Marriage is Mostly About Men

My daughter got married last Thursday. It was a joyous event!

With marriage on the mind, I thought it would be a good moment to highlight a core reason marriage is important—a reason no one really talks about. Here it is:

Marriage is the umbilical cord that tethers a man to his family. If you cut the cord of marriage, men disappear, families unravel, and women are left holding the bag, or rather, the child. The woman gets first and most concrete rights to her child by virtue of her anatomy, but if there is no father to help hold the bag, the result is often instability, poverty, and suffering for the woman, her child, and society. Weddings are about formalizing and solidifying a man’s ability to know, claim, and care for his own children.

If men and women do not inherently possess their biological children and do not need to claim them, there is little need for a wedding other than to spend money to show people you love each other. This is what most modern marriage celebrants understand marriage to be: a state-recognized party about the sexual affection of adults—not a means of biological and legal tethering that secures possessorship of children to their fathers through their mothers.

If a man publicly marries a woman, signs his name in ink, and the whole village shows up to the wedding, it is difficult for a man to deny his responsibilities to the children his wife births. It would also be difficult for outside entities to deny him his unique claim to his own children. Wedding vows—publicly declared and legally binding—allow the man to be publicly and legally responsible for his children. This goes a long way to equalizing the consequences of intercourse for the man and woman and balancing their joint responsibilities to their children. Marriage tethers a man to his children, and this is a good thing.

We couldn’t be happier about adding another good, decent, noble man to our family!

With love,

Kimberly

This post is (mostly) taken from my book, The Invincible Family.

My daughter and her brand-new husband :)