Lecture- 10/10/01
The Cultural Context of Intimacy -
Romantic Love
Feminization love -
According to sociologist Francesca Cancian, love became feminized with the rise of capitalism and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy in the 19th century. As economic production separated from the home and from personal relationships, women's and men's roles became more polarized. Women became responsible for the "emotional management' of the family relationships.
The emotion of love has itself become feminized. The feminization of love means that love is culturally defined in terms of emotional expression, verbal disclosure, vulnerability, warmth, and affection - tendencies typically considered "feminine" in American society. Desirable qualities for men usually include being independent, strong, competent, assertive, and unemotional, characteristics that run counter to common conceptions of love.
Men's attachments and dependency were obscured. Part of the feminization of love was the belief that women have an enormous need for love and tenderness while men were naturally independent and had less need for enduring, nonsexual love.
Although this split has softened in recent decades, it continues to structure marital love.
Cancian argues that men today tend to have a distinctive style of love that focuses on practical help, shared physical activities, time spent together, and sex.
In sum, the fact that women have more close relationships, appear to care about those relationships more, and seem more skilled ate expressing feelings doesn't mean that men are distant and unconcerned about love relationships. In national surveys, men and women alike rank family bonds as the most important element of their lives. The feminized perspective on love, however, leads us to believe that women need love more than men do, even though research on the effect of love relationships on physical and psychological well-being shows that men need it at least as much as, if not more, than women do.
The second aspect that has transformed personal relationships is associated with late capitalism. I.e., the cultural emphasis on individualism and emotional self-expression for both women and men. With wives increasingly joining the labor force, the growth of leisure and consumerism, the improving standard of living, and the rise of wives' employment, mean and women came to value self-development and internal experience.
By the 1920s, the new ideal of "companionship" marriage emerged, emphasizing marital intimacy and the personal development of both partners.
Sexuality - Americans are reluctant to acknowledge the role of cultural images on their own sexual attitudes and behaviors. Instead, we tend to see sexuality as a "natural" phenomenon that we develop into.
We need to understand that sexuality is a social construction. Two points: sexuality exhibits great variability across time, space, and the life course. Second point sexuality is a power system. Compulsory heterosexuality refers to the beliefs and practices that legitimate heterosexual behavior as the only natural and permissible sexuality.
Culture and Sexuality - Every society has its own rules and expectations for sexual behavior. Within the same culture, different families have their own values and therefore teach widely divergent sexual lessons.
Even our ides about what is normal and what is abnormal are culturally determined.
Ideals regarding normal sexual desire change over time as well. In the 19th century, low sexual desire was considered a good thing for women. Sexuality for other reasons than procreation was considered evil.
Liberalization of Sex - Sexuality in the US has changed from a family-centered reproductive system in colonial days to a romantic sexuality in the 19th century, to a modern sexuality with sexual relationships as a source of happiness and personal identity by the 1920s. Transformations in sexuality can be traced to social, demographic, and economic changes occurring in the US. Sex has been highly commercialized, with advertising contributing to sexual permissiveness.
Gender and Sexuality - although contemporary research indicted that the female sex drive is just as strong as the male sex drive, common everyday beliefs still emphasize the "heightened" nature of male sexuality. However, belief in gender differences are diminishing.
The sexual double standard so prevalent in the first half of the twentieth century - 'real" men have lots of sex with lots of women, "good" women have no sex outside of marriages - seems to have weakened somewhat in recent years.
Dating and courtship - Against the cultural backdrop of love and sexuality, we examine the institutional mechanisms through which people meet potential partners.
History of dating in America - Americans have never had a tradition 'arranged relationships." However, supervision of relationships was very tight. Courtship rules - "Calling"
The formal tradition calling began to disappear in the early 1900s.
Economic and educational innovations enabled young people to interact with the opposite sex away from the watchful eyes of parents. The expansion of commercial recreation (movies, dance halls, etc) and cars gave young people new places in which to meet and congregate away from parents.
One of the key features of the modern form of dating which emerged during the 1930s and 1940s and continues today is a primary concern with enjoyment rather than selection of a marital partner.
Contemporary Dating - parental influence still exerted. Most parents try to gradual loosen the reins over their children's sexual behavior while still promoting their own values. But parental influence varies by social class; the higher the class, the more control parents try to have over the dating behaviors of their children. Exclusive neighborhoods, private schools and clubs, and supervised functions help affluent parents ensure that their children will come into contact with 'suitable " dating partners. Lower-class young people are less likely to use structured activities like dances and formal parties as settings for their dates. They are more likely to "hang out" in popular gathering spots like parks, shopping malls etc.
Dating - Some sociologists have long argued that one of the key functions of dating in American society - particularly high school dating - is that it serves as a way of gaining social status among one's peers. Willard Waller - the rating and dating complex.
