by Bruce Hood
YOU’RE MINE
PAUL: Holly, I’m in love with you.
HOLLY: So what?
PAUL: So what? So plenty. I love you. You belong to me.
HOLLY: No. People don’t belong to people.
PAUL: Of course they do.
HOLLY: Nobody’s going to put me in a cage.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, dir. Blake Edwards (1961)
Over the centuries, in addition to slaves and indigenous peoples, the other major subjugated group have been wives. Up until the nineteenth century, marriages were exercises in ownership rights as wives were considered the property of their husbands, described in English common law by the term ‘coverture’. A wife was under the authority (‘cover’) of her husband and she was not entitled to ownership rights independently. Legally, husband and wife were considered one person as far as the law was concerned, and that one person was the husband.
The reasons for marriage have changed as well. Contrary to romantic Western views, love and marriage do not go together like a horse and carriage, or at least, that was never the intention. As the historian Stephanie Coontz points out, until the late eighteenth century, marriage was regarded as far too vital an economic and political issue to be left to the free choices of the individuals involved, let alone to be based on something so transitory or ephemeral as love.17 Indeed, marrying for love was considered a serious threat to the social order as it placed the marital relationship above the priorities of parents, family and God.
For centuries, marriage had done much of the work of markets, governments and social-security systems. It controlled the distribution of wealth through inheritance, enabling provision for the extended family members in an uncertain future. At the top end of the scale, society marriages were used to set up political, economic and military alliances. Even though Shakespeare wrote of love extensively in his plays, it was often in conflict with family obligations as epitomized in his romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. It would have been regarded as foolish to marry for love alone, especially when the stakes were high. Rather, the primary directive was the stability and transfer of wealth, not happiness ever after. Marital bliss was an added bonus only, if it all worked out.
The higher the stakes, the more the couple’s relatives had a say in the process of marriage. In many cultures, if the husband died before the wife, she would be expected to marry another man from her husband’s family so as to retain the continuity of inherited wealth. Then there was the initial price of marriage. Probably the most common form of this is the dowry system, where the family of the bride pays a sum to the husband’s family to allow their daughter to marry their son.
In the West, where the dowry system was abandoned centuries ago, it is still the custom when it comes to paying for the wedding. When I got married, I had naively assumed that my in-laws had bankrolled the event because, at the time, I was a poor graduate student and they wanted to impress their friends and acquaintances by putting on a big bash. In fact, their display of generosity was also a legacy from the old dowry system. Today, many people still adhere to the tradition that the bride’s family hosts and pays for the wedding.
Why would families pay the cost of a dowry to marry off their daughters? For the simple reason that in most societies marriage was essential for recognition as an adult for both sexes. In the Middle Ages, an Englishman was expected to marry when he achieved some degree of financial independence in order to establish a household. This is the origin of the word ‘husband’. Prior to that, he was a man of no substance.
A woman needed to marry in order to be socially accepted. An unmarried woman was regarded with suspicion and generally ostracized. It is ironic, then, that in marriage a woman lost her ownership rights to property or even the right to speak for herself in a court of law. Any property she brought to the marriage came under her husband’s control. Any major decisions beyond the day-to-day running of the household required the permission of her husband. Only by the end of the nineteenth century did this situation change significantly with the gradual introduction of the Married Women’s Property Act in the UK between 1870 and 1893. Certain aspects of coverture survived as late as the 1960s in some US states, and in the UK it was not until 1980 that a married woman could apply for a mortgage in her own name. Even the country’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was not entitled to take out a mortgage when she came into power in 1979. Today, there are still many societies that discriminate against women. According to a 2016 World Bank report, thirty nations still designate men as head of the household, while women in nineteen countries are legally obliged to obey their husbands.18
Marriage was a strategic way of sharing resources to ensure the long-term prosperity of the family. The husband was responsible for his property, which included his wife, children and servants, and could be called to account on their behalf in a court of law. He was expected to control them like an owner. The term ‘wedlock’ conveys the notion of this committed ownership. Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the rise of the Romantic movement in Western culture, did love really enter into the equation that is considered a prerequisite for a successful marriage today.
Although most modern Westerners are appalled at the notion of arranged marriages, we should not forget that this is a minority view; most societies today still operate with some form of the practice. Contrary to Western prejudices, arranged marriages do not necessarily mean forced marriages, where the potential partners have no say in the final decision. Very often there is a considerable amount of research, matchmaking and introductions done on behalf of the couple who end up agreeing to any potential match.
Even if we believe we have abandoned arranged marriages in the West, a quick consideration of the socio-economic circumstances that bring people together reveals that families still play a major role. In one way or another, families pay for the schooling, college, neighbourhood and the eventual profession that their child enters, which all contribute to Mr Right meeting Ms Right (or whatever combination that emerges). It may not feel arranged, but people are more likely to marry someone they meet on a regular basis.19 To some extent, all this is changing as digital communications make it easier to find and change partners, as evidenced by the popularity of dating apps among the ‘Tinderella’ generation.
