TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2000-06 > 0959906671


From: "Denise L. Fritch" <>
Subject: [TMG-L:] TMG-L: RE: True Marriage and all that...
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 17:44:31 -0700
In-Reply-To: <2000Jun01.162652.1278.1023843@menlo-park.os.varian.com>


> -----Original Message-----
>Seems to me you left out the most vital factor: Did those two people
>parent children and who were they?
>Bill Reque
>SF

Sorry Bill, I am going to disagree. The "most vital factor" of a marriage is
not that "those two people parent children".

I know a number of people -- relatives, friends, and co-workers -- through
the years who married, yet remained childless. Some were unable to have
children. Others chose not to have children. One co-worker -- he was in the
military and she was from Korea -- decided not to have children after the
intense discrimination they experienced during the 1960s because some very
vocal people refused to accept their marriage. They decided they did not
wish to have children face such discrimination.

I also have a number of great aunts and uncles who married their second (or
even third) spouse late in life. One great uncle (he just died at 100)
married his second wife when he was in his early 80s and she was in her late
70s. They certainly did not intend to "parent children" when they married.
Nor did that decision not to have children mean their marriage was any less
valid.

Even my spouse and I -- you remember Allison and I from attending a couple
of the TMG user group get togethers for the South San Francisco bay area we
held two years ago at the Sunnyvale mobile home in which we then lived -- do
not indent to "parent children". That decision not to have children does not
in any way make our marriage any less valid.

Best,

Denise L. Fritch

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