Maggie's Farm

It seems to me that marriage had three traditional purposes:
(1) to "put people in their place" by defining roles based on an old-fashioned division of labor which then made sense for just about everyone, but no longer does.
(2) as a formal, public promise by both partners to stay and raise and support whatever kids they might have, thus preventing tragedy for the kids and burdens for others.
(3) to act as the couple's retirement plan, because no other was available.
While marriage also creates (defines) a family, that was considered merely incidental to these three purposes.

Modern practice, though, has changed a good part of this:
- Neither the law nor most of the public expects people to follow the roles in (1) and (2) any more, except the man's duty to provide the financial support. (And a woman no longer needs to marry to get that! Child support law now goes far beyond the children's needs, and many unmarried women now have kids for the purpose of collecting the subsidy, often from men they deceive into cooperating! That's not right. Choice and responsibility for the result of that choice must be inseparable.)
- Modern retirement plans, both governmental and private, have almost completely replaced (3).
- People live much longer now than they did even 200 years ago. This makes promises like "til death do us part" so unrealistic that even committed religious people frequently feel the need to get out of them.

If I could write the law, I would get the state out of the "marriage" business altogether. But there would be a mechanism for any two or more adults to define themselves as a family in the eyes of the law, and there would also be a formal process for (2) -- and the courts would never again award child support to someone who didn't go through that process before or soon after conception.