Unmarital Bliss
Beside the neat little bungalow, you see a plastic pedal car parked at a silly angle. You hear the words “Mommy” and “Daddy” tumble lightly out an open window, and you see toys and crayons on the floor. Nothing gives away the unorthodox fact of life in this house on Loma Street in Santa Barbara: Parents John Foran, 44, and Kum-Kum Bhavnani, 47, like a growing cohort of couples across America, are happily and studiously unmarried. “It seemed like the woman became less of a person when she got married,” Bhavnani says. “Marriage benefits men more. I never wanted that for myself.”
So Bhavnani and Foran joined a quiet revolution of couples who are shunning marriage, choosing to live in a manner considered unacceptable--even sinful--for 1,000 years. Some fear that marriage would freight their relationship with traditional gender roles they don’t want. Others are concerned that a marriage license will become a crutch that allows the relationship to atrophy, or they’re looking for a less cumbersome exit if love sours.
Various federal agencies say the number of unmarried families nationwide jumped seven-fold from 1970 to 1998, and since 1970, according to Rutgers University, the marriage rate has fallen by more than one-third, to its lowest point ever. So pervasive has this new attitude become in American life that a recent Rutgers survey found that just 30% of 12th-grade girls believe marriage makes for a happier life. Breaking with the past, the Census Bureau does not ask about marriage in its short form survey this year.
Remarkably, the revolution has spread beneath the moral radar. When marriage rates dipped a generation ago, the news brought national angst, raising cries of social decay and declining morality. Those voices are scarcely heard now, though they exist if you want to find them. When asked, many academic, political and religious leaders say that the spurning of marriage is contributing to the decline of an institution embedded in the beliefs and traditions of the nation. “A community without marriage is a community that asks for and gets chaos,” says Josette Shiner, former president of the conservative think tank Empower America. The remark stems from a quote that Democratic New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan uttered in the tumultuous 1960s. Back then, and through the two decades that followed, the decline in marriage was blamed in one way or another for nearly every social problem, from crime to teen pregnancy to drug abuse.
So why is there no similar outcry today? The answer could lie here: Crime rates fell sharply in the 1990s, schools improved in many communities, test scores rose and drug abuse and teen pregnancies diminished. The social fabric mended a bit--at a time when unmarriage went mainstream. Perhaps the doomsayers had it wrong.
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Nothing could be more mainstream than the dinner table chatter in the Bhavnani-Foran house. It is the same variety found whenever parents and small children negotiate a meal. Three- year-old Cerina would like more vegetables on her pasta. Amal, 2, declares that he is ready for ice cream now! Dessert arrives after the meal, replies Bhavnani, an animated woman with an accent that evokes her childhood in England. She has more patience for Amal’s sugar cravings than for the notion that she’s to blame for a list of social ills.
“We love our children and raise them in a very stable home. Why would anyone assume that a marriage guarantees that children will be raised better?” Though she was brought up in a traditional family, Bhavnani chose not to marry. Still, she sought a partnership of equals, genuine intimacy and communication. And she wasn’t going to settle for less.
For centuries,”marriage may have supported women and children but it also served to control them,” says Nancy Cott, a historian from Yale whose book “Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation” will be published this fall. By the mid-20th century, however, women began gaining greater access to education and better-paying jobs and, with the advent of the pill, won control of their fertility. Suddenly the marriage imperative was not so powerful.
“Now there’s a strong case to be made for the argument that marriage is no longer the obvious model for almost everyone to follow,” Cott says. “And the fact that this change has taken place in about 25 or 30 years is really quite impressive.”
When Bhavnani met Foran in 1991, she found someone who was ready for the kind of relationship she wanted. She wasn’t interested in any stigma society might attach. “I can’t see how people who choose something other than marriage could be blamed for so many things,” she says. “You really have to question whether that’s true.” University of Delaware sociologist Bahira Sherif argues that improvements in the last decade in problems of substance abuse, violence, poor school performance and teen pregnancies make it clear that the unmarried never should have borne any blame. “It’s always been a kind of scapegoating,” she says.
What does remain, however, is a form of discrimination against unmarrieds that is now illegal when it comes to other groups. Landlords in many states can refuse to rent to unmarried couples. Hospitals can deny them visiting privileges. Even airlines are permitted to withhold special fares and frequent-flyer perks reserved for families. Gay couples and senior citizens were granted protection from many forms of discrimination in a law signed by Gov. Gray Davis last autumn. But straight unmarried couples were not covered and often are not given protection because, until recently, no lobby has worked on their behalf, says Dorian Solot, co-founder of a national organization, the Boston-based Alternatives to Marriage Project. “Unmarried people are beginning to push for their rights,” Solot says, “and the model for this might be what happened for the gay community in the last few decades.”
