Two people joining their lives together as one unit has existed for all of humanity.
However, what we would call a marriage in contemporary times has changed its meaning, structure, and impact since the first couple was ever brought together. Dr. Stephanie Coontz gives a lecture at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania that discusses common myths and realities about the changing nature of marriage and families throughout history.
This myth and reality comparison begins even in the title of Coontz’s talk; she immediately checks the notion that the “traditional” family has been anything more than a brief time in history that served as a short-lived placeholder for strict gender roles and a masculine power structure. Coontz addresses this by presenting …show more content…
But while divorce was relatively simple and common then, divorce laws became so stringent over time that it became one of the strong demands of the women’s movement of the 1970s.
Erin Wagner
The Way We Never Were
Reflection Paper
The desire for divorce stems from another facet of marriage that is actually a modern occurrence, and that is free choice of a marital partner. For most of history, people were married to secure property and power, to amass wealth, and to create relatives out of strangers. Marriages were for the benefit of others, and if love followed it was only secondary. Currently, however, people have the option and benefit of marrying for love, divorcing when there is no longer love, and not marrying if love does not come. These “love marriages” have shifted the institution of marriage entirely, and Coontz argues that if we look to a bright future and not to a wrongly nostalgic past, this shift can ultimately be for the better.
The last aspect of the family that Coontz addresses both directly and through its implications throughout her entire lecture is the idea of separate spheres for men and …show more content…
These changes are so consequential because marriage looks and works vastly differently than it did even thirty years ago, and as long as the American people are yearning for the “ideal” marriage and family that existed before social change, the new, varied, dynamic, and ever more egalitarian family will not be able to reach its full potential.
The changes have indeed caused damages to some areas of marriage; marriage is less stable, more optional, more inclusive, and doesn’t necessarily provide financial gain for either party, but as Coontz states at in the middle of her lecture, “[T]hose [changes] that make individual marriages better weaken marriage as an institution. But marriage when it works, it works.” Coontz argues that when we know how to make the good parts of marriage work better, then we know how to minimize the damage when marriage fails. The new institution of marriage needs to look ahead to the positive impact it can have rather than lose itself in what it is not anymore, or rather as Coontz sees it, the way it never was to begin
However, what we would call a marriage in contemporary times has changed its meaning, structure, and impact since the first couple was ever brought together. Dr. Stephanie Coontz gives a lecture at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania that discusses common myths and realities about the changing nature of marriage and families throughout history.
This myth and reality comparison begins even in the title of Coontz’s talk; she immediately checks the notion that the “traditional” family has been anything more than a brief time in history that served as a short-lived placeholder for strict gender roles and a masculine power structure. Coontz addresses this by presenting …show more content…
But while divorce was relatively simple and common then, divorce laws became so stringent over time that it became one of the strong demands of the women’s movement of the 1970s.
Erin Wagner
The Way We Never Were
Reflection Paper
The desire for divorce stems from another facet of marriage that is actually a modern occurrence, and that is free choice of a marital partner. For most of history, people were married to secure property and power, to amass wealth, and to create relatives out of strangers. Marriages were for the benefit of others, and if love followed it was only secondary. Currently, however, people have the option and benefit of marrying for love, divorcing when there is no longer love, and not marrying if love does not come. These “love marriages” have shifted the institution of marriage entirely, and Coontz argues that if we look to a bright future and not to a wrongly nostalgic past, this shift can ultimately be for the better.
The last aspect of the family that Coontz addresses both directly and through its implications throughout her entire lecture is the idea of separate spheres for men and …show more content…
These changes are so consequential because marriage looks and works vastly differently than it did even thirty years ago, and as long as the American people are yearning for the “ideal” marriage and family that existed before social change, the new, varied, dynamic, and ever more egalitarian family will not be able to reach its full potential.
The changes have indeed caused damages to some areas of marriage; marriage is less stable, more optional, more inclusive, and doesn’t necessarily provide financial gain for either party, but as Coontz states at in the middle of her lecture, “[T]hose [changes] that make individual marriages better weaken marriage as an institution. But marriage when it works, it works.” Coontz argues that when we know how to make the good parts of marriage work better, then we know how to minimize the damage when marriage fails. The new institution of marriage needs to look ahead to the positive impact it can have rather than lose itself in what it is not anymore, or rather as Coontz sees it, the way it never was to begin