Just to reassure Frank, it's not so much that I'm trying to "post-rationalise a gut feeling", but rather I'm trying to figure out how to say what I'm thinking in less than 30,000 words. Also, I need to try and put a coherent structure on it.
I was trying to be concise, but then I felt that I wasn't explaining myself properly, although Frank summarized a lot of what I was trying to say when he wrote that my "principal argument is that marriage as an institution is crucial for the continuity of the type of liberal, civil society we currently enjoy and that this has been weakened by recent developments".
Recent developments are the key and when I say "recent" I'm basically talking about 1945-today. Dick says that "to say that a childless marriage is an incomplete marriage does a disservice to those who opt not to have children and implies that their marriage is in some way incomplete". (What I actually said was, "Couples that permanently and purposefully exclude the possibility of children are not living up to their end of the marriage contract" [with society].)
When I described the relationship between a married couple and society as a "contract" that was not quite right. It was a bad choice of word. Marriage is an institution - a social institution. Thus, society has expectations of married couples. Until the post-war period, married couples weren't "obliged" to have children, as Jon noted, but society's expectations included children.
From that point on (1960 or so), society began to lessen its expectations with regards to children and, also, to reduce the incentives that it had afforded to married couples. Marriage was denigrated and other "options" were promoted to an equal status. "Who's to say that a single parent household isn't as good as a married couple household", etc.
In 1960, 60% of married-couple households in the US* had at least one child under 18. By 2000, 45% of married-couple households had at least one child. {Some of this can be accounted for by aging, but not much if you note the household by age statistics.} In 1960, 75% of households in the US were married couples. By, 2000, that number was just over 50%.
Those statistics represent a double whammy for society. Fewer married-couples and more married-couples with no children. Dick believes that these numbers can be explained by a reduction in the number of "bad" marriages. But, children generally do better when the parents remain married even if the marriage is "bad". Only when violence or abuse is involved is it better for children for their parents to separate. Therefore, society has a vested interest in supporting even "bad" marriages.
All of this is the foundation for my view that marriage – one man, one woman – is special. So special that society has to provide incentives (thanks for the word Jon) to foster and support marriages. Those incentives can be monetary, social (esteem, etc.), whatever. If you extend those incentives to those on whom no expectation of children can be held, then you lessen the incentive (less money available for married couples, all family structures enjoying equal "esteem", etc. ), and therefore, support for marriage.
And, you open up the possibility of further challenges to the definition of marriage. Brothers & sisters, three people, who knows. Once the traditional understanding of marriage has been undermined then there is no accepted understanding of the term at all.
This is too long already and yet, I could easily go on. Enough for now.
{* I couldn't find similar statistics for Europe, but I'd be willing to wager that the fall-off is even greater.}