Gay activists won protections after attitudes were changed by long-term public opinion campaigns and extensive lobbying. Sherif thinks a similar shift may be in store for unmarried heterosexual couples. Though no large political movement is underway, many signs of changing attitudes are evident. In 1995, a Church of England report declared that “living in sin” should no longer be considered sinful.
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“Unbreakable” is one word that comes to mind as Adrienne Albert describes her relationship with Monte Stettin during the medical siege that followed her diagnosis of breast cancer on June 1, 1999. She had surgery on June 11 and a full summer of radiation therapy left her debilitated. Through it all, the man who 10 years ago had pledged--without marriage--to be her partner for life was a completely devoted lover, nurse, chef and friend. “‘I was married once, when I was young, and my then-husband just bailed out when we hit a rough patch,” recalls Albert, a professional composer in her 50s. “Monte doesn’t bail.”
Both Albert and Stettin, a screenwriter, are proud that they have maintained an exclusive long-running relationship without leaning on a legal contract. Indeed, they suspect the very fact that they aren’t married motivates them to be more attentive and devoted to each other. “I’ve seen cases where marriage creates a complacency,” says Stettin. “Some people just think that the power of getting married is enough to keep them together. But when you know that the other person is staying with you solely because it’s a choice, you have a tendency to treat the relationship with much more care.”
During rough times, Stettin and Albert have been to couples counseling. They say they have learned the art of communication and have come to trust in the promises they have made to each other. “I don’t feel insecure because I know Monte’s character,” Albert says.
They are still wary of mentioning their marital status in certain settings and are concerned about discrimination. It’s one of the ironies of the unmarried movement: Over the years, many unmarrieds undoubtedly will spend more time and energy trying to mesh with American society than they would if they simply married and, if their relationship failed, got divorced.
When Albert was in the hospital, doctors and nurses simply assumed Stettin was her husband and granted him the health-care decision-making rights and visiting privileges only a husband would get. He made no effort to correct them. But a part of him resents having to deny the true nature of a relationship that makes him proud. “The bond and promise we have are as strong as anyone’s,” he says. “The spirit of our relationship is just as strong. We should get equal treatment.”
If equal treatment is going to come, it will be in part through the efforts of such groups as the Alternatives to Marriage Project and the Los Angeles-based American Assn. for Single People. Both support efforts to grant domestic partnerships, whether same-sex or heterosexual, the same benefits and protections in housing, employment and other areas that married couples receive from government and employers.
The Los Angeles organization wants unmarried couples to be included in a new statewide registry being organized by state government for same-sex couples and unmarried senior-citizen couples. The registry will allow people to declare their commitment and receive some legal protection from discrimination. “The idea is to create more options for people to live their lives,” says Thomas F. Coleman, executive director of the association. “There’s a way to think about this that suggests it could be better for marriage. With more choice, fewer people will make the mistake of getting married because they think that’s the only thing open to them. The fewer of these mistakes, the fewer divorces.”
Though he’s optimistic about the outlook for unmarried couples, Coleman worries that elected officials won’t stick up for the rights of the unmarried for fear of negative reactions from religious conservatives.
Paradoxically, those with concerns about the decline of marriage voice similar frustration. “All the politicians say they are for the family but they never quite get to the point where they use the word ‘marriage,’ ” says sociologist David Popenoe , co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. “Why don’t politicians say they are pro-marriage? Because we’ve gotten to the point in our society where there are so many people living outside of marriage. It would be very hard for a candidate to come out strong without alienating all those people.”
To defenders of marriage, this new reality is disturbing. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, looked at the recent marriage data and saw a bleak future. “Gone will be the tenderness and unselfishness that occurs when a man and woman form an unbreakable bond of commitment to one another,” he wrote in an article posted on the organization’s Web site.
Popenoe says couples should understand that “the breakup rate for people who make relationships without marriage is much higher” than for those who exchange wedding vows and that many feel marriage still has the power to make lives better. Married people live longer, he argues, and several studies have suggested that they are happier and healthier than single people. Advocates for the unmarried, however, say no studies have been done comparing those factors to couples in longtime relationships outside of marriage.
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If you look for happily unmarried couples, you inevitably stumble into some of the problems Popenoe describes. For more than two years, Larissa Wilson’s friends admired the strength of her relationship with her partner. She said he was the first man who treated her as a person, not an object. Wilson had believed they were in love deeply, and she thought permanently. But a reporter’s telephone call to her Glendale home quickly revealed unsettling news.
