Marital Mentalities: The Changes are Historic, and We're Living Them

I think this is a moment in social history that scholars and critics will be analyzing long into the future. There's a lot of matrimania going on -- the over-the-top hyping of weddings and marriage. But as I argued in Singled Out, I suspect that's not a sign of how secure we are about the place of marriage in our lives, but how insecure.

There are at least two ongoing rhetorical maelstroms. The first, and more narrow one, is over marriage itself. On one side is the "everyone into the marital pool" movement; lined up against it are the lifeguards cautioning, "not so fast."

The second has yet to make quite as much noise as the first, but it is more profound. It asks why marriage is so central to our conversations, our politics, our scholarship, and our culture wars, at a time when it is so inessential to our lives. This perspective takes a step back -- no, many steps back to get a good long view -- and looks at the entirety of our lives, as we live them today, and what makes them meaningful.

The first societal face-off was lucidly illustrated by two high-profile magazine articles on marriage published in the last few weeks. The "get in the pool, NOW, and stay there!" side was Caitlin Flanagan's cover story for Time magazine, titled "Why Marriage Matters." The skeptical lifeguard was played by Sandra Tsing Loh in the Atlantic, who said of marriage, "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off."

I've written about both articles previously (Time, here, and the Atlantic, here), so I won't recap the themes in this post, but instead underscore some starkly divergent takes on the same data.

First, consider how the two characterize the place of marriage in contemporary American society.

From Time's "everyone into the marital pool":

"Getting married for life, having children and raising them with your partner - this is still the way most Americans are conducting adult life."

From the pages of the Atlantic:

"we both divorce and marry at some of the highest rates anywhere on the globe."

Tsing Loh's claim about America's extraordinarily high rates of marriage and divorce is from Andrew Cherlin's new book, The Marriage-Go-Round. I have no idea how Flanagan comes up with the notion that "most" Americans -- that would be more than 50% -- get married for life, have children, and raise them with their partner. First, somewhere between 43 and 46% of all marriages end in divorce. Second, some 10% (probably more) of Americans will live single all their lives. Third, as of 2004, more than 19% of women between the ages of 40 and 44 had never had any children (Census Bureau). Flanagan's numbers just don't compute. Yet neither she nor any of the editors at Time seemed to notice. They are clinging to that white picket fence for dear life. Accuracy be damned.

Here's one more example [continue reading here at the Living Single blog at Psychology Today].

Comments

[Over40]

Bella, thank you for all you've done in speaking out in support of singles ... much appreciated.

[Sinick]

Yeah, it's scary how the numbers don't match up with our Puritanica­l/Christia­n "ideology" isn't it? Nevertheless, Christians wield a disproportionately heavy hammer with our pols--just like the NRA.

[Merlin7]

"Getting married for life . . . is still the way most Americans are conducting adult life" ??
What alternative universe is that Time writer living in? But I guess we should expect a corporate answer from a corporate publication -- and marriage is still one of the biggest industries, not to mention the incredible income to divorce lawyers. Like everything else -- wars of choice, extreme capitalism, religion and advertising-funded news, to name a few -- marriage is harmful institution we need to outgrow, and the sooner, the better.

[Romulus]

Merlin7

In what way(s) is marriage a harmful institution?

[larry278]

A number of Americans choose to indulge in serial monagonmy instead of lifetime marriage to 1 person.