I do not attach any political or economic significance to what I writing about in this post. Ordinarily, that would be clear, but this blog usually deals with political economy and these days people can find a political dividing line in just about anything.
Here is the background:
1. Tyler Cowen said that both he and David Brooks enjoyed Eli J. Finkel’s The All-or-Nothing Marriage.
2. I read the book. I thought that the research methods were good (they included some controlled experiments) and the author’s synthesis of others’ research was very competent.
3. From my perspective, the book seemed off base. While I was reading it, my daughter sent an adorable video of my one-year-old grandson sitting in his high chair, taking food off his tray and reaching down to hand it to their dog. Dog and boy are clearly delighted with themselves. The video vividly illustrated what the book is missing.
4. I got around to reading the David Brooks column, and it turns out that he also rejects the thrust of the book, although perhaps less vehemently than I do.
Very briefly, Finkel views marriage as an institution that has evolved to move up the Maslow hierarchy. Prior the industrial revolution, it was about survival. Once material needs became more secure, it was about love in a highly gendered society–the man as bread-winner and the woman as home-maker. With more gender equality, marriage now is about mutual self-actualization.
I see marriage in a larger context of relationships, including the extended family and the community. Finkel is focused solely on the couple. Children only get mentioned once, when Finkel says that they are big time-sink. Grandchildren are not mentioned at all. My own informal research says that grandparent couples are happy couples. Some of that is selection bias–if you stuck it out as a couple long enough to have your grandchildren born, you are in good shape as a couple. But I think that some of it is that if you have children, then you want grandchildren, and when they arrive you feel real joy and satisfaction. Finkel’s self-realization blather is beside the point.
Any discussion of the evolution of modern romantic relationships and ideas regarding those relationships in the West would be incomplete without mentioning C.S. Lewis’ The Allegory Of Love and the history of the impact of the innovations regarding “Courtly Love” (“fin’amour”) introduced to Europe by the French troubadours in the early High Middle Ages.
You are right, Arnold. For most normal people, family is very important.
Brooks paraphrases: “You should choose the spouse who will help you elicit the best version of yourself. Spouses coach each other as each seeks to realize his or her most authentic self.”
The relationship between self & family is key — how important is your role as husband? as father? as grandfather? compared to your role as worker? your role as hobby-enjoyer of whatever hobby you enjoy?
After the multiple divorces of my father, stepmothers; mother, stepfathers — having a good marriage was very important to me. My authentic self involves being a good husband, and a good father (to 4 kids); also a better brother and better cousin, tho this is more recent.
If your “self-actualization” involves being in love with a spouse, being a part of the “family”, then self-esteem is consistent with good marriage.
One does get to choose one’s ambitions — society supporting family is different than society supporting individuals. (I’m no longer a Libertarian, tho I support most libertarian policies.) What’s best for civilization is social support for families, and most of those who know this are voting Rep now.
Funny how so many “self-actualized” folk are looking for the feeling of belonging to a larger, more noble, transcendent group.
Also important would be the traditional (though since the 1960s, somewhat downplayed) teachings of the Catholic Church that neither the procreative nor the “unitive” aspects of marriage can be separated from each other.
Consequent to that thought are the much maligned teachings of the Church against contraception (the exclusion of the procreative) and the less well-known teachings against artificial means of conception (the exclusion of the unitive).
Whether you agree or no, the Church pretty much formed the understanding of marriage in Western society until at least the 1500s. And what she taught was that marriage was the founding of a miniature society of a very definite and unchangeable form, one where (at least the possibility) of children and the “mutuum adiutorium” of the spouses far from being in opposition to each other as Finkel seems to suggest, are in fact both essential to the very nature of marriage.
I base this off the title and some Amazon reviews, but I might also quibble whether “all” really mean “all” in his usage. The traditional understanding of “all” would be the person entire, which includes the possibility of that person not just as husband, but also the possibility of that person as father, grandfather, etc., mutatis mutandis, that person as wife, mother, grandmother.
This “all” includes my wife not only as my wife, but under the new aspect as “the mother of my children” (and vice versa, for me as both husband and father). This is unique precisely because it is *not* “self-actualization” at all, but the result of union which requires both of us, because of course without her I would not be a father and without me she would not be a mother.
Short version, if someone’s understanding of the “all” of marriage does not also include “actualizing” the possibility of mother and a father, it is short of “all”.
My own informal research says that grandparent couples are happy couples.
This is a huge self-selection bias but this probably happens that most people over 50 made it already. They are aren’t as worried by the future and if their austist son can make in modern society. (Guilty here.)
1) The big change of marriage is the change in age to 30ish in much later part of life. (I believe this is the main driver of modern assortative mating.)
2) The decrease in kids and most modern couples are moving towards 1 – 2 kids in the modern economy.
Many couples are motivated to have kids and grandkids, and derive enough satisfaction from those kids and grandkids that it really benefits the strength of their bond and stability of their relationship and marriage.
But you have to admit, most people clearly seem a lot less motivated and satisfied by them these days. Some of that is a simply “time inconsistency” mistake that people will regret later on. But a lot of that is that people – and especially women – are judging the opportunity cost of child rearing (to the acceptable standards of their reference social group) to be very high.
And I think most people in developed countries are being perfectly correct and rational in this assessment.
It’s not easy to figure out which is the chicken and egg between “selfish pursuit of hedonic experiences and self-actualization” and “high opportunity cost” in terms of part of the way people are now answering the question of “what is marriage for and about?” What I mean is, it’s not easy to tell the difference between an income effect and a preference change. You can observe a couple that is engaging in “self-actualizing” activities without kids, and not know whether that is their preference and they would be doing the same things no matter how wealthy they were, or whether their priority preference is for kids (or more kids), but they perceive the opportunity cost as being too high.
So, it’s not that kids and grandkids aren’t really important and beneficial, but that in modern times in developed countries the people who will be having the kids will tend to be the ones who are especially motivated to have them, and one of those groups will be people who are especially sensitive to these joys in a way that overcomes the high opportunity costs.
Unfortunately at this point I’ll simply have to stop because the discussion of topics related to the issue of who is having how many children and why and whether anyone is allowed to think anything about that is entirely socially radioactive and thus effectively prohibited.