“Who Needs Marriage? ” is a scientific article written in 1988 by Gerald C. Lubenow. The article deals with different views on marriage and how the meaning of being married has changed through time. Lubenow circles around the question “who needs marriage? ” to figure out why marriage is so important to some people in one part of the world and completely different in another part and likewise less important to the younger generation. To figure out the question of the title he uses Scandinavian exemplifications to show the reader different reasons why people are getting married and furthermore how marriage is in a phrase of development.

The use of interviews is to give some credibility to the article. Lubenow has interviewed real people with real problems. The use of quotations is to draw parallels between the receivers and the exemplifications. The fact that the article is posted in a scientific magazine narrow the receivers to be rather informative readers, who are interested in peoples conduct of life around the world. So Lubenow is using quotations of Scandinavia to illustrate other places in the world. The article starts out by mentioning that an increasing number of Scandinavian young couples with children are avoiding marriage.

Especially in Sweden are there signs of antipathy to marriage. But why is it that people are kind of afraid of marriage? Lubenow tries to find out it by interviewing several Scandinavian couples. First real life case is the career woman Anne Raneke who is alone of parenting her daughter Josefine and never wanted to get married. She doesn’t live together with the father of her child, but she receives child support from him each month. She has always determined to avoid marriage and is holding on to that. In continuation of Anne’s situation, do Klas Rudbaeck and Anne-Lie Sjoegren have a daughter too.

They live together but have not been married until they by chance decided to be at their daughter’s baptism. They didn’t see marriage necessarily connected to their situation in life, until it just happened. In contradiction to this doesn’t Astrid Lindberg see any reason to get married. She and her partner Greger Eriksson have lived together for 11 years, and now have two daughters out of wedlock. They think that marriage can destroy a good relationship. They are perfectly happy without being married so why then take the risk of resorting to marriage?

Beside these real life examples from regular people, the article uses statistics and other facts to emphasize the examples and the informative and serious style that is used around this topic. Freelance writer Louise Boije defends Swedish culture as non-marital, out from the fact that it is marriage that has become weakened as a social institution and not the Swedes’ moral that is decayed. Instead Borje Dernulf of Sweden’s central statistical office sees the development as a problem because the definition of being a family is also changing.

It makes it difficult to say whether it’s live-in lovers or married couples that has the highest rank. So why bother getting married if you have the same equal rights and status as married couples? Perhaps it’s the answer to the new non-marital trend. The overall writing style of the article is informative. There are used statistics and quotes from the law of marriage, different cases and sociological research, which often define the meaning of a scientific article. This gives the article’s arguments reliability and makes the text clear.

Even though the article is from 1988, is the reliability still connected to the topic that has not been outdated but still is current in 2012. Even though Lubenow doesn’t interpret his subjective position or opinion, it is still his intent to affect the reader. The article’s diction of formal language and the use of statistics and quotes from the law of marriage, underlines the use of logos which appeals to the reason and intellect of the recipient by using both legislative and objective arguments, which underlines the factuality of the article.

His choice of words is monosyllabic words that are easy to understand. Furthermore has Lubenow used rhetorical effects by the word marriage, which is deliberately repeated in different coherences for the purpose of showing marriage from different angles. One of them is the role of religion that plays in the article. We now that marriage is an institution, which has survived for centuries. But as the society has changed from a traditional to a modern society, is it no longer the old religious traditions that are important.

Instead it has become the individual needs and actions that are in focus. Therefore do marriage no longer play a part of young individuals life as a religious and traditional norm. You can decide how you want to form your own life – and therefore decide whether marriage is a part of your choice or not. In previous time was it a virtue to be married before having children, but now is it most common that couples have children before marriage. It was not even common to live together without being married but this has definitely changed since.

Experts also sustain this tendency by saying “virtually everyone cohabits before marriage in Sweden”1. Some other experts in marriage; churchmen who are closely connected to religious chores such as marriage, has accepted the fact that marriage has fainted out. As we become more aware of the other opportunities we have than our parents, we then want different things. And if young people do get married is it more often on the town hall than in the church. But if you look at it the other way around are there also some consequences of this development of the whole marriage situation.

The Swedish people are maybe heading towards becoming trendsetters in marriage failures. As the statistics says four out of seven marriages in Sweden fails. The consequences of this could be a bad influence on other Western countries – as it already has been in other Scandinavian countries such as Denmark. The trend gives bad family relationships that are not expected to be formal and enduring. As earlier mentioned the reason why could be the changing in society where there is more focus on the individual’s needs.

Marriage is in a way taken for granted because our personal needs has been ranked higher. We don’t put so much effort in preserving marriage, because we know that we can just find someone new instead of changing our selves. But “with all the new laws protecting nonmarital children, parents are burdened with a mass of government forms to fill out. Some may have decided that it’s easier to reduce a relationship to a single piece of paper – a marriage certificate. “2 Marriage will not disappear in a near future, because it is still the easiest way out of a lot of filling out legislative papers.

But the changing in marriage relies in the view on marriage as a title. You can still live together and act like a married couple without being one. And until the government makes more laws and conditions about non-married couples with or without children than unmarried couples, marriage will still endure. English translation According to Doctor Michio Kaku who is one of USA’s leading theoretical physician, are we not able to continue in building faster and more intelligent computers forever/in all eternity.

Sooner or later will the microscopic silicone chips, which constitute the computers brain, become so small/tiny that you defy the physical laws. Therefore thinks Doktor Kaku that it is a little bit silly that people are so worried about whether artificial intelligence becomes too intelligent or if computers develop a human soul.

1 Lubenow, C. Gerald: “Who Needs Marriage? “, p. 71, ll. 5-6 2 Lubenow, C. Gerald: “Who Needs Marriage? “, p. 72, ll. 23-27 ?? ?? ?? ?? [Skriv tekst] [Skriv tekst] [Skriv tekst] Josefine Kji?? rsgaard English assignment Monday the 6th of February 2012.