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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

No regrets
I was an unashamed mistress.
By Anna Sorelli
[11/17/99]

The other woman
She is a narcissistic sex worker with no knowledge of true love.
By Jonathon Keats
[11/17/99]

That Was Then
Keep it clean

[11/17/99]

This Is Now
Ask the madame: Two days of foreplay does the trick

[11/17/99]

"Drop 'em, babe!"
I have two words for married twosomes: Oral sex.
By Carol Ormandy
[11/16/99]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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Suddenly everyone is scrambling to understand.

Whither marriage? For a week, Mothers Who Think examines the battered but unbowed institution Gertrude and Alice When Alice B. Toklas met Gertrude Stein, she heard bells ring. They went on to have one of the happiest marriages of the 20th century. Wisdom ancient and new That was Then: Pay the imposts of love This is Now: No plants on the potty - - - - - - - The winners of "Is this marriage doomed?" First place Second place Third place

Well, I get it, and I didn't have to scramble to understand. In fact, what interests me is not why the members of my generation (X, if you will) are getting married less, but why anyone is surprised. What did everyone -- i.e., the baby boomers -- expect?

As the unmarried mother of a new baby, I am the object of much indignant scrutiny among the older generations, who seem to have conveniently forgotten the past 30 years, in which almost everyone I know has been emotionally pummeled in some way by divorce.

As my boyfriend asked at a recent family gathering, while playing a board game in which you have to prompt the other players to supply a particular word: "What must you do before you get married?" The answer, of course: get divorced. My father and his wife thought this was hilarious.

And yet aging boomers seem shocked and befuddled that someone would choose to avoid the whole swampy mess of broken vows and failed traditions that they've left in their wake.

People over 40 flinched with disdain when I first announced my pregnancy. "Oh," they would exclaim, barely masking their disapproval. "And ... what do your parents think?" They struggled to understand my lack of panic. "Are you going to keep it?" they asked, wide-eyed.

As if the '60s, '70s and '80s never happened. As if at least one-third of marriages don't fail. As if everyone in my family and my boyfriend's family, grandparents included, hadn't broken their marriage vows. At least once.

"What's with all these people in our family having babies without getting married?" my middle-aged uncle (who is divorced and recently broke up with his live-in girlfriend) asked my 40-ish aunt (who recently divorced her husband because he'd taken up with a married woman, who is now his third wife; my aunt is now living with her boyfriend).

The worst is from my parents. "Marriage is very important," my mother said. "It establishes a bond that you just can't get otherwise." I wanted to argue with her, but she was getting ready to leave the country with her new husband. They spend their summers at their cottage up in Nova Scotia, a good 20-hour trip away from the rest of us.

"Studies show that married couples are better off financially than single people," my father's youngish second wife insisted. It's probably true that she is better off financially since marrying my father, but I wasn't sure how that applied to me. When my boyfriend and I looked into getting married, we found out that we would pay an extra $2,000 each year in taxes.

If marriage is risky, doomed and expensive, well, why bother?

Next page | The nightmare of watching parents flirt with strangers