Should men wear wedding rings?

Nowadays, more and more men are opting to bling it up on their left hand. But what's the modern standard?  When I got married in 1965, no self-respecting man would ever dream of wearing one. They were considered working-class, naff and tasteless, up there with two foot-high birthday cards, Tretchikoff’s green woman, horse brasses and lace curtains.  At best, they were seen as flashy and foreign, associated with being a ‘medallion man.’ In those days, men’s jewellery of all kinds, apart from a discreet signet ring on the pinkie finger perhaps, was distinctly off-limits.  For a woman, a wedding ring was a different matter, as not only was there added status in being married, the presence of the ring also told everybody that any progeny you had was legitimate.
And in the days when unmarried mothers were stigmatized, a wedding ring and a ‘Mrs’ title were important signs of respectability.In Margaret Drabble’s 1965 novel The Millstone, the highly intelligent unmarried heroine, Rosamund, becomes accidentally pregnant after a one-night stand. When in hospital having her baby, she notices a new mother who looks about 16. Surely somebody so young must also be unmarried? But no, Rosamund notes with surprise, she is wearing a wedding ring and is a ‘Mrs.’ OK, times have changed.  But now that marriage, for both sexes, is no longer the major rite of passage it once was, it seems that the wedding ring, for both partners, is assuming ever greater significance. At many weddings, the exchange of rings has become an integral part of the ceremony, and most jewellers now display chunky, masculine-looking rings in their shop windows. There was a minor outcry when Prince Willaim announced that he would not be wearing a wedding ring following his marriage to Kate Middleton, as if he was committing some modern solecism. In fact, he is merely continuing the British upper-class male tradition not to.  David Cameron does not wear wedding ring, nor does Boris Johnson. Do any old Etonians, I wonder? George Clooney has one but then he is American, and they have never been class-consious about men’s wedding rings in the same way as the British.  Maybe I am an old-fashioned snob, but the presence of a wedding ring seems to diminish a man, to lower his status. They are a bit ‘lefty,’ a bit lentils and tofu, although I have not seen one on Jeremy Corbyn's ring finger. Mind, he is on his third marriage.  My own sons Tom and Will, now in their forties, have resolutely refused to wear wedding bands and are blessedly ring-free. I might disown them if they did wear one, although many males in their age group have taken to them. Will reckons that a wedding ring on a man says: ‘I may be ghastly, but you can see that somebody wanted me.I am sometimes amazed when I meet a short, fat, ugly, bald man and then observe that he is wearing a wedding ring. Did somebody actually marry him? In the old days, it was often better not to know, or at least not to have the fact shoved in your face.  Nowadays, older men marrying for the first time usually put on a ring as if to say: I’ve finally done it! Eventually, unbelievably, somebody said yes!  But when you divorce or marry for a second, third or fourth time, what do you do with the old rings? Throw them away? Pawn them?  One might assume that a man who sports a wedding ring has thereby pledged himself to fidelity and monogamy, at least for as long as the marriage lasts. But no. We now know that it is by no means a magic talisman to affair-proof your marriage. Over a million married Britons alone have apparently signed up to the Ashley Madison dating site for married people, and one must assume a high proportion of them are men sporting a big fat wedding ring.  But then, you don't need to sign up to dating site to be unfaithful. Married people have been committing adultery for centuries, wedding ring or not.  At the risk of putting jewellers out of business, why advertise the fact that you are married anyway?  In these days of ever easier divorce and rampant infidelity, the whole ring thing seems ridiculous, whatever sex you are.