Clearly, children have become an afterthought in any culture that would come up with a concept like this. The starter marriage, by the definition from the source, is not even supposed to produce any children.

Rand said a lot about children, actually. She said it in her novels and even in her essays. She talked about teaching children self-reliance and a consistent view of the world that would enable them to make sense of it. But she never once considered what a gut-wrencher divorce really is for a child. I am not speaking of the custody warfare, though that's bad enough, but of the Great Shake. Divorce teaches impermanence and an overwhelming sense of hazard. It teaches tremendous risk aversion, to the point where marriage becomes impossible to contemplate.

what??? I must be old fashioned

There is a difference between sticking something out and making things work versus giving up when it's no longer a sparklepony fantasy. There ARE situations where the couple went separate ways for damned good reason, say, they were ready to literally kill one another, or, say, the spouse was dishonest to the point it was uncovered they were a secret serial murderer, and by the way, the bodies are buried in the vegetable garden... pass the salad, please...

But a "starter marriage" to, I guess, "get your feet wet" just to walk away because, well, she or he is cuter/hunkier than my current spouse, this cow will drag me down, this guy will never be more than a fat janitor...

It's the ultimate failure of taking responsibility for your actions. And what this - shitcanning a marriage for trivial, "sparklepony" reasons, teaches kids is why get married, when it will all just fall apart, anyway... and if you make a bad decision, you can always tale a mulligan rather than make Limoncello out of those lemons...

My first wife and I had a "starter marriage" in 1971. We met in 1969. We were divorced in 1976. We had no children. She, too, is a Rand Fan. (In the Gulch here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

This has nothing to do with social decadence or West Coast airheads. This label has all the reality of global warming. Yes, the Earth does warm (and cool), but, no, we do not need to reduce our carbon footprints. Similarly, young people start out life along many paths. So what?

Here's one for you. Have you ever learned about The Panic of 1857? Google it. I have 19th century history books that do not mention it. Maybe it was real; maybe it was not. So, too, with "Starter Marriages." The only "reality" might be on Fox.

Isn't that what us ole folks used to call living together back in the day...is this just a new PC version or just a repackaged look alike?

my first wife and I had a purely secular marriage,
courtesy of a justice of the peace and her neighbor
(a witness) -- to make our union legal as I went into
the usaf. . we grew apart when she wanted animals
and I wanted children. . we were together 15 years,
and parted still in love. . neither of us ever had
kids, though. . I desperately wanted to have
natural offspring, but it's too late now. . my second
wife and I have no kids. . it's just life ... and the second
marriage was in a church ... but the promise which
we made to one another was nothing like that which
my first wife and I made. . more like "'til death."

it turns out that my first was a kind of starter marriage,
but we held on too long. . I just couldn't leave
until she was standing on her own two feet, firmly. -- j
.

I and my wife removed the word "divorce" from our vocabulary, within the first few years of our marriage.

Marriage is not a "throw away" commitment...if it were, the vows would say "Till 2021 do we part", rather than "death".

My thought is if people would return to taking responsibility for their actions, the divorce rate would drop to nearly nothing.

47 Years and counting. Till death do us part. Has it been perfect? of course not. Do we deserve a prize? no, but we adapted to this and worked through any issues, Besides who would want to break in a new spouse every 3 or 4 years?

Starter Marriages don't surprise me at this point.

So many people have been conditioned to be risk and responsibility averse that they have to find a way to avoid them both. So they found a way to remove that from marriage.

Cultural changes like this are just going to keep coming.

Not a good thing culturally, or for men & women of reason specifically. When you begin breaking cultural contracts, others follow.

I am still working on my first/starter marriage. What I can say is that mine is just getting better as we go along. ;)

To your point, however, I think the real issue is that many don't enter marriage with the view of working through issues, remaining loyal, etc. To those, I suggest you never take on the commitment of marriage and most certainly do not have children. Once you decide you want to have children, you create an obligation to them to make your marriage work. My wife's parents got divorced just after all their children left the house and it still causes problems with the entire extended family on a regular basis.

"Starter" marriages are for people who just don't know what to expect from marriage in the first place. They are people who want something slightly more legitimate than simply shacking up, but don't really want to make the commitments inherent in marriage in the first place. You are pretty much admitting that the first time something goes south, you're just going to abandon the whole thing rather than seek the satisfaction and growth that comes from working through issues and strengthening your marriage.

The notion of lifetime marriage is from an era when the average life expectancy was 40. It is simply not realistic today.

The purpose of marriage, of course, was to very publicly swear to a mutual agreement that ensured mutual caring, support, and stability, all mainly for the benefit of children. Thus it would make sense if such agreements could be made among any group of adults, and if (by default) they would automatically end when the children are grown and leave home. But every government is too paternalistic to give couples that freedom of contract.

I've just kind of always had the opinion that anything you have to get a license from the state to do, particularly anything that says that the state enforces rules and property splits and something as evil as alimony is not something I ought to be interested in.

What's the old joke, 'The next time I feel like I ought to be married, I'm just going to find some woman that hates my guts, buy her a new house and a new car and just get it over with.'

I have been aware of this term for awhile, and as a Christian (I know this is almost a dirty word around here, but I am a Christian). I find the concept of a "Starter Marriage" offensive. I find the very idea of the morays of America slipping away from what America has been, problematic to say the least.

Of course I know that in the history of mankind, that we as a species are more serial monogamist than anything else. Which is basically what the term "Starter Marriage" implies. Still I am uncomfortable with the moral direction that society is taking.

As for "the children." My view is that ANY instability is detrimental to their development. As a divorce is the very epitome of instability for a child, I take the position that it should be avoided unless absolutely unavoidable, and even then it should be discouraged. Children need both parents unless for some reason the parent in question just should not be around the child.

In the era of "friends with benefits" a "starter marriage" seems inane. Not because of any emotional entanglements because obviously that does enter into the equation, but because of all the possible legal entanglements, of shared property, bank accounts, etc. It seems to me that a couple would be better off if they either wanted a long term commitment, or merely a consensual hook-up and keep everything separate .I doubt if human relationships can be likened to learning how to bowl.

I wonder if anyone can give me a rational reason to support getting married, and making it as a life-long promise, in the first place. Remember "good of society" is not rational. And neither is self-sacrifice.

I have never needed permission from or threat of government to be responsible. If a potentail partner needs it, I will take time to explain objective reality. If she trusts government more than she trusts me, we are not a good match. Law has changed. Marriage contracts today are not what they were in our parents era.

Somewhere I read about two kinds of marriages that resonate with me. The first kind was easy to get into and out of but children were not allowed. The second kind required that one had been in the first kind at least once, children were allowed and it was much harder to get out of. I like the idea because most people don't know what marriage is about and what they really want in a spouse, so the first kind is a learning thing. The second kind of marriage protects the children. I have no idea how such a condition could be enforced however. :-)

I am thinking that marriage itself (at least the legal version of it) is no longer relevant. In the past there were practical reasons for two (or more) people to choose to spend their lives together. Survival reasons have pretty much disappeared now, and the advent of social media presents alternatives constantly. If two people want to be together, I say they should just do it. If its not working out, then split and start over. There are practical reasons to not just jump from one relationship to another too frequently of course.