Lecture 2/26/03 Cohabitation and Marriage -
Changes from courtship to dating
Context of courting
Courtship is a publicly visible process with rules and restrictions through which young men and women find a partner to marry. The words publicly visible emphasize the important role of the community - and, in particular, parents - watching over, and participating in the courting a young adult does. The words rules and restrictions emphasize the close adherence to well-established ways of acting.
Women and their parents equally involved in the process
Changes in courtship due to
Migration from rural areas to cities
Industrial capitalism
Higher standards of living
Increased years of education
The creation of a social category called adolescence
Technology (e.g. car)
Dating replaced courtship
Ellen Rothman looks at this period of time, and comes up with:
A period of rapid change from 1910 – 1930.
A gradual, evolutionary changed during the middle decades 1930 to about 1965
Heyday of dating 1945 to 1965
Dating was responsible for several changes
Placed courtship on an economic basis - the man paid to take the woman on a date.
Shifted balance of power from women in courtship to men in dating. The date was initiated and controlled by males, and it depended on cash earnings, which favored men over women.
Shifted power from parents to teenagers and young adults. Peer-run. This made it harder for parents to influence the process.
Responsibility of sexual activity shifted to women. "A man is only as bad as the women he is with." (1945)
While attitudes shifted toward greater tolerance for premarital and sexual activities, the tie between love and sex remained strong. It was emotional commitment above all that legitimized eroticism. Middle class Americans have long considered love a "necessary condition" for sexual intimacy. What changed during this period of time was not the condition but the point. There was increased premarital sexuality among engaged couples. Still closely connected to marriage.
Changes in marriage and partnership in the United States
1950s characterized:
By low premarital activity
Early marriage - in 1956 the median age of first marriage reached an all-time low of 20.1 for women, 22.5 for men.
Early childbearing
High rates of childbearing
By mid - 1960s changes in marriage and partnership in the United States characterized by:
Earlier sexual activity
Later marriage
Rise in cohabitation
By 1970s -Many of these concerns about dating seemed less important by the 1970s and 1980s, for by then the dating system had become less closely connected to marriage. Cohabitation increased, sometimes as a step toward marriage and sometimes as an alternative to marriage.
Sharp rise in premarital intercourse.
Adolescents began to socialize more often in larger, mixed-sex groups. (Modell, 1989)
Marital transitions
Instituional marriage
Typical in early U.S. history
Emphasis on male authority, duty, and conformity to social norms
Practical in striving to survive
Companionship marriage - Ernest Burgess coined the term.
Cancian - the increasing focus on personal life and self-development and decreasing commitment to traditional (institutional) roles was fueled by several changes:
Security - experiencing the world as safe and abundant - seems to promote a concern with self-development. Increased standard of living allows people to concentrate on their inner development
Men’s work became more sedentary and regimented, and less heroic.
Better education
The companionship family emphasized the similarity of husband and wife much more than the institutional family. The companionship marriage emphasized affection, friendship and sexual gratification.
But important things to consider:
Love was still feminized. Wives were still expected to be economically dependent on the husband and submissive.
Marriage was to be all of a woman's life but only part of a man's. Young women were seen as increasingly as needing higher education, not so they could establish a career but rather so they could be stimulating conversationalists and adept homemaker. For women it began important to be attractive.
Cancian points out that these transitions are not linear. For example the great Depression from 1929 to 1941 helped to reversing the trend towards individual freedom of the 1920s. Divorce dropped. Opposition to women's entering the labor force reappeared as more and more men lost their jobs and employers increasingly denied married women the right to work.
The postwar decades were a period of extreme commitment to the family and to split gender roles. There was a resurgence of anti feminism and a revival of the 19th century Doctrine of Two Spheres. The Victorian ideology of separate spheres was still partly intact; it was the husband's job to support the family, while the wife was the center of home life. But the authority of the husband had declined - he was to be more of a pal to his children and more of a companion to his wife.
