The marriage revolution has been a controversial issue since the dawn of time, and all that are and have been involved with “matrimony” are aware of the issues of the future. There can be no denying that the culture of marriage has changed. This very course is itself a great example of this fact. Much like any other sociological subject of any real concern, there are many “opinions” related to this issue. This paper will attempt to highlight marriage seen as the sociological transformation, marital erosion versus evolution, and why many people fail at marriage and what does it take to be successful in greater detail.
This will allow you, the readers, to make up your own minds regarding this extremely multifaceted issue. Marriage seen as the sociological transformation “Couples today have much higher expectations. Between the 1950s and the 1970s American attitudes toward marriage changed dramatically as part of what has been called the “psychological revolution”a transformation in the way people look at marriage, parenthood, and their lives in general. ” (Skolnick p. 171) At first blush, marriage in America seems to have followed a similar course.
Once a required rite of passage, seen as a genuine embodiment of shared values, it now serves as a game-show prize on Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire or a booby prize on My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance even though wedding ceremonies have created a “bridal-industrial complex,” as Lee professor of economics Claudia Goldin calls the nearly $100-billion-a-year U. S. industry that outpaces even the movie business ($45 billion a year, including sales and rentals).
Hodder, 2004) Motivated by celebrity magazines and wedding planners, couples take on increasingly elaborate spectacles that take years to plan and cost on average $20,000 to produce. When Love Story first appeared, our society was still extremely absorbed in a marriage culture that encouraged and supported getting and staying married. But inside a few years, the women’s movement, the pill, the sexual revolution, and various economic shifts had permanently transformed that marriage-centric society.
Marriage is not an endangered species, but it is surrounded by enormous difficulties that were not readily apparent 35 or 40 years ago. Divorce is a very serious presence over 50 percent of our marriages end in divorce. The culture doesn’t encourage permanence or fidelity. Dual careers, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with them, tend to force people to make difficult decisions about the growing roles of the two partners in the marriage. So the assumed stabilities of 40 or 50 years ago the Ozzie and Harriet world that most people refer to, if they ever existed, certainly don’t exist now.
Social conservatives blame divorce, cohabitation, illegitimacy, and the demise of the traditional family for society’s ills, from poverty, crime, and juvenile delinquency to the moral decay and destruction of the American way of life. In the 1970s, marriage was at its lowest but by the late 1990s there was a reappearance of marriage, seen in the leveling off of the divorce rate. Although the claims for the value of marriage by conservatives and gay-rights proponents “were from two ends of the spectrum, they came together at least at the rhetorical level for what marriage… accomplishes and how crucial it is as a social institution. Gallagher, 2002) Historic change in American matrimony is especially pronounced in three areas: the equalizing of the respective rights and duties of wives and husbands, the dissolution of marital prohibitions based on race, and the evolution from state-defined grounds for divorce to couple-defined no fault divorce. The most recent area of debate is whether the state should sanction marital consent between same-sex couples. Although such a prospect is unthinkable to some, earlier forms of legal marriage are equally unimaginable now. As equalities expanded, patterns of marital consent evolved.
In the twentieth century, for instance, marriage timing is one sign of such change. The reasons why people marry are usually love, companionship, stability, and children, which have largely remained the same. What has changed is when. In 1970, people were marrying very young, right out of college but by the late 1980s people started marrying at a significantly later age largely because of the women, who were going on to graduate school or to work or just delaying the commitment. Sociologists agree that women have driven the shift from the marriage way of life of the 1950s and ’60s.
Employment of women outside the home and other changes made attachment to a male through marriage at as early a stage as possible not only unnecessary, but then, as the divorce rate went up, an increasingly uncertain proposition. Understanding recent changes in the marriage market also requires looking behind the scenes of the idyllic 1950s and ’60s. The patterns of family life which many Americans now look back upon with nostalgia the stay-at-home mom and the baby boom, people marrying at very high percentages and very early were in fact unprecedented in American history.
Those conditions and their effects reflect the first demographic revolution of the twentieth century: earlier centuries’ high-fertility, high-mortality families gave way to the smaller, long-lived nuclear families of the mid-twentieth century. People still want to get married, but the urgency or the sense that it’s necessary or that you can’t have a full life without getting married has clearly changed. Marital erosion versus evolution Following the script of the 1950s and ’60s, Dick and Jane meet in college, fall in love, make love, marry, work their way through his Harvard law degree, move to Connecticut, and make babies.
Jane is smart, full of fun, and strong, but when she reflects on her mother’s portrayal of the wife, “barefoot and pregnant” she breaks down. But, Dick is sitting in his lazy boy wondering what is wrong and is she always going to have these breakdowns. Until 30 or 40 years ago, the gender differences in marriage generally provided structural support. But when women, participating in larger historical trends toward greater equality, began to tire of their traditional roles and change them, both sides of the relationship were displaced.
