Marriage Actually - An honest look at marriage

Marriage - Two Strands of Change

by Bald Man on May 19th, 2008

I’ve finished Marriage: a History, and no doubt it will inform my thinking and writing for some time to come. For now, I want to give you an extended quote from the conclusion.

The historical transformation in marriage over the ages has created a… paradox for society as a whole. Marriage has become more joyful, more loving, and more satisfying for many couples than ever before in history. At the same time it has become optional and more brittle. These two strands of change cannot be disentangled.

For thousands of years, marriage served so many economic, political, and social functions that the individual needs and wishes of its members (especially women and children) took second place. Marriage was not about bringing two individuals together for love and intimacy, although that was sometimes a welcome side effect. Rather, the aim of marriage was to acquire useful in-laws and gain political or economic advantage.

Only in the last two hundred years, as other economic and political institutions began to take over many of the roles once played by marriage, did Europeans and Americans begin to see marriage as a personal and private relationship that should fulfill their emotional and sexual desires. Once that happened, free choice became the societal norm for mate selection, love became the main reason for marriage, and a successful marriage came to be defined as one that met the needs of its members.

But each of these changes had negative as well as positive implications for the stability of marriage as an institution. No sooner did the ideal of marrying for love triumph than its most enthusiastic supporters started demanding the right to divorce if love died. Once people came to believe that families should nurture children rather than exploit their labor, many began to feel that the legal consequences of illegitimacy for children were inhumane. And when people started thinking that the quality of the relationship was more important than the economic functions of the institution, some men and women argued that the committed love of two unmarried individuals, including those of the same sex, deserved at least as much social respect as a formal marriage entered into for mercenary reasons.

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POSTED IN: Marriage Books