From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!hao!seismo!uwvax!reid
Newsgroups: net.singles
Title: Re: net.single_but_wish_the_hell_I_was_married
Article-I.D.: uwvax.805
Posted: Wed Mar 30 01:59:22 1983
Received: Sun Apr  3 01:22:32 1983
References: sun.232


Net.suicide is also composed mostly of people who want to leave it....

Seriously, I think that staying single will never become a truly viable choice
until enough people do it, which is sort of a vicious circle.  You kinda get
left high and dry, in a sense, if you want to be a bachelor or a bachelorette.
Some 95% of Americans get married, and lots do it time and time again.  If
everybody were single, there would be a slight problem with 'constancy' in
life, but I think it could work really well.  There are a couple of valid
reasons why not to get married, in my opinion.  I'll try to be brief, unless
I am exhorted by my ardent fans to elaborate:

First, it seems to me to be sort of a losing proposition to stay with one
person for 30+n years, with two obvious exceptions (obvious?):  That you don't
wind up old and lonely (usually) and that what usually holds people together
is the committment to marriage, not the commitment to each other.  Make it
work no matter what.

Second, one of the strongest reasons for the existence of family structure has
been economic, or so I'm learning in my women's studies class.  Now that 
technology has all but completely separated the relationship between the work
we do and survival (making clothes, farming for food, etc.) there is less need
for the traditional 'family unit'.  In fact, many careers and lives are
severely limited by trying to impose a family structure on top of it, when
neither party involved wants to 'play house'.  A radical exception and problem
is the fact that women bear children, and usually look after them, and that
puts them back into the position of being 'necessary in the family,' instead
of just have earning power and applying it where it is needed.  This is getting
too long, I'll shut up.

Glenn Reid
..seismo!uwvax!reid