Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
First of all, there wide variety of marriages and equivalent arrangements in human history is huge, and some are fairly recent. Married couples living apart for years for example has been very common no more than a few generations ago, as has been couples living together without marrying. The social significance of marriage still varies hugely even within one country.
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In a more general sense, people benefit from social and economic bonds. People who they can rely on emotionally, and who can buffer them from material hardship. It can be siblings, extended family, church, a tightly-knit village - some protection from social and economic isolation.
The problem is that in most of those societies where marriage is breaking down, the other social networks have already declined. Community declined, extended family declined, church attendance declined. There's nothing to fill the deficit of social capital. So when the nuclear family goes, what's left is atomization and isolation.
This is where Westerners can learn something from immigrants. If you go to a public picnic site like Sandy Beach or North Glenmore Park, you'll notice that at least three-quarters of the sites are being used by visible minorities, typically in groups of 15+. Parents, grandparents, children, cousins, neighbours getting together and sharing their day. Their Western counterparts, presumably, are at home alone watching Netflix of playing Call of Duty. Who do you think will be better able to deal with the loss of a job, a failure to meet mortgage payments, a shortfall in education savings, or the ailing health of a senior? A Canadian living in a closely-knit kinship group of 20 relatives who he has built up tremendous social capital with, or a Canadian with a temporary girlfriend, a sibling halfway across the country they see once every two years, and divorced parents who they spend awkward Christmases with?