Basil Jarrett | Is marriage useless in 2024?

LAST WEEK, I wrote a column suggesting that marriage, or rather a healthier approach to marriage, could be one of the solutions to some of our persisting social ills, in particular crime. Marriage, I argued, with its vows of loyalty, commitment, and mutual support, is a cornerstone of stable, progressive societies, and based on numerous longitudinal studies on the association between matrimony and crime, the common belief is that marriage is a formidable deterrent against criminal behaviour, particularly among men.

Beyond its significance in fostering emotional fulfilment and companionship, I wrote that marriage appears to exert a profound influence on individual behaviour, notably in deterring criminality, with statistical analyses consistently revealing a stark contrast in crime rates between married and unmarried individuals.

That article raised eyebrows among some readers, who commented to me that they were a bit surprised to learn of this correlation between marriage and crime. Others offered me their own ideas as to why we have such apprehension to marriage, and suggested ways to change this. And then there were those who came right out and told me that I was crazy. After all, they argued, going to one type of prison can’t be the solution to avoiding another.

A GLOBAL PHENOMENON

One young lady went as far as to accuse me of trying to blame women solely for the steady fall in the number of weddings happening each June. But the article and the debate it generated forced me to give more thought to this whole business of marriage, gender roles and the future of our society. I wondered if this prevailing attitude towards marriage is the stark future, and if I’m swimming against a global tide that is gathering momentum daily. Have we as men really outlived our usefulness in society?

For instance, over 80 per cent of UWI graduates each year are women. These bright, talented, ambitious women are heavily sought after and end up getting the better jobs and having the better careers. They ascend to top managerial roles in a heartbeat and in doing so, begin to exert greater control over their lives, their reproductive decisions and, of course, their choice of partners. Just last week, for instance, the JDF welcomed its first female vice-admiral to the post of chief of defence staff, in possibly the last remaining field that men could claim as their own.

And the same thing is happening in business. In 2022, the International Labour Organisation reported that nearly 60 per cent of managers in Jamaica were women, including those who work for companies and those who own their own businesses. The survey did add the caveat, however, that the top echelons of corporate Jamaica are still dominated by men, but even that is changing as demonstrated by top women business leaders such as Scotia Group President Audrey Tugwell Henry and the aforementioned Vice-Admiral Wemyss Gorman. Tugwell Henry, in particular, is determined to see that women continue to achieve with programmes such as the Scotia Women Initiative, a groundbreaking project designed to remove barriers to greater economic and professional opportunities for women, through increased access to capital, bespoke specialised education, and advisory services and mentorship for female entrepreneurs.

FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT WOMEN

All of this has now left me asking one deceptively simple question: Is marriage still relevant in 2024? After all, for years marriage was an economic union masquerading as a fairy tale of love, devotion and white picket fences. The dowry may be a thing of the past, but if women have their own money, their own education and their own careers, why bother to pursue this most difficult of endeavours? And to prove my point, survey after survey will tell you that the main cause of divorce isn’t infidelity or other extramarital entanglements, but rather, differences over finances.

So if women can achieve all by themselves, why bother to get married? The obvious answer here, of course, is the desire to have children and to raise them in a stable, two-parent household. But even that is questionable as more and more women are foregoing children, as evidenced by our falling total fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman of childbearing age.

BUT WHAT OF THE MEN?

And let’s not leave out the men. Since men are usually the initiators of marriage, we can assume that women aren’t turning down marriage proposals or saying no with any greater frequency. Part of the reason that many men aren’t interested in marriage is because they don’t see themselves as financially able to take on such an awesome responsibility, especially when women outlearn and out-earn them. For others, many see marriage as a terrible value proposition. Last December, for example, a Jamaican man tried to deny his ex-wife a 50 per cent interest in a house they had purchased together. The courts denied him a request for her to pay him occupational rent from 2016, given that, as he claimed, she had put him out of the house since then. Wherever you are sir, we commiserate.

These stories are backed by our very own Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), which has underscored the downward trend in marriages, and the upward spike in divorces. In 2015, for example, there were 18,373 marriages to 1,734 divorces. In 2016, marriages fell to 17,609 and divorces rose to 2,146. In 2017, marriages fell further to 17,411 as fewer persons jumped the broom, and divorces climbed to 3,166 as more couples called it quits. STATIN also said that between 2020 and 2021, 8,070 divorce petitions were filed.

NOT ALL FAILED MARRIAGES END IN DIVORCE

But let’s take a bit deeper look below these numbers. Those divorce figures represent only those persons who have decided to throw in the towel. But what about those who stayed because of the kids, or because they don’t want to live on the streets or lose half of everything they own? Those marriages could also be aggregated alongside the divorces under the ‘failed’ category, making the situation even starker.

So why do we keep doing it? Outside of having children and being able to combine finances, what purpose does marriage serve? Whatever the reason, the single women I speak to do want to get married. But they bemoan the quality of the eligible men out there. Perhaps the single greatest justification for marriage is not wanting to grow old alone. But even that is questionable, since husbands usually die before their wives.

The truth is that, historically, marriage has rarely been a great situation for women. But now that they are empowered and emboldened enough to reject it, the question remains, what is the alternative for them and for society?

Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerj.com.