What’s “married”?
This week at the bookstore, I noticed The Paperbag Princess on the rotating rack of paperback picturebooks (where there are usually annoying books about characters from television). Someone had recommended this recently (I thought it was in the comments to this post of Julie’s, but I can’t find it there) so I read it, laughed, then called D over and read it to him.
The punchline of the book is "They didn’t get married." In the car on the way home, D asked, "what’s ‘married’?" This surprised me at first, but then I realized that it’s really not something that we’re likely to talk about. D was the ringbearer at my brother’s wedding last year, but he didn’t ask a lot of questions about what was going on. And we always sort of mumble past the last few pages of Babar and Zephir where the General gives Isabelle to Zephir to marry as his reward for rescuing him.
We fumbled a minute, then T came up with the answer that marriage is when two people decide to make a new family together. Sounds about right to me.
I’ve got a hold in at the library on Stephanie Coontz’s new book; I’ll see if she comes up with any better of a definition.
June 5th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
I LOVE the Paper Bag Princess! The final image of the princess skipping off alone into the sunset in her paper bag has become one of my iconic mental images…
In our family, we’ve also adopted Elizabeth’s line, “FANTASTIC! Do it again!” from when she’s wearing out the dragon.
June 6th, 2005 at 11:43 am
Here’s a nice anthropological overview of marriage: http://www.stpt.usf.edu/~jsokolov/2410gaymar1.htm
I love “The Paper Bag Princess”, too. A friend recommended it, but it took me a long time to actually find it on eBay because I was spelling it “Paperbag”.
June 6th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
A lesbian couple I know was forced to think about this when their nephew asked what it meant that they were getting married. Their answer:
“Marriage is when two people promise each other to be best friends forever, and make their own family.”
June 10th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
my boys figured out fairly early that they had friends whose parents were divorced, their lives were very much worsened, and when my wife and I bickered in front of them they got very worried. And we assured them that we loved each other and no one was going anywhere, and they were reasonably okay. Convoluted explanations were not particularly necessary, but they wanted reassurance that both of us would be there for them.