The concept of family togetherness
This family ideal was endorsed by most intellectuals and social scientists, e.g. Talcott Parsons.
Cancian says that the strong commitment to traditional family roles throughout the 50s and early 60s is puzzling since many social conditions encouraged androgyny and self-development. This did not happen until the late 60s, when a wave of protest movements and the Vietnam War produced a counterculture that rejected traditional roles and beliefs.
By the late 60s, there was a rapid reversal of the familism of the 50s.
Divorces accelerated.
Fertility decline
Cohabitation increased
Premarital sexuality increased.
Trend toward wives working for money was probably the underlying cause of the decline of the companionship family. But the immediate cause was the antiestablishment social movements of the 60s and 70s.
Companionship family roles were also attacked by the human potential movement, like Esalen, etc. Cancian points out that this new therapies preached androgyny and urged men and women to reject the expectations of others and develop their own true selves
Not surprisingly women supported the new flexibility in gender roles more than men, especially highly educated professional women.
BIndependent marriage
Typical of post-1960s U.S. families
Emphasis on self-development, flexible roles and communication about problems
Cancian makes a distinction between two post1960s (1970s) concept of love and marriage:
Cancian
Looks at the concept of love and marriage:
Feminized love
Family duty (19th century)
Woman is responsible for love
Love is duty to family
Companionship (1920-_
Woman is responsible for love
Androgynous love
Independence
Woman and man are responsible for love
Love is defined by individual self-development and intimacy
Interdependence (1970-)
Woman and man are responsible for love
Love is defined by mutual self-development, intimacy and support
Although there is disagreement about the importance of mutual support and commitment in contemporary relationships, researchers agree on the growing importance of self-fulfillment, flexible roles and intimate, open communication.
By the middle of 70s, new androgynous images of close relationships.
Factors:
A prolonged economic recession dampened people's aspirations for freedom
Academics and the mass media began to criticize the human potential movement as selfish and narcissistic.
Self-fulfillment
Flexible roles
Intimacy and open communication
Love is the responsibility of the man as well as the woman.
Who marries whom?
Parental influence still exists.
Homogamy - we marry people who are similar to ourselves (income, education, race, etc)
Still the desired arrangement 9 out of 10 whites and 2 out of 3 African Americans will marry eventually.
Market model of marriage
Based on supply, preferences and resources. Supply is the group of people who are actively looking for a spouse. Preferences - each person has an idea of his or her own preferred characteristics in a spouse. Finally each person has resources. These are the characteristics a person possesses that are attractive to others.
Affected by sex ratio and other factors.
Sometimes preferences and resources are so incompatible that the market can't provide acceptable spouses for all that are looking. One explanation for the drop in the African-American marriage rate is that decent-paying industrial jobs have moved to suburban plants so that men without college education have a harder time finding a job that can support a family. Also high levels of homicide, imprisonment, and drug use, and employment by the military move some black men from the marriage market.
Changing marriage bargain in U.S.
Specialization model: This is an economic model.
Traditionally the marriage bargain was been that men specialize in work for pay and women specialize in unpaid work at home doing housework and childcare.
Traditionally men have placed a greater emphasis on the physical attractiveness of their spouses than women; conversely, women have placed a grater emphasis on the earning potential of their spouses.
This specialization model no longer fits the marriage market well. The specialization model predicts that women with less education and lower earnings will be more likely to marry than better-educated, higher-earning women
There is evidence suggests that both men and women now prefer partners with good earning potential. This reflects the grater acceptance of married women's work outside the home and also the prolonged stagnation of men's wages since the early 1970s.
What is the marital bargain these days and why do most people still eventually marry? The marital bargain is based more on a pooling of joint earnings. Perhaps the only advantage marriage offers over cohabitation is that it requires a public commitment to a long-term, possibly lifelong, relationship. What's different about marriage are social norms, such as the expectations of friends, relatives, and religious congregants about how married people will behave and the legal rights and privilege reserved for spouses and married parents.
