September 2003

What's love got to do with it?

    

  

 
The story in the box alongside must have been judged "newsy" to have been given considerable prominence by the Straits Times. But its significance goes much further, if we are prepared to stop and think for a moment.

 
We live in an age where we invest into the notion of marriage some rather strange and ahistorical things such as romantic love and moral goodness. Those of us who are not gay seldom have a chance to question these associations. They are taken for granted: of course, people fall in love, they want to spend a life together, and so they get married. And because children and families come out of the marital union – procreation – so it must be a good and moral thing.

From here, it's an easy slip into partisan slogans like "family values", "the institution of marriage", "traditional way of life", blah, blah, blah.

Well, let me now mess up your assumptions. Marriage has TRADITIONALLY never been about romantic love. For eons, total strangers have been married to each other in arrangements based on property transactions, political advantages or just astrology.

Women, TRADITIONALLY, had no autonomy. Without autonomy, how could they agree of their own will to enter into marriage, let alone control to whom? Females were little more than property of their fathers or brothers, and as property, they could be passed to husbands, by contract between owners.

Having been given to the husband, he then has exclusive sexual use of her. She is obliged to allow him to use her. (For instance, even today, Singapore does not recognise the concept of rape within marriage, which is to say, she has no option for refusing his request for sex.) The husband, however, is not obliged to satisfy his wife in return, merely to keep her fed and clothed. TRADITIONALLY. 

As his property, no one else may use her sexually without his permission. The social publicity of the marriage ceremony is to make clear to everybody else in the community that the woman is formally passed from her biological family to her husband. Henceforth, no one else in the community may covet her, otherwise the husband shall have the right of revenge.

Since she is his to use exclusively, any children borne by her can be assumed to be his. Therefore the marriage's other purpose is to mark inheritance rights. Once again, it's a question of property.

As the song goes, "What's love got to do with it?"

Furthermore, we could ask, "What's morality got to do with it?" Is ownership of property in and of itself, moral?

* * * * *

Where did the idea that marriage should be founded on romantic love, and be a morally good thing, come from? From the Christian West, sometime after 1800. That's pretty recent, and pretty localised, too.

Christianity has always put the idea of love on a pedestal, because it was the founding idea of the religion. If you're a Westerner or just culturally westernised, you may have a hard time realising that other cultures do not accord the same importance to it. They may give more weight to obedience, responsibility, honour or detachment. But even within Christianity, it was, through most centuries, the love of God – something spiritual and mystic – that was the paramount love, not romantic love. It's only recently, that Western civilisation began to give a higher value to romantic love as a reflection of the love of God, though if you look at it with a squinty eye, it is a rather tortuous extension of the original idea. Nevertheless, it has stuck, and has spread to other cultures.

The other thread that brought moral goodness into the concept of marriage was procreation. Like love, it's a culturally specific value, propagated by the Bible. Again, if you're a Westerner or westernised, you may not immediately realise that other cultures have not traditionally given such a high value to procreation.

Since marriage gave the man exclusive use of the woman, and since such use often made her pregnant, Western civilisation naturally transferred the high value it gave to procreation, to marriage.

You therefore have the Church blessing marriages, which only cemented the idea in people's minds that it was a highly moral arrangement.

But it's really strange, when you think of it, why marriage, which is a property transaction, is routinely officiated in a church. Even today, most other cultures see marriage as a social practice, not a religious good. Muslims don't get married in mosques. Jews don't get married in synagogues.

Buddhists don't get married in temples. And Buddhism treats marriage as a social custom. It has no religious significance.

* * * * *

That's why the Straits Times story is so interesting. It shows us a culture where marriage does not have to go with love, and where sex is not the issue. When untouched by the West, the Chinese are not hung up about sex. Go ahead, live together if you must, but don't mess up the settled issues of property and inheritance that came out of the first marriage.

Contrast this with the conventional thinking in the West and among the westernised folks among us. To them, the idea of sex out of wedlock is abhorrent. If two people want to live together, they ought to be married. And it is assumed that this injunction is both universal and traditional.

It is neither, so don' t anyone wag your finger at me about the moral pulchritude of the "institution" of marriage.

© Yawning Bread 

 

The Sunday Times
31 August 2003

Yes to cohabiting, no to marriage for the elderly

China's aged widows and widowers are moving in together, rather than marrying, to avoid family disputes

BEIJING - A growing number of elderly widowers and widows in China's capital are putting an end to their loneliness, not by getting married, but by moving in together.

Social workers said this arrangement was being favoured to avoid potential problems.

Ms Yi Mi, vice-president of the local elderly people's federation, said: 'To some of them, walking directly into marriage can lead to problems such as property disputes. Some children also dislike a re-arrangement of the heritage due to another marriage by a parent.'

Indeed, many second marriages have ended in failure because of such arguments.

For instance, Li, 62, and his second wife Zeng each had their own homes. But when they got married, they decided to live in Zeng's house.

When her granddaughter needed money to study in Japan and approached her for help, Zeng sold Li's house. She did not wait to obtain his permission as he was away on business.

This infuriated Li's children. They insisted that their father get the house back. Li was also unhappy that his wife had taken such a major decision without consulting him.

Zeng, who had planned to repay the money, was upset that he had taken his children's side rather than hers. In the end, she asked for a divorce, and made Li leave her house. A happy union thus ended unhappily, said the monthly magazine China Today.

Ms Yi noted that the children of couples going into second marriages often frowned upon such 'late in life' relationships.

Jealousy and arguments were common. 'Elderly people also dislike family conflicts due to a late marriage,' she said.

Losing the love and concern of their children is the last thing they want in a culture that emphasises the importance of family and an 'unbreakable blood relationship'.

Surprisingly, Chinese society is rather tolerant of elderly couples who choose to live together without marrying. Indeed, 90 per cent of the more than 4,000 people who responded to a recent survey on the issue by the Chinese news portal, Sohu, approved of such arrangements.

But some legal experts said these couples should enter into lawful marriages. Only then can they have their property rights protected since shared property by cohabiting couples is not protected, they said.

Ms Yi agreed. When a partner in a second marriage dies, the heartbroken seniors are not recognised by their deceased partners' children even if they took good care of their new lovers in their old age, she said.

'As a social worker for the elderly, I would advise the elderly people, especially women, that before passion takes the upper hand, they should ponder the consequences of forsaking proper legal protection,' she said.

'In addition, winning the support of their children can also make things easier in such cases.'

 

 

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