tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/marriage-483/articlesMarriage – The Conversation2024-03-21T12:25:56Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234222024-03-21T12:25:56Z2024-03-21T12:25:56ZWhy are Americans fighting over no-fault divorce? Maybe they can’t agree what marriage is for<p>“First comes love, then comes marriage” – so goes the classic children’s rhyme. But not everyone agrees. Increasingly, the idea that love is the most important reason to marry – or at least to stay married – is under attack. Republican pundits and lawmakers have been pushing back on the availability of no-fault divorce, challenging the idea that not being in love is a valid reason to end a marriage. </p>
<p>Speaking as a <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/law/faculty_and_staff/directory/yablonzug_marcia.php">professor of family law</a>, I know such views aren’t new. Zsa Zsa Gabor <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-10984784">once quipped</a>, “Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.” But while Gabor was probably joking, the Republican attack on divorce is serious.</p>
<h2>A history of American divorce</h2>
<p>For most of U.S. history, getting a divorce was difficult. Many states <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/03/south-dakota-divorce-capital/">banned it entirely</a>, while others permitted it only under limited circumstances – typically <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-lost-history-of-no-fault-divorces/">cruelty, desertion or adultery</a>. Unhappily married couples who couldn’t prove such “faults” were effectively stuck.</p>
<p>Then, in 1969, California became the first state to <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=callaw">allow no-fault divorce</a> – meaning that a spouse could get a divorce simply by asking for it, without having to prove that their partner had done something wrong first. </p>
<p>After California enacted no-fault divorce, the rest of the states quickly followed. By 1977, 47 states permitted no-fault divorce, and by 1985, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/No-fault-Divorce-What-Went-Wrong/Parkman/p/book/9780367154394">all 50 states permitted some form of no-fault divorce</a>.</p>
<p>But now, nearly 50 years later, no-fault divorce is under increasing attack.</p>
<p>The issue gained <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/stephen-crowder-divorce-1234727777/">renewed</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/opinions/crowder-right-wing-rhetoric-about-divorce-ignores-history-shanley/index.html">national</a> <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/voices/steven-crowder-and-no-fault-divorce.html">attention</a> in 2023, when Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator who prides himself on his “provocative” views, expressed outrage and disbelief that his wife could divorce him without his consent. </p>
<p>Crowder isn’t alone in such criticisms: Divorce has become a hot topic among many red-state Republican lawmakers. Most recently, in January 2024, Oklahoma lawmaker Dusty Deevers proposed a bill to <a href="https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/01/26/no-fault-divorce-law-oklahoma-senator-wants-to-end/72354142007/">eliminate no-fault divorce</a> and suggested <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/dusty-deevers-public-shaming-people-who-divorce-republican-senate-1848878">“public shaming”</a> of spouses who commit marital fault and then divorce. Restricting no-fault divorce is also part of both the <a href="https://texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-RPT-Platform.pdf">Texas</a> and <a href="https://ne.gop/issues/">Nebraska</a> Republican Party platforms, and was <a href="https://www.wwno.org/news/2023-01-12/louisiana-republican-party-considers-backing-elimination-of-no-fault-divorce">recently debated</a> by Louisiana lawmakers.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Oklahoma’s KFOR reports on a proposal to end no-fault divorce in the state.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The ability to divorce regardless of what the other party wants is the essence of no-fault divorce. I think it’s alarming that it’s under attack. Nevertheless, the idea that not being in love is a valid reason to divorce is an assumption that should be questioned. It’s based on the idea that love is the purpose of marriage, and that itself is debatable.</p>
<h2>What’s marriage for, anyway?</h2>
<p>Marriage is a legal status that confers important rights and benefits on the married, and these rights and benefits <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Public_Vows.html?id=Jnh7ylcLaB4C">have nothing to do with love</a>. In fact, the purpose of these advantages is to give couples non-love reasons to marry. The idea is that the social benefits of marriage are so significant that incentivizing marriage, or even flat-out <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hotgun-weddings/">paying people to marry</a>, is justified.</p>
<p>For an example of this kind of cost-benefit analysis, consider the policy debate over whether children are better off being raised by two married parents. In her recent book “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo205550079.html">The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and started Falling Behind</a>,” economics professor Melissa Kearney argues that this advantage is significant and wide-ranging. Not surprisingly, Kearney’s work was <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-ultimate-privilege-two-parent">eagerly embraced by</a> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriage-economist-kearney-two-parent-privilege-socioeconomic-mobility-equity-single-mother-divorce-4b499a5e">pro-marriage advocates</a> and has reinvigorated <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-two-parent-privilege-a-conversation-on-the-case-for-marriage">long-standing discussions</a> <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/discussion-on-marriage-economic-opportunity-and-family-flourishing-with-melissa-kearney">about how to</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/06/marriage-political-expert-roundtable-00133856">further encourage marriage</a>. </p>
<p>If children do better when raised by married parents, it’s understandable that the government would enact laws and policies to promote marriage. It also explains why the government might seek to limit divorce. This is a purely instrumental view of marriage, and one that would have been <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008755">very familiar to 18th- and 19th-century Americans</a>. </p>
<p>For most of U.S. history, marriage was unabashedly transactional. Laws <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008755">essentially guaranteed</a> that most men and women would wed; love had nothing to do with it.</p>
<h2>Striking a ‘marital bargain’</h2>
<p>Historians refer to marrying for legal and economic benefits as the “<a href="https://casetext.com/case/perry-v-schwarzenegger-10">marital bargain</a>.” However, in the late 19th century, acceptance of the transactional nature of the marital bargain began to wane, and publicly, men and women began to declare that <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/marriage-a-history-how-love-conquered-marriage/oclc/64589809">love was the purpose of marriage</a>. As historian Nancy Cott writes in her book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008755">Public Vows</a>,” by the turn of the 20th century, American culture had “put love and money on opposite sides of the street.” </p>
<p>My book, “<a href="https://steerforth.com/product/youll-do-9781586423742/">You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other than Love</a>,” also explores this history and shows how Americans went from encouraging the marital bargain to viewing it as harmful, both to couples and to the institution of marriage as a whole. </p>
<p>Despite the public view that love is the only reason to marry, the law takes a more practical approach, recognizing that love alone may not be enough to get couples to the altar. That’s why it continues to encourage marriage for instrumental reasons, with <a href="https://steerforth.com/product/youll-do-9781586423742/">benefits ranging from tax breaks and immigration preferences to criminal law defenses</a>.</p>
<p>When marriage was a clear bargain for exchange, the benefits of the union were obvious. Like the 19th-century marital advertisement “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=700646">Man with farm seeks woman with tractor</a>,” each side knew exactly what they were getting. Now, the purpose of marriage is less clear. I believe the move to eliminate no-fault divorce is simply the latest symptom of this confusion regarding the goals of marriage.</p>
<p>If marriage is about love, then a lack of love should be the quintessential reason to divorce. However, if marriage is a contract for benefits, then it isn’t surprising that Crowder and other no-fault critics are outraged that it can be unilaterally broken. Although the push to eliminate no-fault divorce is presented as a fight over the purpose of divorce, it’s really a fight over the meaning of marriage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcia Zug does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A growing number of Republicans say that you shouldn’t be able to divorce simply because you’ve fallen out of love. It’s an idea with a long history.Marcia Zug, Professor of Family Law, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2245622024-03-12T12:36:03Z2024-03-12T12:36:03ZIrish families have changed — it’s a shame the constitution won’t be amended to reflect that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581014/original/file-20240311-25-92qf4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C58%2C5607%2C3673&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mother-toddler-229273195">Mr.Exen/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Irish electorate has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/10/ireland-referendums-what-went-wrong-and-what-happens-now">rejected a proposal</a> to formally change the definition of “family” in the constitution. Voters also rejected a second referendum on changing wording about a woman’s “duties in the home”. </p>
<p>The constitution of 1937 states that the family is founded on marriage and that the “State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage.”
The March 8 referendum proposed changing the constitution to recognise families “whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships”. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/according-to-irelands-constitution-a-womans-duties-are-in-the-home-but-a-referendum-could-be-about-to-change-its-sexist-wording-222477">According to Ireland’s constitution, a woman's duties are in the home – but a referendum could be about to change its sexist wording</a>
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<p>The proposed changes, which were backed by all major political parties, opened a debate on what “the family” is and what it does. In an <a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/referendums/exit-poll-reveals-anger-behind-no-vote-and-how-supporters-of-political-parties-voted-in-both-referendums/a961278452.html">exit poll</a>, voters cited a “lack of clarity” and “mistrust in government” as the reasons they voted against change in the referendums. </p>
<p>The change would have reflected the diversity of families in contemporary Ireland, and granted equal constitutional rights to single parents. By 2022, <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpp3/censusofpopulation2022profile3-householdsfamiliesandchildcare/">the last Irish census</a>, 45% of all family units were defined as a married couple with children. Alternative family structures with children were dominated by cohabiting couples and single mothers. </p>
<p>The number of same-sex couples in the 2022 census was 10,393 – a 157% increase from 2011 (though that was from a low baseline). The total number of children in same-sex couples has increased to 1,853.</p>
<p>Opposition to this amendment focused on two main points, <a href="https://www.michaelmcdowell.ie/what-might-happen-when-a-durable-relationship-ends.html">the definition of a “durable relationship”</a> and the <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/02/18/family-referendum-im-voting-no-because-i-will-not-be-hypocritical-about-marriage/">importance of marriage</a> for families and society.</p>
<p>Like many other countries, concern is growing in Ireland around a decline in marriage. In the 1986 census <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census1986results/volume3/C_1986_V3_T32.pdf">almost 70%</a> of all family units were married couples with children. The decline in marriage (and of religious marriage ceremonies) has been of particular concern to <a href="https://ionainstitute.ie/marriage-in-ireland-continues-its-decline-2/#:%7E:text=In%20all%2C%20there%20were%2016%2C717,a%20tremendous%20impact%20on%20numbers">socially conservative groups</a>. Such groups were vocal when it came to the referendum campaigns.</p>
<p>As fewer and more select groups of people opt to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/03/incredible-everlasting-institution-marriage/555320/">get married</a> globally, it’s natural to wonder how this might affect future generations. But my research shows that marriage itself isn’t, on its own, necessarily the most important factor for family or child wellbeing. </p>
<h2>Marriage isn’t everything</h2>
<p>I’m a sociologist who studies family life, marriage and relationships. Since 2006, the national longitudinal <a href="https://www.growingup.gov.ie/">Growing Up in Ireland</a> study has allowed researchers to track changes in Irish families by following two large cohorts of children in Ireland as they age. My <a href="https://researchrepository.ul.ie/articles/report/Growing_up_in_a_one-parent_family/19839742">analysis of this data</a>, with colleagues, shows that marriage isn’t the most important factor in determining whether children thrive.</p>
<p>Most (78%) children, for example, in the 1998 birth cohort were growing up in two-parent families, and most (98.5%) of these parents were the biological parents of the child.</p>
<p>Just over 4% of the children were living with cohabiting, unmarried parents, and most of these were never married. One-parent families were largely lone mother families with 9% defined as “never married” lone mothers and 8% as “previously married”. These previously-married mothers were mostly the results of marital separation rather than divorce or widowhood. Compared to the rest of Europe and indeed the world, Ireland’s divorce rate is <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-mar/marriages2022/mainresults/">remarkably low</a> with the Irish preferring to remain separated rather than proceed to divorce and remarry (the remarriage rate is also low).</p>
<p>We found <a href="https://www.ul.ie/research/publications/growing-up-in-a-one-parent-family">significant differences</a> in both child outcomes and indicators of family wellbeing across the range of families. For example, children in never-married one-parent families were scoring almost ten percentage points less on a reading test at age nine when compared to children in married two-parent families.</p>
<p>That is not to be ignored and we are not downplaying or denying that these differences exist. But we are not comparing like with like.</p>
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<span class="caption">Reading test scores aren’t the full picture of child wellbeing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/toddler-girl-book-near-window-528426013">Skolova/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Compared to married mothers, never married lone mothers were younger, less educated and less religious, and more likely to be born abroad. These lone mothers were also more likely to have smoked while pregnant, have had a chronic illness prior to the birth of their child and have experienced the imprisonment of a partner. </p>
<p>The children born to never married mothers tend on average to weigh less than those born to married mothers. They were more likely to be the first-born child and to be born in Ireland. Families differ for many reasons besides marriage.</p>
<p>Once we <a href="https://www.esr.ie/article/view/106">accounted for these factors</a>, the difference in children’s reading scores between married and never-married one-parent families was reduced to just under 3%. In other words, we estimated that most of the difference was due to the socioeconomic resources available to families, rather than to marriage itself.</p>
<p>This is not to say that marriage and the stability it brings to children’s lives is not important, but rather to acknowledge that other differences, particularly related to socioeconomic resources and health, appear to matter more. </p>
<p>After the “no” vote, the Irish constitution continues to privilege the “married” family unit over others. Given what I’ve found in my research, and the changing demographics of families, I still hope that this will one day change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carmel Hannan receives funding from the Family Support Agency administered
through the Irish Research Council</span></em></p>Marriage isn’t the most important factor for family or child wellbeing.Carmel Hannan, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of LimerickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233842024-03-12T11:39:11Z2024-03-12T11:39:11ZFamily unbound: how western society is redefining and assembling families through digital platforms<p>Modern Western life offers a wide range of possibilities of what “family” can be: single parents, rainbow families, patchwork constellations, co-parenting, adoption, surrogacy and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/us/childfree-by-choice-women-birth-rate-decline-cec/index.html">partnerships without children</a>. Family forms are diversifying and extending beyond the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12712">traditional</a>.</p>
<p>In many ways, the landscape of this fundamental institution is changing faster than laws and other institutions that can accommodate. As a result, certain online platforms are now seeking to bridge the gap, connecting individuals who are interested in forming non-traditional families and seeking guidance on how to do so.</p>
<h2>A Zeitgeist shift</h2>
<p>A website operating in Switzerland, Germany and Austria, <a href="https://www.familyship.org">Familyship.org</a>, is looking to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14705931231201780">bridge this institutional and cultural gap</a>. Two women, Miriam Förster and Christine Wagner, set it up in order to form their ideal family. Together they found a co-father to take an active parental role and to provide ongoing support for the infant. While the women later ended their relationship, Christine and the co-father, who is gay, have continued to raise the child together.</p>
<p>The site was designed to help people weave new family ties according to a range of desired constellations. Regardless of relationship status, sexual orientation or gender, it’s designed to help anyone with a non-traditional understanding of family to conceive and raise a child. Over the past decade, more than 12,000 people have used the platform.</p>
<p>Users can seek various types of co-parents: hands-on, those with more passive “aunt or uncle” functions, or sperm donors who are less involved in the upbringing of the child. It is also possible to “mix and match” these parental roles as desired. The community is diverse with regard to gender, sexual orientation, relationship status, the desired form of family, and geographic location. Most users are based in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and they’re generally politically liberal and well educated.</p>
<p>The overall goal of the platform was to help those wishing to be parents develop a child-centric family structure. Users are looking for ideal co-parenting partners to bear and rear offspring, not for romance or life partners. The platform affords privacy and protection for its users by offering strict privacy regulations and community access upon registration for a user fee.</p>
<h2>Liberation through innovative family models</h2>
<p>In our research, published in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14705931231201780"><em>Marketing Theory</em></a>, we analysed discourses in media coverage, interviewed the site’s founders, and accompanied 23 families or to-be families over a period of a year and a half. All names have been changed for privacy reasons.</p>
<p>Our analysis showed that there is a demand for platforms that enable and support individuals who question the societally dominant meanings of family. For example, Carlotta, a 38-year-old architect who is bisexual, describes herself as someone who struggles to maintain long-term relationships. After a year of reflecting on her wish to having a child, she came across the platform:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“At some point I [searched the Internet] and found a concept called co-parenting – it made total sense to me. I couldn’t believe that after all this worrying and thinking, my solution was right there. From one moment to the next, the burdening feeling was gone, and I felt so relieved to see a realistic option for having a child.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She is now raising a child with a homosexual man in a co-parenting arrangement.</p>
<h2>Separating parenthood from romantic partnerships</h2>
<p>The platform’s co-founder, Christine Wagner, takes issue with the role of romantic entanglement in family formation and childrearing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Eventually, it became obvious to me that this separation between the desire for children and partnership had to happen. This traditional coupling was also deeply rooted in my mind.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The disentanglement between romance and family formation is also a key reason for the popularity of the platform among heterosexual men and women. The platform was initially founded by a lesbian couple and used predominantly by the LGBTQIA+ community in the earlier years of the platform. Many users are drawn to the platform because they desire to reduce the perceived risk inherent in romantic relationships.</p>
<p>Emilia, a 37-year-old heterosexual woman, is one of them. An expatriate with a degree in literature and history, she co-parents with a homosexual man she found after moving to Berlin, which she dubs the “singles’ capital” of the world. Their second child is already in the planning. She reflects upon her journey:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I always knew I wanted to have a family and become a mother… But at the same time, I increasingly worried. My parents got divorced, as with so many other families. I see the marriages of my friends and the unstable relationships children are born into. And if you look at the official statistics, the divorce rates speak for themselves. To be honest, I don’t believe in this family model anymore. It is too risky to base a family on romantic emotions between two people. I want to find a stronger basis for my child’s future.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Claudia, a 35-year-old who graduated in design and business, is also co-parenting a child with a homosexual man. Her thoughts echo Emilia’s:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I actively thought about questions like: How important is it for me to have children? I came relatively quickly to the conclusion that it is very important for me to have children. But I really do have big doubts about the concept of a traditional family, and it doesn’t really suit me either.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Family creation afforded by platforms</h2>
<p>Social scientists have started to question the changing role of relationships and <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-fr/The+End+of+Love:+A+Sociology+of+Negative+Relations-p-9781509550258">love in the contemporary era</a>, in which popular social media and dating apps greatly influence our interactions and how we meet others. In this respect, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14705931231201780">our study</a> helps advance understandings of “platformisation” of consumer culture. In practice, this means that corporations are once again closely involved in shaping our intimate relationships.</p>
<p>As a digital platform, Familyship.org contrasts with such trends. It can be better understood as a “social enterprise”, given it was a created by ordinary people as a nonprofit. In doing so, it became a successful initiative in shaping and re-imagining one of the most intimate spheres of our lives – the way people think about, create, and enact family.</p>
<p>For policy-making purposes, we consider the model of Familyship.org to be an interesting one to learn from. Its collaborative model helps individuals to share life experiences and find solutions to complex social and legal constraints in ways that leverage a network of expertise. The site protects privacy, enabling participants to talk freely and creatively about their desired family constellations in a closed community space.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article/1/2/145/9448/The-Process-of-Social-Innovation">2006 paper</a> published in the MIT journal <em>Innovations</em> notes, “people are competent interpreters of their own lives and competent solvers of their own problems”. Similarly, policymakers should follow suit and foster the creation of similar kinds of protected platform spaces for social innovation and experimentation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223384/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Part of the research project was funded by the the Swiss National Science Foundation P1SGP1_188106. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Schouten et Joonas Rokka ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.</span></em></p>Whether LGBTQIA+, or sceptical of romantic love as the best foundation for their family, many are looking to the Internet to find co-parenting partners with whom to raise a child.Lydia Ottlewski, Assistant professor, University of Southern DenmarkJohn Schouten, Canada Research Chair in Social EnterpriseJoonas Rokka, Professeur en marketing, EM Lyon Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233992024-02-26T13:09:06Z2024-02-26T13:09:06ZRelationship anarchy is about creating bonds that suit people, not social conventions<p>By its very nature, friendship is <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/anarchy">anarchic</a>: it has few rules and is not regulated by the government. Our friendships are usually egalitarian, flexible and non-exclusive. We treat our friends as individuals and care about their interests. We support them and don’t tell them what to do; our friendships fit around, rather than govern, our lives. </p>
<p>But interestingly, friendship is the exception when it comes to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/people-who-prioritize-friendship-over-romance/616779/">intimacy</a>. Few of us want anarchic love lives, or to treat our children as equals. We gravitate instead towards more rigid, hierarchical, structured forms of intimacy in these relationships. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/i-have-4-partners-and-several-comet-romances-this-is-what-its-like-to-be-a-relationship-anarchist_uk_64ba8dcfe4b093f07cb48251">Relationship anarchists</a> do not hold with these ideas. They argue we must try harder to relate as equals, reject hierarchy between relationships and accept that intimate life can take many forms. </p>
<p>Critics would suggest relationship anarchy is just a lifestyle – an attempt to evade commitment. But the concept is best understood as political, and a development of the core themes of anarchist thinking. This reflects the values and practices involved, and reminds us that the flourishing of intimacy might require radical change. </p>
<p>These core themes include rejecting the idea that there should be one dominant form of authority – like a president, boss or patriarch; wariness of social class or status which arbitrarily privileges some people other others; and a deep respect for the idea that individuals should be able to govern their own lives and support each other. Applied to intimate relationships, these themes define relationship anarchy. </p>
<p>But political anarchism is not above violence and disorder. As someone whose work explores the philosophy of love, sex and relationships – and different approaches to intimacy – I view it as an attitude towards our social predicament where people try to relate as equals and reject unnecessary constraints. </p>
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<h2>Equals without constraints</h2>
<p>Relationship anarchists critique society and imagine alternatives. Their main target is the idea that there are different kinds of relationships and some are more important than others.</p>
<p>They reject how relationships appear in the media; good relationships needn’t last forever, be exclusive, between two people, domestic, involve romantic love or practical entanglement. This critical eye also extends to our attitudes towards children, animals and the environment. </p>
<p>Relationship anarchy’s aversion to hierarchy separates it from <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/a46109633/what-is-a-swinger/">swinging</a> or forms of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/japp.12240">polyamory</a> which distinguish between sex and romance, <a href="https://www.morethantwo.com/polyconfigurations.html">“primary” and “secondary” partners</a>, or which think the government should privilege some relationships through marriage law. </p>
<p>The practical heart of relationship anarchy is the idea that we design relationships to suit us, not mirror social expectations. Do we want to share a home? Is sexual intimacy important? If so, what kind exactly? This process also involves creating a framework to guide our broader intimate life. How will we choose together? How and when can we revise our framework? What about disagreements?</p>
<p>Relationship anarchists will disagree about the content of these frameworks. Can two relationship anarchists agree to be romantically exclusive, for example, set rules for each other, or decide to never revise their framework? Should they retain, repurpose or reject common labels such as “partner”?</p>
<p>My own view is that agreements are acceptable if they support our <a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=romantic-agency-loving-well-in-modern-life--9781509551521">ability to be intimate</a>, but we should embrace “minimal non-monogamy” and remain open to the possibility our desires will change. </p>
<h2>Community and self-development</h2>
<p>Community is central to relationship anarchy. From queer feminist Andie Nordgren’s “<a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andie-nordgren-the-short-instructional-manifesto-for-relationship-anarchy">short instructional manifesto</a>” – which jumpstarted relationship anarchy – to <a href="https://ia803109.us.archive.org/14/items/rad2019zine/RAD%202019%20Zine%20for%20online%20reading.pdf">zines</a> like Communities Not Couples, the <a href="https://violetbeau00.medium.com/relationship-anarchy-smorgasbord-practical-applications-78ad8d911b0b">relationship “smorgasbord”</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/decolonizing.love/?hl=en">social media influencers</a>, relationship anarchists educate each other and share resources. </p>
<p>They also embrace <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2722-mutual-aid">supporting each other</a> when social institutions are inadequate. This might involve providing money, establishing accessible community spaces, sourcing contraception and caregiving.</p>
<p>Relationship anarchy requires self-development. Since we are shaped by our social context, we often lack the skills needed to overhaul our relationships, whether that’s communicating effectively or managing emotions such as jealousy and insecurity.</p>
<p>Relationship anarchists embrace the idea that we cannot behave now in ways that would be <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Prefigurative+Politics:+Building+Tomorrow+Today-p-9781509535910">unacceptable in our ideal society</a>. We cannot be callous or dishonest in trying to bring about open and equal relationships. Instead, trying to embody our desired changes in our actions helps us develop the skills needed to ensure these changes are sustainable. </p>
<p>Talk of relationship anarchy often prompts objections. Liberals think government involvement in private life prevents harm, and that common social norms and ideals of relationships prevent anxiety. A relationship anarchist would ask us to consider the real source of these worries. </p>
<p>We are well able to harm each other within existing government frameworks: police, immigration, social and health services often harm people in unconventional relationships through policies that <a href="https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/21/orphaned-by-decree-italy-same-sex-parents-react-losing-rights">do not recognise the family life of non-heterosexual people</a>. Or which make it hard for immigrant families to be together, or deny visitation rights to unmarried people, for example.</p>
<p>Community networks of care are active in resisting and repairing these harms, and their efforts are evidence that we can successfully oversee our own needs when it comes to intimacy. </p>
<p>Similarly, a more active approach to our relationships, where we reflect on our needs and desires, set boundaries and communicate, <a href="https://scribepublications.co.uk/books-authors/books/polysecure-9781914484957">builds confidence and decreases anxiety</a>. A realistic and flexible attitude towards intimacy makes it harder to trip on the <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2019/09/why-love-ends/">gap between ideals and reality</a>.</p>
<p>Realism, not revolution, is at the heart of relationship anarchy. Social criticism can be radical – ranging from love and domesticity to childcare, companionship and co-operation – but efforts to remould our relationships should be done with care. We can both expose social contradictions and oppressive laws and accept common ground with other views and initiatives.</p>
<p>Most of all, we should be wary of attempts to cast relationship anarchy as a fad or lifestyle. It is political – a commitment to nurture agency when it comes to intimacy. Like conversation, relationship anarchy is a process; it can be messy, loud, and unpredictable, but it can change us entirely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Brunning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Relationship anarchists argue that we should relate to one another as equals and accept that intimacy can take many forms.Luke Brunning, Lecturer in Applied Ethics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186822024-02-21T13:19:25Z2024-02-21T13:19:25ZMarriage is not as effective an anti-poverty strategy as you’ve been led to believe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575664/original/file-20240214-26-6cr98q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite the popular guidance, marriage can be an economic risk for single parents with unstable partners.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/divorce-process-royalty-free-image/1329914655">simarik/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Brides.com predicts that 2024 will be the “<a href="https://www.brides.com/marriage-proposal-boom-2024-8358024">year of the proposal</a>” as engagements tick back up after a pandemic-driven slowdown.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, support for marriage has found new grist in recent books, including <a href="https://sociology.as.virginia.edu/people/w-bradford-wilcox">sociologist</a> Brad Wilcox’s “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Get-Married-Americans-Families-Civilization/dp/0063210851">Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization</a>” and economist Melissa Kearney’s “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo205550079.html">The Two-Parent Privilege</a>.”</p>
