Moving Past Marriage

Book excerpt: A must-read for anyone who has felt they are at a disadvantage simply because they are single or unmarried. Married Americans enjoy over 1,000 benefits and entitlements that are withheld from our non-marital counterparts. Health insurance, immigration rights, tax privileges (such as the estate tax), and hiring policies favor the married. Marriage is subsidized and incentivized by the federal government. Social customs such as blockbuster weddings, subsidized honeymoons, and gifts reserved for wedded couples reify matrimony as a centering norm and further the idea that "marriage is best," a commonplace in popular psychology, where marriage-averse people are often tarred as "commitment-phobes." Despite this blatant and widespread prejudice, non-marital Americans—non-marital people—have not galvanized as a group to demand equality and inclusion. Why? Moving Past Marriage argues that it is because of our troubled relationship to history. As women's history once was, non-marital history has been buried, so that the disenfranchisement that non-marital people share in wedlock-dominated societies, as well as our remarkable, far-ranging achievements, have been hard to spot. In recovering our own history, non-marital people can become self-aware as a group and begin to challenge marriage-centric thinking and practice.