Outstanding article and a wonderful compression of western legal traditions concerning marriage! I believe that there needs to be higher legal standards for divorce in order to provide a disincentive to seeking it for arbitrary and capricious reasons but the core which is rotten is the religious one. I just don’t think secular marriage will ever be successful regardless of the legal structures. If couples don’t understand that you are entering a covenant with God together you’ve lost the foundation to push through the difficult spots in the marriage and the reason you chose to be one flesh to begin with. A true marriage doesn’t need the threat of legal consequences to survive when you fear the spiritual consequences of separation. The horrible outcomes that happen to children of divorce and their parents are really proof of the spiritual consequences that occur no matter the outcome of a court hearing.
I was a product of divorce but overcame it but the truth was I was made to overcome things that I shouldn’t have had to deal with. I’m not bitter and love my parents but they never had the spiritual commitment to each other to overcome the hard times.
Agree. It is also almost impossible to have a proper religious marriage with no legal recourse. If one can ignore vows before God without punishment, it gives the sense they aren't real.
I loosely agree with this, it does seem to be a somewhat global and historical norm for children to be retained by husbands in marriage. One of those things tho that ends up needing caveats since our entire system is wonky. And it also seems preferable for a nursing age child to stay with his mother. But generally this seems too lindy to ignore, at least matched the book im reading on this history of marriage
The modern system is so off kilter it's going to be a long grueling struggle to get back to normalcy. I'm actually fine with babies going to the mother in principle. Tender years doctrine usnt entirely wrong, but we have to avoid moral hazards and injustice. For instance, my best friends BIL's wife left him when their child was six months old and moved to Alaska. The courts pretty much shrugged their shoulders and said oh well.
I think part of what went awry with the "tender years" doctrine was that it gave *permanent* custody to the mother. I remember a medieval custom where the kids were primarily raised by mom until 7, then they lived with dad and he primarily raised them (or something like that).
Like, if your kid is 8 you get custody, but if your kid is six, then the kid stays with your ex permanently.
It's patently obvious to any involved, sentient parent that young children prefer/need the mother and that older children drift into an involved father's orbit, if you will, around 7-12. The medieval custom you mention - I'd love to locate more about it - sounds exactly right. (Now, it also has a whiff of child labor to it, with apprenticeships often starting quite young and children having the capacity to do work. I was a data entry clerk for my father's software startup at 13, so I know!)
The remedy to modern family court resides in the destruction of the moral hazard that now surrounds every motherly decision; until the fling with the tennis coach becomes taboo again - and a real risk of losing your moneyed status - it will continue.
Well written, researched, documented and logically articulated. I feel your pain and stand in solidarity with you.
The whole legal oracle of "Best Interest of the Child" which is interpreted and decided by a judge ,is manipulated day in and day out to the benefit of the mother, not the child and much less of the father.
And what distinguishes the asshole from the gentleman is whether he bothers to consult with the subject of his protection on what they want or need before intervening.
I wish you'd have at least nodded to the way that the creation of child support payments tied into women not being allowed to have bank accounts at the time.
Women "not being allowed to have bank accounts" is a fiction. See Janice Fiamengo's excellent substack for more true stories about the real history of women and feminism.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 (ECOA) is the federal law that allowed women to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and apply for mortgages without a male co-signer.
Men were legally obligated to subject themselves to oftentimes unceasing, back-breaking labor to provide for the family. He could not leave or stop working without forfeiting his rights. Even if his wife was awful. They were in it together with well-established rights and responsibilities.
If modern marriage was better, more women would be excited to get married. But it isn't.
Wives deserted their husbands also. Husbands suffered under insufferable shrews. Husbands had to deal with lousy mothers. Husbands have to deal with frivolous women who overspent.
Also, they couldn't simply "walk out". And there were multiple protections to try to avoid husband desertion. The reason a marriage was public was to make it more difficult for a man to leave or engage in bigamy. Many social controls were in place to make this as difficult as possible.
> What a ridiculous thing to suggest. That women would want to marry more if we were more trapped within marriage. Women didn't want marriage more back then.
Fascinating mind-reading that women from centuries ago had the same mental world-model as a modern feminist.