<p>Kearney’s book was <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-the-two-parent-privilege-by-melissa-kearney">hailed by economist Tyler Cowen</a> as possibly “the most important economics and policy book of this year.” This is not because it treads new ground but because, as author <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-the-two-parent-privilege-by-melissa-kearney">Kay Hymowitz writes</a>, it breaks the supposed “taboo about an honest accounting of family decline.” </p>
<p>These developments are good news for the marriage promotion movement, which <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/webid-moynihan">for decades</a> has claimed that marriage supports children’s well-being and combats poverty. The movement dates back at least to the U.S. Department of Labor’s <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/webid-moynihan">Moynihan Report of 1965</a>, which argued that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/">family structure aggravated Black poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Forty years after the Moynihan Report, George W. Bush-era programs such as the <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ocs/policy-guidance/csbg-im-no-89-healthy-marriage-initiative">Healthy Marriage Initiative</a> sought to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4624797">enlist churches</a> and other community groups in an effort to channel childbearing back into marriage. These initiatives continue today, with the federally subsidized <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/programs/healthy-marriage-responsible-fatherhood">Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood programs</a>.</p>
<p>Still, nearly <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/single-parent-day.html">30% of U.S. children</a> live in single-parent homes today, compared with 10% in 1965.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gCJEShUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">law professors</a> who have written extensively about <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0BBCYNAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">family structure</a> and <a href="https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/faculty/directory/full-time/eleanor-brown/">poverty</a>. We, and others, have found that there is almost no evidence that federal programs that promote marriage <a href="https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-14-02_HMIInitiative.pdf">have made a difference</a> in encouraging two-parent households. That’s in large part because they forgo effective solutions that directly address poverty for measures that embrace the culture wars. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Child hangs upside down on playground equipment" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Having a parent who has a college degree makes kids less likely to live in poverty than having parents who are married.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girl-upside-down-on-the-jungle-gym-royalty-free-image/1127705002">Mayur Kakade/Moment Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Marriage and social class</h2>
<p>Today’s marriage promoters claim that <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-benefits-of-marriage-shouldnt-only-be-for-elites">marriage should not be just for elites</a>. The emergence of marriage as a marker of class, they believe, is a sign of societal dysfunction.</p>
<p>According to census data released in 2021, 9.5% of children living with two parents – and 7.5% with married parents – <a href="https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book/population/faqs/qa01203#:%7E:text=In%202021%2C%209.5%25%20of%20children,17.4%25">lived below the poverty level</a>, compared with 31.7% of children living with a single parent.</p>
<p>Kearney’s argument comes down to: 1 + 1 = 2. Two parents have more resources, including money and time to spend with children, than one. She marshals extensive research designed to show that children from married couple families are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-063016-103749">more likely to graduate</a> from high school, complete college and earn <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-063016-103749">higher incomes as adults</a> than the children of single parents.</p>
<p>It is undoubtedly true that two parents – that is, two nonviolent parents with reliable incomes and cooperative behavior – have <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/cohabiting-parents-differ-from-married-ones-in-three-big-ways/">more resources for their children</a> than one parent who has to work two jobs to pay the rent. However, this equation <a href="https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/pmyhj">does not address causation</a>. In other words, parents who have stable incomes and behaviors are more likely to stay together than parents who don’t.</p>
<p>Ethnographic studies indicate, for example, that the most common reasons unmarried women are no longer with the fathers of their children are the men’s <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3841832">violent behavior, infidelity</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520335233/essential-dads">substance abuse</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, income volatility disproportionately affects parents who don’t go to college. So while they may have more money to invest in children together than apart, when one of these parents experiences a substantial drop in income, the other parent may have to decide whether to <a href="https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1455&context=fac_works">support the partner or the children</a> on what is often a meager income.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/having-a-single-parent-doesnt-determine-your-life-chances-the-data-shows-poverty-is-far-more-important-217841">impact of having single parents</a> also plays out differently by race and class. As sociologist and researcher <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family.html">Christina Cross explains</a>, “Living apart from a biological parent does not carry the same cost for Black youths as for their white peers, and being raised in a two-parent family is not equally beneficial.” </p>
<p>For example, Cross found that living in a single-mother family is less likely to affect high school completion rates for Black children than for white children. Also, Black families tend to be more embedded in extended family than white families, and this additional support system may help protect children from negative outcomes associated with single-parent households.</p>
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<h2>Making men more ‘marriageable’</h2>
<p>Kearney, to her credit, does note that economic insecurity largely explains what is happening to working-class families, and that no parent should have to tolerate violence or substance abuse. But she doubles down on the need to restore a norm of two-parent families.</p>
<p>Many of her policy prescriptions are sensible. She advocates for better opportunities for low-income men – to make them, in the words of <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo13375722.html">sociologist William Julius Wilson</a>, “marriageable.” Such policies would include wage subsidies to improve their job opportunities, investment in community colleges that provide skills training, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-the-box-would-help-people-released-from-prison-rebuild-their-lives-45539">removal of questions about criminal histories</a> from job applications, so that candidates who have previously been incarcerated are not immediately disqualified.</p>
<h2>A new marriage model</h2>
<p>What marriage promotion efforts overlook, however, are the underlying changes in what marriage has become – both legally and practically. </p>
<p>The new marriage model rests on three premises.</p>
<p>The first is a moral command: Have sex if you want to, but don’t have children until you are ready. While the shotgun marriage once served as the primary response to unplanned pregnancy, such marriages today often derail education and careers and are <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2016/11/shotgun-marriage-dead#:%7E:text=After%20a%20decade%2C%2030%20percent,prior%20to%20a%20child's%20conception.">more likely to result in divorce</a> than other marriages. Research shows that lower-income women’s pregnancies are much <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/factsheet/fb-unintended-pregnancy-us_0_4.pdf">more likely to be unplanned</a>. </p>
<p>The second is the ability to pick a partner who will support you and assume joint responsibility for parenting. As women have attained more economic independence, they are less in need of men to raise children, particularly if their partners are insensitive or abusive. With healthy relationships, couples pick partners based on trust, commitment and equal respect. This is more difficult to do in communities with high rates of incarceration and few opportunities for stable employment. </p>
<p>And the third is economic and behavioral stability. Instability undermines even committed unions. Parents who wait until they find the right partner and have stable lives bring a lot more to parenting, whether they marry or not.</p>
<p>We believe that creating opportunities for low-income parents to reach this middle-class model is likely to be the most effective marriage promotion policy.</p>
<h2>Economic support is key</h2>
<p>In relationships that fall outside of these premises, 1 + 1 often becomes 1 + -1, which equals 0.</p>
<p>Being committed to a partner who can’t pay speeding tickets, runs up credit card bills, comes home drunk or can’t be relied on to pick up the children after school is not a recipe for success. </p>
<p>Economic principles suggest that businesses with more volatile income streams need a stronger capital base to withstand the downturns. Working-class couples who face economic insecurity see commitment as similarly misguided; without a capital base, a downturn for one partner can wipe out the other.</p>
<p>The Biden administration’s child tax credit expansion included in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-08/the-child-tax-credit-bill-seems-destined-for-defeat-in-the-senate?embedded-checkout=true">American Rescue Plan Act of 2021</a> helped cut the child poverty rate – after accounting for government assistance – <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/governments-pandemic-response-turned-a-would-be-poverty-surge-into">to a record low</a> that year. It did more to address child poverty than <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106094155.htm">marriage promotion efforts have ever done</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers have described such income-support policies as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-020-09782-0">ultimate multipurpose policy instrument</a>.” They improve the economic circumstances of single-parent families and, in doing so, may also provide greater support for two-parent relationships. </p>
<p>Policymakers know how to solve child poverty – and these measures are far more effective than efforts to put two married parents in every household.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marriage on its own won’t do away with child poverty, and in fact it can create even more instability for low-income families.Eleanor Brown, Professor of Law, Fordham UniversityJune Carbone, Professor of Law, University of MinnesotaNaomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176612024-01-08T13:35:39Z2024-01-08T13:35:39ZSouth Korea’s gender imbalance is bad news for men − outnumbering women, many face bleak marriage prospects<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563900/original/file-20231206-21-smw7n5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5573%2C3699&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In South Korea, there are nor enough young Korean women for young Korean men to marry.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/airport-business-man-royalty-free-image/166973187?phrase=south+korea+men+together&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Korea’s bachelor time bomb is about to really go off. Following a historic 30-year-long imbalance in the male-to-female sex ratio at birth, young men far outnumber young women in the country. As a result, some 700,000 to 800,000 “extra” South Korean boys born since the mid-1980s may not be able to find South Korean girls to marry.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jAfhO2YAAAAJ&hl=en">demographer</a> who over the past four decades has conducted extensive research on East Asian populations, I know that this increased number of South Korean boys will have huge impacts throughout South Korean society. Coincidentally, similar trends are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17450128.2011.630428">playing out in China</a>, Taiwan and India. </p>
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<h2>The reasons</h2>
<p>In most countries, more boys are born than girls – around 105 to 107 boys per 100 girls. That sex ratio at birth (SRB) is a near constant. The gender imbalance is likely an evolutionary adaptation to the biological fact that females live longer than males. At every year of life, men have higher death rates than women. Hence an SRB of between 105 and 107 boys <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/population-and-society/5D47EB8139ED72FD59F7379F7D41B4FB">allows for there to be roughly equal numbers of men and women </a> when the groups reach childbearing ages.</p>
<p>The SRB in the United States in 1950 was 105 and was still 105 in 2021; in fact, it has been stable in the U.S. for as long as SRB data has been gathered. In contrast, in South Korea the SRB was at the normal range from 1950 to around 1980, but increased to 110 in 1985 and to 115 in 1990.</p>
<p>After fluctuating a bit at elevated levels through the 1990s and early 2000s, it returned to the biologically normal range by 2010. In 2022, South Korea’s SRB was 105 – well within the normal level. But by then, the seeds for today’s imbalance of marriage-age South Koreans was set.</p>
<h2>A preference for sons</h2>
<p>There are several reasons why South Korea’s SRB was out of balance for 30 years.</p>
<p>South Korea experienced a rapid fertility decline in a 20- to 30-year period beginning in the 1960s. From six children per woman in 1960, fertility fell to four children in 1972, then to two children in 1984. By 2022, South Korea’s fertility rate had dropped to 0.82 – <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-korea-has-the-lowest-fertility-rate-in-the-world-and-that-doesnt-bode-well-for-its-economy-207107">the lowest fertility rate in the world</a> and far below the rate of 2.1 needed to replace the population.</p>
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<p>Yet, South Korea’s long-held <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2584733">cultural preference for sons</a> did not shift as quickly as childbearing declined. Having at least one son was a strong desire influencing fertility preferences in South Korea, especially up through the early years of the 21st century. </p>
<p>And the declining fertility rate posed a problem. When women have many children, the probability that at least one will be a boy is high. With only two children, the probability that neither will be a son is around 25%, and when women have only one child, it is less than 50%.</p>
<p>In order to ensure that families would continue to have boys, many South Koreans turned to readily available techniques to identify the gender of the fetus, such as screening in the early stages of pregnancy. Abortion, which is legal and socially acceptable in South Korea, was then often used to allow families to select the sex of their child. </p>
<h2>Sex by the numbers</h2>
<p>In South Korea, beginning in around 1980 and lasting up to around 2010 or so, many more extra boys were born than girls. When these extra boys reach adulthood and start looking for South Korean girls to marry, many will be unsuccessful.</p>
<p>The extra boys born in the 1980s and 1990s are now of marriage age, and many will be looking to marry and start a family. Many more will be reaching marriage age in the next two decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man kisses pregnant wife's belly." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563902/original/file-20231206-21-k1wz8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A deeply rooted cultural preference for sons was still influential in South Korea up through the early years of this century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/asian-man-kissing-pregnant-wifes-belly-royalty-free-image/174522589?phrase=south+korea+abortion&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">Greg Samborski via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>I have calculated that owing to the unbalanced SRBs in South Korea between 1980 and 2010, approximately 700,000 to 800,000 extra boys were born.</p>
<p>Already this is having an effect in a society where over the centuries virtually everyone was expected to marry, and where marriage was nearly universal. Recent <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/south-koreans-losing-interest-in-marriage-report-finds-630642">research by Statistics Korea</a> showed that in 2023, over 36% of South Koreans between the ages of 19 and 34 intended to get married; this is a decline from over 56% in 2012.</p>
<h2>Foreign brides and ‘bachelor ghettos’</h2>
<p>The immigration of foreign-born women might help address the imbalance. Research by demographers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X18756640">Guy Abel and Nayoung Heo</a> has shown that financial assistance from the South Korean government is already supporting the immigration to South Korea of Korean women from northeastern China and of foreign women from some less wealthy countries, such as Vietnam, the Philippines and some Eastern European countries. </p>
<p>If the extra bachelors do not marry immigrant brides, they will have no alternative but to develop their own lives and livelihoods. Some might settle in “bachelor ghettos” in Seoul and in South Korea’s other big cities of Busan and Daegu, where commercial sex outlets are more prevalent. Such “ghettos” have already been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/7/20/gender-imbalance-threatens-china">observed in other Asian cities</a> where men outnumber women, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in China.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Bridegroom flashes victory sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563903/original/file-20231206-27-z2krp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">While the desire for sons has been relaxed, the social issues, especially regarding the marriage market, remain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/bridegroom-showing-victory-sign-royalty-free-image/903472740?phrase=south+korea+wedding&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The consequences for South Korean society of the higher than biologically normal SRBs is a problem of the country’s own making. South Korea’s high fertility of the mid-20th century was holding the country back economically. Its program to bring down a fertility rate of nearly six children per woman was hugely successful. But its very success has been problematic. </p>
<p>The speed of South Korea’s fertility transition meant that the evolution to a more modern familial normative structure – that is, with about two children per family and with less preference given to boys – lagged behind. Today, the SRB imbalances appear to be <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38362474">a thing of the past</a>. Women in South Korea have greater access to education and employment, and there is less pressure for men to be sole wage earners. Together with the South Korean government’s efforts to reduce sex selection beginning in the late 1980s, the premium for boys over girls has dropped. </p>
<p>Yet despite the relaxed desire for sons, long-term social issues related to gender imbalance, especially regarding the marriage market, will remain in South Korea for decades to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dudley L. Poston Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following a 30-year boy-to-girl birth rate imbalance, up to 800,000 ‘extra’ men born since the mid-1980s will be unable to find a South Korean woman to marry. That has big demographic consequences.Dudley L. Poston Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2195612023-12-22T19:34:33Z2023-12-22T19:34:33ZChristmas movies always show us that being single sucks — but that’s not true<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565628/original/file-20231213-21-oa2mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C98%2C5946%2C3889&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite the Hollywood stereotype, many single people are happy and not desperate for a romantic partner.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/christmas-movies-always-show-us-that-being-single-sucks-but-thats-not-true" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Being single sucks. At least that’s the impression you get when watching Christmas movies. So many of these films focus on finding love during the holiday season. But, can you name one about being happily single during the holidays? Probably not.</p>
<p><em>Love Actually, The Holiday, Falling for Christmas, Last Christmas, Single All The Way, How to Fall in Love by Christmas, Inn Love by Christmas</em> — there are numerous Christmas movies about finding love. So many, in fact, that Netflix has dedicated an entire genre to them.</p>
<p>Christmas and holiday movies usually tend to centre around a key belief: that people need a romantic partner to live “happily ever after.” Characters in these movies are often desperate to find a partner before Christmas. Even when people aren’t looking for love, someone usually comes along to “fix” the single person’s problems.</p>
<p>The flip side of this messaging is that being single sucks, especially during the holiday season. But, as a <a href="https://secureresearchlab.com/people">relationship and singlehood scientist</a>, I can tell you that this is a lie.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-christmas-movies-so-popular-127972">What makes Christmas movies so popular</a>
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<h2>Singlehood on the rise</h2>
<p>Hollywood’s preoccupation with couples is surprising given how common the single lifestyle is becoming. There are more single adults in society now than there have ever been in modern history.</p>
<p>In Canada, the number of adults who live alone has more than <a href="https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/1908-living-solo">doubled over the last 35 years</a>. Among 25-to-29-year olds, the number of people who were single increased from <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220713/dq220713b-eng.htm">32 per cent in 1981 to 61 per cent in 2021</a>.</p>
<p>Singlehood isn’t just for young people. In 2021, as many as <a href="https://www.cardus.ca/research/family/reports/the-canadian-marriage-map/">32 per cent of adults aged 35-74</a> reported that they were not involved in a married or common law relationship.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black couple sit on a couch with popcorn watching a movie. A christmas tree and decorations can be seen behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565631/original/file-20231213-29-8t3gsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">While most people do enter into romantic relationships at some point in their lives, the number of single people has been rising among people of all ages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Are singles desperate for a relationship?</h2>
<p>I lead the <a href="https://secureresearchlab.com">Singlehood Experiences and Complexities Underlying Relationships lab</a> at Simon Fraser University. My research focuses on understanding when single and coupled people are happy and thriving, and when people may find their lives and relationships challenging.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17456916221136119">recently reviewed studies about single people</a>. Our research highlights that societal views of single people are outdated and narrow.</p>
<p>We found that while some people do struggle with being single, many singles are also happy and thriving. Happy singles often have <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550620988460">strong connections with family and friends</a>, are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146167220942361">sexually satisfied</a>, may want to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550615599828">avoid the drama that can come with dating</a> or <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-017-9921-7">live in societies that are more accepting</a> of singledom. But their stories are rarely told.</p>
<p>The rise in singlehood can be attributed to many changes in society. People are <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED575480">delaying marriage</a>, focusing on career or travel goals, going through <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2006.00287.x">separation or divorce</a>, or <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299146/happy-singlehood">choosing a single life</a> over a coupled life.</p>
<p>Of course, wanting a romantic partner is still a common and perfectly valid goal. As many as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1791946">80 per cent of people enter into stable romantic relationships</a> at some point in their lives. But that doesn’t mean that single people who would like a partner are moping around or desperate to find one.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smiling woman sitting on a couch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565058/original/file-20231212-27-3ieaql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">While some people do struggle with being single, many singles are also happy and thriving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Singles still face pressure to partner up</h2>
<p>Hollywood’s preoccupation with trying to “fix” single people by getting them to partner up is a reflection of the social pressures many single people continue to face.</p>
<p>The cliché of the sad, lonely and desperate single can leave single people feeling marginalized. Along with research colleagues, I examined the experiences of over 4,000 New Zealanders and 800 Canadian and American adults. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211030102">Our study</a> found single people often feel like they are “pitied,” “treated unfairly” and “discriminated against” by the very people that they might turn to for support.</p>
<p>For example, calling their mum for advice may also mean dealing with comments about settling down. Invitations to office holiday parties may mean attending solo, even though coupled colleagues get to bring their partners. Family holiday gatherings may lead to dealing with unwanted questions about their dating life or attempts to be set up on dates.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/netflixs-indian-matchmaking-at-the-emmys-the-problems-with-nominating-this-indian-reality-167011">Netflix’s 'Indian Matchmaking' at the Emmys: The problems with nominating this Indian ‘reality’</a>
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<p>So, as you cozy up to watch re-runs of your favourite Christmas romcoms this holiday season, imagine an alternative ending — one where the single person enjoys their holidays surrounded by their friends and family, without lingering alone around the mistletoe.</p>
<p>And, as you gather with your loved ones, consider resisting the urge to ask your single friends and family about whether they are dating or when they will settle down. Many single people will be celebrating this holiday season with cheer, even without a romantic partner.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yuthika Girme receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Many Christmas-themed movies centre around single people searching for love. But many people are increasingly happy being single and in no rush to find a partner.Yuthika Girme, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2201262023-12-19T13:17:40Z2023-12-19T13:17:40ZPope Francis’ approval of blessings for LGBTQ+ couples is a historic gesture, according to a Catholic theologian<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566409/original/file-20231218-20-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C3%2C2141%2C1329&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Francis speaks during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Oct. 18, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VaticanLGBTQ/8556ca299dda4df394f5e8864e86a1c1/photo?Query=pope%20francis%20same%20sex&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=46&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pope Francis’ <a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=in%20lingua%20inglese-,Declaration,Presentation,-This%20Declaration%20considers">Dec. 18, 2023, announcement</a> that Catholic priests may bless LGBTQ+ couples and others in “irregular” situations marks a definitive shift in the Roman Catholic Church’s posture toward many types of loving relationships. It may also mark a definitive turning point within the Roman Catholic Church.</p>
<p>Across the last few years, Francis has <a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-support-for-civil-unions-is-a-call-to-justice-and-nothing-new-148607">made gesture</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-shouldnt-seem-so-surprising-when-the-pope-says-being-gay-isnt-a-crime-a-catholic-theologian-explains-198566">after gesture</a> indicating his desire to find a way for the Catholic Church to accompany and welcome people whose loving relationships do not fit into the church’s sacramental understanding of marriage as between a man and a woman, ordered toward procreation and ended only by death.</p>
<p>He has telegraphed <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-7b465b60945f40deb3a68b3de742f84a">for a long time</a> his desire to come to some new arrangement that would welcome loving relationships in the church without transforming the church’s doctrine on marriage and sexuality all at once – the Dec. 18 declaration seems to do exactly that. </p>
<h2>Pastoral emphasis</h2>
<p>First, let’s be clear about what this new declaration is not. The declaration does not permit the marriage of LGBTQ+ couples, or couples where parties are divorced without annulment of the marriage. Neither does the declaration permit any recognition of a civil marriage.</p>
<p>The declaration is specific that the blessing of relationships outside marriage must not be done in any way that might be confused with a marriage ceremony. In fact, the declaration encourages priests to be <a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=prayer%20preceding%20this-,spontaneous,-blessing%2C%20the%20ordained">responsive to “spontaneous</a>” requests for a blessing, and it forbids the creation of “<a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=The%20popular%20understanding%20of%20blessings%2C%20however%2C%20also%20values%20the%20importance%20of%20descending%20blessings.%20While%20%E2%80%9Cit%20is%20not%20appropriate%20for%20a%20Diocese%2C%20a%20Bishops%E2%80%99%20Conference%2C%20or%20any%20other%20ecclesial%20structure%20to%20constantly%20and%20officially%20establish%20procedures%20or%20rituals%20for%20all%20kinds%20of%20matters">procedures or rituals</a>” that would provide anything like a script for a blessing ceremony.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people stand in front of a cathedral while another man in white priestly garments blesses them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566410/original/file-20231218-19-qx13c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Same-sex couples take part in a Catholic public blessing ceremony in Cologne, Germany, on Sept. 20, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VaticanLGBTQExplainer/fd76861aa59c4f43ab97ac397e74b082/photo?Query=pope%20francis%20same%20sex&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=46&currentItemNo=13">AP Photo/Martin Meissner</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Still, the declaration is remarkable for what it does do. Sidestepping difficult doctrinal questions that <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255544/the-5-cardinals-behind-the-latest-dubia-issued-to-pope-francis">divide Catholics</a>, the document’s emphasis is pastoral – it is oriented toward caring for and ministering to people rather than teaching doctrine.<br>
The word “pastoral” appears 20 times in the declaration. Francis’ emphasis is unmistakable: The subject of the declaration is not marriage or sexual morality; the declaration is about something else.</p>
<h2>What ‘blessings’ mean in the church</h2>
<p>In fact, the declaration is about blessings and what they mean in the Catholic Church.</p>
<p>A long stretch of the document is devoted to defining and clarifying what the Roman Catholic Church means by the word “blessing.” <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_risposta-dubia-2023_en.html#:%7E:text=For%2C%20when%20one%20asks%20for%20a%20blessing%2C%20one%20is%20expressing%20a%20petition%20for%20God%E2%80%99s%20assistance%2C%20a%20plea%20to%20live%20better%2C%20and%20confidence%20in%20a%20Father%20who%20can%20help%20us%20live%20better">Francis has said that</a> “when one asks for a blessing, one is expressing a petition for God’s assistance, a plea to live better, and a confidence in a Father who can help us live better.” A blessing is an “<a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=a%20superabundant%20and-,unconditional%20gift,-.">unconditional gift</a>” that “<a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=divine%20gift%20that%20%E2%80%9C-,descends,-%2C%E2%80%9D%20the%20human%20thanksgiving">descends</a>,” while our human thanksgiving “ascends” to God. </p>
<p>Blessings, in this pastoral sense, are events when our human dependence on God’s mercy is expressed as a desire for closeness with God. God, in Catholic belief, responds through the church. “<a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2020/documents/papa-francesco_20201202_udienza-generale.html#:%7E:text=It%20is%20God%20who%20blesses">It is God who blesses</a>” in these situations, Francis has written. God’s blessing manifests through priests and ministers.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://b2c-cbp-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/pdfs/9780899425603.pdf">Book of Blessings</a> provides formulas for everything from blessing a new home or a safe voyage to blessings for elderly people and seeds at planting time. Yet often enough in Catholic life, blessing is requested for an object like a rosary or Bible. </p>
<p>When these desires for blessing arise spontaneously, the church’s ministers always accommodate them. The church’s doctrine says blessing is abundant and inexhaustible. “Such blessings are meant for everyone; no one is to be excluded from them,” <a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=Such%20blessings%20are%20meant%20for%20everyone%3B%20no%20one%20is%20to%20be%20excluded%20from%20them">the Dec. 18 declaration says</a>.</p>
<h2>Sidestepping difficult issues</h2>
<p>These meanings of “blessing” are distinct from the blessing in the Rite of the Sacrament of Marriage, which is specific to the “union of a man and a woman, who establish an exclusive and indissoluble covenant.” </p>
<p>Yet, within the scope of that much more broad, pastoral understanding of blessing, Francis has said with this declaration that blessing should not be withheld from LGBTQ+ couples or anyone else.</p>
<p>In this way, the pope has sidestepped the more difficult doctrinal questions while still inviting all couples to present themselves for the blessings they desire. </p>