Marriage and religion
Differences between religions
Maintain strong support of institution of marriage.
US Catholics are now more like mainstream Protestants. Whereas Catholics have been changing greatly in their attitude toward religious authority, fundamentalist Protestants have changed much less. Compared to other religious groups, they are less likely to divorce, they have the highest birthrates, they have the lowest rates of married women working outside the home, and they have the most conservative attitudes toward gender roles. The link between church and marriage is less central among African-American churches because, while supporting marriages, these churches have historically reached out to the larger percentage of single-parent families.
Marriage and health
Marriage related to better health and longevity or is it related to self-selection, ie. Mentally and physically healthier people are more likely to get married and stay married.
Is marriage related to better health? For example, married men and women live longer than do unmarred men and women. Men live longer, report greater life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety and have less treatment for psychiatric problems. The relationship for women holds true, but the differences between the married and the unmarried women are smaller.
It could be that marriage deters people from undertaking risky behavior,. Married men and women are less likely to drink and drive, abuse alcohol or drugs and get into serious arguments. It gives them a sense of responsibility to their children and spouses that leads them to take fewer risks. It may provide a partner who monitors a person’s health closely. Married people usually have higher incomes and this may ease the stress.
Or is it that mentally health and physically healthy people are more likely to get married and to stay married. In essence, a negative selection out.
Non-Marital Unions -cohabitation- the sharing of a household by unmarried persons who have a sexual relationship.
4.2 million households (heterosexual couples)
1.7 million (homosexual couples)
Cohabiting couples are diverse:
College-educated professions
Less affluent and less well-educated
Living together before marriage
Living together before remarriage. (Actually more common than living together before first marriage)
Cohabiting couples have children; 15% children from the current relationship, 35% children from a previous relationship.
About 40% of the births occurring outside of marriage are births to cohabiting couples.
Factors contributing to rise in non-marital unions
Increase in individualism
Increase in standard of living
Improved contraceptive methods
Greater availability of abortions
Greater economic independence of women
Moral stigma less now
Decreasing economic status for men
Cohabiting heterosexual couples
Cohabitation is sometimes a substitute for marriage; However, studies show that cohabitation relationships do not last long and that a majority of cohabiting white women who become pregnant do marry before the birth of their child.
Among some African Americans, cohabitation may be more of a substitute for marriage. Black women who cohabit are much less likely to marry than are white women. Moreover, those who become pregnant are less likely to marry before the child's birth. Cohabitation is also an alternative to marriage among mainland Puerto Rican women.
In may mean that some men do not highly value commitment.
Some argue that cohabitation does not have much to do with marriage at all. Yet others argue that cohabitation is stage in the marriage process.
Cherlin uses the concepts of manifest functions and latent functions to interpret these two views. Manifest function is a publicly stated, acknowledged reason behind social actions and latent function is an unacknowledged, unstated reason behind social actions. So, people do not say that the living together is a step toward marriage, but it may be a latent function (not stating that there is a process of evaluating whether the partner is "marriage material.")
The link between cohabitation and marriage may be weakening. Fewer cohabitations end in marriage now than past decades.
Cohabiting relationships have rates of dissolution than do marriage, and young adults who end cohabiting relationships are more likely to return home than are young adults who end marriages.
Differences with ethnic groups.
Gay and lesbian couples
Tied to inability to marry. Some register for domestic partnerships in regions where domestic partnerships are recognized.
Studies find no significant differences in love or relationship satisfaction. Kath Weston studies suggest that gay partners worry about becoming so united with and dependent on the partner that you lose your independence. There seems to be more equitability and flexibility in sharing household tasks.
Different ties to families - Created kinship Family network created from blood relatives that accept their homosexuality and close friends they have as well as present and fore partners. "Gay people really have to work to make family."
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