whither marriage?

The institution of marriage is reeling, boys and girls.
And rightly so.
Will it disappear altogether, like other relics of patriarchy (the Miss America Pageant, the Tea Party, cosmetic surgery), or will it morph into something vaguely recognizable?
Probably more the former than the latter.
For any society's most fundamental institution, change takes place slowly. Relatively speaking, however, the speed with which marriage is dissolving has been positively breakneck. Our divorce rate is currently over 50% (up from 5% at the turn of the previous century - we don't lead the world though, that honor goes to Belgium's 71%). Unmarried households are now a majority in almost half the states. Singles don't outnumber married folk yet, but the gap is closing (92 million to 121 million). For those who divorce but try, try again, the numbers get worse, with 65% of all second marriages failing, and 73% of all third marriages.
If you're having trouble wrapping your mind around the thought that marriage is a fundamentally flawed institution, let's take a history lesson. Marriage started out as a transfer of property - a father selling a daughter to a male who could afford her. The "sanctity of marriage" (i.e. monogamy) didn't arise until males realized they needed some way to insure that their hoarded wealth went to people who shared their values after they died (i.e. male offspring). Over the past couple thousand years, in the furtherance of property protection, society has required more and more that men be as faithful as women...but only on paper - there have always been backdoors to relieve men of monogamy's burden. Social and legal penalties for adultery (up to and including death) have always been much more severe for women, the world over. Through mistresses and prostitutes, our mores and institutions have always reflected a "wink wink" attitude toward straying males. But all humans, male and female alike, were happily promiscuous before the invention of private property. Our growing knowledge of sexual biology makes this conclusion absolutely inescapable.
Has marriage been a good deal for women? Traditionally, the woman has been expected to do all the housework - the repercussions of this thrive to the present day, when the average woman still walks almost twice as far in a lifetime as the average male. Wives have always been expected to be sexually available at any moment, under any circumstance - as late as the 1970s, it was legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife. Drag her to the town square and sodomize her! You'd have faced a misdemeanor for public indecency, at most (and probably some free rounds at the bar that night). It's only within the past few generations that husbands have been disallowed from beating wives and children at will.
Yet ironically, women today defend marriage more ardently than men! If you find this utterly flabbergasting, you have to consider that a woman's sexuality is the only property she has had (for the short time historically that women have been allowed to have property at all). The selling of her womb (and labor and loyalty) into a lifetime of servitude has been most women's only bargaining chip in life. And as horrific as marriage has been, the few alternatives have been worse. So it cannot be surprising that women defend the institution. This is classic Stockholm syndrome, of course. The only thing i can think of that's nearly as perverse in american history, is the embrace of christianity by african-americans. Mind-bogglingly, they're often more devout in the religion of their former slave masters, than the caucasians sitting next to them in the pew (assuming that their neighborhood has a desegregated church, of course).
Monogamous marriage enjoyed a long run of stability, because it was founded on inequality in fidelity, burden-sharing, and dominance. In this era, when little girls are starting to learn that they're as deserving and capable as any man, marriage is tearing itself asunder. Many bemoan this, and point to one of the most immediate effects - how shattered unions and financial hardships affect the children. To be sure, that lack of stability has produced an epidemic of dysfunctions, neuroses, and social ills.
But was marriage ever a healthy way to raise children?
Not even a little.
It produced its own epidemics of neuroses and dysfunctions, but because they were within a framework of greater social stability (and the concomitant pressures to conform), these afflictions were more internalized. Consider...
When you restrict a child's support base to essentially just two adults, any personality conflicts become amplified a thousand times (including conflicts between the parents, which is the main reason why marriages of equality fail). If you're one of those rare adults who genuinely like both your parents, try to imagine what your life would have been like if one (or both) of them were someone you've never felt comfortable around. Most don't have to imagine it. Many spend their entire lives in therapy, for no other reason.
On top of that, monogamous marriage is brutally hard on the parents. Anyone who has any idea what they're talking about will tell you that parenting is the hardest job in the world. By far. The fact that it doesn't HAVE to be that way, simply doesn't occur to most people. With only two parents, you can pretty much wipe out any together time in which they might rediscover the reasons why they loved each other in the first place. Their alone time is pretty well gone, too. If Mark Twain could have children AND be prolifically creative, why can't i? Because i refuse to enter any personal union founded on inequity. And four hands just ain't enough to healthily manage the 24-hour need machine that is a child (never mind the two hands that we force our single parents [read: mothers] to cope with). Also, isn't it fun how we contort parents with guilt over the fact that they might like one of their children just a little more than another? Beelzebub forbid we allow parents to be, what's that word...human?
So where will all this social seismology end up? "Open" marriage?
Not really, no. Oh, for a while, sure...many will try to reconcile the old with the new, and incorporate a more evolved understanding of sex into something their parents (and government dispensers of financial benefits) will recognize a little. If it's good enough for Will and Jada, Shirley MacLaine, Larry King, and Newt, it's good enough for as many as six million american marital unions, currently.
But in terms of creating a functional family unit, open marriage is a band-aid on a decapitation.
No, the ultimate return to health in family life will be the rediscovery of what community meant for human beings over the vast majority of our species' history. No humans were ever meant to isolate their domestic hardships and happinesses into two-parent dwellings. In terms of practicality, there are a number of ways a burden-sharing renewal might manifest.
Couples living and recreating and procreating together, for instance. Four, six, eight hands pitching in to love, nurture, protect...and babysit. Undamaged by any artificial pretense to monogamy, these people might even be vaguely recognizable to our barbarian eyes. Perhaps some will still have one special significant other. There is evidence that a certain amount of "social monogamy" (cleaving more closely to one particular mate) may be natural to us. But however the sex and romance work themselves out, in a household of at least three parents, all would be free to pursue some semblance of an individual life. Every child would have access to a wider pool of parents, and be free to follow natural personality affinities in choosing the adult or adults they bond with most closely.
Is all this just fanciful folderol? A dilettante's daydream?
Not even a little. There are currently around 500,000 polyamorous families in the U.S. Half a million families with at least three parents who are happily consenting partners in much more than poopy diapers.
Nor do sexually non-possessive societies exist only in the murky depths of pre-recorded history. Some still exist! For an insight into humanity that might blow your little homo sapiens skull, check out the mosuo of southwest China. Their society is based upon sexual autonomy for all, the encouragement to take as many lovers as you wish, and a disregard for biological paternity in matters of parenting.
So perhaps our future will be even more far out than what i've painted. Maybe every woman will have two or three men...which is actually the only kind of system that's ever made any sense to me. Mr. Twain too, for that matter.
Did i mention that the mosuo have no words for murder, rape, or war?
Happy humping.

(see http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2013/11/whither-marriage-2.html for part 2, a parenting guide for those not quite ready for polyamorous collectivism)