Guest Post by Morbo
As the country continues to obsess over that woman in Georgia with the giant eyeballs who skipped out on her fantasy princess wedding, it seems a good time to pop off about marriage in the U.S.A. Naturally, I’ll be stealing someone else’s ideas.
One of my favorite writers about marriage and family issues is Stephanie Coontz, who teaches family history at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. She writes cool books, her latest being Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.
Coontz is never afraid to point out truths that might make us uncomfortable, a habit that infuriates the right wing. In a May 1 Washington Post opinion piece, she explains why those who argue for a return to “traditional values” in relation to marriage are bound to be disappointed.
Anyone who reads Victorian-era novels understands that the motivating factors for marriage have changed dramatically in the past 200 years. Women in Charles Dickens’ day were obsessed with making a good match — that is, a man with enough money to provide for them and the children that would likely result from the union. Love really didn’t enter the equation. This is why so many young, vivacious women in books by Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins are married to icy, unemotional older (but wealthy) men. If a woman made a mistake and married a drunkard or a spendthrift, she would pay for that mistake for the rest of her life.
The economic liberation of women, the rise of affordable birth control, the ability of women to live independently, the sexual revolution, the ability to legally separate from a bad husband and other factors created societies where marrying for love became a reality. As a result, Coontz writes, “Marriage is no longer the main way in which societies regulate sexuality and parenting or organize the division of labor between men and women.”
“[A]lthough some people hope to turn back the tide by promoting traditional values, making divorce harder or outlawing gay marriage, they are having to confront a startling irony: The very factors that have made marriage more satisfying in modern times have also made it more optional.”
In the United States today, Coontz notes, 40 percent of cohabitating (but not legally wed) couples have children. An estimated five million children are being raised by same-sex couples. Coontz writes that many people may not like these facts but “there is a certain inevitability to almost all of them.”
Coontz also points out that even though most Americans are bemoan the high U.S. divorce rates, most married couples want to retain that option. A few states, prodded by the Religious Right, now offer “covenant marriage,” legal unions that don’t fall under no-fault divorce laws. Fewer than 3 percent of couples in those states take that option. Indeed, the Bible Belt leads the nation in divorce rates.
“Marriage is no longer the institution where people are initiated into sex. It no longer determines the work men and women do on the job or at home, regulates who has children and who doesn’t, or coordinates care-giving for the ill or the aged. For better or for worse, marriage has been displaced from its pivotal position in personal and social life, and will not regain it short of a Taliban-like counterrevolution.”
I’ve listened to plenty of Religious Right leaders over the years who would be happy to implement the Taliban option. But human sexuality and interpersonal relationships are notoriously difficult to regulate, and most people simply aren’t going to tolerate much meddling by the state. Sure, encouraging little Johnny to pray in school is one thing, but when these religious types start cramping my style, well, it’s time to take off the gloves.
That’s why, for all of the carping I do about the Religious Right, I really do believe they are destined to fail in some areas — in the long run. They just don’t realize or refuse to accept that societies change and that at a certain point, their efforts are as futile as ordering the tide to turn back. They remind me of the “English only” crowd, which seems to think that Hispanics will stop speaking their native tongue if only enough laws are passed.
Of course, none of this means we won’t have to live through periods of reactionary, politicized fundamentalism that drag us backward. We’re in one of those now. (Read about what’s going on in Kansas lately?) When I say the Religious Right will fail to achieve certain goals, I don’t mean that will happen next month. We could easily live through 50 more years of their heavy-handed efforts to run our lives. So don’t think you don’t have to beat on them and that you no longer must oppose everything they do. You do.
Now get out there and do it. And may you find love and happiness along the way — if that’s what you want.