<p>But the pope has not sidestepped the controversy. In recent decades, the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/anglican-church-lgbtq-issues-4f635708fdb24df166ac8237f9473f00">Anglican Communion</a> and the <a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2010/08/27/lutheran-split">Lutheran Church</a> have been roiled by controversy over LGBTQ+ acceptance. More recently, the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/congregations-leaving-united-methodist-church-lgbtq-bans-70b8c89ea49174597f4548c249bab24f">Methodist Church</a> in the United States has split over the issue. </p>
<p>Catholics are divided in a similar way, and this declaration is not likely to cool down divisions. In fact, I believe, those divisions will likely deepen – especially in the United States, where Catholic bishops <a href="https://www.usccb.org/news/2023/statement-usccb-vaticans-document-addressing-pastoral-blessings">have been tepid</a> in their response to the declaration and <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/11/02/cardinal-christoph-pierre-interview-246416">Francis has not been embraced enthusiastically</a>. </p>
<p>Yet for now, the Roman Catholic Church has made a historic gesture of welcome that invites all people to experience the love of God in a community of believers devoted toward building up a more just and equitable world. “The Church is … the sacrament of God’s infinite love,” <a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en:%7E:text=The%20Church%20is%20thus%20the%20sacrament%20of%20God%E2%80%99s%20infinite%20love">the declaration says</a>. </p>
<p>Pope Francis has been constant in that loving, pastoral emphasis. For as much as the Dec. 18 declaration has changed, it has not changed that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven P. Millies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In emphasizing the church’s love for all, including people in LGBTQ+ relationships, the pope has sidestepped thorny doctrinal issues.Steven P. Millies, Professor of Public Theology and Director of The Bernardin Center, Catholic Theological UnionLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138872023-11-30T19:03:23Z2023-11-30T19:03:23ZFriday essay: can marriage be feminist? – a ‘hopeless romantic’ says no, but a same-sex newlywed says yes<p>Early in my career as a gender studies scholar, I was asked to give some “expert” commentary on whether it was possible to have a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/the-rise-of-the-feminist-wedding-20130918-2ty18.html">“feminist” wedding</a>. Without any specific research or personal expertise – never a real barrier in dial-a-quote land – I insisted of course it was possible. I provided a handy list of ways a feminist bride could subvert the dominant wedding paradigm.</p>
<p>Since then, I have been contacted by the media to discuss marriage more than any other topic. This is not surprising: marriage is one of those perennial hot-button topics and guaranteed click bait. </p>
<p>However, apart from <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/married-first-sight-can-feminist-be-fan#:%7E:text=Zora%20Simic%3A%20I%20don't,which%20involves%20serious%20couch%20time.">sharing my thoughts</a> on my ambivalent love of the reality television show <a href="https://theconversation.com/married-at-first-sight-a-social-experiment-all-but-guaranteeing-relationship-failure-114070">Married at First Sight</a>, I’ve mostly declined these requests. I just don’t have anything new or interesting to say about marriage – including as a feminist.</p>
<p>I’ve never been married, nor particularly wanted to, apart from some idle daydreaming in the early days of new romance. Even then, the fantasy usually involves eloping. Nor, as the eldest daughter of first-generation European migrants, have I ever been pressured to marry. </p>
<p>My parents tied the knot in a registry office, stopping by a photography studio on the way home, to mark the occasion with a serious photograph in which neither smiled. We were too poor to attend the lavish weddings of friends and relatives in the Balkan community, where nothing less than a brand-new white good was acceptable as a gift.</p>
<p>Among my cohort of Generation X friends, hardly anyone got married – unless it was to help secure a visa for international study and travel. The few weddings I attended in my twenties (what should have been my peak period) were usually conducted in a spirit of semi-irony. (It was the 1990s.) </p>
<p>This is not to say my friends were averse to “settling down”. Most of them have had long relationships – some of them very happy ones – with children and houses and shared assets, the whole shebang. </p>
<p>Since marriage equality was achieved in Australia, I’ve had the great pleasure to attend several queer weddings, each one uniquely delightful and moving. There is perhaps no more generative place to discuss marriage as a social institution than at the wedding reception for two people who grew up believing they would never have access to legal marriage. </p>
<p>For every declaration of “love is love”, another guest matches it with a reflection on homonormativity. The historian in me has wished I could have recorded these conversations, but at the time my priority was getting back to the dancefloor.</p>
<p>At these lovely queer weddings, I am sometimes identified as some kind of spokesperson for feminism. What do I think? Is marriage irredeemably loaded with hetero-patriarchal baggage?</p>
<p>Maybe the champagne is to blame, but what pops into my mind at those moments are more trivial episodes in the long history of “feminism and marriage” – like the intense <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/09/07/feminisms-unblushing-bride/a0d72dc5-1c83-4045-ab52-e1e01e1846fb/">media interest</a> following feminist icon <a href="https://theconversation.com/setting-the-record-straight-gloria-steinem-reflects-on-her-legacy-in-my-life-on-the-road-50204">Gloria Steinem</a>’s getting married for the first time at the age of 66, back at the turn of the century. </p>
<p>More recently, we saw former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard retrofit her opposition to marriage equality while in power as some kind of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-16/julia-gillard-same-sex-marriage-feminism-debate/102290962">feminist act</a>, rather than the political manoeuvre it clearly was.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-jilted-lovers-could-once-sue-for-breach-of-promise-did-we-lose-something-in-abolishing-this-law-214840">Friday essay: jilted lovers could once sue for breach of promise – did we lose something in abolishing this law?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Feminism and marriage</h2>
<p>There is, of course, a far deeper and more complex history of feminist thought and activism around marriage, including campaigns for women to acquire or retain their rights to property, paid work and their nationality after getting married. </p>
<p>Some of this history is canvassed in two new books by feminists on marriage. Clementine Ford is avowedly against it, while British feminist Rachael Lennon recently married her now-wife. </p>
<p>Their respective books, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Clementine-Ford-I-Don't-9781761069666/">I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage</a> and <a href="https://www.quarto.com/books/9780711267114/wedded-wife">Wedded Wife: A Feminist History of Marriage</a>, are accessibly written and pitched at a broad audience. Each turn to history, explore popular culture and litter their investigation with personal stories, including their own. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562046/original/file-20231128-27-eamw43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clementine Ford insists she is ‘hopelessly romantic’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nix Cartel/Allen & Unwin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lennon and her wife “made the decision to marry alongside the choice to become married”. Her wife wanted recognition as a parent of their children “without jumping through legal hoops and navigating additional paperwork”. Lennon, even (or perhaps especially) after having been a bridesmaid six times, knew she “wanted a public celebration”. </p>
<p>Inevitably, with two women getting married, there were “moments of misunderstanding in florists, venues and dress shops”. Together, writes Lennon, they “shook off some of the patriarchal expectations of marriage – though we still felt them”.</p>
<p>Ford, meanwhile, has never been married, though she’s had long-term relationships, including with the father of her son. As a young adult, she worked in a pub that regularly hosted identikit weddings, or “carbon copy festivals of heterosexuality”, seeding a grim view. </p>
<p>In researching her book, however, Ford is shocked when an ex-boyfriend reminds her she once told him if they ever got married, she’d take his surname. As she was in her early twenties at the time, Ford concedes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It did sound like the kind of bullocks I might have said when I was a newly gestating human and enjoying the feeling of watching myself be in love. I’m sure I would have framed it as progressive at the time, probably preparing to brag about it the same way people do about their alternative weddings.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These days, she rarely goes to weddings as a guest: like her, most of her friends are unmarried.</p>
<h2>From obedience to intimacy</h2>
<p>Lennon and Ford each reference the key text on the topic, historian Stephanie Coontz’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/marriage-a-history-9780143036678">Marriage: A History, From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage</a> (2005). The notion marriage should be based on mutual love and desire, and freely chosen by both parties, is a relatively recent and by no means universal idea – as captured by Coontz’s subtitle.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562048/original/file-20231128-29-2yzmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rachael L. Lennon.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Around 200 years ago, most societies around the world saw marriage as simply too important to leave up to the choice of two people”, writes Lennon, drawing on Coontz. These days, Ford writes, “cultures in which marriages are arranged are sneered at, while the women who still come with a price on their head are pitied. We would never diminish love that way, or women!”</p>
<p>It’s a promising line of argument, but only fleetingly developed because Ford, unlike Lennon, resists cross-cultural analysis or examples, including within Australia. Nor does Ford consider how the mainstream success of the Netflix series <a href="https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80244565">Indian Matchmaking</a> has opened up a wider international conversation about arranged marriages.</p>
<p>Lennon identifies a cultural shift from the late 18th century, evident in the life and work of <a href="https://theconversation.com/jane-austen-is-facing-death-by-popularity-and-men-37908">Jane Austen</a>, as she tracks the rise of the notion marriage should ultimately be about love. Austen’s celebrated novels “set a romantic bar in popular culture”, writes Lennon, “but the social and economic pressures on middle-class women to marry are always present”. </p>
<p>On “a cold evening in 1802”, Austen herself, aged 26 and dependent on the relatively modest income of her father, <a href="https://digitalausten.org/node/26">accepted a proposal</a> from family friend Harris Bigg-Wither, only to change her mind the next morning.</p>
<p>By the middle of the 20th century, Lennon continues, “most young people in Britain would not only aspire to be in love with a fiancé but expect to be”. But, as Lennon foregrounds, the history of marriage – particularly as decreed by religion and the law – is also one of exclusions on the basis of class, gender, sexuality, religion, race or disability. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aZS2KbLAy5Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ford doesn’t consider how the success of Indian Matchmaking has opened a wider international conversation about arranged marriages.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the idea of marriage for love became more entrenched in the West, so too did the gender binary, the separation of the spheres, colour bars and anti-miscegenation laws. At the same time, European colonial expansion “restricted and homogenised marriage definitions around huge swathes of the world”. </p>
<p>In 1918, the Australian government, building on existing Protection Acts in all states, passed the <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-53997665/view?partId=nla.obj-53998321#page/n0/mode/1up">Aboriginals Ordinance</a>, restricting marriage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people under their jurisdiction.</p>
<p>Ford mostly leaves such histories untouched, making the argument that “as a white woman living in Australia, I couldn’t possibly speak for cultures outside of my own or assert expertise that I don’t have”. </p>
<p>Instead, she purposefully focuses on the “experiences of white, middle-class women” because they “have been instrumental in establishing the idea of success in marriage as a sign of economic status and moral value, which in turn upholds hierarchical power within the patriarchal system”. </p>
<p>Possibly aware she may be negatively targeting her core constituency, Ford makes sure at numerous points to emphasise it is “systemic oppression” she wants to combat and criticise, not “personal actions”. “Contrary to what some may think,” insists Ford, “I am quite hopelessly romantic!” (On this note, in her last book <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Clementine-Ford-How-We-Love-9781760877187/">How We Love: Notes on a Life</a>, published in 2021, Ford compellingly argued for an expansive and capacious definition and experience of love.)</p>
<p>The plot and path of marriage gives each author a structure to roughly follow, from proposal to wedding to what happens or could happen next, including divorce. Both point out the “traditional wedding” or “marriage” as we understand it is a recent invention. </p>
<p>Lennon wryly notes history “is not full of men, century after century, popping the question down on one knee in a carefully choreographed performance”. The proposal is a 20th-century invention. For Ford, the most odious forms are the big, flashy public ones. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561756/original/file-20231127-15-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The proposal is a 20th-century invention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jesus Arias/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ford cites the example of her friend Bridget, whose ex-boyfriend proposed while they were a plane crossing the Atlantic: at “their heart, proposals are an act of entrapment, and there’s nothing quite so inescapable as a tin tube 30,000 feet above the ocean”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-kudnarto-the-kaurna-woman-who-made-south-australian-legal-history-185390">Hidden women of history: Kudnarto, the Kaurna woman who made South Australian legal history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The first celebrity wedding</h2>
<p>Queen Victoria is described by Ford as one of history’s most successful wedding “influencers”. Fittingly, she features in both books. When she married Prince Albert in a white gown in 1840, she launched a “tradition” of brides wearing white. She also inaugurated the big, expensive and elaborate wedding as the default standard for the aspiring middle classes – and, adds Ford, <a href="https://museumcrush.org/the-art-of-devon-lace-and-how-queen-victoria-revived-a-cottage-industry/">revitalised Britain’s lace industry</a>. </p>
<p>Lennon aptly describes the wedding of Victoria to Albert as “Britain’s first celebrity wedding”. Widely publicised around the world, its influence – via colonialism and the modern press – extended far beyond England itself. </p>
<p>And while Lennon laments the enduring hold that “Queen Victoria’s tiny waist and sexual purity” maintains on the bridal industry in the UK and globally, she also stresses the merging of local traditions and western influences in Vietnam and Japan. In China, India and much of Asia, she points out, “red is the bridal colour of choice”.</p>
<p>The burden of wedding planning, Lennon and Ford agree, continues to fall largely on women – or at least, is expected to. In the run-up to opposite-sex weddings, writes Lennon, “gender looms large, with parties of segregated people coming together to celebrate and prepare”. </p>
<p>Hen nights and stag dos, only a regular feature since the 1960s, have transitioned from “moments of quiet celebration to whole weekends”, perpetuated by a “massive industry telling us to make the most of these moments and opportunities”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561759/original/file-20231127-27-8c0id2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hen nights and stag dos have transitioned from ‘moments of quiet celebration to whole weekends’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Borba/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ford is especially scornful of what she labels the “wedding industrial complex”. Its history includes the highly successful mid-20th-century campaign in the US to revitalise the exploitative diamond industry by <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/">rebranding expensive engagement rings</a> as an essential wedding-related expense.</p>
<p>Attentive to how marriage has oppressed women, neither Lennon nor Ford shy away from its worst manifestations and most enduringly sexist features. On this front, Lennon casts a wider net, which takes in child brides and bride kidnapping, to cite just two examples that still occur. </p>
<p>Until not that long ago, a woman lost her entire legal identity when she became a wife. (This is a strong theme for both writers.) The law of <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/coverture-word-you-probably-dont-know-should">coverture</a> was defined by British judge and Tory politician Sir William Blackstone in the 1760s: “the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband”. </p>
<p>With British colonialism, their model of marriage became a major global export, writes Lennon. Ford points out this legacy can be seen everywhere, from “mechanics or tradespeople” who ask to speak to the “man of the house”, through to men who kill their wives and “believe in their hearts that these women belong to them”. </p>
<p>Both draw their reader’s attention to how long it took to get rape in marriage recognised by the law – in Australia’s case, into the 1990s. <a href="https://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/marital-rape/">Criminalisation of rape in marriage here</a> started in South Australia (which partially criminalised it) in 1976, with New South Wales the first state or territory to fully criminalise it, and the Northern Territory the last, in 1994.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561757/original/file-20231127-23-hfexsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ford is especially scornful of the ‘wedding industrial complex’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dimitriy Frantsev/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As feminists writing avowedly feminist books about marriage, Lennon and Ford each pay some attention to feminists who came before them. They include <a href="https://theconversation.com/mary-wollstonecraft-an-introduction-to-the-mother-of-first-wave-feminism-201046">Mary Wollstonecraft</a>, who is widely though not uniformly recognised as the first modern feminist. </p>
<p>She was also no fan of marriage, at least as it stood in 1792 when she published <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman-9780141441252">A Vindication on the Rights of Woman</a>, an instant bestseller in England. “If marriage be the cement of society”, wrote Wollstonecraft, “mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship.”</p>
<p>Wollstonecraft subsequently married writer and political theorist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Godwin">William Godwin</a> – who, as a foundational anarchist, lambasted marriage as a “system of fraud” and the “worst of all laws” – after she became pregnant in 1797. This is interpreted by Lennon as evidence even the strongest and most vocal critics were not immune to “the social pressures and punishments set up to induce marriage”. </p>
<p>Ford celebrates Wollstonecraft’s “wild life”, including “multiple lovers out of marriage”, having a child with one of them and marrying “a fellow radical” who “inadvertently destroyed her reputation by publishing a posthumous tribute that described in detail what a cool bitch she was”. </p>
<p>That Wollstonecraft died giving birth to her second daughter (Mary Shelley, author of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/frankenstein-9780241321645">Frankenstein</a>) is for Ford a “terrible irony”, given her resistance to “the entrapment of marriage and all the risks it posed to women”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-women-writers-helped-me-find-my-voice-after-divorce-207424">Friday essay: how women writers helped me find my voice after divorce</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Strikingly different</h2>
<p>Despite their shared features, however, Wedded Wife and I Don’t are strikingly different projects. Lennon, a “bisexual, feminist woman from a working-class background in the UK”, was inspired by her own marriage to her now-wife to ponder the institution’s “problematic inheritance”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1180&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1180&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561760/original/file-20231127-19-i5tlpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1180&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>A social historian and curator, Lennon deftly blends an “intimate history” centred “on the stories of women and those who challenged gender norms” with a “whistle stop tour of 500 years of modern marriage, within the United Kingdom and beyond”. </p>
<p>At the vanguard of the same-sex marriage revolution, Lennon finds plenty of evidence to support her case that “nothing about marriage is inevitable, natural or fated” – and that it’s perpetually open to adaptation. </p>
<p>While hardly a groundbreaking revelation or conclusion, Lennon impressively backs it up in her jaunty and thoughtful survey of marriage practices across time and place, with special attention to its queer history, legal and otherwise. </p>
<p>And if on occasion, she slips ever-so-slightly into what Helen Fielding’s <a href="https://panmacmillan.com.au/9781743034873/">Bridget Jones</a> (in “singleton” mode) called “smug married”, who can blame her? Lennon’s marriage sounds happy and harmonious, and she mostly resists evangelising for the cause.</p>
<p>Ford, meanwhile, as her title “I Don’t” makes obvious, is having none of it. Marriage is the paradigmatic patriarchal institution and cannot be queered or saved. </p>
<p>“Marriage,” she argues, “entrenches gender inequality between men and women while advertising heteronormative goals to queer people”. She is a “marriage abolitionist” who “cannot in good conscience support an institution that has enslaved women sexually, reproductively, financially and domestically”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561761/original/file-20231127-19-iidrot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>There is no doubting Ford’s ambition. While aware “you can’t summarise six thousand years of patriarchy in ninety thousand words”, she has a go anyway. The obligatory targets and greatest hits are all there – the Ancients, Christianity, the witch-hunts, the Western legal tradition, Piers Morgan. </p>
<p>So are contemporary examples of dud husbands and fear-mongering misogynist podcasters collapsed into the composite figure of “Kermit McDermit”, as are retro comedians (with “a name like Rocket Dickfingers”) who continue to peddle tired “take my wife” jokes to their receptive audiences. Ford’s contempt for such men is occasionally amusing, but more often tedious. </p>
<p>When dealing with the most challenging material – like accounts of coercive sex and rape in marriage that have been shared with her – Ford is sensitive and suitably outraged. But she stops short of providing the proper treatment such disturbing, yet commonplace phenomena demand. Instead, I Don’t is padded with unnecessary detours and digressions, including a lazy primer on what feminism has been blamed for throughout its history.</p>
<p>I Don’t is an unapologetic polemic, which begs the question of who Ford is trying to persuade. The author of three previous books, including <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Clementine-Ford-Fight-Like-A-Girl-9781760633400/">Fight Like a Girl</a> (2016) and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Clementine-Ford-Boys-Will-Be-Boys-9781760878627/">Boys Will Be Boys</a> (2018), as well as a podcaster with a strong social media presence, Ford has established a dedicated readership. </p>
<p>Presumably, some of these readers are like me – self-identified feminists who are, at best, indifferent about marriage. Or if they are married, or plan to marry, or want to be married, such a reader is probably already quite aware marriage has historically been a somewhat oppressive and sexist institution – and often still is. </p>
<p>That they want to get married anyway invites more reflection on its appeal beyond blaming popular culture, society and the patriarchy. Maybe Ford and the publishers anticipate some new readers who are curious about “marriage abolition”. It’s hard to tell. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-marriage-modern-anna-kate-blairs-novel-poses-the-question-but-doesnt-answer-it-212346">Is marriage modern? Anna Kate Blair's novel poses the question, but doesn't answer it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>I Don’t ‘fails to persuade’</h2>
<p>In any case, “marriage abolition”, as advanced by Ford, is a far sketchier proposition than other recent and ongoing feminist mobilisations focused on the abolition of some of society’s most entrenched institutions and structures. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561816/original/file-20231127-21-6k6t4e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>For example, feminism aimed at dismantling the carceral system is a growing international movement that includes Australia’s <a href="https://sistersinside.com.au/">Sisters Inside Inc.</a> and is showcased in the bestselling manifesto <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/abolition-feminism-now-9780241543757">Abolition.Feminism.Now</a>. </p>
<p>Books like <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/711-full-surrogacy-now">Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against the Family</a> (2019) and <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2890-abolish-the-family">Abolish the Family: A Manifesto </a> (2022), both by British scholar, writer and activist Sophie Lewis, invite readers to imagine what a world without the family (as it is currently constituted) would look like. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-equality-compatible-with-the-nuclear-family-alva-gotby-proposes-a-radical-politics-of-friendship-199420">Is equality compatible with the nuclear family? Alva Gotby proposes a radical politics of friendship</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The best polemics and manifestos dare readers to imagine alternative and better worlds: alas, I Don’t is not one of them.</p>
<p>One major reason I Don’t fails to persuade is that there is a tension between Ford declaring her book the “start of a much bigger conversation” about marriage on the one hand, and as a “profoundly hopeful love letter to women” on the other. </p>
<p>Conversations about marriage are happening all the time – for instance, about <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ethical-slut-has-been-called-the-bible-of-non-monogamy-but-its-sexual-utopia-is-oversimplified-207425">ethical non-monogamy</a>, living-apart-together, blended families and friendly divorces. But surprisingly few of them appear in Ford’s book. And while plenty of queer theorists share her view that marriage remains fundamentally heteronormative no matter who enters it, she names none of them. </p>
<p>As a genre, polemics defiantly resist the obligations of “balance”. But without the voices of women who, like Lennon and her wife, have reclaimed and reinvented marriage to suit themselves, in I Don’t, Ford runs perilously close to accusing women who decide to get married for whatever reason of false consciousness.</p>
<p>As polemic, the success of I Don’t largely rests on accepting Ford’s two related claims. Firstly, that the “modern woman is told that she needs marriage” and this pressure remains overwhelming. Next, that the stigma of not getting married – of becoming the modern version of a “spinster”, the “Cat Lady” – continues to loom large. </p>
<p>As a “spinster” myself (without any cats), I am part of an ever-increasing cohort of women who will never marry, have never really had any desire to, and have somehow remained largely immune from social pressures – including from the enduring stereotype of the “Cat Lady”. </p>
<p>I embarked on I Don’t sharing most of Ford’s criticisms of marriage. And while I still share them, I also found reading it such an alienating experience that by the end, I was tempted to get married just to prove her wrong.</p>
<p>As an alternative, I would recommend Lennon’s nuanced history, or even better, historian Alecia Simmonds’s recently published <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/courting#:%7E:text=Courting%3A%20An%20Intimate%20History%20of%20Love%20and%20the%20Law&text=In%20packed%20courtrooms%20and%20breathless,of%20love%20and%20the%20law.">Courting: an intimate history of law and the law</a>. In her captivating history of people – most of them women, but not all – who sued their prospective marriage partners for breach of promise, Simmonds audaciously suggests there might be merit in reviving and updating breach of promise in the civil law as a way to advance an ethics of intimacy. </p>
<p>It’s the sort of cleverly developed argument you don’t have to necessarily agree with to be excited by. I just wish there had been more of those arguments in I Don’t.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zora Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Zora Simic has never been married, nor wanted to. She assesses two new books about feminism and marriage – Clementine Ford’s polemic against it and Rachael Lennon’s history of its reformation.Zora Simic, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148402023-11-02T19:12:31Z2023-11-02T19:12:31ZFriday essay: jilted lovers could once sue for breach of promise – did we lose something in abolishing this law?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556790/original/file-20231031-25-kfakh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C7%2C4702%2C3137&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bridal-bouquet-on-cobblestone-street-585841202">Leah Joy Kelton/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Just a few lines to my ever dear Beattie.<br>
My dear love. I am nearly mad. <br>
Dear love, I love the ground you walk upon. <br>
My dear love. I pity you from the bottom of my heart. <br>
You are my love for life.<br>
I think it is a yarn about my wife being alive … I think it is spite …<br>
Dear, I would like to see you …<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>On a squally autumn day in Sydney in March 1914, Beatrice Storey, a barmaid, sued Frederick Chapman, a farmer, for abandoning her on the day of their wedding. To be precise, she claimed £1,000 damages in the New South Wales Supreme Court for breach of promise of marriage, a suit that could be used to claim compensation for injuries arising from a broken engagement.</p>
<p>Beatrice had first glimpsed Frederick a year earlier, from behind the bar at the Captain Cook Hotel. Cavalier, stocky and a “spinner of yarns”, he breezed into the pub “<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Paul-Keating-David-Day/dp/0732284252">smelling of horses and flashing his winnings</a>”. He told her he had been at the Moore Park races down the road. He also said he was 40, wealthy and a widower. After a month of giddy infatuation, he presented her with a wedding ring and vowed he would marry her.</p>
<p>Almost none of what he told her was true.</p>
<p>Beatrice explained from the witness box to the judge and a jury of four that she was 30 years old when she quit her employment, on Frederick’s insistence, and moved back home with her mother a few doors down on Flinders Street. Yes, she and Frederick had made wedding arrangements at St Barnabas’ church on George Street: 40 invitations were sent out; the wedding cake and carriage were ordered. </p>
<p>She had selected furniture for their new home in Kensington, and he had promised to settle the property upon her as well as gifting her £2,000 to furnish the house. “He said he had plenty of money,” she informed the court; “in fact, ‘money to burn’.” The day before the wedding, Frederick kissed Beatrice goodbye on the porch of her brother’s house and told her not to be late for church.</p>
<p>Frederick never showed up for his wedding. He phoned Beatrice and apologised, asking her to cancel the ceremony as he had just received news his wife was alive. The marriage would make him a bigamist. </p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-3-ways-philosophy-can-help-us-understand-love-155374">Friday essay: 3 ways philosophy can help us understand love</a>
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<p>Beatrice was livid. Frederick rushed to her house and tried to console her, begging her to take the wedding ring, fumbling his way into an embrace, chaotically trying to kiss her. She pushed him away. In the following weeks Frederick turned to ink and paper, bewailing the maddening effects of passion, confessing that the reports of his wife were “a yarn” and exhorting that it was his “greatest wish to marry”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A newspaper clipping reporting on the case." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556796/original/file-20231031-21-fey6h3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A report of the case.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia/Trove.</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Beatrice converted Frederick’s love letters into legal evidence and his passion into proof, in one of the most lucrative breach of promise actions of her decade: £350 compensation for her “lacerated feelings”.</p>
<p>The next time Beatrice and Frederick appear on the historical record is on January 23 1915, at St Martin’s Anglican Church in Kensington. This time, Frederick showed up for his wedding.</p>
<p>A little under 60 years later, in the early 1970s, a grandson of Beatrice and Frederick was also sued for breach of promise of marriage, just before <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillshistorical%2FHBILL1976V400018%22;src1=sm1">the action was abolished</a>. No newspaper bothered to report it, and we only know of the action because in 1986 a Liberal politician, Wilson Tuckey, raised it in federal parliament. </p>
<p>“Paul had a girl called Christine,” he hissed, directing his comments at a Labor MP named Paul, also implying (incorrectly) that an illegitimate child had been born. </p>
<p>“Madame Speaker,” the Labor MP interjected. He demanded Tuckey be censured. He railed against him, calling him a criminal. Later that day, the Labor MP held a press conference outside Parliament House to address the remarks and asked that they be erased from the Hansard minutes. This Labor MP, the grandson of Beatrice and Frederick, was <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/pop34/c14">the future prime minister Paul Keating</a>. </p>
<h2>Servants, seamstresses, nurses</h2>
