The Cow and Milk

At the end of her first hour today, Dr. Laura took a call from a couple who was shacking up, and had been so for ten years. To her credit (and if you check my Dr. Laura tag, you know I generally think she's great), she blamed them both, not just the man. But I wanted to go over something she said. She said that man was getting the milk without buying the cow.

I wrote about this before in this entry. But I wanted to briefly look at this again.

Among other things, this statement assumes that her company is more valuable than his. After all, it isn't just her living with him – he's also living with her without marriage. But Dr. Laura's statement, common to a lot of people, implies that she isn't getting anything out of the deal. He may be subsidizing, partially or entirely, her life. He likely is providing her with things like physical protection. He may be paying for her housing, food, clothes, entertainment, car, vacations, recreation, medical care, etc.

In some states, they are as good as married in terms of legal obligations, at least in the sense that if they parted ways, he’d be obligated to keep subsidizing her life.

Why doesn't anyone see this as him risking/giving away something, too? By only looking at this as denying her something, it appears to be a tacit admission that marriage doesn't benefit men, but does benefit women. Dr. Laura refers to marriage as him laying down his life for her, but where is the mention of what she will be sacrificing/obligating herself to by becoming a wife?

As I've said before, shacking up is a bad idea for many reasons and I advise against it. But when marriage-and-family-minded people speak out against shacking up, they should not give the impression that 1) shacking up is mainly wrong because it keeps men from being punished the way they should be; or that 2) men are of lesser value than women. If men are expected to provide compensation for sex (or even just time), then they become customers or bosses, not partners, and if that is the case, then the woman is morally obligated to give him whatever he wants (within certain limits) and he's not under the same moral obligation towards her. Is that how relationships should be?