“It’s too bad you didn’t call a month ago,” said Wilson, a 32-year-old artist and designer. Though she and her partner are still good friends, “we’ve broken it off,” she said, “and I think it’s pretty much a final decision.” The relationship suffered from the same things that kill many marriages: financial stress, time pressure and a slow falling out of love. (Wilson’s two previous serious relationships ended when her partner proposed marriage and she declined.)
Her partner had “actually said that he didn’t have faith that we were meant to be together,” Wilson recalled. Sadness colored her voice. She said she’d never been “one of those women chasing a diamond ring,” but she has always wanted a life partner. “I think the problem was that we didn’t communicate about a lot of important things.”
Would being married have made a difference? The experts and their data say yes. People who go through a marriage ceremony, pledging themselves publicly and binding themselves legally, do have longer relationships, according to statistics. But no one knows if this extra longevity equals better relationships or simply longer-lasting unhappiness.
Wilson is of two minds on this. “Some friends of mine got married recently and they said they instantly felt closer and more relaxed.” But over time, she adds, couples who want to stay together need something more than the rush of good feeling that comes from a wedding. They need a commitment, communication and a conscious effort to share their lives. If they don’t have this, “then I’m not sure staying together because of the pressure of being married is good for anyone.”
Unless, of course, children are involved. Decades of study have shown that children thrive in stable families. And here, married and unmarried couples alike share common ground. Some advocates for alternatives to marriage have proposed that couples who have children out of wedlock sign a legal document committing themselves to parental responsibilities until the children are grown. “We are in favor of personal responsibility,” Coleman says. “We just think there can be a lot of different options for being responsible people in a serious long-term relationship.”
It is difficult to refute the claim that children in loving two-parent homes fare best when it comes to physical and mental health, education and even financial security. Popenoe cites research that children are better off in families headed by married couples, followed by families headed by single mothers and, finally, by stepparents. Few studies have been done, however, comparing those living arrangements to families headed by unmarried couples--although here, too, the numbers have changed remarkably. Nationwide, children under the age of 15 in households where the parents aren’t married rose from 196,000 in 1970 to 1.5 million in 1998, according to the Census Bureau.
How do children feel about it? Solot says she has found they do not necessarily feel disadvantaged. She interviewed now-grown children of unmarried parents and found they “considered the fact that their parents were unmarried really unremarkable. The only real difficulty they had was finding a good word for the relationship their parents had. Otherwise, their lives were pretty much like everyone else’s, and that’s the point.”
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Twenty-two years of loyalty and love seem to qualify the non-marriage of Phyllis Klein and Roger Lefkon as a serious relationship. Both say that in choosing not to marry, they have been able to create lives that fit their desires for loving companionship and their needs for independence.
This is visible in the comfortable single-story house they share in Beverly Hills. The most important rooms are the separate dens. Hers has a couch, a desk, a treadmill and a television. It is decorated with pictures of dogs, one of her passions. His is dominated by a sofa, a desk, a large television for watching sports and hundreds of clown pictures and statues collected over the years. “We love each other but we really appreciate our differences,” says Klein, who owns and runs a public relations firm. “We are both with people working hard all day long and we value being alone when we need it.”
Klein and Lefkon, an executive with Merv Griffin Entertainment, come from parents who were married and formed traditional families. They each had been married once. Lefkon knew soon after their first date that he wanted to be with Klein forever. He courted her and plied her dog Muffy, a Maltese, with squeak toys. Soon, he told her he was interested in trying marriage again. Klein said she was not.
“Today I see a lot of young women who are desperate to get married and have a man give them their identity, but I felt the opposite of that,” she recalls. “I wanted to be myself, in a relationship with someone who was my equal. I didn’t want to be an appendage.”
Lefkon found this individuality appealing. “We were like the Odd Couple. She’s always late. I’m always on time or early. She sleeps in. I get up at dawn. We were both determined to be who we are, but we were also determined to be together. We like our differences.”
The differences were preserved in a self-made relationship that has proven stronger and longer-lasting than the marriages of many of their friends. They’ve succeeded, in part, because they allow for those areas where they are not compatible. “There wasn’t really a plan about how things would evolve, but there was a lot of respect,” Lefkon says. “We talk about things that we think are different and discover a great deal about each other. It’s still going on.”
Klein adopted this live-and-let-live philosophy after watching her own parents. “My mother spent 60 years trying to change my father and it didn’t ever work,” she laughs. So Klein chose to have a marriage based on a mutual desire for companionship and admiration for her partner’s individual qualities and quirks. “A lot of marriages are on automatic pilot. The people get married and stay together because of it,” she says. “We are together because of a conscious choice we make every day. We just happen to have made that choice every day for more than 20 years.”
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Michael D’Antonio’s last article for the magazine was a profile of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon.
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