<p>Why would Keating care so much about a past breach of promise suit – an action that by the 1970s was seen as a quirky relic from the Victorian era? Why should we care about his breach of promise suit, or any action over a thwarted romance in the past? What can the minor tragedies we see in breach of promise cases tell us about the history of love in Australia over the course of two centuries? And what might they suggest about how humans have sought to govern love – the most ungovernable of emotions, across time? </p>
<p>I have spent the past ten years looking for love in the canons of law; digging up around 1,000 breach of promise cases in search of answers to these questions. In the process, I have encountered a different kind of protagonist to those I have been accustomed to meeting in histories of romantic love. Here there are no lofty philosophers, sensitive poets or delicate letter-writers penning epistles in the hush of a lady’s drawing room. </p>
<p>The feckless Lotharios are shearers, train drivers, bankrupt shopkeepers, farmers and commercial travellers. Their scorned brides are people like Beatrice Storey: barmaids, domestic servants, seamstresses, nurses, piano teachers and, later in the century, chorus girls and migrants. They are mostly ordinary people of the lower-middle orders who could not afford the luxury of privacy, nor the indulgence of marrying for love alone.</p>
<p>Some went to court seeking compensation for lost wages or diminished social and economic status, others for wounded affections or missed romantic opportunities, and many more, like Beatrice, were using the action to pressure their partner to marry them. </p>
<p>Women who had been “seduced” litigated to defend their sexual reputations. Most plaintiffs were refreshingly oblivious or indifferent to the social scorn that the legal action cast upon them: the indignity of having your most private feelings filleted before a public audience; the perceived vulgarity of seeking financial recompense for the unquantifiable pain of a broken heart.</p>
<h2>Contemporary fantasies of romantic plenitude</h2>
<p>If Beatrice Storey had been left at the altar today, Frederick Chapman would not have been forced by the state to compensate her for her hurt feelings, nor for any financial losses she incurred. The fact Fred was an intimate partner, rather than a commercial one, would likely have denied her a legal remedy. </p>
<p>The law tends to assume that intimates don’t intend to create legal relations. Women are not economically and socially dependent on marriage as they once were, and a failed relationship does not relegate women to the status of damaged goods. Courtship is now defined by love, choice, physical desire and mutual negotiation, rather than by contractual legal obligation.</p>
<p>Fuelled by dating apps that promise a new partner by simply swiping right on your phone, fantasies of romantic plenitude have replaced legal regimes of punishment.</p>
<p>Yet people continue to experience injury, be it financial, emotional or bodily, when intimate promises are broken, and the discovery of deceit in relationships can be life-altering. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/3-in-4-people-experience-abuse-on-dating-apps-how-do-we-balance-prevention-with-policing-198587">3 in 4 people experience abuse on dating apps. How do we balance prevention with policing?</a>
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</p>
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<p>Rather than seeing the unmooring of love from law as a tale of liberation, by which love was set free from the paternalistic bonds of the state, I question what we have lost in this process, and how we might imagine, legally and socially, an ethics of intimacy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman at a window crying." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556793/original/file-20231031-23-3dz8ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People continue to experience injury, be it financial, emotional or bodily, when intimate promises are broken.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/light-fashion-love-people-6670149/">Pexels: Rdne stock project</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of turning to law, the Beatrice Storey of today would likely try to overcome her pain by reading self-help books or talking to friends, family and experts, all educated to varying degrees in psychology. The advice she would receive would no doubt revolve around the virtues of resilience, the balm of commodity culture (go out and buy yourself a new dress!), and interrogation of her own psyche (why had she been attracted to such a duplicitous cad in the first place?). </p>
<p>Where law would have ascribed fault and demanded a tallying-up of emotional, bodily and financial harm that could be compensated (however awkwardly) by money, therapeutic discourse is uninterested in material loss or ethical responsibility. </p>
<p>What was once a public debate about the rules of romance, including its gendered financial costs and the seriousness of its injuries, is now sequestered in the therapist’s clinic. </p>
<p>Like scholars before me, I argue that the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/144078338702300304">coming of the counsellors</a>” by the mid-20th century was not a victory but a loss, particularly for women. Responsibility for romantic injury has been individualised and feminised, and its pain trivialised, drained of economic meaning.</p>
<h2>High stakes</h2>
<p>There is something fundamentally human about falling in love that allows us to feel the amorous tremors of love poetry such as Sappho or Byron although centuries may yawn between us and the poet. But love is also not just love. When we see doctors giving testimony about the medical effects of heartbreak, or read of Beatrice Storey turning around after her court case and marrying Frederick Chapman, or applaud women at the start of the 20th century for claiming damages for the dinners they had cooked their lovers, we know we are dealing with an emotion that is profoundly shaped by culture. Love is a creature of its time. And it is in the space between strangeness and familiarity that the history of love can be found.</p>
<p>When I tell my students they could once have sued a lover for breaking an engagement, they are always astonished and a bit indignant; romance is not a fit subject for law, they say. Their response exposes a cultural assumption that love and law are opposites, conceptual antipodes, each untranslatable and hostile to the other. We think of romance as frolicsome, rebellious, impetuous and wilful, impervious to the monolithic sobriety of law. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cover for the book Courting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556792/original/file-20231031-21-w7qbls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc.</span></span>
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<p>From the ancients to the romantic poets, love has been a breaker of rules, which is why social contract theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau viewed it with suspicion. “Lovers never see anyone but themselves, they incessantly attend only to themselves and the only thing they are able to do is love each other,” he complained. </p>
<p>While law is rational and generalisable, love is a divine delirium that makes little sense to anyone but the couple afflicted. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-philosophy-of-jean-jacques-rousseau-is-profoundly-contemporary-201179">Explainer: the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is profoundly contemporary</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Ethical or not, today’s courting couples can “ghost” away without consequence; they can break promises or refrain from making them at all. Being true to your own feelings and following your own desires now trumps any notion of duty or honour. Ineffable, exquisitely personal, secretive and mysterious, romantic love, as we imagine it, has nothing to do with the coercive, transparent machinations of our public legal system.</p>
<p>But if we think more deeply, this easy dichotomy between love and law begins to break down. Love has its own laws and exercises its own jurisdiction; like law, it demands, either pleasurably or punitively, that we relinquish our will to a higher order. Love may elevate us – magically transfiguring the world into something as beautiful as our imagined love object – but like law it can also deprive us of autonomy, bestow obligations, punish transgressions and issue commands. </p>
<p>And because the stakes in love and law are high, as both change lives, they have a similar interest in evidence: “How do I know you are who you say you are?” and “can I place trust in your words?” are questions asked as anxiously in court as in courtship. </p>
<p>Love and law propel us on a quest for proof: we hunt for clues in small gestures, we read signs into bodily disturbances, we discern meaning in happenstance and we detect broad patterns of significance in the minutiae of everyday life.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-love-in-pop-culture-love-is-often-depicted-as-a-willingness-to-sacrifice-but-ancient-philosophers-took-a-different-view-187159">What is love? In pop culture, love is often depicted as a willingness to sacrifice, but ancient philosophers took a different view</a>
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<h2>An ethics of love?</h2>
<p>Over the course of two centuries, romantic love and law become separated. Each declares incompetency in the realm of the other, and I wonder whether this is something we should celebrate. </p>
<p>Is there such a thing as an ethics of love? What did we lose in the shift from the legal condemnation of deceit in relationships to psychological exhortations to resilience? Should we take romantic injuries more seriously? How should we economically value intimate labour? </p>
<p>History is not simply about avoiding the mistakes of the past – for we never do this anyway. It is at best an exercise in humility: learning that humans are malleable creatures and that the various incarnations of humanity we meet when we travel back in time may sometimes be wiser creatures than ourselves. </p>
<p>For Australians, a history of love told from the papery relics of one of our most treasured national icons – the working-class battler – is a corrective to traditional histories of love that tend to favour the bourgeoisie, and an antidote to our anaemic national mythologising of stoic, independent blokes and robust women.</p>
<p>Frederick Chapman may have been a stockman, larrikin and “spinner of yarns”, but he was also nervous, sentimental and smitten by Beatrice Storey. And far from being a long-suffering heroine of Australian legend, Beatrice took her squandered affections to court and won. </p>
<p>Writing a history of courtship from the archival remains of broken hearts allows us to tell national and transnational stories of vulnerability and resistance, of fierce and fragile inner worlds.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/courting">Courting: an intimate history of love and the law</a> by Alecia Simmonds (Black Inc).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alecia Simmonds received funding from The State Library of New South Wales where she was a Merewether Fellow. </span></em></p>Australians could once claim compensation for injuries arising from a broken engagement. Today, the responsibility for romantic injury has been individualised and feminised, its pain trivialised.Alecia Simmonds, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2136322023-10-04T12:31:48Z2023-10-04T12:31:48ZWhy are some Chinese women still looking to the West for love?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551470/original/file-20231002-15-syyk7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C9%2C6116%2C4074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In China, single women as young as 27 are considered 'leftover.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/man-and-woman-facing-each-other-on-balkony-royalty-free-image/926295480?phrase=illustration+man+looking+out+window&adppopup=true">Maciej Toporowicz/Monument via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Robert, an American truck driver in his 50s, lived in a trailer park in the Deep South. After divorcing his wife, who had cheated on him, he joined an online dating agency that connected Western men with Chinese women through translator-assisted email exchanges.</p>
<p>Robert told me he had become frustrated with American women, whom he felt were overly materialistic and had lost their “traditional family values.” (To protect the identities of my interviewees, I’ve used pseudonyms.) Yet Robert could barely afford to travel to China to meet the women with whom he exchanged emails. To save up, he often ate just a few dumplings for dinner, sometimes skipping the meal altogether. </p>
<p>Across the ocean, several Chinese women had gathered at their local dating agency, waiting to speak with their translator. Among them was Ruby, a former businesswoman in her mid-40s who had received a generous divorce settlement from her wealthy Chinese ex-husband and had retired in leisure. Next to Ruby stood another divorcee in her 40s, Daisy, who struggled to make ends meet as a department store sales clerk. </p>
<p>Despite their immense class differences, both women shared the same hope of marrying a Western man and moving abroad.</p>
<p>Commercial dating agencies like the one described here facilitate email exchanges and marriages between women from developing countries, such as Russia, Ukraine, China or Colombia, and men from economically advanced Western countries, such as the U.S., U.K., Canada or Australia. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/530647/love-in-the-time-of-algorithms-by-dan-slater/9781101608258">It’s a US$2 billion global business</a>. From 2008 to 2019, I conducted research for my book “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35148">Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides under China’s Global Rise</a>” at three international dating agencies in China, interviewing 61 Chinese female clients.</p>
<p>I wanted to know why, despite China’s meteoric economic and cultural rise, so many women – especially those who were financially well-off – were still looking to the West for love and companionship.</p>
<h2>Options narrow with age</h2>
<p>Despite China’s staggering male-female gender imbalance – <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/china-has-nearly-35-million-more-single-men-women-1592486">where single men outnumber women by more than 30 million</a> – middle-aged divorced women still face significant struggles. </p>
<p>There’s the stereotypical Western media representation of “<a href="https://studybreaks.com/thoughts/shattering-myths-about-asian-mail-order-brides-through-screen-narratives/">mail-order brides</a>” – young women who marry older Western men to escape poverty. This dynamic persists. But contrary to this stereotype, the majority of women enrolled at the dating agencies where I conducted research were middle-aged and divorced. </p>
<p>None of them felt coerced, and they cited age discrimination in China as their No. 1 reason for seeking Western men. </p>
<p>As Ruby confided, “Here, rich men want a young girl who is 20 to show off.” </p>
<p>Although it’s no secret that divorced or widowed <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/11/14/four-in-ten-couples-are-saying-i-do-again/">men in many countries remarry younger women</a>, the pressure to do so is particularly acute in China, where women as young as 27 years old <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/leftover-women-9781783607891/">are stigmatized</a> as “leftover.”</p>
<p>Adding to the complexity, women with children from previous marriages – especially those with sons instead of daughters – face even more challenges in the local marriage market. Chinese women attribute this <a href="https://cardiffjournalism.co.uk/life360/for-many-chinese-men-no-house-means-no-marriage/">to societal norms</a> that expect young men to own a home or have made a down payment before tying the knot. This means that parents are expected to financially assist their sons with mortgages, and many single men don’t want to assume this financial responsibility when marrying a woman with a son. </p>
<p>Infidelity also ranks among the top concerns for women, in large part due to the country’s post-1978 <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-01/40-years-of-reform-that-transformed-china-into-a-superpower/10573468">economic reforms</a>, which spawned a new capitalist upper class. Many newly wealthy men – even those who were already married – started seeking younger, more sexualized women.</p>
<p>Ruby told me that her affluent ex-husband, who had a number of extramarital affairs, once quipped that “men are like teapots, each teapot should be matched with multiple teacups.” </p>
<p>It wasn’t just China’s newly wealthy class of men who started seeking romance outside of their marriages. Women told me of husbands who had lost their jobs and then turned to drinking, gambling and infidelity to cope with their newfound financial struggles.</p>
<p>While many female clients sought Western men as a tonic against Chinese men’s infidelity, this was hardly a concern for women who were mistresses to wealthy businessmen. </p>
<p>One former mistress, Jennifer, said, “I believe in patriarchy.” She preferred the company of rich men with multiple partners over faithful but less prosperous men. </p>
<p>As these mistresses aged, however, their wealthy paramours abandoned them for younger women. But they were unwilling to settle for lower-status, less successful men in China. After years of being out of the workforce, their lavish consumption habits were at odds with their weakened labor market prospects. </p>
<p>As a result, they turned to marriage migration as an option for escape.</p>
<h2>Spurned by the service sector</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, my interviews with sales clerks and nannies shed light on the challenges faced by middle-aged women without college degrees. Many of them had been laid off from state-owned factories in the 1990s, <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2016/03/chinas-coming-mass-layoffs-past-as-prologue/">when over 30 million workers lost their jobs</a>.</p>
<p>These women struggled to find new work in China’s service sector, <a href="https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/mein%C3%BC-jingjichinas-beauty-economy-buying-looks-shifting-value-and">which prioritizes hiring young, good-looking women</a>. Daisy, a 43-year-old, felt fortunate to have secured a job at a luxury department store, but she feared for her future job prospects. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young female Chinese barista pours hot water as a male customer awaits his order." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551473/original/file-20231002-26-dsef6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In China’s booming service sector, young applicants get preference over older ones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/barista-is-making-coffee-in-a-new-starbucks-reserve-coffee-news-photo/992237296?adppopup=true">Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Meanwhile, less attractive women often had to work in less desirable positions: as nannies helping mothers take care of newborns, or street vendors who earned less than $5 per day. <a href="https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/reform-horizon-chinas-weak-social-safety-net">Without access</a> to health insurance, retirement benefits or other social safety net programs, many of these women were desperate to leave China.</p>
<p>Finally, many struggling single mothers marry Western men so their children can study overseas. </p>
<p>Some of them want their children to escape <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvm8aq/china-education-rigid-gaokao-alternative-learning-beijing-school">China’s exam-driven education system</a> that can burden students with excessive schoolwork and no playtime. Others feel that the Chinese job market favors social connections over qualification. </p>
<p>Joanne, a retail manager with dreams of sending her teenage son to the U.S. for college, pointed out, “Unlike in the U.S., a lot of good jobs in China depend on ‘hou tai’” – the Chinese term for “social background” or “lineage.” </p>
<p>“Having a degree is not enough,” she added.</p>
<h2>Mixed marriage experiences</h2>
<p>Interestingly, of the 30 women in my study who were financially secure, only 12 ended up marrying Western men. By comparison, 26 of the 31 financially struggling women married and moved abroad. </p>
<p>This is because many financially secure women were used to dating wealthy Chinese businessmen and politicians, so they often rejected their working-class Western suitors. After meeting these men face to face, they realized that they lacked the refined taste, lifestyle and sexual experience of their Chinese lovers. </p>
<p>By contrast, the financially struggling women held a different perspective. Daisy, who married a French mechanic, eventually grew to appreciate her husband for being kind and caring to her, even though she was not initially attracted to him and called him “foolish and clumsy, like someone from the peasant class.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Daisy valued the opportunity to work as a waitress and earn $1,500 per month, which enabled her to send some money home to her daughter in China.</p>
<p>Likewise, Robert, the truck driver, eventually found love with a Chinese woman. She moved into his trailer and worked as a masseuse on the side to send money back to her sons in China. </p>
<p>While some brides felt content in their new marriages, others suffered. For example, Joanne found herself in a toxic relationship with a controlling American man. Yet she stayed with her husband because her older age, limited English skills and her son’s need for financial support as a college student in the U.S. left her with few other options. </p>
<p>As Joanne’s experience shows, given the gender, age and class inequalities that continue to plague modern-day China, single Chinese women can find themselves choosing between a rock and a hard place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Liu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Their desire to pursue marriage abroad not only reveals their longing for a better life but also reveals the pervasive gender, age and class inequalities that continue to plague modern-day China.Monica Liu, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of St. ThomasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2123462023-10-03T19:05:18Z2023-10-03T19:05:18ZIs marriage modern? Anna Kate Blair’s novel poses the question, but doesn’t answer it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548247/original/file-20230914-27-hba3sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C4147%2C3116&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Suzana Duljic/Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is marriage modern? This is the circuitous premise of Australian writer Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Modern/Anna-Kate-Blair/9781761421242">The Modern</a>, set in contemporary New York and centred on the life, half-loves and near-loves of Sophia, an Australian research fellow at MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art). </p>
<p>Sophia’s fellowship at MoMA is coming to an end. About to turn 30, she is facing future job precarity. In this transitional state, she becomes engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Robert – an academic and avid hiker, who plops a marriage proposal onto her lap, then embarks on a five-month trek through the Appalachian Mountains.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Modern – Anna Kate Blair (Scribner)</em></p>
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<p>Sophia’s engagement shakes out a constellation of loose questions about potential choices, possibilities and limitations. Her relationships have previously been with women, her queerness suppressed in a longstanding heterosexual relationship that is easy and affirming, but ultimately, the reader feels, taken for granted – not so much by Robert as by Sophia herself. </p>
<p>When Robert departs, Sophia meets the mercurial, filament-like Cara, an unlikely assistant in a little-frequented New York wedding boutique. In her spare time, Cara makes art using photographed wedding-dress remnants. Sophia falls for her. Cara does not reciprocate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548989/original/file-20230919-23-vhrr4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel explores the ‘life, half-loves and near-loves’ of an Australian at New York’s MoMA.</span>
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<h2>Is marriage modern?</h2>
<p>The question “Is marriage modern?” is less the fulcrum of Sophia’s personal narrative than, increasingly, a perplexing nonsense rhyme, or rhetorical question weighed down by its own glowering question mark. </p>
<p>Is marriage modern? <em>Are clothes modern?</em> Sophia asks. <em>Are houses modern? Children modern? Rats modern?</em></p>
<p>The question feels decidedly oxymoronic. In the context of same-sex marriage, which Blair touches upon, marriage <em>is</em> modern, so long as you don’t drill down to its ideological underpinnings: the history of marriage as property transfer, its requisite reproductive labour, the spectacle of grim-lipped, decades-long resentments sustained under the oath of “til death do us part”. </p>
<p>By what barometer might we gauge “modernity” in marriage? Happiness? Unhappiness? Equality? Freedom to realise the self within the safety of mutuality? </p>
<p>Or is it all, in the end, about <em>the dress</em>? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-adultery-be-inherited-kate-legge-investigates-after-the-king-hit-of-her-husbands-affair-which-seems-to-run-in-his-family-197428">Can adultery be inherited? Kate Legge investigates after the 'king hit' of her husband's affair – which seems to run in his family</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Smacked in the face by a dress</h2>
<p>Like Sophia, the idea of marriage has always repelled me, but then (also like Sophia) one day I found myself <em>hit by a dress</em>. Smacked in the face by it. A flounce-ridden, gorgeously deep-red <a href="https://theconversation.com/wedding-dresses-and-bikini-bodies-20052">wedding dress</a> in a Moonee Ponds wedding boutique window. </p>
<p>For one second, I entertained the idea of a wedding, but only because of that dress. Sophia has similar swooning moments imagining, choosing, thinking about the dress. </p>
<p>She goes dress-shopping with her overly conscientious mother-in-law-to-be; she considers the instances of wedding dresses in art and the emblematic 1954 painting <a href="https://whitney.org/collection/works/1292">Grand Street Brides</a> by abstract expressionist painter <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/2520">Grace Hartigan</a>: six ghoulishly clad brides outside a wedding shop, a shimmer of white and crimson and green that bodes ill as much as good. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uUhhii2jy-o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Grace Hartigan’s six ghoulishly clad brides bode ‘ill as much as good’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the phenomenon itself – the overweening presence of the wedding dress in young women’s lives – remains under-explored. Sophia is constantly taking photographs and uploading them to Instagram, but her conjuring of ideas feels like a once-posted, easily forgotten exercise. </p>
<p>It’s as though simply posing questions and thrusting them out into cyberspace is sufficient: the archival evidence of having had a thought or idea about something precluding the need to explore that idea further. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-woman-could-paint-the-story-of-art-without-men-corrects-nearly-600-years-of-male-focused-art-criticism-184458">'No woman could paint': The Story of Art Without Men corrects nearly 600 years of male-focused art criticism</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Modern art ‘at every turn’</h2>
<p>If the novel’s central question is not answered or adequately dissected, questions of modernity in art are more fulsomely, if curatorially, examined. The Modern tosses “modern” artists and art at the reader at every turn, assuming a familiarity with art history on the reader’s part. </p>
<p>This is not a bad thing, of course, but I was glad to have seen photographer <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/7532">Nan Goldin</a>’s 1980s New York exhibition, <a href="https://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/nan-goldin/">The Ballad of Sexual Dependency</a>, at the National Gallery of Australia recently. It gave me a touchstone for Sophia’s descriptions of these tender, bruising countercultural images. Other works, other artists, skated past me without feeling synchronous with the narrative, or like they expanded it. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cag_2c0jTS4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nan Goldin on The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The Modern overflows with ideas: musings on modern art, and on the masculinist orientation of art institutions, in which female curatorial assistants doggedly do the work their male supervisors put their names to. </p>
<p>And musings on the nature of marriage as a “ceremony that [sits] awkwardly between the libidinal and the legal” – a ceremony to which Sophia is curiously drawn, in spite of her rational instinct to repudiate it.</p>
<p>Sophia’s relentlessly self-reflecting narrative is shot through with titbits from the life of Grace Hartigan, her dissertation subject. Grand Street Brides functions as an almost-motif throughout the novel, its Picasso-esque, post-<a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm">cubist</a> awkwardness reflecting Sophia’s own ambivalence about marriage. </p>
<p>Sophia’s curatorial instinct cannot help but see weddings as “huge installations with a performance element”, the wedding dress as a shimmering fabric monument (to be later dyed black and re-used). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548998/original/file-20230919-17-7z704n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Curator Sophia can’t help but see weddings as ‘huge installations with a performance element’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pixabay/Pexels</span></span>
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<h2>Curated, rather than known</h2>
<p>The Modern charts Hartigan’s life – three marriages, three significant relationships, an important friendship with curator and poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/frank-ohara">Frank O’Hara</a> (champion of <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/4675">Jackson Pollock</a>) – but she remains an under-exploited (or perhaps I should say under-illuminated) throughline in the novel. She is curated rather than known; she’s a collection of iterations. </p>
<p>Perhaps this is Blair’s intention: Hartigan as surface, knowable only through her work, her private self inured to the public gaze. But every character in The Modern feels somewhat like a bit-part: fleeting, insubstantial, or, in Robert’s case, downright wooden. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548992/original/file-20230919-27-my42jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The only knowable entity is Sophia herself, and even she tumbles and falls in what feels like an “imitation of collapse” rather than the real messy, muddy dissolution of self that might make the reader <em>feel</em> for her.</p>
<p>There are moments of grace and intelligence in this novel: poignant moments, moments that might have been opened further out, or borne interesting fruit – or pods, or leaves. But instead, they funnel into the ongoing introspection of Sophia’s ever-changing insecurities. </p>
<p>“I wonder if I could use Frank O’Hara as a model for a new form of art history, one that acknowledged love,” Sophia says at one point. </p>
<p>Discussing <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abstract-expressionism">abstract expressionism</a>, the style with which Hartigan struggled as a female artist, Sophia says: “It felt essentialist, and just wrong, to say that strength and energy belonged to men.” I wanted to clutch onto these observations, and see them take flight, play out in the narrative.</p>
<p>Blair is extremely good at asking pertinent, urgent questions. But they remain loose and untethered: helium balloons that, once hoisted, float swiftly out of sight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding from Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria. She currently works for the Australian Education Union</span></em></p>The Modern, a debut novel centred on an Australian researcher at New York’s MoMA, muses on modern art and relationships – riffing off MoMA artists like Grace Hartigan and Nan Goldin.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108972023-09-03T20:03:03Z2023-09-03T20:03:03ZBeing the main breadwinner didn’t necessarily keep married mums in work during the pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540668/original/file-20230802-19-2o1z8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C24%2C5447%2C3596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the toughest days of the pandemic, many dual-income families made the difficult choice to drop down to one income. </p>
<p>With dads being the primary earners in many heterosexual households, it was often the mother who gave up her job to manage all the extra housework, homeschooling and childcare the pandemic brought.</p>
<p>But what about heterosexual households where the mother was the primary earner?</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12926">study</a>, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, involved analysis of 7,139 different-sex married parents in the United States, captured at multiple time points. We found many married mothers who earned half or more of the family’s income got knocked out of employment during the first 18 months of the pandemic. </p>
<p>The employment rate of fathers who earned the bulk of the money over this time dropped much less, we found. In fact, it barely changed.</p>
<p>Our study also found the ability to work remotely was an important lifeline for mothers to retain employment. Overall, earning more of the income couldn’t guarantee mothers would be protected from employment loss, but working remotely was crucial to mothers remaining employed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540669/original/file-20230802-19-6hm10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The pandemic pummelled mothers through added childcare, housework, and homeschooling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-resignation-didnt-happen-in-australia-but-the-great-burnout-did-201173">The 'great resignation' didn't happen in Australia, but the 'great burnout' did</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Even earning more, many mothers were knocked out of employment</h2>
<p>To track US mothers’ employment over the duration of the pandemic, we used data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey. The data are collected by the US Census Bureau.</p>
<p>Our sample included civilian respondents aged 25–54 who were different-sex, married parents with children 12 years or younger. In each case, both the respondent and their spouse reported working for pay in 2019, before the pandemic started.</p>
<p>We used this data set to follow mothers’ and fathers’ employment patterns over the first year of the pandemic (January 2020 to May 2021). </p>
<p>We found fathers in this group who were primary earners tended to remain employed over this period. </p>
<p>The employment rate for mothers, by contrast, dropped significantly in the first few months and never fully recovered. It didn’t matter if mothers were primary earners or not – their employment rate still dropped.</p>
