The Business of Commitment
The question of family-making is similarly fraught for Gen Zs who are facing increasing political, environmental, and economic precarity. by
Georgie, 20, New York City
Younger generations have begun to rightfully cast their doubts upon the traditional industries of marriage and family. Observing many of the older generations’ conventional marriages has instilled both conscious and unconscious beliefs that unions do not contribute to happiness, nor can they be deemed healthy. The question of family-making is similarly fraught for Gen Zs who are facing increasing political, environmental, and economic precarity. So we spoke to the owner and creator of the nation’s largest source for wedding planning and inspiration, The Knot, Carley Roney. With her husband, David Liu, Carley developed one of the most accepting and progressive forums for weddings, while still advocating for marriage. In fact, their empire grew out of Carley’s own frustration with not seeing a community which reflected her attitudes towards marriage when looking to plan her own. Marrying work/life, if you will. In speaking to this iconoclast, we discovered that she is secretly a Gen Z at heart, voicing an optimistic view of this generation’s future in regard to relationships and family, as well as challenging Gen Zs to reinvent the system to fit their own traditions.
Georgie Humphries: So, tell me about yourself and how you started The Knot.
Carley Roney: When I got married to my husband, who is Chinese-American, I felt completely and totally uncomfortable in the cookie cutter , 100% white bread, version of weddings that existed in the world. So I thought we need to create something new. I am actually a child of divorced parents, and completely and totally did not believe in marriage. I had always imagined as a child that I could have something like the relationship between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. They had separate homes and could be completely independent, but still had this romance that was 100% equal and autonomous, which sounded good. Because obviously, traditional marriage didn’t seem to work as evidenced by my own parents.
GH: When did that feeling change?
CR: I was proceeding along that path until I met David, my husband, and completely fell in love — like crazy, madly, head over heels smitten. We ended up getting married within six months from our first date. We had planned a trip to Hong Kong, and as a sort of dare I said “we should get married there,” and he agreed. Thus began a very funny, long journey.
I was still so anti-marriage. I bought a black dress. I was cynical. I wanted to avoid it entirely, until ultimately I kind of fell into the process. I wanted all of my friends there and to have a fun party. Through the planning process, I realized that the purpose of the wedding was to make an agreement in front of a community of people who are also agreeing to be there for you. But in every magazine I looked at, everything was perfect. It makes you think that they quit their jobs just to plan these weddings. I felt so much anxiety about it — never mind being an interracial couple. But that birthed the thinking that so many people are in the same boat as me, why isn’t there a solution for us? For people with divorced parents, crazy family situations, interracial couples or who do not want to spend a million dollars on their weddings. Why isn’t there a place for us? We became emotionally sensitive to the fact that most people’s lives are far more complicated than they look in a magazine. From there we formed The Knot, and then The Nest, which is all about relationships and figuring out those first few years of marriage, and then The Bump, which is about having a baby and being a parent. So for the past 25 years I have been trying to create an accepting universe for all different people, and their ideas and identities in that space.
GH: In the US, 40–50% of all marriages end in divorce — as you so witnessed with your parents. What do you believe must change within our society to increase healthy unions, and where does The Knot come into play?
CR: We now live in a world that has an abundance of choice because of the internet. In many ways, individuals are “shopping” for their future partners on dating apps. We think, “I’m going to find the perfect one, because I have unlimited choices. And because I’ve done all this work and researched this partner, it is going to be perfect.” Right now, there is this commodification of a perfect partner. However, this leaves out the other side of it, which is, at the end of the day, marriage is just two human beings with all their baggage, all their unconscious anxieties, insecurities, and expectations, just trying to make it work every day. And as it turns out, that takes a lot of effort. It requires constant negotiation, patience, and an extraordinary amount of empathy, not only for others, but for yourself.
My hope is that because Gen Zs have already begun to think long and hard about the choices they’re making for their own lives, and how they want to interact with the world, that they will show up in their marriages or relationships with that same high level of consciousness, patience, and generosity. I feel like every generation takes institutions and makes them their own. And it’s part of our job to change these institutions for the future generation. Otherwise, I would still be picking up my husband’s slippers when he walked through the door with a gin and tonic for him at hand. And I can guarantee you, that’s not what happens.
