Stephanie Coontz

This is a sweeping history of the institution of marriage (including how it shifted from being an institution to a relationship). People used to marry for political or economic reasons instead of primarily for love and personal fulfillment: to make an alliance with powerful or wealthy families, or to join together with the person whose farmland was next to yours. The in-laws were as important as the two people in the marriage. Now marriage is generally regarded as a choice two individuals show more make, and it is becoming more of an equal partnership - not for the first time, but as it used to be.

Quotes

Introduction

In those days there were few two-career marriages. Most people had a two-person, married-couple career that neither could conduct alone. (6)

Today most people expect to live their lives in a loving relationship, not a rigid institution. (10)

The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love

...in early modern Europe most people believed that love developed after marriage. (18)

The Invention of Marriage

The story that marriage was invented for the protection of women is still the most widespread myth about the origins of marriage. (35)

I do not believe...that marriage was invented to oppress women any more than it was invented to protect them. (44)

Soap Operas of the Ancient World

...in most cases, marriage was still a matter of practical calculation rather than an arrangement entered into for individual fulfillment and the pursuit of happiness. (65)

For thousands of years...the economic functions of marriage were far more important to the middle and lower classes than were its personal satisfactions, while among the upper classes, the political functions of marriage took first place. (69)

Something Borrowed

The world's first experiment in democratic government did nothing to improve the rights and social status of wives....Athens was one of the few societies in history prior to the nineteenth century that idealized the role of wives as dependent homemakers rather than as work mates for their husbands. (76)

Like many contemporary boosters of the sanctity of marriage, [Octavian/Augustus] did not let his own divorce and many sexual liaisons inhibit him from trying to impose marital virtue and "family values" on others. (83)

How the Other 95 Percent Wed

Women were not necessarily impoverished by divorce in the medieval world. Because no one in the Middle Ages ever claimed that the man was the main breadwinner, a divorced wife was entitled to a percentage of the household estate in line with the labor she had contributed to it. (105)

...until the 17th century the most typical prior consent suit was brought not by a deserted woman or unwed mother by by a man trying to force a woman into marriage after she had rejected him or even married someone else. (109)

In urban as well as rural areas, marriage expanded a man's authority while restricting a woman's....A married woman...was covered by her husband's identity and lacked any legal standing on her own. (115)

From Yoke Mates to Soul Mates

It was harder to dismiss calls to extend equal rights to women when people no longer believed that every relationship had to have a ruler and a subject. (153)

"women's labor was radically undervalued in the world of cash transactions" (Catherine Kelley,156)

The new theory of gender difference divided humanity into two distinct sets of traits. The male sphere encompassed the rational and active ideal, while females represented the humanitarian and compassionate aspects of life. When these two spheres were brought together in marriage, they produced a perfect, well-rounded whole. (156)

"Two Birds Within One Nest"

"Two birds within one nest;
Two hearts within one breast...
A world of strife shut out,
A world of love shut in."
Dora Greenwell, "Home," 1863 (p. 163)

"A Heaving Volcano"

...the conviction that men and women had inherently different natures remained an impediment to the intensification of romantic love and intimacy. (184)

There was a remarkable continuity in the legal subjugation of women from the Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century. (186)

"The Time When Mountains Move Has Come"

Traditionalists worried that...changes in sexual expectations might lead women to put their own happiness above that of their husbands. Instead, historian Nancy Cott suggests, "sex appeal" replaced "submission" as a wife's first responsibility to her husband... (204)

The Era of Ozzie and Harriet

The cultural consensus that everyone should marry and form a male breadwinner family was like a steamroller that crushed every alternative view. (229)

At every turn, popular culture and intellectual elites alike discouraged women from seeing themselves as productive members of society. (236)

Winds of Change

It was by reading about what marriage ought to be that many women saw what their own marriages weren't. (252)

Uncharted Territory

The big problem doesn't lie in differences between what men and women want out of life and love. The big problem is how hard it is to achieve equal relationships in a society whose work policies, school schedules, and social programs were constructed on the assumption that male breadwinner families would always be the norm. (299-300)

Over the past century, marriage has steadily become more fair, more fulfilling, and more effective in fostering the well-being of both adults and children than ever before in history. It has also become more optional and more fragile. (301)

Conclusion

This is a recurring pattern in periods of massive historical change. The gains that social change produces in some areas of life are usually inseparable from the losses it produces in others. (308)

Notes

"The Last User of a Secret Woman's Code," NYT, 10/7/2004
"A Language By Women for Women," WaPo, 2/24/2004 show less

If there's one thing that's great about this book is that it dismantles the myth that middle class white people "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" to get where they are now. The GI Bill, highway system, low-interest mortgages and much more government aid helped build the middle class after World War II. Of course there's much more in this book about the mythology of the Golden Age of America's past and that makes it all the better still. A great book and recommended reading for all show more Americans. show less

This is one of those books where I underlined something on nearly every page. Coontz believes in getting beyond rhetoric and into data to figure out what works and doesn't work for families. She doesn't try to live in some unrealistic fantasy that the traditional[1] nuclear family is going to come back or that solves all problems. Instead, she examines the strengths and weaknesses of the many different family types that exist in the US -- they all have both strengths and weaknesses relative show more to the others.

One of the strongest points Coontz makes is that, historically, strong families, whatever their form, have been associated with strong, stable economies. The 1950s was a time when people married young and women stayed home with children largely because a man with a high school education could earn a salary that could support a family. This has rarely been true in other times[2]. As wages have stagnated, families have been put under more pressure. Coontz argues that this is the cause of many of the social ills that plague the US[3] and the cause of many of the changes in family life, not that the changes in family life cause the ills.

She also observes that not all the change is bad. Many people -- especially women -- are happier now than in the past.

These book is a short and important read for anyone who cares about the culture wars that surround family life or just wants to be reassured that deviating from the increasingly-non-normative normal doesn't mean disaster.

[1] By which everyone really means 1950s / 1960s
[2] Before the 20th century, and to a large degree in the early 20th century, everyone in the family contributed to the family economy. This was easier when the family economy was not primarily a cash economy.
[3] Although she also points out that when the present is compared to data rather than rose tinted memory, the ills of the present aren't as bad as they seem. show less

This book made me stop at nearly every paragraph to ponder everything I ever thought I knew about the institution of marriage. (And with quite a lot of varied personal experience in and out of that arena, I had the silly notion that I was beginning to comprehend a good bit.)

Coontz traces the best understandings of the origins of marriage beginning way back in prehistory and describes the amazing variety of forms marriage has taken all around the world. As the narrative moves from prehistory show more to the present, the scope correspondingly narrows to predominantly north America and western Europe, but that is truly the only short-coming in this deeply resourced study. (Because it was published in 2005, the work ends before the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, holding the fundamental right to marry is constitutionally guaranteed to same-sex couples.)

"Marriage, a History" examines marriage from inside and out; the societal, religious, familial, economic, and political forces that act on marriage and the ways in which marriage acts right back; and the hopes, dreams, and expectations that individuals have about and within marriages. Coontz concludes that marriage is no longer and can never again be an institution into which virtually all people can be plunked and expected to remain for the entirety of their adult lives. She reaches this conclusion not out of any subjective or judgmental view about whether marriage is right or wrong, good or bad, but rather as a result of the clear-eyed analysis of the facts gleaned from the history and progression of marriage in the world.

Thanks to my daughter for loaning me this book! show less