Turtles

Marriage is not the institution it was when my parents married. When being a bastard had some kind of meaning other than just being an awful person. When women had to marry if they were pregnant - because keeping a job often wasn't an option, married or not. When a woman needed a man to get a credit card. Because men on their own were pitied, as well as suspected of being swish, and were expected to have a son to carry on the name. When people were routinely called Mr. Mrs. Miss - not first names. And that last name mattered. When a child who wasn't clearly only one nationality, or genetic type, would be rejected by the family they didn't look enough like, or both families they didn't look enough like them either. When marrying someone outside your "race" was illegal in many places. And frowned upon everywhere. When women had to carry a child to birth, or risk her life on an illegal and unsafe abortion, and contraception was unreliable, often illegal, always a bit difficult to obtain. When living together was "shacking up" or "living in sin" instead of a common, normal phase of a relationship.


Children of single parents are just children now. Pregnant and married women are not routinely fired from their jobs. Women can legally handle their own finances. Men can be gay, or live alone - although I think the pity and suspicion might actually be worse these days. I don't think I have ever been called Mrs. D-lastname, at least not un-ironically. I can't remember the last time I called someone Mr. Anything. Children with well mixed genetics are accepted by all but the most recalcitrant bigots. Obviously different-looking couples don't get more than a second look. Contraception is routine, abortion is still a problem in a lot of places, but with decent contraception that is less of an issue. Still dealing with the economic/insurance side of that, and the churches are still digging in their regressive heels. Women are making their own decisions.

This really has all changed in the course of my mother's lifetime. Can't expect people her age to get over that easily, especially if they don't want to. Especially if they indulge in gilded nostalgia. And we have a ways to go to break down the assumptions and stereotypes. And that is just in this country, other places are still a couple of generations behind, and unwilling to adjust. Other places are doing better, leaving us looking crotchety and priggish - which is quite true.

And this all comes with more responsibility, more work, newly discovered problems. I think this is why the gay marriage issue looms so large for so many. It was so deeply buried underneath all the other issues that affected the vast majority, no one not directly affected even realized it was there.

This from The Onion, and flask.

Underneath that will be other problems. It's problems all the way down.


It's turtles all the way down.