The wider landscape is also changing. Marriages are not inevitable, and there are traditional societies that have no such institution, such as the Mosuo tribe of China. Then there are the various combinations of multiple wives (polygamy), multiple husbands (polyandry) and the recent trend for multiple lovers out of wedlock (polyamory). There are many reasons for these varieties of cohabitation in the West, but one important factor is the rise of the welfare state that has provided support to the individual, reducing the need for co-dependency through marriage. It was not so long ago that bearing children out of wedlock was relatively rare and considered shameful, whereas today, half of all UK children are born outside marriage. The rise in single parenting is due to the decline in marriage, with half as many marriages taking place today in the West compared to the 1960s. And around half of marriages now end in divorce. In Europe, the divorce rate has doubled over the same period.20
Divorce is largely focused on property and ownership, but divorce lawyers are a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, divorce was so difficult and complicated that it was rarely enacted.21 Moreover, the husband stood to gain everything. Before a divorce law was finally enacted in 1857, the number of divorces in English history stood at a mere 324. Only four of those cases were initiated by the wives. Compare that to the 107,000 divorces in England in 2016 alone, which represents a rate of around four out of every ten marriages. By contrast India, with its predominant system of arranged marriages, has a divorce rate of only 1 in 100. However, as the Indian economy grows and provides more social support for individuals, it remains to be seen whether this shift towards Western values will threaten traditional marriage.
Not only is divorce a so
urce of much misery, it is one of ownership inequality that is stacked firmly against the divorced wife, who is more likely to be financially worse off. A large-scale study of marital splits estimated that divorced men, especially fathers, are around a third wealthier following divorce.22 Regardless of whether she has children, the average divorced woman’s income falls by more than a fifth and remains low for many years. Even though ownership does not usually bring individuals together in marriage, as it did in the past, it certainly plays a major role in the separation of couples today.
PARENTAL POSSESSION
Ownership also binds families together. There are varying perceptions of obligation to the family but, across the world, children all start off as the responsibility of their parents. This is a form of ownership in that parents have control over their children. However, that relationship is reciprocal. We belong to the family and the family belongs to us. When we no longer want a child to be part of the family because they have shamed us, then we disown them and, in turn, if they no longer want anything to do with the family, they disown the family.
From the parent’s perspective, there is an expectation of exclusive access to their child, just like property. Parents rarely talk about owning their children, but testimony collected during the 2001 Redfern Report into the UK’s Alder Hey scandal was full of references to ownership that many identified with.23 Between 1988 and 1995, organs and tissue samples from children who had died were collected and stored at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool without the full consent of their parents. As we have already established, this was not illegal as there can be no ownership of a corpse. It was also fairly standard practice in pathology at the time to retain human tissue for research purposes. When this practice came to light, however, parents were outraged. In the report, one parent commented, ‘It feels like bodysnatching. The hospital stole something from me’, with another stating: ‘Alder Hey stole 90 per cent of my child.’
The grieving parents’ demands for the return of the body parts were couched in terms of ownership: returning what was rightfully theirs and the right to decide what would then happen to their children’s remains. It is clear from their commentary that the parents felt they had a right to their children’s body parts, whether this consisted of whole excised organs, tissue slides, or small segments of tissue encased in paraffin blocks. One of the most remarkable things about the Redfern Report was that there was little consideration given to the legal standing of ownership of the deceased; instead it focused on making a set of recommendations to address the parents’ concerns by putting in place procedures to prevent the practice happening again.
Public opinion and the law remain at odds when it comes to looking after our children. For most parents, it is unacceptable that others, including the state, could take control over their child, even when it is in the child’s best interest. In 2018, Alder Hey hospital would once again come under critical public scrutiny when the parents of Alfie Evans, a terminally ill toddler, battled doctors over the decision to remove his life support. The parents took their case to the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights but were unsuccessful. Many protesters who supported the parents thought this was a simple case of the state controlling the life of a toddler – or, as Brexiteer Nigel Farage complained in an interview with Fox News, ‘Are our children now owned by the state?’24 Legally, however, parents in most Western countries do not own their children, and have not since the nineteenth century. Rather, parents are guardians who are expected to look after the best interests of the child – the same criterion that courts apply in such cases.
It is a little-known fact that this parental ownership works both ways: adult children are legally obliged to look after their elderly parents if they become dependent on others, though few destitute parents have ever enforced the ‘filial support laws’ that exist in the US and the UK. However, this might be set to change; nursing homes in the US have begun to sue children on behalf of infirm parents to recover the cost of their care. In 2012, a Pennsylvanian nursing home successfully sued a son for $92,000 to pay for his mother’s care and the number of similar cases is on the increase.25 As the post-war baby boomers approach their senior years and people are living longer than ever before, the state is ill-prepared to look after its elderly and will be seeking to recover those costs of care from the children.
