In the U.S., 90 percent of us get married—and usually without a whole lot of thought. We may do it for love, which is fine, but arguably a dubious reason to tie the knot. You can love someone perfectly well without marrying him, after all. We get married because, that’s what people do. For women in particular, getting officially attached to a man is what society expects; if you buck that tradition, some people will wonder about you…if just a little.
And so it is unseemly to question marriage. When people become engaged, you are supposed to be happy for the couple—not to second-guess their decision. Reconsider marriage as an institution? That is unlikely to make you very popular either. And even though half of marriages in this country end in divorce, people too rarely take a hard look at the practice to determine what makes a marriage flourish—or fizzle.
Yet these unfashionable topics are just what Kate Schermerhorn broaches in a delightfully quirky new documentary called “After Happily Every After” to be released on DVD and Video-On-Demand on November 1. A critical examination of marriage is long overdue, because as one of the film’s speakers points out, a success rate of 50 percent would not be considered acceptable in any business context, so why do we think it’s okay for marriage?
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Complete article at Scientific American : http://bit.ly/seA4wA