According to other sociologists, a more important social function of dating - at least in a heterosexual context - is that it allows males and females to interact with and learn about one another. It provides an opportunity for exploring romantic intimacy without requiring a rapid escalation toward marriage.
Martin King Whyte tested this hypothesis. Our dating culture is based upon the premise that dating provides valuable experience that will help individuals select mates and achieve happy marriages. Whyte found that marrying young tended to produce unsuccessful marriages. Premarital pregnancy was associated with problems in marriage. However, once the age of marriage is taken into account, none of other measures - dating variety, length of dating, length of courtship or engagement, or degree of premarital intimacy with the future husband or others - was clearly related to measures of marital success. A few weak tendencies in the results were contrary to predictions drawn from the marketplace learning viewpoint. Women who had dated more partners or who had engaged in premarital sex or cohabited were slightly less likely to have successful marriages. This might be seen as evidence eof quite a different logic. Perhaps there is a "grass is greener" effect. Women who have led less sheltered and conventional lives prior to marriage may not be as easily satisfied afterward. Several other researchers have found a similar pattern with regard to premarital cohabitation. Individuals who had been living together prior to marriage were significantly less likely to have successful marriages than those who did not.
Women who had married their first sweethearts were just as likely to have enduring and satisfying marriages as women who had married only after considering many alternatives. Similarly, women who had married after only a brief acquaintance were no more nor less likely to have a successful marriage than those who knew their husbands-to-be for years. And there was no clear differences between the marriages of women who were virgins at marriage and those who had had a variety of sexual partners.
Dating obviously does not provide useful learning that promotes marital success. Although our dating culture is based upon an analogy with consumer purchases in the marketplace, it is clear that in real life selecting a spouse is quite different from buy a car or breakfast cereal.
The influence of social structure in mate selection -
Exogamy - requires that an individuals marry outside certain social groups to which he or she belongs.
Endogamy - limits marital choices to people within one's social group, however that group is defined.
Homogamy - refers to marriages where the partners share similar social characteristics - age, class, race, educational status, etc.
Religion - marrying outside one's religion isn't as uncommon as it once today. Today, about one-quarter of all marriages occur between people of different religions. Although the traditional norms that once obligated people to marry within their faith have diminished, most religions still actively discourage interfaith marriages
Race and ethnicity - Even though marriages that cross racial and ethnic lines have become more common - they've tripled over the past 30 years - they still remain rare relative to marriages between people of the same race or ethnic group. 1994 - 1.3 million interracial marriages - only constitutes 2.3% of all U.S. marriages. 23% of interracial marriages are black-white unions.
Asians have fairly high rates of intermarriage
Intermarriage rates for all groups are affected by structural factors and are not uniform from one region to another. Rates for African Americans are highest in the West where attitudes toward interracial relationships and race in general are more permissive and tolerant than in other parts of the country, and lowest in the south.
1967 - US. Supreme Court ruled that using racial classifications to restrict freedom to marry was unconstitutional.
Social Class - class is a powerful factor in mate selection. Certainly some people do marry a person from a different social class, but the class tends to be an adjacent one.
Our education system plays a particularly important role in bringing people from similar class backgrounds together. Neighborhoods - and thus neighborhood schools - tend to be homogeneous in social class.
Social Theories of Intimate Relationships -
Discussed 2 theories:
Sociobiological Model of Mate Selection - see previous lecture.
The Social Exchange Model.
The exchange approach tries to explain why we are attracted to some people and not others. The exchange approach also explains why we pursue and remain in some relationships and avoid or leave others.
A cost-benefit analysis. In addition to taking into account costs and benefits, social exchange theory also considers people's preferences and expectations.
Availability of partners - marriage market
Equity and Investment in Intimate Relationships
People are interested in maximizing rewards and minimizing costs. Relationships work best when the exchange is fair or equitable - when both partners are deriving benefits from the relationship that are proportional to what they are investing in it. The presence or absence of such interpersonal equity has profound effects on the satisfaction felt by individuals as well as the stability of the relationship.
An interpersonal investment is anything one has to offer to the relationship, such as time, money, interest, or personal characteristics. Investments are important because they create feelings of entitlement or derservedness.
Individuals will often resort to attempts to restore equity psychologically - to convince themselves, that although it seems otherwise, equity does in fact exist.
Inequity is fairly obvious when the imbalances are in financial contributions to the relationship or in the performance of certain chores around the house, but there is emotional investment as well.
The partner who love more has greater interest in maintaining the relationships and may be forced to put up with a lot to do so. Willard Waller - principle of least interest - suggests that control over the relationship rests with the partner who has the least interest in continuing it. This person is able to dictate the conditions of the relationship, make demands of the other, and even exploit that person's dependence if he or she is so inclined.
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