A couple of weeks ago I asked the question "is marriage necessary?" in reference to the US.  Today I found a story in the WaPo in which the French provide a resounding answer: Non!

In France,
the country that evokes more images of romance than perhaps any other,
marriage has increasingly fallen out of favor. Growing numbers of
couples are choosing to raise children, buy homes and build family
lives without religious or civil approval of their partnerships. In the
past generation, the French marriage rate has plunged more than 30
percent, even as population and birthrates have been rising.

"Marriage
doesn’t have the same importance as it used to," said France Prioux,
who directs research on changing social trends for France’s National
Institute of Demographic Studies. "It will never become as frequent as
it once was."

Marriage is in decline across much of northern
Europe, from Scandinavia to France, a pattern some sociologists
describe as a "soft revolution" in European society — a generational
shift away from Old World traditions and institutions toward a greater
emphasis on personal independence.

But French couples are
abandoning the formality of marriage faster than most of their European
neighbors and far more rapidly than their American counterparts: French
marriage rates are 45 percent below U.S. figures. In 2004, the most
recent year for which figures are available, the marriage rate in
France was 4.3 per 1,000 people, compared with 5.1 in the United Kingdom
and 7.8 in the United States. The only European countries with rates
lower than France’s were Belgium, at 4.1, and Slovenia, with 3.3.

      Again, this makes me wonder how Confucianism, with its emphasis on "family" and the social roles inherent in "family," can be adapted to this obviously large trend in modern society.  Traditional family structures are transforming – in the US, in Europe, in East Asia.  I have not seen much data for China (the pdf I linked to in the earlier post did not include the PRC) but I think we can say that this trend – the decline of traditional married families – is almost certainly China’s future as well.   So, what is a Confucian to do? (I do not consider myself a Confucian, but I am intrigued by the possibilities of Confucianism).

    Two alternatives appear immediately available (there may be more but these two are a starting point).  Either a Confucian could simply condemn the emerging practice of marriage-less family life, and likely become increasingly irrelevant as the practice expands, or a Confucian could find ways that the new practice might be made into a medium for realizing Humanity, which is the ultimate goal after all.

    As you can imagine, I am more interested in the latter than the former alternative.  A Confucian then might ask: are parents, even if they are not married, performing the proper loving and caring roles as parents toward their children, and are they fulfilling their commitments to one another as partners?  Confucius is certainly interested in  sincere and genuine devotion to social responsibilities.  If a father – even if he is formally married – does not live up to his duties as father, then he does not deserve the name.  Thus, if sincerity is of primary importance, then the formality of institutional recognition of a "marriage" might not be necessary.

    Of course, a Confucian would still see a certain benefit to a formal marriage, insofar as it is a ritual enactment and declaration of a life-long loving commitment.  Those sorts of rituals matter.  But so do the daily rituals of loving care that any relationship is built upon.  Indeed, the daily and mundane performance of duty may be more important, in terms of creating a life of Humanity, than the formalistic rituals.

    Interestingly, though, the language of marriage continues to provide clearer referents for sincere commitment:

That is not to say there aren’t occasional awkward social moments, especially during introductions to strangers.

"Saying,
‘This is my friend or my companion,’ doesn’t say you’ve been together
as long as we have," Titouh said. "So I say, ‘This is my wife,’ not to
have problems."

"When you say ‘husband’ and ‘wife,’ it’s more
concrete," Folet conceded. "More like a real couple, not a relationship
in passing."

 Now, if we could just make more formal marriages live up to the connotations of the terms "husband" and "wife," perhaps we would all be better off.