“What Is God Doing with Marriage?”
Working Group Discussion on Marriage
April 23, 2005
Augsburg College, Minneapolis
Tim Pippert
Augsburg
College
Introduction
As a family sociologist, I cannot answer the question, “What is God Doing with Marriage?” Instead, my sociological training leads me to assess marriage as a fluid institution that is continually impacted by our environment and through social interaction. In addition, the sociological perspective makes it difficult to answer such a question because I would then need to explain why God has created different variations of marriage in different countries and even different sub-cultures within countries.
As a result of this perspective, and my inability to assess God’s intention, I will place the institution of today’s marriages in the context of historical change. Social institutions are constantly undergoing periods of change and redefinition and the institutions of marriage and family are no exception. To demonstrate the constant flux of marriage and family ties, four of the seven family systems that have been prevalent throughout history will be examined. After examining the historical context, current issues surrounding and impacting today’s marriages and the alternatives to marriage will be examined.
The major focus of this paper is on the history of marriage and family ties. Given that the issue this working group is being asked to face is currently playing out in Americas’ coffee shops and voting booths, a historical paper might seem to be out of place. I would argue that by providing a historical background that establishes the fact that the social institution of marriage has taken many forms will provide the necessary background for examining the current status of the American family in the context of continual change.
Historical Change
Historically, seven distinct family systems can be identified. They include Foraging (Hunting and Gathering), Horticultural, Agrarian, Stem, Modified Extended, Modern / Industrial, and Post-Modern family systems. As the names indicate, family systems are based on an economic model based on how a family is able to provide for itself. In short, how food finds its way to the table determines the size and function of the family. When a society becomes more economically and technically advanced, the way marriages and families function also changes. To demonstrate this concept, the earliest known family system, the foraging family (hunters and gatherers), will be examined. After outlining foragers, the three family systems that make up the historical shift in the American family will be addressed. These include agrarian, the modern / industrial, and postmodern families.
Foraging Families. Keeping in mind that I am describing thousands of years and millions of families in a few paragraphs, the following characteristics can be found with foraging families. It should also be noted that the foragers are the earliest known societies and family systems and encompassed all human societies until the rise of agriculture approximately 10,000 year ago (Diamond, 1993). Foraging families can even be found today in areas of South American and Africa. Because foraging family systems are based on essentially a hand-to-mouth survival, their concept of family and marriage are distinct from many family systems. Foraging societies can be larger but rarely exceed one-hundred individuals living in a tribal formation. The size of such societies is ultimately dependent on the ability of the physical environment to support the size of the tribal unit. Regardless of the size, the entire community is one large kin group composed of different nuclear or extended families.
Because there is so much interdependence, these families and societies have a centralized sharing of resources and consensus is needed for most major decisions. As a result, they are highly egalitarian. The egalitarian status of such societies even translates into the cooperation between men and women. It is true that the gender division of labor, men hunting while women gather and care for children, is easily identifiable, but because each role is seen as so crucial to survival, each role is respected. In addition, there is a substantial cross-over among duties as women will often hunt small game and men will gather foods on their hunting expeditions. This creates a situation in which there is little inequality on two levels, gender and class. In terms of class, men who are the best hunters do carry more social capital but because such societies are not able to produce surplus, the entire community is either “wealthy” or starving depending on the favorability of the conditions for hunting and gathering. In relation to gender, men may have more power in the family and marital systems but women have more relative power than many later family systems.
As a result of the relative egalitarian status of such societies, marriage looks quite different that it does in contemporary United States. For example, marriages tend to be numerous and informal. Most hunting and gathering societies practice polygamous marriages or what is called serial monogamy. Serial monogamy, what will later be argued we may be moving toward in the U.S., is the concept of having one monogamous partner at a time, but having multiple partners over your life span. The primary reason marriages are practiced in this fashion is an issue of survival. In short, it is in the best interest of women to have children with multiple men, preferably the best hunters, in order to ensure their survival. Hunters face difficult odds when trying to provide meat for their families so a general sense of cooperation is established within the society. Because many times hunters come back empty-handed, sharing between hunters is common, acting like today’s insurance policies. When a hunter is successful, it is his duty to distribute the meat (Diamond, 1993). It should be noted that he brings back the game, his wife or wives prepare the meat, and then he distributes it. What we would consider his immediate family, current partner(s) and children, are provided for first and then what is remaining is distributed to the larger family network. If enough meat is available, it will be distributed among the entire tribal group. This system of sharing increases the likelihood that he and his immediate family will eat even if he is unsuccessful in his next hunt. The sequence in which you eat, however, is still determined by your relationship to the hunter. As a result, it is in the best interest of women to form relationships with multiple men either through serial monogamy or polygamous relationships. By having sexual relationships with multiple men, and having children as a result, women are providing a more consistent means of survival for their children and themselves.
