From Contract to Covenant
Margaret F. Brinig, From Contract to Covenant (Harvard University Press, 2000)
Despite
trends in our society towards consumerism where everything and
everybody "has a price," there still remain some relationships which
cannot be reduced to a mere exchange of goods. One such relationship is
the parent-child relationship. Most parents willingly make all kinds of
sacrifices for their children. Think how funny it would be if parents
gave a bill to their children after 18 years for all the hugs given,
hurts kissed away, diapers changed, meals cooked, clothes ironed, toys
purchased, sports lessons given or school books bought! Most parents do
so out of an unconditional love for their children.
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According to Margaret Brinig, author of From Contract to Convenant: Beyond the Law and Economics of the Family,
such a relationship can be called a convenantal relationship because of
its lasting and sacrificial nature, based on trust and intimacy and the
absence of commercial exchange, Those involved in such a relationship
often do far more for each other out of love than could ever be
required by law.
A contract-based world allows a breaking of
promises so that one or both parties can find a better deal. But when
applied to personal relationships what one gains in freedom comes at
the cost of finding that one is profoundly alone. Contract also implies
a need to keep a record of what each of the contracting partners has
given. In cohabiting arrangements where two sexually intimate people
live together, there is neither permanence nor unconditional giving.
The two have come together for mutual benefit, but if either one
becomes tired or dissatisfied with the arrangement, he or she can just
leave. The conditional quality of the relationship discourages real
long-term investment.
It's like living in an apartment you
don't own. Because you can leave when the lease is up each year, there
is little incentive to make major repairs or improvements to the place
you live. By comparison, families or individuals who buy a home usually
have much more motivation to invest time, effort, creativity and
resources to make such improvements.
In stable, covenant-based
marriages (as opposed to contractual marriages such as those involving
prenuptial agreements in which it is spelled out who gets what if there
is a divorce), couples do not keep precise track of who owes what to
whom. Surprisingly, couples who do not keep precise track of who owes
what to whom have more stable marriages. For example, in the National
Survey of Families and Households, couples were asked in 1987-88 how
much time they, and their spouse, spent each week on various household
tasks. The spouses were questioned as well, and the responses were
found to be highly consistent. The second wave of the study tracked the
same people five years later, in 1992-94. Some of the couples had
divorced or separated during those five years, others remained intact.
The interesting thing is that those couples who answered "don't know"
or simply refused to answer the household hours questions had a
significantly lower rate of divorce than those who could make such
estimates did.
In covenant relationships, whether between
parent and child, husband and wife, or a particularly deep and lasting
friendship or loyalty to one's country or one's Creator, there is a
faith that what one has invested will eventually be returned. The
parent who loves his/her child unconditionally believes that
relationship can never be broken and that some day the son or daughter
will have a chance to return that love or that the act of loving itself
was the best reward. The husband who takes care of a sick wife or
soldiers who volunteer to defend their country are acting in faith that
their actions are beyond the mere counting of benefits owed or given.
Contracts
frequently involve short-run or limited relationships or even
instantaneous exchanges. Covenants, because they are designed to be
permanent, assume that the balances will be righted eventually or that
any imbalance doesn't matter. Their participants are thus, on average,
far more giving and selfless than those who enter into contracts.
Keeping score of who does what, and who owes whom appears to produce
less satisfactory unions. In other words, married people appear to
thrive when they depend on one another yet do not keep score. |
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