The Marriage Strike Really Bothers Prager

Dennis Prager again used his "Male-Female Hour" today to advocate people marry, or as I put it, enter into a Mexican Standoff with the state. The way he did this was asking people who'd been together for a while without being married to call, including if they had eventually married and to say whether or not it made a difference. The "funny" thing is he wanted to know if it felt different, he said, but later he dismissed the feelings of people in long term relationships who didn't feel like marrying. [This entry has been bumped up.]

I've previously discussed his rejection of the "I was burned by marriage before" reason for not marrying (again). Very similar to that, he derided the feelings of people who say they don't want to marry because their parents had a bad marriage. He again compared marriage to driving, saying that if your parents had been in a bad car accident, would that mean you'd never drive? Well, for some people, yes! But does he really want to equate marriage with driving?

There's a big difference. People grow up under their parents' marriage. The live in it. They see other people driving all of the time. They don't see the marriages of other people as intimately as they see their marriage of their own parents. Their parents' marriage is the most prominent experience with marriage, by far. It's completely understandable that they don't want to marry if their parents had a horrible marriage.

What if every summer while growing up, the family vacationed for two months in the same vacation home, and the kid hated those two months? How likely would they be to want to go the trouble of buying a similar vacation home in the same neighborhood to live there as an adult? And that's just two months a year. Their parents' marriage was something that had an effect on them every day.

When Prager says he doesn't have any respect for someone who says they don't want to marry because of their parents marriage, I am prompted to give a reply Prager previously found to be lifechanging:

SO WHAT?

So what if you don't respect them? Your respect and five dollars can get them a decent hamburger.


There's another difference between driving and marrying.

Driving gets someone to someplace they want to go. It can help them earn a living, visit their doctor, and do all sorts of practical and enjoyable things.

Especially for a man who is already getting everything he wants from a relationship, marriage gets him nothing. It doesn't take him anywhere he wants to go.

Growing up under a bad marriage can be very damaging to someone. Does Prager deny the impact marriage has on children?

Prager has clearly felt compelled to marry, so much so that he's in his third marriage. And it bothers him that are so many other men who don't feel like they have the same obligation.

Is this a matter of misery loves company? Is this a matter of Prager feeling like men should pay for sex and it isn'r fair that there are men who aren't, or are paying less?