<p>In fact, by the March to May period of 2021, mothers’ employment was over four percentage points lower than pre-pandemic levels – regardless of their earnings.</p>
<p>So, earning more of the family income didn’t necessarily shield mothers from employment loss. What did matter, however, was access to telecommuting. </p>
<p>Mothers who could work online had significantly higher employment rates across the period of our study than mothers who couldn’t. Additionally, the positive effect of telecommuting on employment was four times larger for mothers than for fathers.</p>
<p>Telecommuting was a lifeline for mothers’ employment during the pandemic.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman exams documents and works from home while her pre-schooler plays in the background. Half-eaten food and mess sits near her computer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541587/original/file-20230807-25-qhmckc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Earning more of the family income didn’t buffer mothers from employment loss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The pandemic-pummelled mothers</h2>
<p>These findings build on our previous research showing US mothers’ employment was hit hard during the pandemic. </p>
<p>At the start of the pandemic, our previous research found nearly 250,000 more mothers than fathers <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120947997">exited employment</a> from February to April 2020.</p>
<p>We also found in prior studies that US mothers with children aged five or under reduced their work time <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7361447/">four to five times more</a> than equivalent fathers.</p>
<p>We also showed that in-person learning in the latter part of 2020 <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08912432211001300?te=1&nl=nyt-parenting&emc=edit_ptg_20210324">was lower</a> in US districts with higher proportions of Black and Hispanic students. Remote learning across the <a href="https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/rsfjss/9/3/134.full.pdf">2020–2021 school year</a> led mothers’ but not fathers’ employment to drop, especially for those with less education and limited access to telecommuting. </p>
<p>And our earlier research revealed how US mothers stepped into more <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1097184X21990737">housework and childcare</a>, causing sleep problems, anxiety and stress.</p>
<p>As we discussed these findings with researchers and the community, one question would keep coming up: isn’t all this just the consequence of fathers earning more? </p>
<p>Isn’t it a “rational” choice to shield fathers from job loss, rather than mothers, because men tend to be the primary earners?</p>
<p>Our recently published <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12926">research</a> shows that, no, this was not necessarily about who made more money in the household – it is often about who is expected to provide care when times get tough. </p>
<p>Many mothers got knocked out of employment even when they were the family’s highest earner.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Asian mother works from home on a laptop while her child plays next to her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541586/original/file-20230807-15-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Working remotely has been critical to mothers remaining employed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>US mothers have now returned to employment at pre-pandemic levels. But we can’t ignore the fact many mothers stepped into the added care of the pandemic while also trying to maintain their work lives. Many couldn’t and employment dropped. Others experienced significant <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/py8bj/">earnings losses</a> even while remaining employed. </p>
<p>For those with the option to work remotely – who are largely employed in professional jobs – this benefit was and remains critical to their ability to hold onto their job. Despite this, employers are increasingly removing this lifeline and demanding a return to the workplace.</p>
<p>These lessons also extend to other Western nations. In Australia, for example, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1097184X21990737">mothers</a> picked up more housework and childcare at the expense of their health and wellbeing (as did <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-forced-australian-fathers-to-do-more-at-home-but-at-the-same-cost-mothers-have-long-endured-154834">fathers</a>). Australian workers want <a href="https://www.work-futures.org/publications">remote work to remain</a> which has long been critical to mothers maintaining employment and to avoid <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-resignation-didnt-happen-in-australia-but-the-great-burnout-did-201173">burnout</a>.</p>
<p>The pandemic showed care work is critical to our lives and we must support those who do it. </p>
<p>For married heterosexual mothers, this means acknowledging the tolls of the pandemic and ensuring access for all in relevant occupations to critical resources like telecommuting.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yet-again-the-census-shows-women-are-doing-more-housework-now-is-the-time-to-invest-in-interventions-185488">Yet again, the census shows women are doing more housework. Now is the time to invest in interventions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Ruppanner receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liana Christin Landivar is a senior researcher at the US Department of Labor. Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the US Department of Labor.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlyn Collins and William Scarborough do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With dads being the primary earners in many heterosexual households, it was often the mother who gave up work to manage extra work at home during the pandemic. But what about heterosexual households where the mother was the primary earner?Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, The University of MelbourneCaitlyn Collins, Associate Professor of Sociology, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisLiana Christin Landivar, Faculty Affiliate, University of MarylandWilliam Scarborough, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of North TexasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2105272023-08-10T12:41:29Z2023-08-10T12:41:29ZBeyoncé has a prenup − but do you need one if you’re not a millionaire?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541566/original/file-20230807-26-p288xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=152%2C49%2C2815%2C1877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A prenup allows couples to separate their debt from the debts of their spouse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/beyonce-and-jay-z-perform-during-the-global-citizen-news-photo/1067795190?adppopup=true">Kevin Mazur via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A prenuptial agreement can seem like something only high-profile people like <a href="https://www.hellomagazine.com/brides/494142/jeff-bezos-prepares-jaw-dropping-prenup-to-protect-his-138billion-fortune/">Jeff Bezos</a> – with his US$138 billion fortune to protect – actually need.</p>
<p>But prenups – contracts entered into before marriage that detail how assets will be divided in the case of divorce – can be a good idea for anyone going into a marriage, according to <a href="https://doyledivorcelaw.com/blog/9-reasons-you-need-a-prenuptial-agreement/">lawyers</a> and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bringing-compassion-matrimonial-law/201810/the-unexpected-upside-getting-prenup">marriage counselors</a>. They have been in regular use since 1983, when a group of attorneys and law professors drafted the <a href="https://helloprenup.com/upaa/">Uniform Premarital Agreement Act</a>, a set of rules regulating prenups that 28 U.S. states have since adopted. </p>
<p><a href="https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/popularity-of-prenups-rising-2022/">A recent poll</a> showed that the percentage of couples with prenups has risen from 3% in 2010 to 15% in 2022. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/prenups-arent-just-for-rich-people-anymore">Nearly 40%</a> of married or engaged couples between the ages of 18 and 34 have signed prenups, while just 13% of couples between 45 and 54 have done so. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6kPZNuMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As a law professor</a> who specializes in family law, I teach my students what prenups are and how to make sure they stand up in court. I also <a href="https://law.richmond.edu/faculty/atait/">write about</a> what happens to property when couples get divorced, especially unique forms of property like <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3036997">family businesses</a> or <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3259129">trust funds</a>. </p>
<h2>A shield from unwanted debt</h2>
<p>But prenups can be about more than what you own – they can also be about what you owe.</p>
<p>Millennials have accumulated <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/02/27/millennials-debt-pandemic-credit-interest-rates/">more debt</a> than previous generations, and prenups can help millennial couples navigate some of the concerns about debt in marriage. They can help couples address questions about the shared debt incurred during the marriage and who will pay what if the marriage ends. For example, couples can agree in a prenup to allocate <a href="https://www.tateesq.com/learn/prenup-student-loans">student loan debt</a> to the person who took out the loan. </p>
<p>They can also choose to protect one person from the other’s <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/prenups-arent-just-for-rich-people-anymore">medical debt</a>, especially if they know that large medical bills are on the horizon. Prenups can insulate one spouse from potential debt and financial risk from their <a href="https://state48law.com/benefits-of-a-prenuptial-agreement-for-business-owners/">partner’s business</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A couple signs a prenup agreement." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541349/original/file-20230806-20589-vq6fu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prenups allows couples to make their own rules rather than being at the mercy of state laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/couple-who-signs-a-contract-at-a-new-residence-royalty-free-image/1124316087?phrase=a+couple+signing+a+prenup&adppopup=true">kokouu/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A shield from state laws</h2>
<p>Couples may also be drawn to prenups because these agreements allow them to make arrangements that, if executed correctly, take precedence over state laws.</p>
<p>When you get divorced, you can either follow the terms in a prenup or the terms that state law provides and be at the mercy of a divorce court’s estimation of who should get what. </p>
<p>State rules that generally divide all assets and debt equally were initially created for divorcing couples with conventional and gendered household patterns. For example, stay-at-home mothers raising children, working fathers with full-time employment, and assets like a house, life insurance and pension. </p>
<p>Younger couples are likely to organize their <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/27/as-millennials-near-40-theyre-approaching-family-life-differently-than-previous-generations/">households much differently</a>. Both spouses <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/10/13/the-rise-resilience-and-challenges-of-2-career-couples/">generally work</a>. Expectations about who is responsible for child rearing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/upshot/millennial-men-find-work-and-family-hard-to-balance.html">are more varied</a>. Millennials and Gen Z workers are frequently <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennial-burnout-cant-even-anne-helen-petersen">freelance employees</a> or independent contractors, with less income security and fewer benefits like employer-provided pensions or health and life insurance. </p>
<p>Prenups are a helpful way to address these emergent work-life arrangements. For example, one spouse can choose to keep their income or pension benefits as separate property, not to be divided upon divorce.</p>
<h2>New ways to draft a prenup</h2>
<p>New platforms like <a href="https://helloprenup.com">Hello Prenup</a> – a “Shark Tank” success story – can be helpful for younger couples. The company aims to make the prenup process more accessible and less costly – think Turbo Tax but for prenups. Online platforms like Rocket Lawyer or Legal Templates, which provide outlines for all kinds of legal documents, also offer a <a href="https://www.rocketlawyer.com/sem/prenuptial-agreement?id=1319&partnerid=103&cid=15098121101&adgid=134763364211&loc_int=9008455&loc_phys=9109325&mt=b&ntwk=g&dv=c&adid=450847162998&kw=prenuptial%20agreement%20form&adpos=&plc=&trgt=&trgtid=kwd-29682911&gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw5remBhBiEiwAxL2M955oQgvm6K7G5HI0VwPv9dOAPRh95YgbNtrlS-rnXrW3wsEAK1J_bRoC8SAQAvD_BwE">prenup template</a>. </p>
<p>These platforms provide state-specific documents and explain the process, walking clients through things like <a href="https://helloprenup.com/prenuptial-agreements/can-online-prenups-be-valid/">financial disclosure rules</a> that are important if a prenup ever ends up being questioned in court.</p>
<h2>A valuable conversation</h2>
<p>Prenups make the news because of celebrity agreements and sensational provisions, like <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/16-times-contents-celeb-couples-181602719.html">fidelity clauses</a> or <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/celebrity-couples-with-and-without-prenuptial-agreements/">sobriety requirements</a>. However, for most couples, these items are less important. Many people draft prenups to feel financially safe and know what will happen if they divorce. </p>
<p>One of the most significant benefits of prenups is that they get couples to talk about their financial lives and what it might look like to merge – or separate – finances as a part of marriage. And, considering conflicts around money are one of the <a href="https://www.thejimenezlawfirm.com/what-percent-of-marriages-end-in-divorce-because-of-money/">biggest causes of divorce</a>, prenup conversations may be the best kind of wedding planning you can do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allison Anna Tait does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A prenuptial agreement can help millennial couples navigate concerns about student debt in their marriage.Allison Anna Tait, Professor of Law, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110892023-08-09T19:25:45Z2023-08-09T19:25:45ZDivorce and separation can have significant impacts on business and political leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541810/original/file-20230808-17-d1kkk4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=187%2C98%2C5994%2C3752&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Recent research about business leaders and divorce has important implications for political leaders like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who hold high-level positions of power and responsibility. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/divorce-and-separation-can-have-significant-impacts-on-business-and-political-leaders" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The announcement that <a href="https://theconversation.com/justin-trudeaus-political-foes-should-avoid-capitalizing-on-his-marital-breakdown-210958">Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau</a> are separating has sparked widespread discussions across the nation.</p>
<p>This situation has placed the prime minister in a new role as a separated parent, raising questions about the political implications of separations and divorces among public figures. </p>
<p>This news comes at a time when divorce has become a common occurrence in modern societies. About <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/divorce/divorce-statistics/">half of first marriages end in divorce, and subsequent marriages fail at even higher rates</a>.</p>
<p>Divorce is a highly stressful life event that can lead to lower social participation, economic decline, disrupted family relationships and legal issues. It <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2940">increases the risks of depression, burnout, anxiety, physical illness</a> and even mortality.</p>
<p>Such adverse effects are not limited to the individuals directly involved in the divorce but can also spill over to their work behaviour, including job performance. </p>
<p>The impact of divorce on job performance can be profound, affecting individuals on both personal and professional levels. </p>
<h2>Impact of divorce on job performance</h2>
<p>For regular employees, studies have consistently shown that divorce-specific conflicts <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022170">can lead to problems at work</a>. These include working fewer hours, decreased productivity, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12166">increased absence and sick leave</a> and even long-term work disability.</p>
<p>The demands of personal life can deplete personal resources, leaving insufficient capacity for work-related tasks and leading to conflicts between work and family roles.</p>
<p>When it comes to CEOs, researchers have recently started looking at the impact a CEO’s divorce may have on their firm and its stakeholders. However, we’re still not sure about how a CEO’s divorce affects their job performance. Our study is the first to explore this aspect.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two wedding rings rest beside a dictionary entry for the word divorce" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541812/original/file-20230808-28-ui9ptc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Divorce has become a common occurrence in modern societies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since CEOs are the chief decision-makers and architects of company strategy, divorce-related distractions and cognitive limitations can have severe consequences on their job performance and, subsequently, on their company’s performance. </p>
<p>However, CEOs may also be more likely to have managerial support to help with decision-making and cope with potential negative consequences, which is especially the case for larger firms with supporting staff.</p>
<h2>CEO divorce and company performance</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2020.0031">research paper based on data from Danish firms and their CEOs</a> shows that CEO divorces can have a negative impact on their company’s performance. However, the extent of the impact depends on certain circumstances. </p>
<p>The impact of a CEO’s divorce is more significant in smaller firms, industries experiencing rapid growth and if the CEO has children in their household. The level of control and decision-making power the CEO has in the company also plays a crucial role in determining the extent of the impact.</p>
<p>Our study emphasizes the importance of providing support — both personal and institutional — to CEOs during challenging life events to help mitigate any negative effects on the company’s performance.</p>
<p>These findings highlight the complex interplay between CEOs’ personal lives and their professional roles, shedding light on how such events can influence a company’s success.</p>
<h2>Implications for political leaders</h2>
<p>Our research has important implications for political leaders, including individuals like Trudeau who hold high-level positions of power and responsibility. </p>
<p>When a leader goes through a separation or divorce, it can have potential ramifications for their performance and decision-making in office.</p>
<p>For politicians, the impact of divorce on their performance may vary depending on several factors, including cultural norms, societal attitudes towards divorce and the expectations placed on public figures. </p>
<p>If a political leader is in a country where people have more liberal perspectives on family issues and divorce, societal pressure might be low. People tend to be more accepting and open-minded about personal choices. This results in reduced societal stigma towards political leaders undergoing divorce. </p>
<p>This can be seen by the divorce announcement of Finland’s outgoing Prime Minister Sanna Marin, which sparked far <a href="https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int/world-news/finland-in-the-world-press/23551-sanna-marin-s-divorce-nato-drills-and-cha-cha-cha-finland-in-the-world-press.html">less media attention than the controversy surrounding her partying with friends and celebrities</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in a suit jacket and dress shirt looks off-camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542005/original/file-20230809-5449-uz7tor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In May, Finland’s outgoing Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced on Instagram that she and her husband had filed for divorce.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Sergei Grits)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, in countries like the United States, attitudes towards divorce can vary significantly across regions and communities. In some parts of the U.S., there is stronger emphasis on traditional family values, <a href="https://theconversation.com/prime-minister-justin-trudeau-assumes-a-new-role-single-dad-just-like-his-own-father-210938">which can result in more scrutiny and negative perceptions when political leaders go through a divorce</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, the level of public attention and media coverage that political figures receive can differ between countries. </p>
<p>In countries with more liberal views, the media might focus less on personal matters like divorce, and more on the leader’s professional capabilities. In the U.S., however, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo22723661.html">the media often covers both personal and professional aspects of politicians’ lives</a>, which can amplify the impact of a divorce on one’s public image.</p>
<h2>Personal and professional lives</h2>
<p>Our research emphasizes the importance of a strong support system. If a political leader has people and systems in place to support them, it can help them navigate the challenges of divorce and maintain their leadership effectiveness. </p>
<p>In situations where a leader lacks an adequate support system, their ability to make crucial decisions and focus on governance might be negatively affected. This can lead to poor decision-making and ultimately result in negative economic consequences. </p>
<p>As our research implies, it’s crucial for political and business leaders to be mindful of how their personal lives may impact their professional roles. </p>
<p>Additionally, research on how politicians balance their family and work lives, and how it affects their decision-making, can provide valuable insights for improving leadership performance and public service.</p>
<p>It’s important to note these are general tendencies and there can be exceptions in every country. Ultimately, the impact of a political leader’s divorce depends on a complex interplay of cultural norms, media dynamics and a leader’s ability to navigate public perception during challenging personal times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The impact of divorce on job performance can be profound, affecting individuals on both personal and professional levels.Denis Schweizer, Professor of Finance, Concordia UniversityJuliane Proelss, Associate Professor Finance, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110242023-08-04T03:23:40Z2023-08-04T03:23:40ZTrudeau separation: Divorce is common for most people, but still rare for political leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541130/original/file-20230803-23-yxrdcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=132%2C220%2C5748%2C4047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau announced that they were separating on Aug. 2, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/trudeau-separation-divorce-is-common-for-most-people-but-still-rare-for-political-leaders" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Over the long term, the political impact of the separation or divorce of public figures has tended to reflect prevailing attitudes towards divorce within the general population. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a man and woman sitting together in a garden." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541124/original/file-20230803-17-uvkkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward, then-Duke of Windsor, and Wallis Simpson at the Chateau de Cande, near Touraine, France on May 7, 1937. Edward would later abdicate the throne to marry Simpson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Len Putnam)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a40321966/royal-divorces/">The British royal family is an excellent example</a>. Almost a century ago, in the 1930s, divorce was extremely difficult to obtain in most countries and divorced people were widely believed to be unstable and immoral. </p>
<p>When King Edward VIII announced he intended to marry <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wallis-Simpson">Wallis Simpson</a>, a twice-divorced American, he created a crisis within Britain. Simpson’s divorces were the issue, but the fact that she was American didn’t help. </p>
<p>Edward was forced to <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/significant-events/abdication-of-edward-viii-1936/">abdicate his throne</a> so that he could marry Simpson and the couple lived, effectively in exile, for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>Since then, <a href="https://academic-accelerator.com/encyclopedia/divorce-law-by-country">divorce laws in many countries have been liberalized</a> and divorce is more an administrative process than a judicial procedure. Divorce is common throughout most societies and there is little stigma attached to it. </p>
<p>Edward was the great uncle of King Charles, who divorced his wife Diana in 1996 when he was still the Prince of Wales following a very public breakup that involved allegations of adultery on both sides. <a href="https://harpersbazaar.com.au/charles-camilla-wedding/">Charles, as a divorcé, then married Camilla Parker-Bowles, herself divorced</a>, and he was crowned king without any objection. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and woman wearing crowns and robes look at eachother" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541126/original/file-20230803-27-8vosrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King Charles and Queen Camilla stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following the coronation ceremony in London on May 6, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Divorce can bring scrutiny</h2>
<p>Most people are aware of the complexities of relationships, even though it is common to blame one partner more than another. Politics can place peculiar pressure on couples, but this is true of many other professions and it’s up to individuals to balance their work and family lives.</p>
<p>Although divorces are common among Canadian politicians, <a href="https://theconversation.com/prime-minister-justin-trudeau-assumes-a-new-role-single-dad-just-like-his-own-father-210938">divorced premiers and prime ministers are rare</a>. It might be that voters are perceived as likely to penalize a divorced person and make them harder to elect, and there are strong political reasons not to separate or divorce while in office. It directs intense scrutiny on the couple and their behaviour, as well as retrospective analyses of their relationship.</p>
<p>Earlier sensational couple-related events at the federal level include the <a href="https://theconversation.com/justin-trudeaus-political-foes-should-avoid-capitalizing-on-his-marital-breakdown-210958">separation and subsequent divorce of Pierre and Margaret Trudeau</a> and the <a href="https://macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/peter-mackays-private-life-on-the-public-stage/">very public breakup</a> of Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and MP Belinda Stronach in 2005.</p>
<p>The first was accompanied by scandals and rumours of infidelity, the second was provoked by Stronach crossing the floor to join the Liberals — a kind of political adultery. </p>
<h2>Trudeau separation</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/02/trudeaus-split-isnt-outlier-00109512">It’s unlikely that there will be significant public reaction to the separation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau</a>, not least because divorce has become part of the family landscape in Canada. There are about <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/443290/divorced-people-in-canada/">three million divorced people in Canada</a> and there can be few Canadians without a divorce in their family or among their friends. </p>
<p>The announcement of the prime minister and Grégoire Trudeau’s separation stressed their ongoing love and respect for each other and the continued integrity of their family. The message was “nothing to see here” — and we can expect to see photographs of them together with their children to reinforce this image.</p>
<p>Any political consequences will unfold in the next months. Politicians will <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-politics-briefing-jagmeet-singh-expresses-sympathy-for-justin-trudeau/">express sympathy</a> and say that this is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmrl385Of4s">personal matter with no political importance</a>, and that it would be improper for them to comment other than to wish the separated couple well. </p>
<p>But of course the images of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh with their wives — and Trudeau without his — might resonate for some people. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CvctRHlrcL9/?img_index=1","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>The separation will also reinforce the belief that some people hold that Trudeau is not a nice man. If either is primarily blamed for the separation, it will almost certainly be the prime minister, not his wife.</p>
<p>Some observers will note the timing of the separation announcement, which followed soon after a cabinet reshuffle. The decision to separate might have been made weeks earlier, with the timing of the announcement strategically planned. </p>
<p>In other words, this could have been a decision made in light of political considerations — despite the insistence that the separation itself is a personal matter. Perhaps we are seeing Trudeau preparing, politically and personally, for the next election.</p>
<p>If there appear to be few political downsides to this separation, there are no upsides. It would certainly be preferable to announce the separation sooner rather than later — further out from the election than closer — and August is a month when many people tune out of current affairs. </p>
<p>Withholding the announcement also risked it leaking to the media, with the implication there was something to hide. As it is, the separation might be conversation at the cottage or over a barbecue for a day or two, but it will be old news by the time people re-engage in September.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Divorce is still rare for high-profile politicians and any political consequences of the separation will likely unfold in the months to come.Rod Phillips, Professor of History, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109582023-08-02T23:24:05Z2023-08-02T23:24:05ZJustin Trudeau’s political foes should avoid capitalizing on his marital breakdown<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540903/original/file-20230802-15-bxxstr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C2029&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau arrive at Westminster Abbey prior to the coronation ceremony of King Charles in London in May 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/justin-trudeaus-political-foes-should-avoid-capitalizing-on-his-marital-breakdown" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-gregoire-separation-1.6925254">have announced they’re separating</a> after 18 years of marriage. The surprise announcement has stunned Canadians who have watched the couple’s three children grow up in the public eye but also in a seemingly harmonious home environment.</p>
<p>“Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate,” Trudeau wrote in a message posted to his Instagram account.</p>
<p>With an event like this, thoughts inevitably move along two tracks — the personal and political. A separation is a difficult process for any family, and the humane among us wish for the best for everyone involved.</p>
<p>But breakups are especially difficult to go through for high-profile politicians, when every aspect must be stage-managed. The temptation to use the split for political purposes might be tempting to Trudeau’s political opponents, but any attacks risk sounding tone-deaf at best and cruel at worst.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows an older man and a young woman swinging smiling boy between them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540909/original/file-20230802-27-d7rxo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau leaves the House of Commons with his wife Margaret and two-and-a-half-year-old son Justin in May 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pierre Trudeau’s adage that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/archives/no-place-for-the-state-in-the-bedrooms-of-the-nation-1.4681298">the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation</a> remains as true today for politicians as for any other citizen — including for his eldest son and the country’s current prime minister. </p>
<p>Indeed, Pierre Trudeau’s marriage to Justin Trudeau’s mother, Margaret Trudeau, fell apart while he was serving as prime minister <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/05/28/trudeau-wife-separate/593a216c-8aad-4d86-80a2-ec8aeee6f432/">in his own high-profile breakup</a>.</p>
<h2>Lines blurring</h2>
<p>There is a longstanding tradition in Canada, still more often observed than not, that the private family lives of politicians are not subject to political scrutiny and criticism in the way that they are in the United States — unless the personal becomes publicly scandalous.</p>
<p>Admittedly, the wall between public and private life has eroded somewhat during the Justin Trudeau era. </p>
<p>There are several reasons for this. First, the Trudeaus themselves have chosen to involve the family in political imagery at times. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A couple and their three children walk in a line. All are dressed in red or white." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540904/original/file-20230802-15-8djwnp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau are joined by their children Ella-Grace, Xavier and Hadrien, as they arrive to 2022 Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, the increasingly polarized political culture in Canada has left fewer topics off limits to criticism — particularly online and on the political margins. </p>
<p>It is quite likely, and unfortunate, that there will be unsavoury attacks from those online fringes, including some operating independently of any factual content. That’s already apparent when reading the comments on both Trudeau’s and Grégoire Trudeau’s Instagram post on the breakup and cutting remarks on other social media platforms.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CvctRb3uszw/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\u0026igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>What impact the separation will have on Trudeau’s political career remains to be seen. It represents a challenge, but also an opportunity for both the prime minister and his wife. </p>
