WILL ALL MARRIAGES COME TO THIS BY THE YEAR 2000?
A SWEDISH magazine recently headed an article on the future of marriage with a picture of five men carrying one girl over the threshold of their new home.
Hopefully I quizzed four experts about how they thought marriage would change by 2000. Could a baby girl born in 1971 look forward to five husbands by the age of 30? From the responses, she has a one in four chance. NICHOLAS TYNDALL, chief officer of the Marriage Guidance Council: ‘You can look back at history books and they are talking about the break-up of marriage, so I’m not particularly impressed with the notion that we are the last married generation.
‘There is something pretty good about marriage — it’s to do with sex, but more to do with companionship and emotional security.
‘This women’s liberation business is probably going to gather momentum, and the roles of husband and wife are going to get more flexible. I don’t really see why men shouldn’t stay at home and do the housework while women go out to work.
‘I think there’s a nasty possessive streak in human beings and it is innate. I’m not impressed by all this business of wife swapping, for instance.
‘There will still be the feeling that one man and one woman are faithful to each other.’ MICHAEL KING, marital lawyer (who is unmarried): ‘There are going to be opposite trends in the age of marriage; those who leave school at 16 will marry even earlier than they do now. Many more people will go in for higher education and get married in their late 20s. There will be a lot of cohabitation outside of marriage — I personally would like to see some kind of trial marriage.
TOLERANCE
‘We are moving towards divorce by consent. The amount of legal work in divorce itself will be very small, the work will be in things like custody of the children and maintenance. Fewer and fewer women will be able to claim maintenance for their own benefit.’ EVELYN HOME, of Woman magazine: ‘Marriage is nothing to do with people’s feelings — it is to do with passing down property, and until people aren’t interested in property I don’t see marriage disappearing.
‘I don’t see any trend emerging from the letters I get — only a pendulum swing. Just at the moment it’s very fashionable to sound frightfully wicked, but this will almost inevitably be followed by a period in which people carry on as they always did.’ ALBERT FREEDMAN, editor of Forum magazine: ‘Childbearing will be restricted and the abortion pill a fact. Women will have economic and social equality. Church rulings will influence only the devoted.
‘Therefore, only couples or groups intending to have children will enter formal marriage contracts, which will be drawn up by a solicitor to meet individual needs.
‘The contracts will be concerned only with the economic security and the welfare of the children. Communes and group marriages will be totally acceptable.’