Waco, Texas – Fifty years ago, nuclear families gathered in front of black-and-white TV sets to watch the cookie-cutter Nelson family on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” tackle how to deal with school bullies and burned casseroles.
The doting Harriet spent her days ironing Ozzie’s shirts and vacuuming in elegant gowns during a marriage-centric era when more than 96 percent of adults were married and four out of five people believed that remaining single was “immoral.”
Today, half-siblings and openly gay couples watch rocker Ozzy Osbourne of “The Osbournes” chastise his children for using drugs, and his wife, Sharon, curse their son for taking the car.
The beloved Ozzie of the past wouldn’t last an episode today, when the majority of marriages end in divorce and a record number of young adults are altogether swearing off an institution that was once thought to be a pillar of civilization.
In the face of gay marriage laws and increasing cohabitation rates, society has paused to re-examine what was once considered a one-size-fits-all romantic institution.
Conservative social scientists reference grim statistics to project the moral decay of the American way of life. They call for stricter divorce laws and constitutional amendments limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.
Others argue the relational freedom that sprang from the sexual revolution and women’s movements of the 1960s and ’70s transformed an institution traditionally driven by economics and obligation into one defined by fulfillment and friendship.
How will kids fare?
While clergy and policymakers struggle to define the ever-changing force that is marriage through church doctrine and constitutional amendments, for many couples it has come to signify the bond between two people and their ability to conquer the ebb and flow of life and love.
“Marriage used to be much more institution-based. People were committed to the ideal that marriage was good for society,” said Preston Dyer, a professor of sociology and social work at Baylor University who, when growing up in 1940s Georgia, was not allowed to play with the children of divorced parents.
“Today the commitment is about the relationship, and it is much easier to break a relationship with a person than one with an institution.
“The marriages that will last in the future are those based on realistic expectations and being best friends, sexy best friends, but still friends.”
Dyer said relationship experts consider the reduction in the number of marriages and growing tendency to cohabit as the trends that most threaten the institution of marriage, even more so than the 60 percent divorce rate.
The Alternatives to Marriage Project, a national organization for unmarried people, found that 11 million American households consist of unmarried partners, a statistic that has grown by 1,000 percent since the 1960s.
Nearly a quarter of unmarried women live with partners, a lifestyle relatively unheard of until about 30 years ago.
What’s more, Dyer said that more than 40 percent of unmarried-partner households include children, causing many marriage specialists to worry about children’s perception of marriage as a committed social, legal and spiritual contract.
Researchers and policymakers fear the overwhelming number of failed marriages has fostered a rejection of the concept, jeopardizing the stability of future generations, Dyer said.
A high divorce rate is troubling, but it indicates that people still hold a belief in the institution.
The latest research from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the number of marriages in the United States has reached an all-time low of 85 percent.
Dyer said the number of marriages in the United States had remained above 95 percent for most of the past 35 years he taught courses on marriage and family dynamics, and only took a nose dive in the past few years.
“It seems logical that people who live together before marriage would be more likely to have stable marriages, but the research shows just the opposite,” he said.
“The greatest question is what effect constantly changing home environments will have on children, because children are likely to perform better in stable households and go on to have more stable adult lives.”
A number of societal advancements and economic shifts have contributed to the evolution of marriage.
Nancy Cott, author of “Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation,” told Harvard magazine that three phenomena have had the greatest impact on the shifting state of marriage: women’s acquisition of economic independence from joining the workforce, the introduction of the pill during the reproductive rights movement, and the loosening of divorce laws from state-defined divorce to couple-defined “no fault” divorces.
The institution has become less essential in American culture, she said, and the scarlet letters of divorce, premarital sex and unwed motherhood have become more acceptable lifestyles.
44% in U.S. never married
Marriage is no longer a rite of passage to adulthood, but about the freedom to choose and be chosen. The majority of Americans now believe a single person can have a fulfilling and complete life without saying, “I do.”
Only 9 percent of adults were single and living alone in 1950, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, a record 44 percent of adults in the United States have never been married.
Pursuing a career and playing the field for the right spouse has pushed the average age of marriage up from 22 for men and 20 for women in the mid-1950s to 31 and 28.
