Marriage is a great institution, we say, to which millions of marriageable moderns respond: but who wants to live in an institution?
Men don’t need marriage, since the moral revolution of the 60s, to get sex. Women don’t need marriage, since Murphy Brown, to have children. Feminism makes it doctrine that women in their twenties should be thinking about careers, not their “MRS.” degree. And sex education makes it doctrine that safety’s the big thing, not real intimacy, much less commitment.
So who needs marriage, the question goes. Leon and Amy Kass, after 30-plus rich years of it, say: we do! Together they teach the University of Chicago course on courtship, on the history and the literature of love and marriage. They do it, they say, for students, women especially, who seem “sad, lonely and confused” in their liberation, and clueless about the prospects of “love-filled lasting union.”
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Leon and Amy Kass, Professors at the University of Chicago.