The last time I was in Turkey, a rug salesman offered me 500 camels for my daughter. Not a bad offer. In other parts of the world I would have been expected to send 500 camels with her as dowery.
In either case, she probably would not have fared very well. But we think of all that as primitive; we are way beyond camels.
Admittedly, we have moved on from the days when King David had eighteen wives and, gathering pace, King Solomon had a thousand, though, to be fair, about three hundred of them were concubines.
We no longer pay heed to the musings of the likes of Sts. Thomas Aquinas ('children, imbeciles and women') or Paul ('seen and not heard') or Jerome ('when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called a man').
By the middle of the eighteenth century we were still hearing from Blackstone, father of English law, that: 'the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage'.
Each opinion is worst than the last. Even today, with apparently the best intentions in the world, the current Catholic patriarch offers a shocking metaphor, describing Europe as a 'grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant' but instead 'elderly and haggard'. I wonder does he think of himself as no longer vital and effective at 78 years of age?
Our view of women has changed, and mercifully, is still changing. This change sheds further light on the contours of traditional marriage. We no longer sanction polygamy, and we set age limits to prevent the marriage of children while we joyfully celebrate the weddings of elderly, infertile couples. Today there are laws against wife-beating and rape within marriage but because these crimes happen in private they still happen.
The one thing about marriage that does not seem to change is its popularity. We are entranced by the new dream of love and mutually sustaining support which will enable us to become our best possible selves. Until we start leaving.
Today, nearly a third of marriages will end in divorce and this figure is expected to rise to 45 per cent in the next few decades, and women are the initiators. Of divorces initiated by one party, 69 per cent are initiated by women.
Not surprisingly, the more education and money a woman has the more likely she is to end the marriage. When a woman holds the belief that the household tasks of housework and parenting should be shared equally, there is a greater risk of marital breakdown and divorce.
The pat answer given by traditionalists is that feminism is responsible for marital breakdown. But that answer is untrue to the degree that it is incomplete.
Young women are now educated to the same level as men. Their income enables them to buy their own car and then their own home. Contraception allows them to enjoy their sexuality in a way that has always been open to men. They are self-sufficient, materially and psychologically, and they are not going to put up with inequality within the home.
The more complete answer is that a growth in the divorce rate occurs when a man believes that housework and parenting should not be shared equally. He says, 'I love you' and she replies, 'Well, it doesn't feel like it over here'. Because most couples cannot afford a stay at home parent they are both working full time jobs but she is double-jobbing as 'super mum'.
While parenting and housework are the essence of family life, they both believe that his work is more important than hers. Her caring work within the home is not considered of primary value. Oh, we say it is but men are not rushing home in droves to do it. Not only is there there concern for his sense of self worth, there is also the very salient question of salary.
Government cements tradition when he gets paid more than she does and she alone gets what should be parental leave. It is such an unhappy place for women that, even knowing they will be poorer, they leave it. Traditional marriage is on very shaky ground because we are continually trying to extract equality out of inequality.
We need to acknowledge that traditional marriage is, and always has been, a chimera. Feminism confronts not only sexism but also racism and classism, indeed, the interweaving of all forms of oppression. Marriage changes its shape as we change our culture – and we are. If we really believe that more love and equality within marriage is better than less, then, perhaps, it is time to include gayness within its ever evolving expression.
Gail Grossman Freyne is living in Melbourne after practising as a family therapist in Ireland for 35 years. She is author of Care, Justice & Gender: A New Harmony for Family Values (Veritas 2006).
Marriage conflict image by Shutterstock.