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| British King Henry VIII asked for a divorce in 1530. Since then,
it’s been all downhill for marriage, according to a group of social scientists.
They claim heterosexuals are responsible for the decline in the stature of maritial
relationships idealized by the 1950s concept of marriage on American TV. They
go on to say that gay couples who want to marry do more to honor the institution
and make it meaningful again. (Photos by AP)
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National Council on Family Relations
3989 Central Avenue NE, Suite 550
Minneapolis, MN 55421
763-781-9331
www.ncrf.org
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: LOU CHIBBARO JR. COMMENTS
 
continued...
of history,” Coontz wrote. “Suddenly,
couples were supposed to invest more of their emotional energy in each other
and their children than in their natal families, their kin, their friends and
their patrons. There was a new stress on marital companionship, intimacy and
privacy.”
But with love emerging as the main criteria for marriage, the revolutionary
concept of divorce soon crept into the equation, Coontz wrote. Once people took
the idea of love and intimacy seriously they began to question the notion of
marriage as a lifelong institution if the love and intimacy wore off, she said.
The seeds of more change began to sprout in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
according to Cherlin, when women’s rights and the transformation from
an agricultural to an industrial economy had an effect on the family. Other
factors, such as the decline in child and adult mortality and rising standards
of living contributed to a further transformation of marriage “from an
institution to a companionship,” Cherlin said.
In the second half of the 20th century, the 1950s era concept of the nuclear
family with the wife’s role as homemaker and the husband’s as breadwinner
began to give way in the 1960s and 1970s to a new concept of the “individualization
of family life,” Cherlin said.
Married couples “began to think more in terms of the development of their
own sense of self and the expression of their feelings, as opposed to the satisfaction
they gained through building a family and playing the roles of spouse and parent,”
he said. The divorce laws soon changed to meet this new belief system, Cherlin
said, making it far easier for couples to end their marriages when “individual”
needs weren’t being met.
He said the most dramatic “deinstitutionalization” of marriage
occurred in the latter part of the 20th century. Cohabitation and remaining
single — especially among women — became increasingly more acceptable,
he said. This ended the longstanding tradition that marriage provided the only
“ticket of admission” to a full family life, which, in turn, made
accessible a good career and social status in one’s community, he said.
With this as a backdrop, the quest by gay Americans to marry appears likely
to have little impact on the forces that led to the current state of marriage,
according to Cherlin and others who submitted papers to the Journal of Marriage
and Family.
“What’s happened is that heterosexuals have changed marriage,”
Cherlin said in a phone interview with the Blade.
“Th
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