DEBATENATE

Topics / Family, dating and gender

The challenge

“Marriage is just a piece of paper”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Marriage is not a piece of paper. It's a public vow, and vows change how people live. Genesis two says a man leaves his parents, holds fast to his wife and the two become one flesh. The numbers agree. Sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur found kids raised apart from a parent do worse on average. Brookings scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill found that people who finish high school, work full time and marry before having kids rarely end up poor. You'll say that's correlation. Some of it is. But a promise in front of God and your grandmother is harder to walk out on than a lease. So find the right person, get married and have kids. If it's just paper, why are people so afraid to sign it? A diploma is just paper too. Ask anybody who earned one.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Children do better on average raised by their married mother and father. Marriage is the institution that keeps both parents in the house.

    McLanahan and Sandefur found that children raised apart from one of their parents had worse outcomes on average, including higher rates of dropping out of high school.

  2. Marriage is one of the proven steps out of poverty. So get married, and don't wait forever to do it.

    Haskins and Sawhill found that adults who finished high school, worked full time, and married before having children rarely lived in poverty.

  3. Marriage is a covenant that creates something new. It isn't a receipt for feelings that already exist.

    Genesis two, verse twenty-four, describes a man leaving his parents, holding fast to his wife, and the two becoming one flesh.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Married people may just be different to begin with. They're more educated, more stable, and better off, so the marriage itself isn't doing the work.

Nate: Selection explains part of it. Commitment explains the rest. People who have bound themselves in public plan longer, invest more and fight fair, because leaving costs more. That's not a flaw in the paper. That's the point of it.

What he grants the other side

A certificate alone doesn't make a marriage good.

The lines

Sources

  1. Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Harvard University Press, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (1994)
  2. Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution Press, Creating an Opportunity Society (2009)
  3. The Bible, Genesis 2:24 (ancient)

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