<p>If cracks in the public image of a conscious and mutual uncoupling begin to show, it will inevitably affect perceptions of Trudeau, given how much he has invested in developing the image of a devoted husband and father.</p>
<h2>Empathy from most Canadians</h2>
<p>At the same time, there is opportunity. </p>
<p>Many of us, myself included, have had our marriages end in separation or divorce and are co-parenting our children with our former spouses.</p>
<p>As a result, many of us likely have a great deal of empathy for what the Trudeaus are going through right now — which is why opposition politicians would be unwise to make any political hay out of the breakup. And while marital breakdowns are painful and difficult, they can lead to better things for everyone involved. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1686775703524794368"}"></div></p>
<p>After nearly 10 years in office, some Canadians have tired of the very <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-says-image-making-is-part-of-governing-1.2705646">carefully cultivated public persona that Trudeau presents</a>. It’s possible that the Trudeaus are just as tired of it. </p>
<p>If they emerge from this moment better able to live authentic lives, it may prove the beginning of a new chapter both publicly and personally, rather than the end of the story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Prest does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Canadians likely have a great deal of empathy for what Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau are going through right now — which is why opposition politicians should too.Stewart Prest, Lecturer, Political Science, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103432023-08-02T13:27:23Z2023-08-02T13:27:23ZSouth Africa’s new Marriage Bill raises many thorny issues - a balancing act is needed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539927/original/file-20230728-16043-9x88ao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brides attend a mass wedding ceremony at the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, south of Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ihsaan Haffejee/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is changing its marriage law to recognise all types of intimate partnerships – irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, or religious, cultural and other beliefs. </p>
<p>The Department of Home Affairs has <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/department-home-affairs-invites-public-submit-written-comments-draft-marriage-bill-11-jul">invited public comment</a> on the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/marriage-bill-draft-7-jul-2023-0000">Draft Marriage Bill 2022</a>. The bill amends some marriage laws, and prescribes what’s required for marriages to be considered valid, forms of registration, and the property consequences of marriage. As the <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/48914_7-7_HomeAffairs-4-28.pdf#page=3">preamble</a> shows, it seeks to promote liberal values of equality, nondiscrimination, human dignity and freedom of thought. </p>
<p>While it is innovative for bringing all forms of intimate partnerships under one piece of legislation, the bill raises thorny questions. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism">Liberalism</a> – or openness to different behaviour, opinions or new ideas – is a strange beast. It pushes accepted conduct to its limits.</p>
<p>For instance, if the bill truly seeks equity, why does it not recognise intimate partnerships such as cohabitation? Why does <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202307/48914gon3648.pdf#page=20">section 22(6)</a> criminalise marriage between people who are related to each other by adoption or by blood (to certain degrees)?</p>
<p>I have <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JgVz0yUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researched</a> these issues, notably as a member of the Advisory Committee on Matrimonial Property of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/Salrc/ipapers/ip41-prj100E-MatrimonialPropertyLawReview-6Sep2021.pdf">South African Law Reform Commission</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-the-relevance-of-african-customary-law-in-modern-times-150762">Understanding the relevance of African customary law in modern times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>I believe that even though the bill promotes important constitutional values, it does not sufficiently reflect changing social and economic conditions. Specifically, it ignores polyandry – marriage of a woman to more than one man – and unmarried partnerships. This is significant because other laws recognise <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/a17-061.pdf">civil unions</a>, which include formalised marriage-like partnerships of same-sex couples.</p>
<h2>The thorny issues</h2>
<p>Firstly, radical socioeconomic changes require society to reevaluate traditional assumptions about accepted forms of relationships. Due to urbanisation and the interaction of different cultures, relationships such as cohabitation and polyandry are rising. A couple could live together for reasons such as exorbitant rent, distance to workplaces, and prohibitively high bridewealth (<em>ilobolo</em>). </p>
<p>The bill doesn’t recognise such intimate partnerships, which the Constitutional Court has accorded the same legal status as formal marriages. As the court has <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2021/51.html">acknowledged</a>, unmarried partnerships have serious implications for finances, human dignity, property ownership and child custody.</p>
<p>Secondly, the Marriage Bill <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/48914_7-7_HomeAffairs-4-28.pdf#page=8">defines</a> <em>ilobolo</em> as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>property in cash or in kind … which a prospective husband or the head of his family undertakes to give to the head of the prospective wife’s family in consideration of a customary marriage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This implies that only (traditionally male) family heads can receive it. The definition does not anticipate a role for women, as happens among the Galole Orma people of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744433">northeastern Kenya</a>.</p>
<p>Also, the position of family head could be disputed where the mother is divorced and raised the bride alone. As far back as 1997, the Transvaal High Court <a href="https://www.bbrief.co.za/content/uploads/2019/11/Mabena-v-Letsoalo-1998.pdf">ruled</a> that the bride’s mother could negotiate and receive <em>ilobolo</em>. The bill should therefore redefine bridewealth as “money, property, or anything of value given by the groom or his family to the bride’s family in consideration of marriage and/or to symbolise a union between the groom and bride’s families”.</p>
<p>This definition is consistent with the decreasing role of the extended family in the education or raising of the bride. Uncles and aunts should not benefit from bridewealth if they did not assist in raising the bride. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the bill is silent on the coexistence of a civil law marriage with a customary or religious marriage. For reasons like legal certainty and communal respect, <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/journals/SPECJU/2018/14.pdf">double marriage is common</a>. Previously, if a couple in a civil marriage subsequently concluded a customary or religious marriage, the state regarded the latter marriage as invalid. </p>
<p>The bill creates ambiguity because it does not stipulate the fate of a subsequent customary or religious marriage. This could affect inheritance, property and child custody because legal systems may govern these issues differently.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-courts-and-lawmakers-have-failed-the-ideal-of-cultural-diversity-91508">South Africa's courts and lawmakers have failed the ideal of cultural diversity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Furthermore, the bill defines polygamous marriage as “a marriage in which a male spouse has more than one spouse at the same time”. This patriarchal definition does not promote equality. It implies that a woman should not marry more than one man. </p>
<p>Finally, the bill imposes an omnibus standard for divorce on all marriages. This standard may complicate divorce under Islamic and customary law, where the standard is relaxed. Also, <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202307/48914gon3648.pdf#page=19">section 21(1)</a> of the bill states that a marriage may be dissolved by the “continuous unconsciousness of one of the spouses,” without specifying how long a spouse must be unconscious following an injury, for example.</p>
<p>If the thorny issues in the bill are not addressed, the eventual legislation could be challenged as discriminatory. Its amendment would then drain the public purse. </p>
<h2>A balancing act</h2>
<p>Significantly, the bill emerged from the 2022 <a href="http://www.dha.gov.za/images/PDFs/White-Paper-on-Marriage-in-SA-5-May2022.pdf">White Paper on marriages and life partnerships</a>. The advisory committee that worked on the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers/dp152-prj144-SingleMarriageStatute-Jan2021.pdf">Single Marriage Statute (Project 144)</a> proposed two options for regulating life partnerships in its discussion paper.</p>
<p>These are a <a href="https://www.lssa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/SALRC-discussion-paper-152-on-single-marriage-statute-plus-media-release.pdf">Protected Relationships Bill and a Recognition and Registration of Marriages and Life Partnerships Bill</a>. It appears Home Affairs did not add life partnerships to the bill because it is controversial. But legislative avoidance is unhelpful because it <a href="https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1727-37812021000100048">postpones inevitable problems</a>. The Constitutional Court <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2021/51.html">recognises</a> the right of a woman in a life partnership to inherit or claim maintenance from her deceased partner’s estate. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-rights-african-union-watchdog-goes-back-on-its-own-word-197555">LGBTQ+ rights: African Union watchdog goes back on its own word</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ultimately, new forms of relationships demand legislative recognition. Law reform should be carefully handled to ensure that non-discriminatory cultural and religious practices <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10566/7355/Diala_law_2021.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">are respected</a>. The bill should strike a balance between preserving these practices, promoting liberal values, and recognising the evolving realities of contemporary relationships.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Diala receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number 136532). </span></em></p>The Marriage Bill should strike a balance between preserving non-discriminatory cultural and religious practices and promoting liberal values.Anthony Diala, Director, Centre for Legal Integration in Africa, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2079532023-07-27T12:26:11Z2023-07-27T12:26:11ZJust about anybody in America can officiate a wedding, thanks to the internet – and one determined preacher<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539099/original/file-20230724-12442-v5wcun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2121%2C1409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who did the honors: clergy, a justice of the peace or just a friend? More and more weddings are performed by someone ordained online.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/happy-groom-piggybacking-bride-in-vineyard-royalty-free-image/1445187947?phrase=wedding&adppopup=true">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wedding season is here again, and my calendar is filling up – not just as a guest.</p>
<p>Over the past 15 years, I have officiated over 20 weddings for friends and family, plus nearly 200 more as a part-time professional wedding officiant. These weddings have ranged from simple elopements to fancy ceremonies before hundreds of guests. They have taken place at farms, beaches, mountaintops, hotels, wineries and warehouses – but never at a church. They have been secular, spiritual, religious and interfaith.</p>
<p>I became a nominal minister through the website of <a href="https://www.ulc.org/">the Universal Life Church</a>, a nondenominational church that offers free, lifelong ordination to anyone, regardless of their beliefs. <a href="https://www.universalchurch.org/about-us#:%7E:text=Since%20our%20founding%2C%20we%20have,regardless%20of%20religion%20or%20background.">More than 20 million people</a> have been ordained so far. Just type in your name, email and mailing address and you will receive confirmation of your new status as a clergyperson, able to perform any legal marriage. You can adopt any religious title you please or none at all.</p>
<p>In the U.S., many, if not most, weddings today are officiated <a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/06/27/126426016/more-couples-have-friends-perform-wedding">by a friend</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/style/noticed-need-a-minister-how-about-your-brother.html">relative of the couple</a> rather than a traditional clergyperson or civil official authorized to perform the ceremony. According to the wedding planning website The Knot, 51% of couples in 2020 <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-religion-weddings-4fcbe095c77babeb79fc2464d5af0574">had a friend or family member officiate their wedding</a>, up from 37% in 2015. Though there are multiple ways for a layperson to get ordained, the <a href="https://www.ulc.org/">Universal Life Church</a> is most popular.</p>
<p>When two friends whom I had introduced to each other asked me to officiate their wedding back in 2008, I was touched and honored. Each experience of performing a wedding for friends or family has moved me deeply. Since I’m <a href="https://www.cappscenter.ucsb.edu/people/dusty-hoesly">a scholar of religion in contemporary America</a>, they also piqued my interest in what <a href="https://www.livescience.com/56094-friends-family-officiate-weddings.html">this trend</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110458657-013">says about religion and wedding rituals today</a> – questions that sparked <a href="https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.be">my subsequent research on the ULC</a>. </p>
<h2>Mail-order ministry</h2>
<p>The Universal Life Church was founded in 1959 in Modesto, California, by <a href="http://www.ulchq.com/founder.htm">Kirby J. Hensley</a>, an itinerant minister from North Carolina who could not read or write yet created Baptist and Pentecostal congregations across America.</p>
<p>Hensley’s religious views <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1036791669?oclcNum=1036791669">were hard to categorize</a>, and the congregations that he formed kicked him out when disagreements arose. So he wanted to found a church where anyone could believe, teach and practice whatever they wanted, free of constraints imposed by religious or government authorities. The ULC’s only doctrine is <a href="https://store.ulc.net/aboutus.asp">to “do that which is right</a>,” which each person can define for themselves.</p>
<p>Hensley offered free mail-order ordinations and soon began mass ordinations at spiritual conventions and college campuses, where he was a popular speaker. Classified ads in the magazines Rolling Stone and Fate helped grow the church’s popularity, as did a flurry of news reports.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph shows a balding man giving a talk while wearing glasses, a suit and a polka-dot tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539409/original/file-20230726-29-hdbd0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Rev. Kirby Hensley, photographed in 1986.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-rev-kirby-hensley-has-ordained-more-than-13-million-news-photo/837081604?adppopup=true">Denver Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most people got ordained as a lark: after all, why not? Others felt a spiritual calling. Ordination also appealed to young men hoping that a ministerial credential could help them <a href="https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/universal-life-church/">avoid the Vietnam War draft</a>. Some became ministers, created their own churches chartered under the ULC and claimed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/20/us/irs-is-challenging-mail-order-pastors.html">income and property tax exemptions</a>. In 1995, the church began offering ordination online. </p>
<p>After Hensley’s death in 1999, his wife, Lida, took over. Since her death in 2006, their son Andre <a href="https://amp.modbee.com/living/article3118424.html">has led the church</a>, which <a href="https://www.ulchq.com/">still meets weekly</a> in a church building in Modesto, California. </p>
<p>However, most people <a href="https://getordained.org/">seeking ordination</a> online today wind up using an offshoot of the Universal Life Church, not <a href="https://www.ulchq.com/">the original website</a>. </p>
<p>In 2006, <a href="https://www.themonastery.org/">the Universal Life Church Monastery</a> based in Seattle <a href="https://www.modbee.com/living/article3118424.html">split off from the rest of the ULC</a> under the leadership of minister George Freeman. The ULC Monastery’s websites now dominate the online ordination business, claiming to receive <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2015/02/05/how-online-minister-ordination-mills-work-or-dont/">1,000 requests each day</a>.</p>
<h2>My wedding, my way</h2>
<p>The ULC is most famous for ordaining people to officiate weddings for friends and relatives. Couples want unique, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/04/more-couples-having-friends-officiate-their-weddings/586750/">customized ceremonies</a> that reflect their values and beliefs. They want their weddings performed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/fashion/weddings/a-word-from-your-officiant-for-better-or-worse.html">by someone they know</a>, trust and care about and who will deliver a ceremony tailored to them. Typically, they want a nonreligious wedding.</p>
<p>These desires reflect two key trends in the wedding industry and in American religion: <a href="https://www.corpmagazine.com/features/cover-stories/modern-weddings-are-more-personalized-than-ever-say-bridal-consultants/">personalization</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/684202">secularization</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a teal dress uses a silver cord to bind the hands of a person in a white dress and a person in a blue suit, who face each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539412/original/file-20230726-29-r5g1qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tying the knot – literally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/traditional-handfasting-ceremony-during-the-wedding-royalty-free-image/1438085024?phrase=wedding+vows&adppopup=true">Wirestock/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With 29% of Americans reporting <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/">no religious affiliation</a>, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/">up from 7% in the 1990s</a>, fewer couples identify with any religion, and far fewer belong to a congregation.</p>
<p>Most of these couples want a secular or spiritual officiant who reflects their beliefs and who will help them tailor the ceremony to their interests and values. And while these couples could have secular civil ceremonies at city hall, those are usually not personalized and the officiant is a stranger.</p>
<p>Most of the couples who use an online-ordained officiant say they and their weddings are nonreligious. However, they use the ULC’s religious status to ensure the legal validity of their marriages, showing how blurry <a href="https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.be">the line between secular and religious</a> can be in America today.</p>
<p>The ULC has transformed not only how people get married, but also who can get married. The church has authorized same-sex weddings since at least 1971, when Kirby Hensley <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1036791669?oclcNum=1036791669">presided over a wedding of two women</a>. According to my research, Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556">2015 Supreme Court</a> case that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-day-in-court-for-jim-obergefell-the-face-of-the-historic-gay-marriage-case/2015/04/28/99a00bdc-eda5-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html">legalized same-sex marriage nationally</a>, was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-jim-obergefell-became-the-face-of-the-supreme-court-gay-marriage-case/2015/04/06/3740433c-d958-11e4-b3f2-607bd612aeac_story.html">married</a> to his late partner John Arthur by Arthur’s aunt, who was ordained by the ULC for the occasion.</p>
<p>The church’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141219074338/http:/kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-titles/religion/11097/universal-life-church-ordained/">six-decade history</a> reflects major, long-term transformations in American society. While the ULC often serves as a religion of convenience, it has allowed many spiritual and secular people to practice what is sacred to them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207953/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dusty Hoesly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A professor who has researched the Universal Life Church unpacks why many couples now prefer to hand-pick loved ones to perform their ceremonies.Dusty Hoesly, Postdoctoral Researcher in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2056202023-06-12T12:24:33Z2023-06-12T12:24:33ZLinguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530654/original/file-20230607-23-bbcsrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C9%2C2171%2C1548&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Travel to Miami, and you might hear people say 'get down from the car' instead of 'get out of the car.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-hang-out-the-window-of-a-car-on-flagler-street-news-photo/51091597?adppopup=true">Miami Herald/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“We got down from the car and went inside.” </p>
<p>“I made the line to pay for groceries.”</p>
<p>“He made a party to celebrate his son’s birthday.”</p>
<p>These phrases might sound off to the ears of most English-speaking Americans.</p>
<p>In Miami, however, they’ve become part of the local parlance.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://news.fiu.edu/2023/get-down-from-the-car-miami-dialect">my recently published research</a>, these expressions – along with a host of others – form part of a new dialect taking shape in South Florida.</p>
<p>This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish. </p>
<h2>When French collided with English</h2>
<p>Whether you’re an English speaker living in Miami or elsewhere, chances are you don’t know where the words you know and use come from. </p>
<p>You’re probably aware that a limited number of words – usually foods, such as “sriracha” or “croissant” – are borrowed from other languages. But borrowed words are far more pervasive than you might think. </p>
<p>They’re all over English vocabulary: “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pajamas">pajamas</a>” from Hindi; “<a href="https://animalia.bio/arabian-gazelle">gazelle</a>” from Arabic, via French; and “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tsunami">tsunami</a>” from Japanese.</p>
<p>Borrowed words usually come from the minds and mouths of bilingual speakers who end up moving between different cultures and places. This can happen when certain events – war, colonialism, political exile, immigration and climate change – put speakers of different language groups into contact with one another. </p>
<p>When the contact takes place over an extended period of time – decades, generations or longer – the structures of the languages in question may begin to influence one another, and the speakers can begin to share each other’s vocabulary.</p>
<p>One bilingual confluence famously changed the trajectory of the English language. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Norman-Conquest">In 1066</a>, the Norman French, led by William the Conqueror, invaded England in an event now known as “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Norman-Conquest">the Norman Conquest</a>.” </p>
<p>Soon thereafter, a French-speaking ruling class replaced the English-speaking aristocracy, and for roughly 200 years, the elites of England – including the kings – did their business in French.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Faded color illustration of soldiers and injured troops." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 18th-century illustration of the Battle of Hastings, which initiated the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-battle-of-hastings-found-in-the-collection-of-british-news-photo/520722235?adppopup=true">Heritage Images/Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>English never really caught on with the aristocracy, but since servants and the middle classes needed to communicate with aristocrats – and with people of different classes intermarrying – French words trickled down the class hierarchy and into the language. </p>
<p>During this period, <a href="https://medium.com/english-language-faq/how-many-french-words-are-there-in-english-how-did-they-get-there-538f54ea016b">more than 10,000 loanwords</a> from French entered the English language, mostly in domains where the aristocracy held sway: the arts, military, medicine, law and religion. Words that today seem basic, even fundamental, to English vocabulary were, just 800 years ago, borrowed from French: prince, government, administer, liberty, court, prayer, judge, justice, literature, music, poetry, to name just a few.</p>
<h2>Spanish meets English in Miami</h2>
<p>Fast forward to today, where a similar form of language contact involving Spanish and English has been going on in Miami since the end of <a href="https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/cuban-immigration-after-the-revolution-1959-1973">the Cuban Revolution</a> in 1959.</p>
<p>In the years following the revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island nation for South Florida, setting the stage for what would become one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas. </p>
<p>Today, the vast majority of the population is bilingual. In 2010, more than 65% of the population of Miami-Dade County identified as Hispanic or Latina/o, and in the large municipalities of Doral and Hialeah, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/15765243/Multilingual_Miami_Trends_in_Sociolinguistic_Research">the figure is 80% and 95%</a>, respectively.</p>
<p>Of course, identifying as Latina/o is not synonymous with speaking Spanish, and language loss has occurred among second- and third-generation Cuban Americans. But the point is that there is a lot of Spanish – and a lot of English – being spoken in Miami. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of Cubans walking on beach holding luggage and children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban refugees on the island of Cay Sal wait for the U.S. Coast Guard to take them to Florida in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-refugees-on-sal-cay-waiting-for-us-coast-guard-to-news-photo/50679206?adppopup=true">Lynn Pelham/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among this mix are bilinguals. Some are more proficient in Spanish, and others are more skilled English speakers. Together, they navigate the sociolinguistic landscape of South Florida in complex ways, knowing when and with whom to use which language – and when it’s OK to mix them.</p>
<p>When the first large group of Cubans came to Miami in the wake of the revolution, they did precisely this, in two ways. </p>
<p>First, people alternated between Spanish and English, sometimes within the same sentence or clause. This set the stage for the enduring presence of Spanish vocabulary in South Florida, as well as the emergence of what some people refer to as “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/08/10/158570815/puedes-believe-it-spanglish-gets-in-el-dictionary">Spanglish</a>.” </p>
<p>Second, as people learned English, they tended to translate directly from Spanish. These translations are a type of borrowing that linguists call “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/loan-translation-calque-1691255">calques</a>.”</p>
<p>Calques are all over the English language. </p>
<p>Take “dandelion.” This flower grows in central Europe, and when the Germans realized they didn’t have a word for it, they looked to botany books written in Latin, <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/dandelion">where it was called dens lionis</a>, or “lion’s tooth.” The Germans borrowed that concept and named the flower “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/L%C3%B6wenzahn">Löwenzahn</a>” – a literal translation of “lion’s tooth.” The French didn’t have a word for the flower, so they too borrowed the concept of “lion’s tooth,” calquing it as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/25/plantwatch-dandelions-hawthorn-sunshine">dent de lion</a>.” The English, also not having a word for this flower, heard the French term without understanding it, and borrowed it, adapting “dent de lion” into English, calling it “dandelion.” </p>
<h2>A new lingo emerges</h2>
<p>This is exactly the sort of thing that’s been happening in Miami.</p>
<p>As a part of my ongoing research with students and colleagues on the way English is spoken in Miami, I conducted <a href="https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/eww.22036.car">a study</a> with linguist <a href="https://buffalo.academia.edu/KristenDAlessandroMerii">Kristen D’Allessandro Merii</a> to document Spanish-origin calques in the English spoken in South Florida. </p>
<p>We found several types of loan translations. </p>
<p>There were “<a href="https://pureenglish.org/2012/05/06/calques-loan-translations/">literal lexical calques</a>,” a direct, word-for-word translation. </p>
<p>For example, we found people to use expressions such as “get down from the car” instead of “get out of the car.” This is based on the Spanish phrase “bajar del carro,” which translates, for speakers outside of Miami, as “get out of the car.” But “bajar” means “to get down,” so it makes sense that many Miamians think of “exiting” a car in terms of “getting down” and not “getting out.” </p>
<p>Locals often say “married with,” as in “Alex got married with José,” based on the Spanish “casarse con” – literally translated as “married with.” They’ll also say “make a party,” a literal translation of the Spanish “hacer una fiesta.”</p>
<p>We also found “<a href="https://langeek.co/en/grammar/course/359/loan-words-and-calque">semantic calques</a>,” or loan translations of meaning. In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef” – as in, “I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.” </p>
<p>And then there were “phonetic calques,” or the translation of certain sounds. </p>
<p>“Thanks God,” a type of loan translation from “gracias a Dios,” is common in Miami. In this case, speakers analogize the “s” sound at the end of “gracias” and apply it to the English form.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yoTeQ73rP9I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Examples of unique expressions that have emerged in Miami.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Miami-born adopt the calques</h2>
<p>We found that some expressions were used only among the immigrant generation – for example, “throw a photo,” from “tirar una foto,” as a variation of “take a photo.” </p>
<p>But other expressions were used among the Miami-born, a group who may be bilingual but speak English as their primary language. </p>
<p>In an experiment, we asked Miamians and people from elsewhere in the U.S. to rate local expressions such as “married with” alongside the nonlocal versions, like “married to.” Both groups deemed the nonlocal versions acceptable. But Miamians rated most of the local expressions significantly more favorably than folks from elsewhere.</p>
<p>“Language is always changing” is practically a truism; most people know that Old English is radically different from Modern English, or that English in London sounds different from English in New Delhi, New York City, Sydney and Cape Town, South Africa. </p>
<p>But rarely do we pause to think about how these changes take place, or to ponder where dialects and words come from. </p>
<p>“Get down from the car,” just like “dandelion,” is a reminder that every word and every expression have a history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip M. Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It came about through sustained contact with native Spanish speakers who directly translated phrases from Spanish into English, a form of linguistic borrowing called ‘calques.’Phillip M. Carter, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2056972023-06-08T14:08:14Z2023-06-08T14:08:14ZSex, money and love: what South African university students say about romance and dating in a material age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529083/original/file-20230530-15-2ezsot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young women are not, as some believe, passive sexual beings. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DavideAngelini/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2012.664660?scroll=top&needAccess=true&role=tab&aria-labelledby=full-article">Transactional sex</a> – the exchange of consensual sex for material support like gifts, money or food – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-nigerian-students-told-us-about-transactional-sex-on-campus-116610">occurs</a> on <a href="https://theconversation.com/rise-in-sugar-babies-mirrors-increase-in-student-sex-work-44377">university campuses</a> in <a href="https://theconversation.com/student-sex-work-is-happening-and-universities-need-to-respond-with-health-services-167767">many parts of the world</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa is no exception. Some scholars have highlighted the importance of understanding transactional sexual relationships beyond seeing it only (or mostly) as a way for young women to mitigate poverty, or because they want to enjoy the advantages of what is perceived as an elite and glamorous lifestyle. It’s more complicated than that. </p>
<p>We came together as a trio of psychology scholars to <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/gab/article/view/230358">explore</a> how young South African female university students construct themselves as sexual beings, and negotiate dating and intimate relationships. </p>
<p>Our findings highlight that young women view transactional intimate relationships from multiple levels, including family experiences, the cultures they are embedded in and broader social contexts. These factors all influence how they articulate their understanding of intimate relationships.</p>
<p>Financial considerations may compel and shape their choice of sexual partners. But they aren’t the only factor. Others include the chance to get work, to advance their careers or to unlock educational opportunities.</p>
<p>All of this challenges the idea that young adult women choosing to enter sexual relationships that can meet their financial aspirations are not agents in their relationships.</p>
<h2>A variety of reasons</h2>
<p>For the study, we conducted focus groups with 14 women students at one South African university. We were interested in their perceptions and understanding of transactional relationships – some reflected on their own experiences, while others reflected on those of others they knew. All were aged between 19 and 26. While the number of participants was relatively small, their perceptions were helpful in assisting us to get some understanding of how women students perceive transactional relationships.</p>
