By Khangray
I’m new to the MRM. I’ve enjoyed the articles, comments, and ideas and want to thank those who take the time to participate. It has helped me a lot. Many years ago I figured out that the game was rigged but I didn’t appreciate by how much until after spending some time at this and similar web sites.
Marriage 2.0 is clearly toxic to men’s health and sanity. Women like it a lot but are beginning to wonder where the guys are. Marriage 1.0 was better for men, children, and arguable for women, but not by much. But Marriage 0.0 was what humanity experienced for most of recorded history up until about the 15th Century. It was a partnership between men and women in an effort to survive in a world of grinding poverty and near constant hunger. It gave both access to in-laws with resources and power. The woman produced children who soon added to the family workforce increasing the change of survival for everyone. The man offered protection for his wife and children. Survival was the goal and both stood a better chance of surviving if they were married than single. In Marriage 0.0, you married for resources and connections, not ‘love.’ For a good history of marriage read Marriage a History by Stephanie Coontz. Eye opening. She doesn’t use the term Marriage 2.0 and doesn’t address men’s issues to any extent but does a reasonable job at discussing the evolution of the institution of marriage.
Marriage has always been about regulating property, sex, and child rearing. It is a set of legal rules that govern how property, and status is handed down from generation to generation. But, because it is a set of legal rules, it allows the state, and church, and other special interests to modify those rules for the benefit of certain groups at the expense of others. OK. Now what?
The problem isn’t Marriage 2.0. The problem is marriage in general. But society has to have marriage in order to survive. Right? Maybe not.
The Na is a society of about thirty thousand people in current day southwestern China. With the Na, there is no marriage. Brothers and sisters live together, jointly raising, educating, and supporting the children of the sisters. Sibling relationships are valued and longlasting. Sexual relationships and love affairs are informal and far less important than the sibling relationships. Trained anthropologists have established that some of these sibling-based households have lasted for ten or more generations. Brothers and sisters are practically inseparable. Yet there is no incest. That is a very strong taboo among the Na.
Na babies come from casual romantic encounters. The father has no responsible and no rights to his child. It is the siblings, not spouses, who pool economic resources and share the responsibilities of child raising.
A Na household can consist of a large number of individuals: the siblings, the children of the sisters, mothers, aunts, and uncles of the siblings, and maybe a few great grandmothers, great aunts, and great uncles. Children need both male and female adult role models as they mature. A household with many adult role models generally produces happier and healthier children. The single parent family offers the child a very narrow view of what it is to be an adult and children from such families suffer as a result.
With the Na there is no marriage and no divorce. There is no alimony. The rape issue is mitigated to some extent by the fact that any women will have several brothers and uncles looking after her. Men have no rights or responsibilities to their children. There is no child support. Na men do however have a responsibility to help raise the children of their sisters. These children carry 25% of the genes that make the man unique. He can be certain of that. A married man (in the absence of DNA testing) can never be quite sure that the children he is struggling to support carry any of his DNA.
To know that a thing is possible is half the battle to making it real. The Na have proved that a stable society can exist without marriage. It provides a way for men to have women and children in their lives without having to deal with the legal institutions that have sprung up to regulate marriage.
It is a very different approach to the question of family, procreation, and sex but one worth pondering. Clearly Marriage 2.0 is unsustainable in the long term. Something must replace it. If not the Na approach then what? If you don’t like the options available to you, then build another. Men have always been good at that and humanity is much better off because of it.
