Ellyne said marriage would have advantages for the Federation
- If people know their misbehaviors may come back and
hit their family, they are less likely to commit them.
Though of course people who are not married still have families, and
live
with them, and love them just as much and everything, so this would
apply
anyway.
Or do you mean that the Federation would find it harder to identify who those families were?
Sorry, I _try_ to keep my posts down to manageable size, and then I cut out essential elements.
Now, starting with the usual disclaimer that anthropology is only an off and on interest of mine, making knowledge gaps inevitable, let's get on with this.
I suppose I should have said that the Federation is likely to encourage the idea that certain male-female pairings should come with a life long commitment attached and with strong, vested interests (both social and economic) in the other's well being. As far as I know, in most cultures where such exists, this kind of union is usually referred to as a 'marriage' (or that's how they're commonly translated). The commitment angle is the one I see as of primary interest to the Federation.
Look, I don't know everything I'd like to about human cultures, but how we organize our families and what obligations we recognize ourselves as having to them and others is one of the core elements of social structure. There are some cultures that go to the extreme that only blood relatives count, cultures where women were referred to as strangers in their husbands' homes because they weren't his blood (or, conversely, where fathers were of little account [however, matrilineal cultures are another, underdocumented-from-unprejudiced-sources-before-they-were-in prolonged-contact-with-patrilineal-cultures story]). There are cultures where relatives, by blood or marriage, are the _only_ people you can ask for help or who aren't considered competitors.
Anyhow, what we're talking isn't just the personal element of the relationship, however powerful that may be. We're talking about having as many reasons as possible to see your social and economic (and assorted other) fortunes as coinciding with another individual's, a view supported by as many _outside_ forces as may reasonably be brought to bear. Ergo, a legally recognized union of a type with major legal and social baggage.
Then, there's the children angle. The term 'legitimate,' when used in reference to children, originally had legal connotations, whether a child was considered a legitimate _heir_. It's quite possible for a child to be a legitimate heir without being what we usually think of the word legitimate as meaning (and, before anyone says, I quite agree that stigmatizing a child for parental behavior is low). Also, it's quite possible for a child to be 'legitimate' without being a legitimate heir (morgannatic marriage, female children, the list is long). Since status for minors and things such as their access to education and other privileges (medical help, the Federation version of social security, etc) are dependent on to what extent they have claim on their parents' status, I assumed a governmental interest in the issue.
Also, if there is a reasonable social expectation of having heirs for whatever reasons (duty to the state or to the family), which children can be _heirs_ is of greater interest (in our own culture, we still consider it a greater tragedy for a father to lose his only _son_ [and don't complain about the justice of it. I'm just stating a fact, not my opinions on it]. Also, consider the military's sole surviving son rule). These children are also greater leverage against the parent.
I wouldn't call it fair, but there are enough precedents that I would call it true to how a lot of people act with the right cultural conditioning.
Would a delta grade who had a child out of wedlock or whatever receive any kind of state help? Unlikely.
Would a Delta who conceived a child *in* wedlock receive any state help? Presumably the same rules would apply: in either case if she or her
partner
were unemployed they wouldn't be able to feed the child without help. A marriage contract doesn't make it cheaper to live.
Again, let me clarify. From things Vila has said (like about getting his pleasure hours in the rec center or whatever) and because I like to use ancient Rome as a partial basis for the Federation, I assume there is a sort of 'bread and circuses' mentality. This also means things about citizenship - there were lots people -even rich, important people - in the Roman Empire who weren't citizens. A _citizen_ of the Federation and Earth (JMO, but I think there were citizens who wouldn't have had automatic rights to Earth residency and that living on Earth was generally cushier), even low grade, I'm thinking would have certain claims on the state. This is just an idea I had for a story, but I'm thinking they had claims to some kind of housing and food coupons, possibly a few other things.
When I was first kicking this idea around, I thought that the Federation would come down very hard on anyone it saw as not fulfilling various legal requirements - I was passing on what I saw as some of the nastier ideas in the welfare reform debate a few years ago (see Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' for details). I then combined this with the economic problems Rome faced providing bread when the empire was no longer expanding.
More specifically, I was working with a story in which Avon's mother was nonFederation (a soldier from Helotrix who had to go underground after the Federation took over her world the first time). She wound up on Earth with false papers passing her off as a delta. Without going into lengthy side stories about Avon's father and how they were seperated during this time, she got stuck on Earth after finding out she was pregnant.
To clarify her difficulties, she could
1) Find a way to support her child (so long as she didn't make claims for him, she still received her own food ration and a hole in the wall [literally, in the domes] room) without using any of her job skills that would show she probably wasn't the grade she seemed _and_ without falling afoul of the law, which would have her declared unfit and her child taken into 'care.'
2) Give up and hand him over to a life of abuse, assuming he survived.
Look, we all know I'm the little arch-conservative. Do you think arch-conservatives are blind to social injustices? Do you think we don't have axes to grind? Or that welfare 'reforms' that seem likely to penalize children when they kick in in the very near future don't make me furious? Or that, when I consider the Federation likely to perpetuate the same kind of evils, I mean it as a good thing?
I know I'm not always the best at expressing myself, but have I really done that poor a job?
Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.