Posted by
Laura L. Hollis, JD on Monday, August 31, 2009 11:09:54 PM
Somebody
finally mentioned Ted Kennedy's first wife, Joan, in an article. She who is now best known for her alcoholism.
When I read articles like these - whether about politicians, or athletes, or actors, or rock stars, I always wonder: why do we hold ourselves out as being so morally superior to cultures that have legalized polygamy? After all, that's really what no-fault divorce has wrought in this country:
serial polygamy. Only in a legitimately polygamous culture, First Wife always has higher status, as do her children, and (perhaps even more importantly), husbands cannot take second or third wives unless they can afford to support all of them.
In our country, however, we call our marriage culture "monogamous," and then we allow husbands to divorce their first wives, toss them out onto the "street" (the courts now call this "getting a job"), go off and start a new family with another woman, and leave the first wife to fight for every penny of child support, while the child or children fight for whatever scrap of time they can get with their dad. Who wins? The matrimonial lawyers, of course. (And, speaking as someone who has done a bit of matrimonial law, I can tell you that most of the lawyers doing the work hate it, too.)
And yes, I know all about the women who divorce perfectly decent men for no reason other than that they are "tired" of them, soak their ex-husbands for every damn dime they can get, try to turn the man's children against him, and make him a criminal by filing trumped-up requests for "orders of protection" every time he gets pi$$ed off about the once-a-week-dinner-and-every-other-weekend the court systems "allows" him with the children he still wants to be living with. I think she'd be better off, too, if the legal system made her continue to live with her husband AND whatever new man she's decided she likes better.
The whole system sucks. And reading the blurb about Joan Kennedy made me think about it.