Marriage not designed for the middle classes

The statistics in South Africa are that 3 out of 5 marriages end in divorce, which, of course, does not mean that the other two are blissful. They probably endure because of affordability issues or religious beliefs and so the parties to these unions end up fighting it out to the bitter end.

My theory is that the concept of marriage was formulated in days of yore when there were essentially only two classes of people, the very rich and the very poor.

The poor worked 12 and more hours, seven days a week with no leisure time. Essentially theirs was a struggle for survival and at the end of the day they fell exhausted into the marital bed (pile of straw?), their only pleasure being the procreation of more children who increased their poverty and battle for survival. Marriage worked well because there was neither time nor energy for the protagonists to question whether indeed they were happy or not.

Marriage also worked well for the wealthy, who, in the main, saw it as a means of ensuring succession. They could afford huge mansions and were able to live in separate apartments with the progeny cloistered in a nursery in another wing. Thus one did not have the inconvenience of actually sharing ones room with a spouse- a boon when he/she was unwell, ill tempered inebriated ,etc. and one also did not have too suffer the disruption of children. Young children were generally presented to their parents only when they were fed, clean and ready for bed.

The many servants took care of the drudgery of cooking, cleaning, driving, gardening, and maintenance as well as the tutoring of the children until they were of an age to send away to boarding school. The benefits were, to name but a few, no school meetings and the ability to fire a bad cook, cleaner, driver, gardener etc.

Spouses were also not expected to do everything and go everywhere together, and usually led separate social lives except for the expected attendance at functions such as the opera or spring ball and it was even acceptable to indulge in discreet affairs.


The problems however began with the emergence of the middle classes. This class does not struggle for mere survival, has abundant leisure time but not the finances that are available to the wealthy.

Cooking, cleaning, maintenance, driving, gardening, child minding and the like have to be shared between the spouses. The down side of this is that one cannot criticize, let alone correct, bad performance any one area as this will negatively impact on the whole and will even effect matters of passion.

Houses are small and has to share a room with the other half no matter their mood, state of health or sobriety. Escape from the children is also impossible.


Affairs are not tolerated and couples expect to do everything together, to the extent that they no longer have their own lives and consequently something to talk about. Friends from the past are not usually tolerated by the other half and consequently the partnership ends up socializing with new found friends with whom they usually have no more in common than having attended the same pre natal classes or kids who go to the same school.

The major reason however for the failure of marriage in the middle classes has to be the ubiquitous bathroom en suite. We are all aware that everyone needs to clean teeth and perform their toilet, but it does nothing for romance when one lies in bed and is privy, having a ringside seat as it were, to the whole performance complete with sound and smell.