'I Don't'
By Henrietta Hammonds
Monday 28th September 2009
Monday 28th September 2009
Ready to shimmy down the aisle and say 'i do'?
The changing structure of the British social system is a constant fascination for our newspapers and TV programmes, and it seems that it has now reached Westminster. The Conservatives have recently announced plans to encourage families to stay together, by implementing a three month “cooling off” period before a couple will be granted a divorce. But is this really a good idea? Having not been married I wouldn’t really know what it feels like to want a divorce. I saw my parents go through it, and, even though neither of them objected to it, it took ages to come through, and I can’t imagine that having an extra three months before the start would have helped either of them. Then again, we live on the Isle of Man, and I think the processes are different. Apparently, in the UK, you get a divorce within a day if all the paperwork is in order. That seems pretty swift... One argument about not doing the washing up, and 12 hours later it could all be over... Seems a tad drastic. But for those couples that have had problems for months already and finally make the decision, three months would just make a bad situation worse. But I can see where the Conservatives are coming from. Divorce is more common than ever, particularly in the recession, and supposedly it has negative impacts on children (maybe at the time, but frankly I think that is rubbish in the long term). Same-sex dissolutions have also increased fourfold. But perhaps divorce won’t be such a problem in the future. Why? Because there are less marriages than ever before. In 1972, there were 426,241 marriages in Britain. In 2000, there were 267,961. That means that there are over 150,000 fewer couples that could get divorced. So why are less people getting married, and why, out of those getting married, are they leaving it so much later? I was talking to my grandmother recently, and she asked me if I thought that my sister would get married next year. My sister is 24, and has been with her boyfriend since she was 15. They have just bought their first house together, but they have been living with each other for 4 years already. As couples go, I would say they are pretty strong, and I can’t really imagine them breaking up any time soon. But do I think they will get married soon? No. I don’t believe in ‘no sex before marriage’, but for me, marriage means that a couple is ready to have a family, and I think my sister thinks the same. In my mind, I don’t want to get married until I am about 30. When I told my grandmother this, she seemed completely shocked. She was married in 1943, aged 22, and had her first child about a year later. She seemed to expect me to do the same. But then I pointed the following out to her: She left school aged 14, and got a job and worked almost every day until her first child was born. She had eight years between school and marriage in which to experience life without being in education and without children. She describes those years as some of the best of her life. She went out all the time, dancing with lots of people that definitely weren’t my granddad (she nearly ran away with a Canadian sailor a few months before marrying my granddad, to whom she was already engaged). I then explained to her that, essentially, I won’t finish school until I graduate from St Andrews when I am 22. I then need those 8 years that she had to just work and experience life in the real world outside of “the bubble” (and maybe find a Canadian sailor of my own) before I settle down. So that brings me to 30. But would I even get married then (providing, of course, that there was someone who wanted to marry me!)? I didn’t tell my grandmother this because I think she might have fainted, but I’m not sure I want to get married. It just seems a bit...irrelevant. If you can undo your vow in the space of a day, then what is the point? What are the benefits of marriage? When my grandmother was young, you couldn’t live with your boyfriend, you most certainly couldn’t sleep with him, and you wouldn’t have been able to buy a house as a single woman because you wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Now, you can do all of those things without having to fork out £20,000 to say some vows in a church with a pretty dress on with relatives that you haven’t seen for 15 years telling embarrassing stories about your childhood. Times are changing. The social freedom that we experience now means that marriage is no longer a necessity. If the majority of people still believed in waiting until their wedding night to have sex I reckon the marriage rate would increase dramatically. But let’s face it, that’s never going to happen, no matter what the Conservatives do to promote “family values”.
The changing structure of the British social system is a constant fascination for our newspapers and TV programmes, and it seems that it has now reached Westminster. The Conservatives have recently announced plans to encourage families to stay together, by implementing a three month “cooling off” period before a couple will be granted a divorce. But is this really a good idea? Having not been married I wouldn’t really know what it feels like to want a divorce. I saw my parents go through it, and, even though neither of them objected to it, it took ages to come through, and I can’t imagine that having an extra three months before the start would have helped either of them. Then again, we live on the Isle of Man, and I think the processes are different. Apparently, in the UK, you get a divorce within a day if all the paperwork is in order. That seems pretty swift... One argument about not doing the washing up, and 12 hours later it could all be over... Seems a tad drastic. But for those couples that have had problems for months already and finally make the decision, three months would just make a bad situation worse. But I can see where the Conservatives are coming from. Divorce is more common than ever, particularly in the recession, and supposedly it has negative impacts on children (maybe at the time, but frankly I think that is rubbish in the long term). Same-sex dissolutions have also increased fourfold. But perhaps divorce won’t be such a problem in the future. Why? Because there are less marriages than ever before. In 1972, there were 426,241 marriages in Britain. In 2000, there were 267,961. That means that there are over 150,000 fewer couples that could get divorced. So why are less people getting married, and why, out of those getting married, are they leaving it so much later? I was talking to my grandmother recently, and she asked me if I thought that my sister would get married next year. My sister is 24, and has been with her boyfriend since she was 15. They have just bought their first house together, but they have been living with each other for 4 years already. As couples go, I would say they are pretty strong, and I can’t really imagine them breaking up any time soon. But do I think they will get married soon? No. I don’t believe in ‘no sex before marriage’, but for me, marriage means that a couple is ready to have a family, and I think my sister thinks the same. In my mind, I don’t want to get married until I am about 30. When I told my grandmother this, she seemed completely shocked. She was married in 1943, aged 22, and had her first child about a year later. She seemed to expect me to do the same. But then I pointed the following out to her: She left school aged 14, and got a job and worked almost every day until her first child was born. She had eight years between school and marriage in which to experience life without being in education and without children. She describes those years as some of the best of her life. She went out all the time, dancing with lots of people that definitely weren’t my granddad (she nearly ran away with a Canadian sailor a few months before marrying my granddad, to whom she was already engaged). I then explained to her that, essentially, I won’t finish school until I graduate from St Andrews when I am 22. I then need those 8 years that she had to just work and experience life in the real world outside of “the bubble” (and maybe find a Canadian sailor of my own) before I settle down. So that brings me to 30. But would I even get married then (providing, of course, that there was someone who wanted to marry me!)? I didn’t tell my grandmother this because I think she might have fainted, but I’m not sure I want to get married. It just seems a bit...irrelevant. If you can undo your vow in the space of a day, then what is the point? What are the benefits of marriage? When my grandmother was young, you couldn’t live with your boyfriend, you most certainly couldn’t sleep with him, and you wouldn’t have been able to buy a house as a single woman because you wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Now, you can do all of those things without having to fork out £20,000 to say some vows in a church with a pretty dress on with relatives that you haven’t seen for 15 years telling embarrassing stories about your childhood. Times are changing. The social freedom that we experience now means that marriage is no longer a necessity. If the majority of people still believed in waiting until their wedding night to have sex I reckon the marriage rate would increase dramatically. But let’s face it, that’s never going to happen, no matter what the Conservatives do to promote “family values”.
