Every day on social media, Black people bewail the lack of marriage in the community. Folks write think pieces, make podcasts, go live for three hours at a time mourning the “breakdown of the Black family” like they’re standing over a gravesite in a church hat and hard-bottom shoes.

But some of these same people couldn’t be bothered to marry the parents of their own children.

That’s the part nobody wants to sit with. People love romanticizing marriage in theory while avoiding the hard work of partnership, commitment, accountability, emotional maturity, sacrifice, and stability in practice. Everybody wants the symbolism of family. Fewer people want the labor that comes with building one.

And let’s be honest: some people don’t actually miss marriage. They miss the illusion of social order. They miss the aesthetics of respectability. Because if marriage were truly valued the way people claim, we would see more conversations about emotional availability, conflict resolution, financial literacy, healing trauma, healthy communication, and choosing partners carefully instead of treating relationships like temporary entertainment until somebody gets pregnant.

At this point, some of y’all don’t want marriage. Y’all want nostalgia with a filter on it. Half these folks screaming about “family values” would’ve folded instantly under the pressure of Big Mama and them standing on the porch demanding a wedding date after a positive pregnancy test.

Maybe we need to bring shotgun marriages back. Not the shotgun part necessarily — Lord knows we don’t need Uncle Willie out here legally threatening anybody with a rusty revolver — but perhaps we need to resurrect the collective expectation that if you’re grown enough to make babies, maybe you should at least seriously discuss building an actual life together. Imagine the chaos if aunties started scheduling courthouse appointments the same way they organize repasts.

And before somebody starts hollering about statistics and systemic issues — yes, those things matter. Racism, mass incarceration, economic instability, generational trauma, and disinvestment absolutely impacted Black relationships and family structures. Anybody with historical sense knows that. But personal choices still exist inside systems. Two things can be true at once.

Sometimes the loudest people mourning the “death of marriage” are grieving a standard they never practiced themselves. And social media has become a strange place where people publicly worship institutions they privately refused to uphold.