General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Why Great Husbands Are Being Abandoned" [View all]BainsBane
(54,162 posts)Last edited Fri Aug 15, 2014, 05:29 PM - Edit history (1)
Modern-day expectations of marriage are exceedingly high. People expect to find a soul mate, best friend, life partner, and someone who can share financial burdens with them. Add to that idealized notions of romantic euphoria and intense passion and sexual fulfillment, it's a very high bar to reach and maintain.
Marriage has not simply evolved from the Ozzie and Harriet days that some of the MRA types long for. Rather it has evolved dramatically over centuries. Prior to the 18th-19th century (and of course the time-frame varies from place to place), marriages were practical arrangements. Families arranged marriages based on mutual interest, which varied according to status in society. European and Euro-American families of social standing were expected to pay sizable dowries to the groom's family. Arrangements were expected to advantage both families, wealth for the groom's and social standing and connections for the bride's. Many of our Founding Fathers wealth came from marriages to the daughters of wealthy families, and that was standard for men of the upper-class.
The notion that people married for romantic love, as opposed to alliances between families or economic arrangements, began to arise in the 18th century. Marriage records in Spanish and Portuguese America, for example, show increasing petitions to Crown and Church where supplicants sought to avoid marriages their parents had arranged or parents sought to prevent children from entering matches based on love but harmful to family honor. Over the course of the 18th and into the early to mid-19th century, ideas that love formed the basis for marriage became increasingly common.
We are now in an era where the idea that people marry for anything other than love is seen as unacceptable. Social relations and gender relations evolve and have continued to evolve over the centuries. The mythical ideal that some have of constant, steady gender norms (based largely, it seems, on Hollywood and TV images of the 1950s) is false. Gender norms like all social relations evolve across time. As the economy changes--whether through colonial trade, manufacturing, industrialization, or technological innovation--so do social relations and with them marriage.
Here we are in an era where marriage is no longer exclusively defined as between a man and a woman. Most of us here think that a good thing. Why then should anyone hearken back to a time when that was inconceivable?