<p>The participants explained that they and other young women they knew engaged in intimate relationships for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they want to meet their love and sexual needs; sometimes they want to enhance their socio-economic and social standing within their peer group and wider society. The latter arrangement has been referred to by some researchers as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4875790/">sexual-economic relationships</a>, which enhance one’s social standing or result in class mobility for the young women involved in transactional sex. </p>
<p>When talking about these sorts of sexual-economic relationships, the participants in our study offered an example of how a man’s financial status is gauged: by the car he drives.</p>
<p>A sexual relationship with a man who has a good job is seen as a safer option than one with an unemployed, unmotivated man who is unable to provide or meet the young women’s consumer expectations. A man’s ability to work hard was said to “count” in terms of his appeal to women. This is reflected in some of the comments made by the young women in our study:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most girls my age group tend to go for guys who have money or who are well established. In a sense of where they are going with their lives. Most girls are tired of going for guys who just sit at home and do nothing the whole day.</p>
<p>I don’t think relationships do exist, nowadays, I don’t think so, it’s more about material, what don’t you have … if a guy comes to you driving a Volvo and a guy comes to you driving a Mazda 3, the latest, I don’t think girls will go for the guy driving a Mazda, but the one driving a Volvo, that’s all, that’s how I see it recently.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some transactional relationships may offer the pretence of real love and create the illusion for the male sexual partner that he is the only object of the young woman’s affection. Other relationships are initiated on the implicit understanding that they are non-exclusive or multi-partner arrangements, with a tacit agreement not to discuss other sexual partners.</p>
<h2>Navigating the perils</h2>
<p>But that doesn’t mean people are necessarily happy about non-exclusive relationships. Mistrust, jealousy and anger arise at times.</p>
<p>If a man has multiple girlfriends in a transactional arrangement and they learn about each other, the women often turn their anger towards each other. This may lead the women to try and “stake their claim”. For example, some told us that, in a sense, one becomes a “PI” (private investigator) assessing or “researching” their partner’s “true colours” or “their intentions and motives” and hoping for “transparency” from their partners. These concerns often centred on concerns about contracting HIV and AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases because their boyfriends had multiple partners.</p>
<p>It also became clear that our participants did not have much faith in any future marriages lasting for a long time or that their husbands would be faithful. But this didn’t mean that they didn’t want to experience genuine love or to pursue marriage that would also result in having children.</p>
<h2>Nuance</h2>
<p>This research makes it clear that there is a great deal of nuance around how young women negotiate their intimate relationships with men. Our research has shown us that the nature of transactional relationships can no longer be solely understood within the frames of disenfranchised young women and men as the embodiment of agency. </p>
<p>Rather, it is critical to engage the ways in which our consumeristic and materialistic global society seems to dictate what is “normal” and how this, in turn, plays a role in how young women choose to engage in transactional relationships. </p>
<p><em>Precious Sipuka and Christine Laidlaw co-authored this article and the research paper on which it is based.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Puleng Segalo receives funding from The National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p>There is a great deal of nuance around how young women negotiate their intimate relationships with men.Puleng Segalo, Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2015632023-05-25T20:01:06Z2023-05-25T20:01:06ZFriday essay: what the migrant workers who made my iPhone taught me about love<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525790/original/file-20230512-39256-ha5kei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C0%2C3167%2C2148&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten years ago, a group of images on a popular Chinese <a href="http://fj.sohu.com/20130911/n386381112.shtml">website</a> caught my attention. They showed young rural migrant workers in intimate, though not overtly sexual situations: talking quietly, holding hands, kissing, embracing, or simply sitting close to each other with their limbs intertwined. </p>
<p>These intimate moments all take place in public spaces in the industrial areas of Dongguan, Guangdong Province, where these workers live and work – on the lawn of a park, on a bench by the roadside, at a table outside a snack bar, in a community library, in a public phone booth, on a city street. While some women in the photos wear casual or even sexy clothes, others wear factory uniforms.</p>
<p>As a cultural anthropologist who has spent 20 years studying rural migrant workers in China, I was immediately captivated by these images. I liked their realism. But what intrigued me were the polarised comments about them.</p>
<p>Some were one-liners such as “So sweet”; “How romantic”; “They are so pure and innocent”; “Love doesn’t discriminate against the poor”; “Life is beautiful because love exists.”</p>
<p>Others were harsh. One comment said that Shenzhen and Dongguan were full of “illicit love birds”. Criticism of such intimate acts was also implied in another post, which said “most of these couples are just after sex; love doesn’t really come into it.” One of the comments struck me as particularly judgemental:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They’re not interested in learning, they have no souls, they give free rein to their bodily urges. They feel no responsibility for themselves, their family, and society. They’re after cheap sexual pleasure. What do they know about love?</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wanning Sun’s decade-long journey into the intimate consequences of inequality among Shenzen’s migrant workers began with a series of photos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking back, I realise it was my initial fascination with this group of photos that started me on a decade-long journey of exploring the intimate consequences of inequality.</p>
<p>I wanted to know what rural migrant workers themselves would make of these images and these polarised responses. I wanted to know what it feels like to go on yet another blind date arranged by their parents, to steal an intimate moment in compromised circumstances, and to endure the stigma of not being able to afford a wife.</p>
<h2>The iPhone and iPad workers of Shenzen</h2>
<p>Driven by these questions, I started my fieldwork in 2015 in the newly created industrial zone of Longhua District in Shenzhen – a manufacturing sector in the Pearl River Delta that is a major employer of China’s rural migrant factory workers.</p>
<p>From 2015 to 2017, I spent an average of one month each year talking to a total of 50 migrant men and women who worked for <a href="https://theconversation.com/foxconns-labour-union-elections-put-chinese-workers-rights-under-the-spotlight-12122">Foxconn</a> in Shenzhen – people who assembled the iPhones and iPads we use. In addition to these in-depth, one-off interviews, I also invited ten workers – five men and five women – to participate in my research over three years, so I could document the changes in their lives. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The production line at Foxconn, making iPhones and iPads.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kin Cheung/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During this period, I met members of these workers’ families, and spent as much time as possible with them: chatting, cooking, eating, shopping and watching television, or simply “hanging out.” I closely followed the developments in their love lives in 2018 and 2019. To this day, I still communicate with them regularly via WeChat.</p>
<p>The main site of my fieldwork was Village Q, a “village within the city” enclave that lies outside Foxconn’s plant. Inside the village, the smell of food wafts in the street, as does the sound of popular songs lamenting the travails of unrequited love, betrayal and <a href="https://theconversation.com/loneliness-is-a-health-issue-and-needs-targeted-solutions-96262">loneliness</a>. </p>
<p>Spicy aromas of food from Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan fill the nostrils, ameliorating homesickness and gratifying the chilli-loving palates of large cohorts of workers from these provinces. Shops selling lottery tickets, mobile phone accessories and groceries line the streets, as do internet cafes, hair salons, and “accommodation” venues of a dubious nature, selling temporary intimacy at hourly rates. </p>
<p>The streets are littered with promotional material in the form of cards or leaflets advertising myriad goods and services, ranging from “factory girls” who are happy to spend a night with you for a reasonable fee, to clinics offering a “quick and painless abortion.” </p>
<p>Everything migrant workers need for subsistence can be found here. It’s all cheap and cheerful, catering exclusively to workers on a wage of around 3,000 yuan (approximately US$440) a month.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shenzen’s ‘Village Q’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wanning Sun</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each morning, around 7.30, I would see a steady stream of workers hurrying toward the northern and western gates of the Foxconn factory, breakfast in one hand and sleep still in their eyes, afraid to risk having their pay docked for being even a couple of minutes late. </p>
<p>At the same time, another stream of workers going in the opposite direction would emerge from the same gates, dragging their tired bodies after a 12-hour shift, looking pale and numb, heading for bed in their dormitory or rental accommodation. Everyone wore a lanyard with their Foxconn photo ID card hanging from it; no one was allowed to enter or leave the plant without swiping their card.</p>
<h2>‘A very modest dream’</h2>
<p>The rural migrant workers I talked to are often referred to as <em>nongmingong</em>, literally translated into “peasant worker”. Rural migrants can be found in the manufacturing sector, where I conducted this study. They are also in the <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442236776/Subaltern-China-Rural-Migrants-Media-and-Cultural-Practices">construction sector</a>, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maid-China-Morality-Cultural-Boundaries/dp/0415592194">service and hospitality</a> sector, small businesses, and a wide range of other areas. </p>
<p>Chinese cities cannot function smoothly for a single day without rural migrants. The China’s so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-economic-miracle-is-close-to-fruition-but-what-now-for-workers-10926">economic miracle</a> simply would not have been possible without the cheap labour they supply.</p>
<p><em>Nongmingong</em> have become part of urban life since the start of the economic reforms of the 1980s. China’s <a href="http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202104/t20210430_1816933.html">National Bureau of Statistics</a> finds that as of 2020, there were up to 286 million “peasant workers”. That’s more than ten times Australia’s entire population.</p>
<p>The rural migrants I talked to were born in the 1980s and 1990s. They are the children of the rural migrants who went to the city to seek employment during China’s first two decades of economic reforms. Most of these younger workers have little or no experience in farming. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most rural migrants Wanning Sun spoke to harbour the ‘very modest dream’ of finding a life partner, and the chance for family and a better life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They tend to be better educated and more engaged with urban consumption culture than their parents, but they also feel more stuck, angry and disillusioned – unlike their parents, who had always intended to go back to the village, they generally want to remain in the city. However, they see little hope of doing so, and are often unwilling even to contemplate returning to their native villages.</p>
<p>Most rural migrants I talked to harbour what might seem to be a very modest dream: of finding a life partner, having the chance to start a family, and living with a little more dignity and less discrimination in their often bleak and harsh lives. </p>
<p>Since they still hold rural residential registration status, they have less access to a wide range of socioeconomic benefits – health care, education, housing and employment – than city folk do. This is despite the fact they have lived in the city all their lives, and have spent their youth and prime years contributing to <a href="https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-slower-chinese-economic-growth-inevitable-without-internal-reform-170277">China’s economic growth</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-china-does-valentines-day-129420">How China does Valentine's Day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Without betrothal gift, my family would be embarrassed’</h2>
<p>I first met WJ, a clerical employee at Foxconn, in August 201. WJ comes from a rural village in Henan Province, one of the biggest labour-sending counties in Henan. She was 27 years old, and had been away from home for more than ten years. </p>
<p>WJ’s mother was also a first-generation rural migrant worker. But several years of long hours and night shifts working in a garment factory finally took their toll, and WJ’s mother returned home, nursing a chronic high blood pressure condition. WJ’s only brother had just gotten married and was expecting a baby, so he was living at home for the moment. </p>
<p>At the age of 16, just after finishing middle school, WJ decided to “go out” (<em>chu qu</em> – leave her hometown), since there was nothing to do in the village, and there was no work. The small piece of farming land available to the family brought in little income.</p>
<p>WJ’s story exemplifies the dilemma of being caught between parental opinions and her own desires.</p>
<p>Born in 1988, WJ was aware that many women her age were already married with children. She liked someone she met online, but she was not sure how to proceed. In the eyes of her mother, this potential marriage partner had three strikes against him: he owned no property; he had two younger, unmarried brothers (so he may have needed to support them in the future); and his mother could not help with childcare. And to add the final straw, he may not have been able to afford a betrothal gift, even though the expected betrothal “fee” (<a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-11/23/content_22510352.htm"><em>caili</em></a>) from the groom’s family in WJ’s hometown is not high.</p>
<p>Then WJ met S, who had a university degree, and then worked in a company in Shenzhen. WJ hoped to find someone better educated or financially better off than she was.</p>
<p>This traditional preference to “marry up” on the part of female rural migrants explains why, despite the large number of male workers in Foxconn, women still report difficulty in finding “suitable partners”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is a traditional preference to ‘marry up’ on the part of female rural migrants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though WJ did not think S was very “handsome”, she felt what he lacked in looks was compensated for by his superior education. While WJ was keen on S, her mother disapproved. S’s mother was mentally ill, and there was not a marital house for the would-be couple. Furthermore, S’s family could not afford to pay betrothal money – an amount of about 100,000 yuan (more than AUD$20,000) – in WJ’s hometown.</p>
<p>The practice of giving “betrothal money” to the bride’s family has survived in China from a much earlier era. WJ was aware that paying a betrothal fee to the bride’s family was a bad “feudal” custom, but it had been done for generations and her family felt it should be followed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Personally, I don’t care if he has no caili, but I know my family would be embarrassed. What would our neighbours think of us? Everybody else follows the tradition, and who are we to break it? People may say that your daughter is so cheap she’s prepared to go without any betrothal money.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>WJ’s mother put pressure on her to consider a young man who now had a small local business, and whose family was keen to cement the marriage with a handsome amount of betrothal money as well as an engagement ring. </p>
<p>WJ was not in the least interested in that man – “we have nothing in common” – but she was worried that her open defiance might further upset her mother’s health. So, while her mother went ahead and accepted the betrothal money and ring from the other suitor, WJ secretly continued seeing S.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-tv-dating-shows-helped-change-love-and-marriage-in-china-forever-60594">How TV dating shows helped change love and marriage in China forever</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘My daughter doesn’t want to talk to me anymore’</h2>
<p>In the married cohort I talked to, MB’s story was fairly common: parents arranging matchmaking, the couple getting married after a few meetings, the relationship falling apart soon after marriage. </p>
<p>After MB married this way and their daughter was born, she and her husband came to work at Foxconn in Shenzhen. Their daughter, four years old at the time I met MB for our first interview in 2015, was being cared for by MB’s mother-in-law back in the village.</p>
<p>At that meeting, MB told me she had not seen her daughter for a couple of years. She could only get leave during the Chinese New Year period, but she could not secure a train ticket because of the high demand during peak seasons. Once, she got up at 4am and queued for three hours, only to find that the tickets for her train home had sold out.</p>
<p>Social media platforms such as QQ and WeChat were useful to connect with her daughter, but only to a limited extent. Her mother-in-law did not know how to use QQ – she did not even have QQ on her phone – so MB could only see her daughter on QQ when her mother-in-law visited relatives. On average, she saw her daughter once every two or three months. But she was sad that her daughter no longer wanted to talk to her.</p>
<p>MB lived in Foxconn’s dormitory, whereas her husband lived in a small rented room near the factory. They seldom saw each other in the factory – it was a huge complex and they worked in different departments. MB went to visit him on Sundays when they both had a day off. She told me that she would help him tidy up his room, wash his clothes, and cook a meal. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">MB (not pictured) lived in Foxconn’s dormitory and visited her husband in the small rented room where he lived on their shared day off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My first guess about their decision to live separately was that it was a way of saving costs. But it wasn’t until I met MB for a second face-to-face interview in the following year that she became more open about her conjugal problems.</p>
<p>They fought all the time, and could not agree on anything, even though she was quite sure there was no other woman in his life. The tension between the couple was not just due to an incompatibility of personalities. They also disagreed about the future. </p>
<p>MB believed they should work as hard as possible while they were still young, and save enough money so that they would not have to work so hard when they eventually went back home. At this stage of her life she also preferred to be living in the city, and did not want to go back home. In comparison, her husband was less enthusiastic about city living, and would not mind going back home.</p>
<p>MB has tried to engineer opportunities for her to talk with her husband.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His rental room is small – only big enough for a bed – dark and stuffy, so one time I suggested we go out for a walk. So, we went for a walk, and I sensed he was in a much better mood, and for the first time, he talked about some things from his childhood. After that, whenever we had another fight, I’d suggest we get out of his room and go for a walk. But he wouldn’t do that anymore. He said, “That’s just your trick of getting me out so you can discuss our relationship.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>MB knew in theory that she needed to “communicate”, but she said she did not know how to in practice. Nor did she know how to communicate with someone who refused to engage.</p>
<p>MB echoed the sentiments of quite a few migrant women I spoke to, who were eager to talk to their husbands but did not know how to get through to them. An expression that came up frequently in my conversations with migrant women about their partners was “cold violence” (<em>lengbaoli</em>), referring to the absence of physical violence but the presence of aggressive and hostile refusals to engage – in effect, emotional abuse.</p>
<p>Last year, MB told me via WeChat, 11 years since I first spoke to her, that she was finally divorced. She is still working at Foxconn.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hukou-and-what-birthplace-can-still-mean-for-marriage-in-china-75032">'Hukou', and what birthplace can still mean for marriage in China</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘You never get ahead by working hard’</h2>
<p>These conversations made me realise experiences in people’s intimate lives are shaped by differences in gender as well as socioeconomic status. ZB is one of the five men whose love lives I followed, but he was the only one who recently found someone and got married. </p>
<p>When I first met ZB in 2015, he was still single, and he offered this explanation why the odds were against migrant men like him “getting girls”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People like us come from the countryside, and we don’t own a house or car, and many of us can’t afford the cost of getting married, including caili. If you’re poor but good-looking, you may have a chance. But then again, if you are that good-looking, you wouldn’t be a worker at Foxconn, would you? </p>
<p>Also, girls like boys who have glib tongues and pay them a lot of attention and shower them with gifts, even though these boys may not have serious intentions. Younger people, those born in the 1990s, tend to have a more casual approach when it comes to girls. Older ones like me who were born in the 1980s are more serious. </p>
<p>I’ve seen too many boys who are honest and want to do the honourable thing by girls, but they’re shy and don’t know how to talk to them. That may not be a problem if you’re loaded with money; your money can talk on your behalf. But what chance do you have if you have no money, you look ordinary, and you don’t know how to talk to girls? Most of the men you see here fit that description, especially those born in the 1980s. </p>
<p>And let’s face it, girls like men who are confident and can sweet talk them, even though they may not be as dependable as the honest, quiet ones. That’s why you see so many lonely souls here – starving for love, sexually frustrated, and feeling lost.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wanning Sun followed some of China’s so-called ‘leftover men’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>JH is one of the so-called “leftover men” I followed. Born in 1986, JH grew up in a mountain village in southeast of China. When I first met him in 2015 in Shenzhen, he was working 12 hours a day, six days a week at Foxconn plant, assembling iPhones. “That’s one of the iPads we make,” he said, noticing mine.</p>
<p>JH frequently changed jobs during the period of my fieldwork. By August 2019, he was working as a security guard in a hotel. I asked him why he had left his last job making furniture. He told me the company had to lay off many people because of China’s trade war with the United States, and his company faced too much competition from inland factories in Chengdu and Jiangsu, so he had to work more for less pay. He could no longer make enough to support himself.</p>
<p>JH is tall and dark, with a well-chiselled face – my assessment of his good looks was shared by other workers, both male and female. But he had had no luck in finding a girlfriend. In my meetings with him, he was quiet, softly spoken and shy. He found it difficult to strike up a conversation with a stranger. But other migrants who knew him well all commented on his loyalty as a friend. </p>
<p>Unlike those glib-tongued men who “get girls easily”, JH would not ask a girl out even if he was attracted to her, because he feared rejection. Because of this, he lived with a constant sense of failure. Furthermore, he did not believe in wasting time on frivolous affairs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I like a girl and want to go out with her, I want to make sure she knows I’m serious. I don’t want to waste her time, or my time. Also, I want to behave responsibly toward the girl. I don’t want to take advantage of her, only to leave her later. I also don’t want to say and do nice things – such as buying her gifts – just to please her and get close to her, with no intention of marrying her. It’s not the right thing to do. I know I’m old-fashioned.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>JH was referring here to some younger rural migrant workers in their twenties, some even as young as their late teens, who “get girls” easily, but have no intention of staying in a relationship with them or getting married.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some younger rural migrant workers ‘get girls easily’, but have no intention of staying in a relationship or getting married.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to his loneliness, JH’s sense of failure is exacerbated by a feeling of guilt for letting his parents down:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They [his parents] sacrificed so much to bring me up, and all they want to see is that I’m married. But I’m not able to give them that. They try not to put too much pressure on me, but I know they’re also under a lot of pressure from neighbours and relatives. I have two sisters and I’m their only son. So, they always try to set me up with a date when I go home. I feel I need to go along with these meetings, but nothing ever comes of them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the past, JH had believed that, as long as he was prepared to work hard, he might have been able to change his circumstances. After all these years of job hopping, he remains a source of disposable cheap labour. He earns enough money to survive on, but has nothing left to save, and certainly isn’t acquiring any certified professional skills. Now, he is adamant that “you never get ahead by working hard.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pity-chinas-bare-branches-unmarried-men-stuck-between-tradition-and-capitalism-68592">Pity China's 'bare branches': unmarried men stuck between tradition and capitalism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Love doesn’t conquer all</h2>
<p>One key message I got from my conversations with workers is that love does not conquer all, as we are often told. Instead, market logic and socioeconomic inequality largely determine the extent of success or failure in the pursuit of dreams and intimate desires on the part of the rural men and women in the study. </p>
<p>My research tells me that although people from all social classes experience “love troubles”, an individual’s capacity to ward off such troubles often depends on their socioeconomic position.</p>
<p>As shown in the polarised responses to the photos discussed earlier, inequality not only shapes how much access people in different classes have to intimacy, it also shapes how their intimate practices are talked about: both by themselves and in public narratives. </p>
<p>For instance, I talked to both young rural migrants and their educated urban counterparts about how they made decisions about wedding photography. Both cohorts considered wedding photography essential to their marriages, but they attached different meanings and significance to this ritual of consumption.</p>
<p>The love lives of the workers are not only personal and individual matters; they are closely related to how the Chinese state governs. Much government funding has gone into research about the lived reality of a large cohort of unmarried and sexually repressed rural migrant men in urban China: mainly because sexual frustration is usually believed to be a law and order issue, and may pose a serious threat to moral order and social stability. The aim, therefore, is largely to find ways of governing vulnerable communities and managing inequality.</p>
<p>I did get to ask workers to comment on those images of lovers in Dongguan: the ones that started me on my ten-year journey of discovery. Their responses were mostly along the lines of “So what?” </p>
<p>To them, what was represented in these pictures was simply their everyday lives: “These are very familiar to me; I see people like this everywhere, all the time.” Some even told me they had “been there and done that” and that “it’s nothing to make a fuss about.” </p>
<p>It’s clear that workers didn’t want people to romanticise their love lives – and nor did they wish to be patronised, judged or censured.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Wanning Sun’s new book, Love Troubles: Inequality in China and its Intimate Consequences, is published by <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/love-troubles-9781350329614/">Bloomsbury</a>, May 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This study was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant "Inequality in Love - Romance and Intimacy among China's Young Migrant Workers" (ARC DP150103544) </span></em></p>Wanning Sun spent nearly a decade talking to migrant workers at the Apple factory in China’s Shenzhen about their intimate lives – and how their relationships are affected by inequality.Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045182023-05-23T18:36:51Z2023-05-23T18:36:51ZIndian activists call for recognition of queer relationships beyond marriage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527088/original/file-20230518-21-svvca8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C31%2C5301%2C3475&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators carry a rainbow flag as they march demanding equal marriage rights in New Delhi, India on Jan. 8, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/indian-activists-call-for-recognition-of-queer-relationships-beyond-marriage" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The Supreme Court of India <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-law/sc-same-sex-marriage-here-are-the-arguments-over-10-days-8609177/">recently finished</a> hearing <a href="https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/marriage-equality-what-good-is-symbolic-recognition-of-one-s-relationships-sans-rights--88940">petitions</a> related to marriage equality for queer and trans people. A group of 18 couples has <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174752874/india-same-sex-marriage-case-supreme-court">petitioned</a> the country’s highest court to legalize same-sex marriage.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.boomlive.in/explainers/same-sex-marriage-wrong-term-what-is-a-marriage-equality-petition-in-india-21762">Marriage equality</a> would grant LGBTQ+ couples rights currently only available to those married to people of the opposite sex.</p>
<p>Activists are also calling for the recognition of queer and trans kinships beyond marriage. Trans and queer kinships provide emotional as well as material supports and care. But legalizing marriage alone ignores such kinship ties. </p>
<p>Many who choose such kinships over marriage will not have access to rights and benefits that are associated with marriage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman at a protest holds a placard that reads: self identification is a human right." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524933/original/file-20230508-266123-o6xtme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protestors hold placards during a demonstration against an anti-LGBT bill in Bangalore, India in November 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Beyond marriage</h2>
<p>In February, activists Rituparna Borah, Chayanika Shah, Minakshi Sanyal, Maya Sharma and six anonymized petitioners <a href="http://orinam.net/content/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Rituparna-Borah-Ors.-v.-UOI-WP-No.-260-of-2023-as-filed.pdf">filed a petition</a> before the Supreme Court demanding the right to form legally recognized families — even if they do not revolve around marriage.</p>
<p>These 10 petitioners are calling for the legal recognition of <a href="https://www.thequint.com/gender/chosen-family-queer-and-trans-persons-life-marriage-equality#read-more">an expansive idea of family</a> which goes beyond the institution of marriage and is not solely defined by birth or adoption. </p>
<p>They are asking the court to affirm the rights of queer and trans people who have <a href="https://lifestyle.livemint.com/relationships/it-s-complicated/the-petition-you-need-to-know-about-from-the-same-sex-marriage-hearings-that-start-today-111681805877468.html">various forms of kinships</a>, friendships and non-monogamous relationships that are not deemed legitimate in the eyes of the law.</p>
<p><a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/no-court-of-law-can-tell-us-whom-to-love-says-lesbian-couple/articleshow/50827605.cms">Queer</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/08/indian-transgender-couple-tie-knot-in-landmark-rainbow-wedding">trans</a> people have long been getting married in India even without legal recognition. Marriage has legal and socio-cultural legitimacy that is unparalleled.</p>
<h2>Legal, political and social hurdles</h2>
<p>However, marriage in the Indian context enables the inequalities of the caste system to persist. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35650616">Caste</a> is a hierarchical socio-religious system which continues to privilege people of upper castes while excluding lower caste and caste-oppressed people. </p>
<p>Activists see marriage as a <a href="https://www.newsclick.in/marriage-equality-case-queer-and-trans-persons-assert-right-define-family">casteist</a> institution and are demanding that the state recognize queer and trans kinships beyond marriage.</p>
<p>Marriage cannot contain all kinds of <a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/thicker-blood-queer-kinship-and-choosing-your-own-families-88253">relationships, needs and wants that inform the lives of queer and trans people in India</a>. Therefore, <a href="https://indianculturalforum.in/2021/11/24/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-same-sex-marriage/">marriage equality</a> alone <a href="https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/queer-trans-deaths-equal-same-sex-marriage">cannot save</a> or protect all trans and queer lives. </p>
<p>For example, social injustice and political mobilization can <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2023.2150446">inform strong relationships</a>.
