marriage material

story

I'm nineteen years old, and this is an interesting age to stumble across this article. I'm not married, but I go to school with people who are and, chances are, if I marry it will be in the next few years. A reflex in my brain automatically files all the men I know into "marriage material," "give him a few years," and "definitely not marriage material." I like to think I know what I'm looking for: is he a a Catholic who takes his faith seriously (so we see things the same way)? Can he hold a job? Is he courteous? Is he going to embarrass me in front of my parents? My mom gave me advice on finding a husband: "marry someone who's going to help you get to heaven" and "marry a man who's as nice to you as your dad is to me." I never thought about genes.

And I don't see why it's necessary to check out genes before accepting a proposal. Track record, reputation, and character have been enough to sort the good eggs from the bad. I don't think it's fair to men to do a background check into something they can't control.

It reminds me of criminal trials. A certain prosecuting attorney I know once mentioned how frustrating trials can be when jurors don't want to give a guilty verdict if there isn't any DNA evidence. He has to remind jurors that trials were fair before we had technology to do DNA testing.

Here's an interesting excerpt:

About 15 percent of the men without the allele reported serious marital discord in the past year, compared with 34 percent of men with two copies of the allele. Wives and partners of the men with two copies of the allele reported lower levels of satisfaction, affection, cohesion and consensus in the relationship than women married to men who had one or no copies of the allele.

It doesn't seem to me that 15% and 34% really make up a significant difference. Another point not made in the article is this: stable, two-parent families often raise kids who value stable, two-parent families and will grow up to have stable, two-parent families. Chances are, the parents in the stable, two-parent families will pass on their genes to their kids. The gene trait maybe be entirely coincidental. Now, I'm not a scientist and I will freely admit that I really don't know what I'm talking about. But the article doesn't address this issue at all.

"What this means is that some people will go into marriage with a stronger deck of cards," Fisher said. "But there are people genetically prone to alcoholism who give up booze and make a good marriage. No one is saying biology is destiny."

This paragraph, the penultimate, is buried at the end of the article. And there's some truth here. We are greater than the sum of all our genes.