Fixing Marriage

National Geographic has an article about an ethnic group in China that is a matrilineal society (woman dominated). The women in the village own all the property and are heads of households. But the most unusual aspect of their culture is the idea of a “walking marriage.”

What happens is that when a woman is interested in a man, she will invite him to spend the night with her and leave early in the morning. That basically establishes the relationship or marriage. When a child is born, the father can visit, but he doesn’t play a role in raising it. Instead, the father is responsible for raising the child that their sisters, aunts, cousins have (they all live in the same house). The women are allowed to switch partners, but more often than not, they usually just have one. A better way to describe this is like “serial monogamy.”

They say the benefits of doing this is stability within the family – meaning no divorces that will muddy up things like dividing property and creating a bad environment for the kids.

Interestingly enough, just this week, the Atlantic published an article questioning the purpose of marriage in our society. The writer argues that it’s an outdated institution that hasn’t kept up the cultural trends that have women working more and men taking on a larger role in the home – but it’s not always a rosy situation as she describes the tension:

That said, it’s clear that females are dissatisfied—more and more, divorce seems to be initiated by women. If marriage is the Old World and what lies beyond is the New World, it’s the apparently stable men (comfortable alone in their postfeminist den with their Cook’s Illustrated and their porn) who are Old Worlders, and the Girls’ Night Out, questionnaire-completing women who are the questing New Worlders.

To work, to parent, to housekeep, to be the ones who schedule “date night,” only to be reprimanded in the home by male kitchen bitches, and then, in the bedroom, to be ignored—it’s a bum deal. And then our women’s magazines exhort us to rekindle the romance. You rarely see men’s magazines exhorting men to rekindle the romance.

I’ll admit that the writer may have a slight chip on her shoulder, but the frustrations she draws seem honest and real (I say “seem” because I’ve never been married myself). In one of her proposals for alternatives to marriage concerning child rearing she suggests that:

As far as the children are concerned, how about the tribal approach (a natural, according to both primate and human evolution)? Let children between the ages of 1 and 5 be raised in a household of mothers and their female kin. Let the men/husbands/boyfriends come in once or twice a week to build shelves, prepare that bouillabaisse, or provide sex.

And strangely enough, that sounds awfully similar to a “walking marriage.” But what’s interesting is that in both cases the call is to move men out of the household and to use them as needed. It is sad to see the marginalization of men as the solution for stability. Obviously, gender relations within marriage is an issue that affects every culture. There is an interesting tension in how we just don’t get along and we’re better apart. And interestingly enough, this insight is relevant even after the coming of the “Modern Man,” who is supposed to be more progressive and female friendly.