GH: Millennials and Gen Zs are breaking ground, as far as gender
and sexuality goes, by creating progressively more accepting societies, especially in relationships. So for gender nonconforming individuals, interracial relationships or LGBTQIA+ couples that feel they may be alienated by the prospect of the nuclear family or religious communities, how can marriage benefit them in a system that does not advocate for them?
CR: We fought hard for marriage equality, so it’s interesting to live in an era now where people who have the right to get married are not interested in that anymore. But I think at the end of the day, we can’t help but hold some stock in what is sanctioned by the state. If something is approved of, it releases us from a sense that we have to fight every minute of our lives. That applies for interracial couples too, as that used to be illegal. And being part of an interracial couple, you don’t want to participate in the institution of marriage on some level. But you also do, because there’s that state sanctioned protection of your relationship.
My daughter considers herself queer, and she’s dying to have her own version of the nuclear family. She can’t wait to have kids. And I think what’s amazing is that in every generation, we mix around these institutions and cultural constructs of what a family is with people who have the courage to live the life they want to. The law should not be in opposition of what the culture wants.
And when we don’t feel accepted in it, we don’t participate. We must work together as a society to make sure that no matter what rock you live under, you understand that these things are important pieces of other’s worlds and our complexity as a society.
GH:Women have historically been oppressed by laws (such as rape is not considered rape if the two are married), and social norms that come with union. In defiance of this, many women are choosing not to take part in marriages. How can women be prompted to trust the institution of marriage? Do we have to change something within the US to protect women inside of unions?
CR: The struggle for true equality is obviously still very real, and it’s so systemic that marriage becomes only a piece of that puzzle. And now we (women) are at this place where we can work, and get married and early on do feel equal. Often times, in the early days of marriage we can have a real assertive equality. But when you become a mother or have a child in the US it really quickly changes. We think we can have it all, but it’s simply impossible to try and progress in your career at the pace you want, and try to be a full-time partner while you’re also a parent. But once there’s the extraordinary addition of caring for a human, women really struggle and end up thinking “how did this happen to me?” We haven’t moved past the functional, practical idea of how do you divide up responsibilities when there really isn’t enough time to go around.
And the only solution for that is that you have to be almost embarrassingly intentional about everything. You need to become very honest with yourself and your partner, as well as set down rules and systems. Sometimes the laws meant to protect equality in marriages have loopholes. And there is no true federal “marriage equality act” or “equal rights for women act.” This forces us to have to be clear and say, “I want things to be equal” in pre-marriage agreements. We need to talk about this before it even becomes a problem.
GH: Couples are often provoked once they get married with intrusive, yet normalized questions on when they will be procreating. Do you believe children are a natural step taken after marriage? And in this way, are we commodifying children?
CR: What I think we need to unpack as a culture is the concept of loneliness. Like you see these images everywhere that make you think that having a baby might be what completes you as a woman. Or you might ask, “what’s missing from my life?” And sometimes I think what’s really missing from people’s lives is being told that they’re just fine as who they are. That’s more of a global issue though, that sort of quest for self-acceptance and happiness.
I do believe that procreation or creating your own little community is very natural and a beautiful thing to experience. However, I do think in this era of objectification and commodification, that it’s hard to feel okay about not wanting to make those choices. Overall, having children is part of our natural urges. But we need to become more self-accepting of our variety of feelings in order to be far better parents. We need to make sure we are having babies for the love of creating a community, and not for the fulfillment. Because children are not there for that purpose. They are allowed to be there as individuals, so nobody is objectified in the process. Our choices are out there to have children or not, but it is hard when 90% of your Instagram feed is made up of traditional triads of nuclear families. I can see how that would start to feel oppressive, and make you feel like you’re not doing it right. So I am happy that The Knot has been more deliberately focused on diverse societies and families, so that you can feel an overall sense of acceptance and make more varied/non- traditional choices.
