Lady Astor is reputed to have said to Winston Churchill "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavor your coffee with poison." Churchill's reply: "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it." Marriage can be a mixed blessing, a fact that is perhaps reflected in Taiwan's rising divorce rate.
The Ministry of Education recently sponsored a symposium on whether the government should make available on either a voluntary or mandatory basis, four-hour marriage classes for couples about to marry. This plan, which is embodied in a bill entitled Family Education Law is currently pending in the Legislative Yuan ("Couples may have to take seminar before saying `I do,'" May 10, page 1).
It is a pointless plan and a waste of the taxpayers' money in a time of government cutbacks. In particular, these classes should not be mandatory, but even on a voluntary basis they serve no real purpose. The government should stay out of the marriage counseling business.
There are a number of reasons the government should not be conducting "Marriage 101" classes. The ostensible reason for putting the plan forward is to counter the rising divorce rate in Taiwan. I would be much surprised if a four-hour government sponsored "how to be
happily married" class does much to curb that trend. The rise in divorce rates has a number of causes, the most fundamental being the move from traditional family social systems to a more modern social system where the emphasis shifts from the extended family to the individual.
Now I will grant that unrealistic expectations regarding the realities of marriage does contribute to divorce. I am not against pre-marriage classes nor counseling. My position is that the government, particularly the education ministry, is ill suited for the task.
Part of the reason that the government is ill suited to this task is the problem of what exactly will these classes teach, what will be put forward as the "model marriage" that couples should aim for. Marriage can have a number of different models. The two extremes are "marriage as ownership" and "marriage as partnership." Marriage as ownership is what marriage is viewed as in traditional societies. The groom "buys" the bride from her family. The bride becomes the "property" of the groom and his extended family.
The bride's place is, in this model, a quiet obedient servant of the groom and his family and to serve as a "boy baby machine." In this model wife beating, psychological abuse from the mother-in-law and infidelity on the part of the husband are all acceptable. Although that is an archaic view it is still very common in Taiwan.
The other end of the spectrum is marriage as partnership. In this view the husband and wife are viewed as equal partners working together in a venture called marriage. In this model both parties are equals, both retain their independence to a certain extent. They both partake in the decision making and control of the assets of the marriage. The extended family is not viewed as part of the partnership and they are not involved in the day to day operation. It is, on a practical level, much like a business partnership with two co-equal partners.
So which of these models is the one the government classes are going to teach? Assume one of the students asks the teacher, "If my husband beats me what should I do?" or perhaps a milder question, "Must I obey my mother-in-law?" What will the government teacher answer? The issue being, in order to teach how to do something, there must be a model of how the thing should be.
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