In many cultures, parents can give their children away and, in some instances, effectively sell them. In India, despite the fact that the dowry system has been outlawed for the past forty years, many families of the groom still expect payment from the bride’s family in order to marry their sons. They want a return on their investment. Having only girls can therefore spell economic disaster for poor families. Often dowry disputes lead to violence; sometimes wives are tortured to extract more money, or simply killed so that their husband can remarry to obtain another dowry. There is even an official statistic specifically for it. Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code accounts for dowry deaths and registered over 24,000 such deaths in the three years between 2012 and 2015.26 Those that are not killed are often scarred for life in acid attacks. (Arranged marriages might produce low divorce rates, but the persistence of the traditional dowry system in India is still a source of much misery for women.)
Another despicable abuse of parental ownership is the trafficking and sale of children, especially daughters, into the sex trade, which is still prevalent in many poorer parts of the world such as rural Thailand. There it is commonplace for daughters working in the infamous Bangkok brothels to support their entire family. It is not considered an honourable way to make a living but poverty overrides moral judgement in these situations. Agents scour the countryside offering the promise of employment opportunities in the ‘recreation or entertainment business’ with cash loans to poor families, which have to be paid off.
Before we cast judgement on these families, however, we should remember that the industrial revolution in nineteenth-century Europe was largely supported by children working in terrible conditions. Children were a source of income in hard times, something that will be familiar to anyone who has read Charles Dickens. There was even a ‘stubborn son’ law enacted in New England in 1646 that entitled parents to have their sons executed if they were disobedient.27 Prior to modern social-care systems, children were an investment. They were expected to earn their keep and, when the parents and grandparents needed care and assistance, it was usually the family’s daughters who were expected to look after them. It is only in modern times in wealthy Western societies that we have shifted the burden of supporting families from the individual to the state’s healthcare and social-support systems. What we must not forget is that throughout the world this societal support is the exception, not the rule. This is why children are considered vital resources in many developing countries and are still traded as commodities.
Our reliance on children is likely to become more pronounced with the so-called demographic time bomb in countries that have falling birth rates. As the population ages, the elderly become increasingly dependent on the young to look after them. An ageing population means higher costs for government, a shortfall in pensions, reduced social-security funds, a shortage of people to care for the very aged, a shortage of young workers and, ultimately, a slow-down in the economy. This recession produces a spiralling cycle of decline, and as the economy shrinks people have fewer children, thereby exacerbating the problem further.
This shortfall in live births is particularly worrying for increasingly secularized societies with declining populations. Compared to secular societies, religious societies have fertility rates two or three times as high as the population-replacement level.28 This difference explains why the demographic time bomb is particularly bad for countries in the West, where a combination of the decline in births, increased life expectancy and the high cost of social care are a perfect storm for economic disaster. We have become so used to social support from our governments t
hat many from the political right believe that the state has gone too far and must return the responsibility to look after family members to the families themselves – to look after their own.
POLITICAL OWNERSHIP
As someone of Scottish descent from the MacFarlane clan, I was amused to discover that the motto for my clan is, ‘This I’ll defend.’ I am not sure what my ancestral fellow clansmen were promising to defend but I expect that it was land they believed they owned. In many ways, the political unrest and conflicts that are currently sweeping the globe reflect this sentiment of fear of loss. Many people today feel an acute sense of threat from others competing for resources, taking over their lands and control of their lives. To give an extreme example, suicide terrorism is often associated with individuals who feel dispossessed because their lands have been illegally taken. In his analysis of over 188 suicide attacks between 1980 and 2001 around the world, from Sri Lanka to the Middle East, Robert Pape, an American political scientist, concluded that the dominant purpose for these actions was to coerce foreign governments to withdraw from occupying territories that the terrorists regarded as homelands they owned.29
The recent political unrest spreading across Western democracies is also a fight over national identity and ownership in the face of a perceived threat from outsiders. Both Brexit’s ‘taking back control’ and Trump’s ‘America first’ campaigns were blatant displays of nationalism in the face of perceived attack from foreigners. The campaign language was all about possession: my country, my job, my way of life.
Why are we now witnessing the rise of populists such as Donald Trump in the US and Matteo Salvini in Italy? And why did we not see this wave coming? In retrospect, what might seem surprising is the extent of incredulity that someone like Trump could ever win the presidential election. How could people vote for such a xenophobic, misogynistic, polarizing person with no political experience, who lacked any integrity and espoused paranoid conspiracy theories about his rivals and the media and who traded insults on Twitter with anyone who dared to criticize him? He might not be statesman-like, but Trump is a self-professed man of the people. His resemblance to the Italian dictator Mussolini, another famous populist, is more than just physical.30 They both represent a shift in politics to the extreme right, and similar populist movements have taken place across many Western democracies. According to a 2018 BBC report, far-right political parties have made significant gains in elections across Europe in recent years.31 Remarkably, viewing these political upheavals through the lens of ownership provides an intriguing explanation for this phenomenon.