involving two people, with God as a witness Though the state's covenant marriage contract excludes religious language or references to God, many couples see it as a way to put what they say is God's vision of marriage--one man, one woman, forever--above their own shifting desires. "A covenant gives you someone else to be accountable to--the Lord," says Thomas Aldridge, 36, who plans to convert his marriage of nine years (Gilgoff, 1)

Covenant Marriage is sometimes called the "I do, and I really mean it" marriage (Carey, 2). A covenant marriage requires premarital counseling, and must include discussions of the seriousness of marriage, the lifelong commitment being made by the couple to their marriage, the obligation to seek marital counseling if problems arise later in the marriage, and the exclusive grounds for divorce or legal separation. Couples must sign an affidavit acknowledging their commitment and prove that they have received counseling on these issues. Likewise, divorce from a covenant marriage requires the couple to have sought marriage counseling and to have made a good-faith effort to resolve their differences. Although a no-fault divorce