Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Who pays the kids' tuition in a Bamber-marriage?

Having come out against covenant-marriage, I'm afraid I will also have to express my lack of interest in Bamber-marriage. In Bamber-marriage, both partners must understand economics (in order to create and agree upon percentage-based joint accounts alongside the separate ones--if you marry someone far better at math than yourself, watch out!), and are encouraged to alternate who pays for dinner till their last meal. To be fair, some of the larger obstacles of separate accounts come from having kids (Who pays the allowance? Or the college tuition?) but a Bamber-marriage is child-free, so these issues would never come up. I'm not sure what makes Bamber-marriage different from monogamous dating, and I do think there ought to be some difference between the two. Also, Bamber-marriage would only work for couples composed of two similar-earning spouses, who will never have to worry that, say, the wife is leading an upper-class lifestyle while the husband can barely get by. A marriage in which the spouses suggest different types of places to dine out depending on who's asking (and thus who's paying) breed all sorts of hostilities. Amber writes that "if the higher earning spouse held his superior salary over the head of the lower earning spouse it would make for marital discord, but again, that's more a function of interpersonal problems between the spouses than the accounting. The same situation could arise with joint banking." True, but what would lead to undercurrents of annoyance in a joint-checking marriage would lead to an outright disparity in the quality of life of the two spouses, which would be rough on the couple and especially confusing for the children, if there are any children, (who would best be advised to become child actors and start their own checking accounts as soon as possible).

While I repeat that different things work for different people, and individual couples should be free to extra- or semi-commit themselves to the institution, I'm not convinced that either Bamber-marriage or covenant-marrage is objectively a good idea.

3 comments:

Amber said...

Phoebe, my dreams are shattered. I'm here in Massachusetts, with a ring, on one knee, and now you tell me Bamber-marriage is not for you?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

I'm not against the idea of you Bamber-marrying, I just don't think it's something that should be argued for in general.

Maureen said...

Has Will heard about this?