Outstanding article and a wonderful compression of western legal traditions concerning marriage! I believe that there needs to be higher legal standards for divorce in order to provide a disincentive to seeking it for arbitrary and capricious reasons but the core which is rotten is the religious one. I just don’t think secular marriage will ever be successful regardless of the legal structures. If couples don’t understand that you are entering a covenant with God together you’ve lost the foundation to push through the difficult spots in the marriage and the reason you chose to be one flesh to begin with. A true marriage doesn’t need the threat of legal consequences to survive when you fear the spiritual consequences of separation. The horrible outcomes that happen to children of divorce and their parents are really proof of the spiritual consequences that occur no matter the outcome of a court hearing.
I was a product of divorce but overcame it but the truth was I was made to overcome things that I shouldn’t have had to deal with. I’m not bitter and love my parents but they never had the spiritual commitment to each other to overcome the hard times.
Agree. It is also almost impossible to have a proper religious marriage with no legal recourse. If one can ignore vows before God without punishment, it gives the sense they aren't real.
I loosely agree with this, it does seem to be a somewhat global and historical norm for children to be retained by husbands in marriage. One of those things tho that ends up needing caveats since our entire system is wonky. And it also seems preferable for a nursing age child to stay with his mother. But generally this seems too lindy to ignore, at least matched the book im reading on this history of marriage
The modern system is so off kilter it's going to be a long grueling struggle to get back to normalcy. I'm actually fine with babies going to the mother in principle. Tender years doctrine usnt entirely wrong, but we have to avoid moral hazards and injustice. For instance, my best friends BIL's wife left him when their child was six months old and moved to Alaska. The courts pretty much shrugged their shoulders and said oh well.
I think part of what went awry with the "tender years" doctrine was that it gave *permanent* custody to the mother. I remember a medieval custom where the kids were primarily raised by mom until 7, then they lived with dad and he primarily raised them (or something like that).
Like, if your kid is 8 you get custody, but if your kid is six, then the kid stays with your ex permanently.
It's patently obvious to any involved, sentient parent that young children prefer/need the mother and that older children drift into an involved father's orbit, if you will, around 7-12. The medieval custom you mention - I'd love to locate more about it - sounds exactly right. (Now, it also has a whiff of child labor to it, with apprenticeships often starting quite young and children having the capacity to do work. I was a data entry clerk for my father's software startup at 13, so I know!)
The remedy to modern family court resides in the destruction of the moral hazard that now surrounds every motherly decision; until the fling with the tennis coach becomes taboo again - and a real risk of losing your moneyed status - it will continue.
Well written, researched, documented and logically articulated. I feel your pain and stand in solidarity with you.
The whole legal oracle of "Best Interest of the Child" which is interpreted and decided by a judge ,is manipulated day in and day out to the benefit of the mother, not the child and much less of the father.
"the main aspiration of most men is protection,"
And what distinguishes the asshole from the gentleman is whether he bothers to consult with the subject of his protection on what they want or need before intervening.
I wish you'd have at least nodded to the way that the creation of child support payments tied into women not being allowed to have bank accounts at the time.
Women "not being allowed to have bank accounts" is a fiction. See Janice Fiamengo's excellent substack for more true stories about the real history of women and feminism.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 (ECOA) is the federal law that allowed women to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and apply for mortgages without a male co-signer.
Corner cases make bad law. Now we have millions of children estranged from a mother or father due to divorce instead of a few tragic cases.
Also, I directly cited the De Manneville case, a very similar one at the same time. Thou doth protest too much.
Men were legally obligated to subject themselves to oftentimes unceasing, back-breaking labor to provide for the family. He could not leave or stop working without forfeiting his rights. Even if his wife was awful. They were in it together with well-established rights and responsibilities.
If modern marriage was better, more women would be excited to get married. But it isn't.
Wives deserted their husbands also. Husbands suffered under insufferable shrews. Husbands had to deal with lousy mothers. Husbands have to deal with frivolous women who overspent.
Also, they couldn't simply "walk out". And there were multiple protections to try to avoid husband desertion. The reason a marriage was public was to make it more difficult for a man to leave or engage in bigamy. Many social controls were in place to make this as difficult as possible.
> What a ridiculous thing to suggest. That women would want to marry more if we were more trapped within marriage. Women didn't want marriage more back then.
Fascinating mind-reading that women from centuries ago had the same mental world-model as a modern feminist.