Marriage requires more up-front and ongoing investment from the spouses and their extended families, notes James Q. Wilson, the veritable dean of social scientists today. Without the process of marriage, "neither the man nor the woman has any strong [or external] incentive to invest heavily in the union," Wilson says. "Marriage is a way of making such investments plausible by telling each party that they are united forever, and if they wish to dissolve this union, they will have to go through an elaborate and possibly costly legal ritual called divorce." This reality is one of the sticking points in the glue of marriage. Another is friends and family around us.
Glenn T. Stanton, The Ring Makes All the Difference, p.43
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