There were lots of stressors that made it more difficult for marriage to happen,” says Dudley Rose, assistant dean for ministry studies at the Divinity School. “People particularly women, rightly didn’t want to be put into situations where they had a set of responsibilities that completely undermined their careers. ” (Catholic Answers Inc. , 2004) For social conservatives, these shifts in roles have compromised the very foundation of marriage. Change is characteristic of marriage. It’s not a static institution.
Between gender shaking and cultural surges, Americans now live among a diversity of family patterns, “People can cohabit without great social disapproval; they can live in multigenerational families; there are scenes of group living; there are gay unions or civil unions. There are a greater variety of household forms that are approved and accepted, or at least tolerated, at the same time that there are some very strong voices appreciating conventional, traditional marriage in ways that were not voiced 25 or 30 years ago. ” (Ross, Mirowsky, & Goldsteen, 1990)
Let’s adds economic factors to the marital mix. Researchers often view emotional and economic incentives on an historical seesaw. They usually went together in the past and they still go together in current times. It’s true that people look immediately for romantic and intimate bonds with someone now, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t figure in the past. Our society is full of economic benefits for people who are married. People may no longer need to marry for economic security, but they do seem to need economic security to marry.
The marriage rate is much higher among people of higher socioeconomic and educational levels, and it’s especially low among those without the same opportunities. If marriage is an evolving work in process it may be choice that will give it an evolutionary edge. When the right of matrimony is equally available to all, perhaps the public institution of marriage will gain in strength and meaning. Given that American marriage is founded on mutual consent which requires a context of freedom, equality, and, perhaps most important of all, choice we may be on the verge of an American renaissance of marriage.
It’s interesting that the marriage image just remains with people. It changes and evolves, but it will not go away and it cannot, in my opinion, be destroyed. Many people fail at marriage. What does it take to be successful? Social science, philosophy, and common sense have distinguished a number of requirements for successful marriage. People have needs that must be satisfied if they are to be happy. These needs are not just a matter of taste; they are built into our nature. They are universal and change little from one person or culture to the next.
One universal feature of human existence is the need for relationship. The expression of this need may vary from culture to culture and between men and women, but the need seems universal. Man is a social creature. We were created to be in deep and loving unity with other persons. Our need for unity is extreme, and it is not easily satisfied. It insists on a thoughtful relationship and will not settle for less. But relationships come in different intensities, different degrees of significance, and different depths of satisfaction.
Belonging to a club is nice, but it’s not deeply satisfying. Having friends is important, and being part of a community helps our sense of well-being, but none of these types of relationships are intense enough to satisfy the deepest needs of our souls. We can get there only through a loving union with one other person and only one other person. The deepest relationship can involve only two people. It cannot be the work of a committee. Not everyone is meant to be married, but everyone has the desire for a deep relationship. And the deepest relationship can be between only two persons.
To obtain the greatest satisfaction, one must build a special relationship with one other person that excludes all others. There is no other way to do it. Affection spread among many people may give short-term pleasure, but these types of relationships normally tend to be superficial and not satisfying in the long run. This is why marriage must be exclusive, that is, with just one other person. There is nothing subjective about this need for exclusivity. Our nature as human beings requires it. After couples are married, they continue to intensify their union.
That takes a while. The mature union achieved by people who have been married for years does not happen overnight. It develops between them, as each is free to reveal his or her true self and to find that true self accepted and loved. It requires a lot of confidence to risk self-revelation. There’s always the fear that your loved one may stop loving you. That’s why so many people put up “a good front” to impress a person of the opposite sex. One of the first shocks in marriage is to discover that your spouse is not quite the person you had imagined.
A wife finds that Prince Charming doesn’t really wear shining armor around the house nor ride a white horse; worse yet, he’s got some startling and disgusting habits. A husband finds that Cinderella’s foot doesn’t quite fit the glass slipper, and, worse yet, she’s got a horrifying temper. So there are reasons people hide behind a mask. But to grow closer as a couple they have to be willing to risk self-revelation. That takes a lot of confidence in the relationship. To be successful and in order to trust enough, marriage needs to be unconditional, exclusive, and permanent.
Without these qualities, it will not thrive. Psychologists seem never to get tired of telling us that marriages die for lack of exclusiveness, unconditional mutual acceptance, or commitment to permanence. Couples who fail to develop these features often fail at marriage. It is quite astonishing that even a radical change in marriage uses and customs could not destroy the basic character of marriage. The transformation of marriage uses and customs is a consequence of the history of man. Culture is not something static or invariable, but is in a constant process of development.
Openness is essentially the willingness to grow, a distaste for ruts, eagerly standing on top-toe for a better view of what tomorrow brings. A man once bought a new radio, brought it home, placed it on the refrigerator, plugged it in, turned it to WSM in Nashville (home of the Grand Ole Opry), and then pulled all the knobs off! He had already tuned in all he ever wanted or expected to hear. Some marriages are “rutted” and rather dreary because either or both partners have yielded to the tyrany of the inevitable, “what has been will still be. ” Stay open to newness. Stay open to change. ” (Nutt, 1990)