Despite Britney’s nuptials, marriage is not to be taken lightly

January 20, 2004

Oops.

That’s the first word in the chorus of one of Britney Spears’ most famous songs. It also sums up her first marriage.

Odds are you’ve heard the story. Britney spends a wild weekend partying in Las Vegas with a friend from high school. At 5:30 a.m. on Saturday (likely late Friday night for them), they decide get married, “just for the hell of it,” according to Britney’s new ex-husband. The Associated Press reported that the bride “wore a baseball cap and torn jeans down the aisle … escorted by a limousine driver.” I’m sure this is exactly the “big day” Mr. And Mrs. Spears envisioned for their former Mouseketeer.

By 10 a.m., Spears had filed to have the marriage annulled The petition said: “Plaintiff Spears lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was unable of agreeing to the marriage.” (The document says nothing about being able to walk a straight line or say the alphabet backward.) Britney’s record label released a statement saying that Britney and her friend simply “took a joke too far.”

And so the pop idol of millions does for the institution of marriage what Michael Jackson did for baby-sitting and Bill Clinton did for mentoring young co-workers — she made a sad joke of it.

Is this what marriage is becoming? Something we do, “just for the hell of it?” The Little White Wedding Chapel, site of Spears’ nuptials, has been offering “drive-through weddings” for more than 12 years. Originally an attempt to better serve handicapped couples, the chapel’s “Tunnel of Vows” has recently been upgraded “ … to include a romantic ceiling with cherubs and starlights.” It’s “perfect for a unique, yet romantic ceremony” according to the chapel’s website. Oh, yeah. I wonder if the attendant asks, “Would you like fries with that?” I also wonder what “super-sizing” would get you. Then again, let’s not go there.

While Britney’s wedding may have been a joke, it could also be considered the most extreme example of a new national trend called “starter marriages.” The term, coined by journalist Pamela Paul in her recent book on the topic, refers to first-time marriages that last less than five years and produce no children. She cites Census Bureau statistics showing there were more than 3 million divorced 18- to 29-year-olds in the U.S. in 1998.

Her book also includes anecdotes from 60 interviews of people who have been through such marriages. She concludes that, unlike Oops Spears, nearly all couples go into marriage with more eternal intentions. It’s realistic expectations that they lack. And patience. And maturity.

Not surprisingly, most experts see the answer to the starter marriage problem as simply correcting these deficiencies. Require couples to go through more pre-marital counseling. Encourage them to wait. Give them better role models to show them what marriage is like once the wedding cake is stale.

While all certainly good ideas, here’s a more radical one. Why not take a page from the gun-control playbook? Instead of educating gun buyers in the hopes that they’ll be more responsible gun owners, the trend nowadays is to simply make it harder to buy a gun. Isn’t it odd that so much has gone into making divorce easier, when perhaps the real answer is to make getting married more difficult? To steal the old Clint Eastwood line: A bad marriage can “blow your head clean off,” too.

Instead of drive-through weddings, why not mandatory waiting periods? When a couple applies for a wedding license, go ahead and issue it that day — for the same day next year. If you can’t wait that long to start the rest of your life, then maybe your betrothed shouldn’t be the rest of your life.

And how about mandatory background checks, to be shared with both parties? Wouldn’t that reduce a lot of marriage-busting surprises? Even a hint of reluctance to submit should be cause for serious alarm. Oh, and let’s not forget credit checks and complete physicals.

We should also include some ideas from the licensing of drivers. To get a license, you have to take a test, in front of someone who can usually tell if you really can’t drive. How about a pre-marital licensing exam? Like driving, if you fail, you have to get more “training” (marriage counseling) before you can try again.

Yes, adopting these ideas would be a significant increase in the government’s involvement in our personal lives — generally, not a good thing. But the only real alternative is to continue letting marriage erode into an evening’s entertainment for a spoiled pop singer.

Our society was built on the institution of marriage. It’s time to prop up this crumbling pillar and again treat it as a serious commitment — requiring serious thought and serious preparation.