Kinships rooted in affection, care, mutual support, activism and solidarity, deserve recognition, and the rights that flow from it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People at a march with rainbow coloured balloons and a banner that reads: Delhi queer pride." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524935/original/file-20230508-29-6su8wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People attending a march demanding equal marriage rights in New Delhi, India on Jan. 8 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Networks of care</h2>
<p>Disabled and neurodivergent trans and queer people experience <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/relationships/how-indians-with-disabilities-find-love-through-dating-apps-101677134546666.html">more discrimination</a> when it comes to establishing relationships. Their partners are also often <a href="https://medium.com/skin-stories/if-you-want-the-full-story-you-have-to-start-with-our-love-story-dd8291a73495">dissuaded</a> or discouraged by their families from <a href="https://www.thebetterindia.com/295644/disabled-activist-nu-misra-on-navigating-sexuality-stereotypes/">dating</a> them. </p>
<p>They often choose <a href="https://feminisminindia.com/2022/02/08/the-loves-of-my-wildest-dreams-valentines-day-plans-and-beyond/">broader networks</a> of care, affection and support. </p>
<p>Recognition of different kinds of trans and queer kinships can also help dismantle relationship hierarchies. When marriage is the only valid and legal relationship, it runs the risk of marginalizing those <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2pZ3KQPZ9A">excluded</a> from it.</p>
<p>Moreover, there are trans kinships which cannot be subsumed within the institution of marriage — such as <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/3992">Hijra households</a> with complex <a href="https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823294718/hijras-lovers-brothers/">kinship</a> structures.</p>
<p>Older trans and queer people <a href="https://www.queerbeat.org/stories/long-shadows-in-the-sunset">aging into disabilities</a> might find it even harder to successfully advocate for themselves and their partners as they age. </p>
<p>Apart from marriage equality, the Indian state needs to be committed to equity to ensure the survival of trans and queer people as well as their kinship networks. Marriage equality without attention to equity cannot do justice to trans and queer lives.</p>
<p>If trans kinship is to be legally recognized, it should also align with demands for <a href="https://upscwithnikhil.com/article/polity/what-is-the-difference-between-vertical-and-horizontal-reservations-in-india">horizontal reservations</a> and <a href="https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2023/04/before-getting-married-i-want-to-live-with-pride/">equality</a>. </p>
<p>In India, <a href="https://www.thequint.com/explainers/trans-people-fight-for-horizontal-reservations-across-castes#read-more">horizontal reservations</a> refer to policies and quotas that address historical injustices and inequities faced by marginalized groups. Such reservations would provide caste-oppressed trans people <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/equal-stake-nation-transgender-people-demanding-horizontal-reservation-8570321/#:%7E:text=jobs%20and%20education.-,In%202021%2C%20Karnataka%20became%20the%20first%20and%20only%20state%20in,horizontal%20reservation%20for%20transgender%20persons.">guaranteed rights</a> with regards to education and employment which they struggle to access. </p>
<p>So far, <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/equal-stake-nation-transgender-people-demanding-horizontal-reservation-8570321/">Karnataka</a> remains the only Indian state to <a href="https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/karnataka-first-state-reserve-jobs-transgender-persons">partially</a> provide horizontal reservations for transgender people.</p>
<p>Trans people often experience violence and exclusion on the basis of caste as well as transphobia. Horizontal reservations recognizing caste oppression within trans communities means those who are unmarried, unpartnered and without community, can also survive when marriage equality prevails.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of people stand in a line. Some are chatting to each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527281/original/file-20230519-25-fs6kdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Transgender women and gay men wait in line to receive a number as part of the process to apply for asylum in the United States, at the border in Tijuana, Mexico on Nov. 15, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kinship ties are important in the lives of variously marginalized trans people in various parts of the world. In 2018, a group of LGBTQ+ migrants, including 30 trans women, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/9/3/1075/6179036">presented themselves together</a> at the United States’ southern border, having travelled through Mexico from Honduras. </p>
<p>They asserted the existence of their kinship by applying for asylum in the U.S. together. Even though they identified as a group, they were separated from each other and sent to different detention centres. </p>
<p>As marriage is associated with rights that cannot be obtained otherwise, it is crucial to <a href="https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/redefining-same-sex-marriage#Top">make living and relating possible</a> for those who want to — or have to — survive without it. </p>
<p>We need to advocate for the recognition of broader and inclusive forms of trans and queer kinship so that their critical support networks are not invalidated in the eyes of the law if and when marriage equality becomes a reality in India.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sohini Chatterjee receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as a Vanier Scholar.</span></em></p>Trans and queer kinships provide emotional as well as material supports and care. But legalizing marriage alone would ignore such kinship ties.Sohini Chatterjee, PhD Candidate & Vanier Scholar in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2025872023-05-15T12:32:50Z2023-05-15T12:32:50ZWhy so many South Korean women are refusing to date, marry or have kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525713/original/file-20230511-36633-3ze3d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C29%2C3976%2C2628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Korean women protest against sexism and digital sex crimes, such as the making of pornography using hidden cameras.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/south-korean-women-protest-against-sexism-and-hidden-camera-news-photo/1046462564">Jean Chung/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Korea finds itself embroiled in an all-out gender war – and it keeps getting worse.</p>
<p>The animosity between Korean men and women has reached a point where some women are outright refusing to date, marry and have kids with men – a phenomenon known as <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/4b-movement-feminism-south-korea.html">the 4B movement</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2_iGT-QAAAAJ&hl=en">As a Korean feminist scholar</a> living in the U.S., I’ve followed this gender war from afar as I conducted research on contemporary Korean gender politics. </p>
<p>However, I also became embroiled in it myself after my research on Korean masculinity <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/south-korea-western-women-seeking-love-intl-hnk-dst/index.html">was published by CNN</a>. </p>
<p>The article described foreign women who traveled to Korea after becoming enamored of the idea of dating Korean men from watching Korean television dramas. I pointed out that since the tourists’ fantasies were based on fictional characters, some of them ended up disappointed with the Korean men they dated in real life. </p>
<p>The article was about racial politics and the masculine ideals. But some Korean readers thought that I was simply criticizing Korean men for not being romantic and handsome enough. One enraged Korean man commented that I was an “ugly feminist.” </p>
<p>But this was tame in comparison to what women living in South Korea have endured in recent years.</p>
<h2>Extreme misogyny and a feminist backlash</h2>
<p>Over the past couple of decades, there have been flash points in this gender war.</p>
<p>In 2010, Ilbe, <a href="https://koreaexpose.com/south-koreas-angry-young-men/">a right-wing website</a> that traffics in misogyny, started attracting users who <a href="https://www.ilbe.com/view/11200697424">peppered the forums with vulgar posts</a> about women.</p>
<p>Then in 2015, an online extremist feminist group <a href="https://koreaexpose.com/megalia-south-korean-feminism-marshals-the-power-of-the-internet/">named Megalia</a> arose. Its goal was to fight back by <a href="https://10mag.com/megalia-south-koreas-radical-feminism-community/">demeaning Korean men</a> in ways that mirrored the rhetoric on sites like Ilbe. </p>
<p>A year later, a man who had professed his hatred of women <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-korea-woman-killed-20160521-snap-story.html">murdered a random woman in a public bathroom</a> near a Seoul subway station. He was eventually sentenced to decades in prison, but the lines were quickly drawn. On one side were feminists, who saw misogyny as the underlying motive. On the other side were men who claimed that it was merely the isolated actions of a mentally ill man. The <a href="https://www.ytn.co.kr/_ln/0103_201605231913446582">two groups violently clashed</a> during competing protests at the site of the murder. </p>
<h2>A backdrop of digital sex crimes</h2>
<p>However, none of these events have elicited as much public controversy as the steep rise in digital sex crimes. These are newer forms of sexual violence facilitated by technology: <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1532/revenge-pornography">revenge porn</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-upskirting-and-what-are-your-rights-to-privacy-under-the-law-158060">upskirting</a>, which refers to surreptitiously snapping photos under women’s skirts in public; and the use of hidden cameras to film women having sex or undressing.</p>
<p>In 2018, there were <a href="https://easylaw.go.kr/CSP/CnpClsMain.laf?popMenu=ov&csmSeq=1594&ccfNo=1&cciNo=1&cnpClsNo=2">2,289 reported cases</a> of digital sex crimes; in 2021, the number <a href="https://easylaw.go.kr/CSP/CnpClsMain.laf?popMenu=ov&csmSeq=1594&ccfNo=1&cciNo=1&cnpClsNo=2">snowballed to 10,353</a>.</p>
<p>In 2019, there were two major incidents that involved digital sex crimes. </p>
<p>In one, a number of male K-pop stars were indicted for filming and circulating videos of women in group chatrooms <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50596943">without their consent</a>.</p>
<p>A few months later, Koreans were shocked to learn about what became known as the “<a href="https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/tv/a40018199/what-is-nth-room-true-story-cyber-hell-destroy-the-nth-chatroom-netflix/">Nth Room Incident</a>,” during which hundreds of perpetrators – mostly men – committed digital sex crimes on dozens of women and minors. </p>
<p>They tended to target poorer women – sex workers, or women who wanted to make a few bucks by sharing anonymous nude photos of themselves. The perpetrators either hacked into their social media accounts or approached these women and offered them money, but asked for their personal information so they could transmit the funds. Once they obtained this information, they blackmailed the women by threatening to reveal their sex work and their nudes to their friends and family. </p>
<p>Since <a href="https://koreaexpose.com/sex-workers-speaking-out-koreas-shadowy-underbelly/">sex work</a> and <a href="https://easylaw.go.kr/CSP/CnpClsMain.laf?popMenu=ov&csmSeq=901&ccfNo=2&cciNo=1&cnpClsNo=1">posting nude images of yourself online</a> are illegal in Korea, the women, fearing arrest or being ostracized by friends and family, complied with the perpetrators’ demands to send even more compromising images of themselves. The men would then swap these images in chatrooms. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protester holds sign that reads 'Korea is from top to bottom the rape cartel itself.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525716/original/file-20230511-19-rpy9jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests erupted in Seoul in July 2019 after women were drugged and sexually abused at a popular nightclub partly owned by the K-Pop star Seungri.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/feminists-chant-slogans-as-they-hold-signs-that-read-korea-news-photo/1157943309?adppopup=true">Jean Chung/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet a 2019 <a href="http://www.mogef.go.kr/kor/skin/doc.html?fn=4ee3d24743c343d9ad7df17a5211eb0c.pdf&rs=/rsfiles/202305/">survey conducted by the Korean government</a> found that large swaths of the population blamed women for these sex crimes: 52% said that they believed sexual violence occurs because women wear revealing clothes, while 37% thought if women experienced sexual assault while drunk, they are partly to blame for their victimization. </p>
<p>In other words, a significant percentage of the Korean population believes that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2021.1901602">female sexuality is the problem</a> – not the sexual violence.</p>
<h2>Government policy lays the groundwork</h2>
<p>Digital sex crimes are too widespread to lay the blame at the feet of a handful of bad actors. </p>
<p>To me, part of the problem stems from the long history of “gendered citizenship.” </p>
<p>Korean feminist scholar <a href="https://www.vassar.edu/faculty/semoon">Seungsook Moon</a> has written about the ways in which <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/militarized-modernity-and-gendered-citizenship-in-south-korea">the government created one track for men and another for women</a> as the country sought to modernize in the second half of the 20th century:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Men were mobilized for mandatory military service and then, as conscripts, utilized as workers and researchers in the industrializing economy. Women were consigned to lesser factory jobs, and their roles as members of the modern nation were defined largely in terms of biological reproduction and household management.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although these policies are no longer officially carried out, the underlying attitudes about gender roles remain embedded in Korean life and culture. Women who veer from being mothers and housewives expose themselves to public and private backlash. </p>
<p>The government has created gender quotas in certain industries to try to unravel this system of gendered citizenship.</p>
<p>For instance, some government jobs have <a href="https://www.womennews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=234654">minimum gender quotas</a> for new hires, and the government <a href="https://www.seoulfn.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=483074">encourages the private sector to implement similar policies</a>. In historically male-dominant industries, such as construction, there are quotas for female hires, while in historically female-dominant industries, such as education, <a href="https://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20190222011034">there are male quotas</a>. </p>
<p>In some ways, this has only made things worse. Each gender feels as if the other is receiving special treatment due to these affirmative action policies. Resentment festers. </p>
<h2>‘The generation that has given up’</h2>
<p>Today, the sense of competition between young men and women is exacerbated by the <a href="https://keia.org/the-peninsula/low-youth-employment-in-korea-part-1the-golden-ticket-syndrome/">soaring cost of living</a> and rampant unemployment. </p>
<p>Called the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-po_generation">N-Po Generation</a>,” which roughly translates as “the generation that has given up,” many young South Koreans don’t think they can achieve certain milestones that previous generations took for granted: marriage, having kids, finding a job, owning a home and even friendships.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women in purple jackets hand out stickers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525955/original/file-20230512-15-g1trvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of South Korea’s Women’s Party campaign ahead of the 2020 election. Though the party didn’t win any races, it marked the first time a feminist party sought seats in the National Assembly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-photo-taken-on-april-9-2020-shows-womens-party-news-photo/1209572028?adppopup=true">Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although all genders find themselves discouraged, the act of “giving up” has caused more problems for women. Men see women who forgo marriage and having kids as selfish. And when they then try to compete against men for jobs, some men become incensed. </p>
<p>Many of the men who have become radicalized commit digital sex crimes to take revenge on women who, in their view, have abandoned their duties.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the competitive dynamic created by the Korean government’s embrace of gendered citizenship has stoked the virulent gender war between Korean men and women, with digital sex crimes used as ammunition.</p>
<p>The 4B movement, whereby Korean women forego heterosexual dating, marriage, and childbirth, represents a radical escalation of the gender war by seeking to create an online and offline world devoid of men. Rather than engaging in altercations, these women are refusing to interact with men, period. </p>
<h2>Digital sex crimes are a global problem</h2>
<p>To be sure, digital sex crimes are not unique to Korea. </p>
<p>When I teach my college class on digital sex crimes in the U.S., I’m surprised by how many of my students admit that they’ve been victims of digital sex crimes, or knew of it happening at their high schools. And at the National Women’s Studies Association’s <a href="https://gwss.washington.edu/2022-nwsa-conference">annual conference in 2022</a>, I watched feminist activists and scholars from all over the world present their findings about digital sex crimes back home.</p>
<p>Since each country has its own cultural context for the rise in digital sex crimes, there isn’t a single solution to solve the problems. But in South Korea, continuing to unravel the system of gendered citizenship could be part of the solution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Min Joo Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The South Korean government’s embrace of gendered citizenship has fueled the virulent gender war between men and women, with digital sex crimes used as ammunition.Min Joo Lee, Postdoctoral Fellow, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1991942023-04-27T13:01:39Z2023-04-27T13:01:39ZSlavery’s historical link to marriage is still at play in some African societies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508608/original/file-20230207-18-9ckb4k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women in parts of the world are victims of slavery</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Governments and religious institutions regulate marriage. Such regulations are heavily laden with specific moral ideas and cultural taboos. There are heated debates around what counts as “proper” marriage: should polygamy or monogamy be preferred? What should be the minimal age for marriage? </p>
<p>Despite these debates, all contemporary societies see marriage as a sacrosanct institution that deserves legal protection. Not so slavery. </p>
<p>Today slavery is abolished in all countries. But 250 years ago various forms of slavery would have been legal on all continents. </p>
<p>During the period of legal slavery, marriage and slavery were closely interconnected and sometimes overlapped. Slave owners could force their slaves to marry, remain unmarried, or separate from their spouses. They could also marry them. </p>
<p>The forms of power that allowed slaveholders to coerce enslaved persons into unwanted marriages (or out of wanted ones) haven’t disappeared. </p>
<p>First, slavery has not ended. African women and children are caught in illegal networks controlled by sex traffickers who cater for a persistent demand in vulnerable (and therefore sexually abusable) persons. This, today, is outlawed and prosecutable as either slavery or forced marriage. But in the past such a demand was largely met through the provision of enslaved persons who could be used for sexual and conjugal purposes. </p>
<p>This points to <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Trafficking+in+Slavery%E2%80%99s+Wake">continuities</a> in the types of services required, as well as the traffic geographies that connect vulnerable people from the South to demand in the North and Near East, as well as from poorer peripheries to urban centres within different regions in the South. </p>
<p>Second, during <a href="https://csiw-ectg.org/survivors-hearing-for-reparations-for-conflict-related-sexual-and-gender-based-violence-kinshasa-principles/">recent</a> African wars, militias kidnapped women and forced them into marriage, and sexual or conjugal slavery. Here, too, there are clear continuities with historical forms of wartime captivity. African women – survivors and activists – have been on the forefront of global movements speaking out against these abuses. </p>
<p>Thirdly, <a href="https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/descent-based-slavery/">African abolitionists</a> today fight against groups who illegally enslave people and defend slavery as a legitimate institution, based on the alleged slave descent of its victims . These practices are peculiarly resilient in connection to the acquisition of enslaved wives or concubines.<br>
I have been studying slavery in African and global history for over two decades. As part of this research, I have considered the relation between slavery and marriage.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2022.2063231">research paper</a> co-authored with professor of politics Joel Quirk, we introduced a collection of articles on slave ‘marriages’ in Africa from 1830 to today.</p>
<p>While slavery has lost the ideological battle almost everywhere, women nevertheless continue to be objectified and subordinated under the protective cloak of “marriage”. What forms of “marriage” are nothing but slavery in disguise? In such cases, does the terminology of “marriage” merely serve the interest of perpetrators? </p>
<p>We can learn from the history of African women’s resistance against slavery, a history that has not ended. The voices and actions of women who were enslaved in the past, or who experienced enslavement today, reveal how oppression works and what made a difference to those exposed to it. </p>
<p>This history is not only an important part of the past that should not be forgotten. It can also be useful to activists and decision makers today.</p>
<h2>Historical slave marriages</h2>
<p>It is still common for people to think of historical slavery as coinciding exclusively with the history of Africans transported to America and the Caribbean as dehumanised labour for the profit of Euro-American racist capitalism. But this was only one of multiple historical forms of slavery. </p>
<p>Slavery also occurred within Africa and between different groups of Africans. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/plantation-slavery-in-the-sokoto-caliphate/3BAA8C45E8E5A017BD67473B85DF80F3">Research </a>by African and international historians leaves no doubt that slavery was a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-slavery/slavery-in-africa-18041936/F01667F6DC2CDF8A51D6F9E0D5505E6E">legitimate institution</a> in most African societies in the Nineteenth Century. In Africa in the 1800s, ‘marriages’ between enslaved people and freeborn people were relatively common. Usually a ‘slave wife’ benefited from some protections compared to other categories of female slaves. But slave wives were nevertheless subordinate to free wives, first wives and higher-ranking wives. </p>
<p>Whether the role of the ‘slave wife’ or the ‘conjugal slave’ was perceived as relatively desirable, or whether it was instead experienced as a daily torture imposing dreaded burdens on its unfortunate bearers, was contextual and individual. But such hierarchies were not uncommon. As historian Ettore Morelli <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2022.2063232">has shown </a> for Sesotho- and Setswana-speaking societies of the Highveld in today’s Lesotho, they gave rise to complex social dynamics of resistance and accommodation. </p>
<p>In most African societies there were many ways of being a slave and many ways of being a wife. There were hierarchies within slavery and hierarchies within marriage. <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-466;jsessionid=614732E6961AD8AD9096A836E01F8206">Researchers</a> have only just begun to explore this area.</p>
<p>It must also be remembered that both marriage and slavery in Africa in the 1800s existed within patriarchal societies. In such societies positions of political dominance and public prestige are primarily held by men, and in which men have rights in women that women do not have either in their male kin or in themselves – even though the features of patriarchy varied from case to case. Everyday <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/everyday-gender-inequalities-that-underpin-wartime-atrocities/">gender inequalities </a>common in patriarchal contexts influence historical and contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking.</p>
<h2>Modern-day slave marriages</h2>
<p>Modern-day or contemporary trafficking in women and girls meets a demand for women whose sexuality, fertility and labour can still be imagined as fully controllable. Trafficking is <a href="https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/406-trafficking-in-human-beings-especially-women-and-children-in-africa-second-edition.html">recognised</a> as a major problem in most African sub-regions and countries.</p>
<p>In addition, in Africa’s recent conflicts large numbers of women and girls have been abducted by militias whose members seized females as booty, as in the case of the Lord Resistance Army in northern Uganda. Their commanders redistributed female abductees among their officers. Forced wives were expected to become pregnant. Their children would join societies ruled by warlords who sought to establish new autonomous political and social units. </p>
<p>Researchers <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/expertiseguide/sociology-social-policy/dr-eleanor-seymour.aspx">Eleanor Seymour</a>, <a href="https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/persons/eunice-apio">Eunice Apio</a>, and <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/people/academic-staff/professor-benedetta-rossi">Benedetta Rossi</a><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2022.2063237?tab=permissions&scroll=top"> explored </a> how, if at all, these phenomena were in continuity with forms of female captivity common in the region’s warfare in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. </p>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jun/28/child-sex-trafficking-wahaya-girls-slavery-niger">form</a> of trafficking that has proven resilient in contemporary Africa is the sale of young concubines (also known as ‘fifth wives’) to Muslim men who feel entitled to purchase girls of alleged ‘slave’ status to avoid committing the sin of fornication. These practices, in Niger for example, have been <a href="https://www.antislavery.org/reports/wahaya-domestic-and-sexual-slavery-in-niger/">combated</a> by African anti-slavery non-governmental organisations whose members are Muslims who argue that there can be no Islamic justification for these forms of conjugal slavery today, if there ever was. </p>
<p>Historic slavery lives on today in various forms and is exacerbated by contemporary slavery. Research on this history can reveal the perspectives and strategies of those enslaved and inform policy aimed at reducing their oppression.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benedetta Rossi receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 885418. </span></em></p>The voices and actions of women who were enslaved reveal how oppression works and what made a difference to those exposed to itBenedetta Rossi, Professor of History, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.