GOP to twentysomethings: No sex for you

[vulturesrow]

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Is it really all that bad? I don't understand why conservatives defend nuclear families so much. Monogamy is pretty unnatural, we're about the only mammalian species that does it. There's no evidence that children raised in atypical, planned families (by same-sex couples or polyamorous families) are at any significant disadvantage scholastically, socially or economically.


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Yeah I really do think its that bad. The amount of studies that show the benefits of marriage are overwhelming. The more this institution deteriorates, the worse off we all are.

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For the most part, marriage is a social institution that used to have a valuable economic function, but in the post-industrial world is an anachronism. (For example, in colonial America, no one had the luxury of fast food/TV dinners or pre-stitched clothing; men had to toil to earn not goods, but the elements of goods (raw foods, tools and cloth) which the women then had to spend the day converting into consumables (dinner, clothing, etc). It was a necessary division of labor that doesn't exist anymore, since the industrial revolution rendered the woman's role in the home completely meaningless. Accordingly we've seen a progressive degradation of traditional gender roles since the industrial revolution to the point now where they don't really exist anymore.


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Here is where you and I part ways completely. I think its demonstrable (and I sort of talk about it above) that marriage and the traditional family has an intrinisc value in and of itself. The instrumental economic benefits you spoke of are really just another net good but arent the primary benefit of marriage. Your statement that the "womans place in the home has been rendered meaningless" is quite telling. Nothing could be further from the truth, IMO. But you are right, it is emblematic of the turn that society has taken and I think its a turn for the worse.