It’s being reported that the two turtles Bibi and Poldi have refused to share the same cage at the Austrian Zoo after being each other’s companion for 115 years.
It seems that the female turtle Bibi attacked Poldi, biting off a part of his shell and then attacked him a few more times until finally they were put in separate cages.
115 years up in smoke. But this brings up an issue in my head that’s been on the rise lately which is an argument that as life expectancies increase, marriage becomes increasingly obsolete.
The Rabbi Bradley Hirschfield wrote in the Washington Post, “there is no question that increased life expectancy and increased opportunities over that longer life will have an impact on who might be right for us, when.”
A recent Pew Research analysis showed that only 51 percent of U.S. adults are currently married. That’s a drop of more than 20 percent since 1960. If the current trend continues, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years.
What I didn’t see reported in any of the reports concerning this Pew analysis was the effect this has on children or women. Certainly, not getting married makes it more likely that the man, who typically earns more, can trade in his older girlfriend for a newer model.
All of the news reports seemed to gleefully report the study as some kind of liberation. But the lack of people getting married certainly hasn’t stopped people from jumping into bed with one another. It’s led to an increase in abortions and children born to single mothers. And it’s become clear from studies that children in single parent households don’t fare as well as children with an active mother and father.
So we sit around and tell ourselves that we live longer nowadays and who can be marriaged for that long. That kind of thinking just says we can act like those turtles. Like animals.
