This year, women said ‘enough’ to modern marriage

It’s too early to say heterosexual marriage is dead – but 2023 seemed to mark the beginning of the end of Marriage 3.0. Illustration: Carmen Casado/The Guardian

It sounds absurd, but the most compelling display of the collapse of modern American marriage in 2023 is happening on a show about Mormon polygamists.

For 18 seasons, TLC’s Sister Wives has followed Kody Brown and his four loudly Caucasian wives, who share 18 children and several houses in Arizona. The show started as a saccharine docu-soap about an unorthodox family trying to fit into an increasingly modern world. Now, I watch with rapt interest, practically foaming at the mouth, as one by one Kody’s wives leave him.