“Certainly people putting off marriage until their 30s gives them a shorter time clock in terms of reproduction, but it also implies a re-appreciation of the institution,” said Dyer, who has been married for 45 years.
“They view it as the big step that it is and don’t want to rush into it, as many of their parents did.”
The Rev. Jimmie Johnson of First Presbyterian Church of Waco has performed countless marriage ceremonies during his 34 years behind the pulpit. He attributes many of today’s troubling marriage statistics to the confused households of the indulged baby boomer generation and the formation of unrealistic marriage expectations.
Marriage for Johnson, 58, is summed up during the exchange of rings vow: “With all that I am and all that I have, I honor you.”
Commitment has been clouded by instant gratification and a whirlwind of emotions, he said.
“I have always thought that so many adult problems are unfinished childhood problems. My generation brought the confusion of the 1960s into our parenting, reacting against what we thought was conservatism, but we went a bit too far,” Johnson said.
“(Couples today) are looking to marriage for the fulfillment and personal intimacy they didn’t get in childhood.”
Dyer said he doesn’t think people are less committed than they were 50 years ago, just less wed to the social constructs of marriage and a family. A divorced person wouldn’t win an election for town dog catcher in the 1950s, Dyer said.
Now, divorce is an option and people are less willing to remain in troubled relationships for the sake of staying together.
But Johnson said hopefulness is the basic nature of his faith.
His observing fewer divorces within his congregation in the past few years also has fueled a renewed optimism in today’s young adults seeking depth in their relationships.
Johnson said he also holds great admiration for divorced couples who overcome their anger and remain involved in the same church and social activities for their children.
There are never too many people in a child’s life to love and support them, he said.
A timeline for marriage
3,000 B.C. – Marriage first becomes the way the upper classes conclude business deals and peace treaties, cementing socio-political alliances. Ancient societies experiment with polygamy – and, in the case of Egyptian royalty, incest among siblings.
500 B.C. – Love is honored – but among men only. In marriage, inheritance is more important than emotional bonds: A woman whose father dies without male heirs can be forced to marry her nearest male relative, even if she has to divorce her husband first.
A.D. 800 – Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne outlaws polygamy.Germanic warlords, even baptized Christians, still acquire wives for strategic reasons.
900 – The Roman Catholic Church tries to require people to obtain the church’s blessing of sexual unions, but is reluctant to thereby create millions of “illegitimate” children whose parents don’t obey the edict. The church, however, wins a battle by denying royalty the right to divorce on a whim.
1000 – Catholic clergy are no longer allowed to marry. Aristocrats believe love is incompatible with marriage and can flourish only in adultery.
1200 – Common folk in Europe now need a marriage license to wed.
1500-1600 – Protestant moralists elevate the status of marriage over the Catholic gold standard of celibacy, but enact even stricter controls over annulments.
1769 – The American colonies, basing their regulations on English common law, decree: “The very being and legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated into that of her husband under whose wing and protection she performs everything.”
1800 – Marriage for love, not for property or prestige, is gaining wider acceptance. But women are still completely subject to male authority.
1874 – The South Carolina Supreme Court rules that men no longer may beat their wives.
1891 – England’s Parliament passes a law that men cannot imprison their wives (or deny them freedom of movement from the home).
1900 – By now, every state in America has passed legislation modeled after New York’s Married Women’s Property Act of 1848, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.
1920s – The Roaring Twenties bring about the biggest sexual revolution in marriage to date and divorce rates triple. The Supreme Court upholds people’s right to marry someone of a different religion.
1965 – In Griswold vs. Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns one of the last state laws prohibiting the prescription or use of contraceptives by married couples. Seven years later, the right to use contraceptives is extended to unmarried people.
1967 – Interracial marriage is decriminalized in all states when the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes.
1968 – The Supreme Court upholds the rights of children of unmarried parents.
1969 – California adopts the nation’s first “no-fault” divorce law, allowing divorce by mutual consent.
1970s – Most states overturn rules designating a husband “head and master” with unilateral control of property owned jointly with his wife.
Sources: Stephanie Coontz, “Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage”; National Women’s History Project.
– Katherine Heine