The foraging family system has been discussed in significant detail to provide a background for the basic foundation of the family and marital unit. Historically, the foraging family is followed by the horticultural family system, when societies consist of primitive agriculture and a continued, although less pronounced, reliance on hunting and gathering. For this paper, however, further attention will only be paid to the family systems that have been prevalent in colonial America and the United States.
Agrarian Families. Roughly 5000 years ago the invention and increased use of the plow and draft animals altered human interaction beyond comprehension. In short, more productive agricultural production created much more complex societies by allowing cities to increase in size, enabling the division and specialization of labor to begin, sparked the system of land ownership, created stratified societies in terms of wealth, and created demand for governments, banking, slave labor, armies, political boarders, and an unending list of other changes.
These major societal shifts greatly impacted families and marriages. One of the major changes included the substantial reduction of status among women. Women’s status dropped for two main reasons. First of all, their work became less visible and thus less valued. Foraging and even horticultural agriculture are compatible with pregnancy and caring for infant children but operating plows and controlling draft animals were not. As a result, agricultural production was relegated to men. In agrarian societies, women remained in charge of the domestic duties and maintained trunk gardens, but such activities were not as seen as important as the work men were doing. In addition to the work agrarian women were charged with doing, they were now expected to increase their production of children. By comparison, foraging families were rather small because the difficult nature of survival. In agrarian societies, the more workers you have, the more surplus you can produce, and the greater accumulation of wealth you can amass. As such, fertility rates rose and agrarian women’s status began to be defined by the number of male children she could produce for her husband rather than the labor she produced toward the survival of her family.
Agrarian women also lost status because more complex societies needed a way to control land and therefore the practice of ownership evolved. Because agrarian societies are not mobile, individuals understandably wanted to maintain possession of the land they had worked to clear and plow. Prior to agrarian societies, land was simply controlled for a short period of time but the general mobility of societies did not create the need for permanent residences. Within agrarian societies, land ownership works as an insurance policy. Men own the land and will reside on it, with their spouse and children, until their death. As the men age and their children, especially the males, mature, the insurance policy is enacted where the labor is slowly transferred to the children. During this time the sons and their families cared for the elderly parents in exchange for the promise of inheriting the land upon their father’s death. The transfer of land from father to son, in essence keeping it under the same lineage, became of the utmost importance. Making sure that a father’s land was truly going to remain in his blood-line meant only one thing, strict moral and legal regulations on the sexual relationships of women. In earlier family systems, all children were seen as members of the larger family group and inheritance of wealth was not a factor, therefore allowing more fluid sexual regulations, especially for women. The increase in sexual regulations, however, was not uniformly imposed. Men, subsequently, benefited from a double-standard in which their sexual activity was not under the same level of scrutiny.
Because of the new found interest in the accumulation of land and wealth, marriages became more formal and were seen in most agrarian societies to be too important to be left to the couple. Societies utilized one of two ways to make sure the union of marriage was a strong economic bond between two families, arranged marriages and marriages subject to the approval of one’s parents.
In simplistic terms, arranged marriages became family alliances based on the goal of creating economic ties between families. In such arrangements, the wealth and status of the husband’s family were typically exchanged for the youth and beauty of the bride. Instead of looking for a good partner for your son or daughter, parents were interested in finding a family to make an alliance, or at least an economic deal with. In arranged marriages, the focus was not on the marital relationship, but on how well the new bride or groom benefited the entire family. Women had little choice in this matter because of their inability in most agrarian societies to own land. In order to survive, women had to be attached to a husband or a father who would “provide” and “protect” them (Aulette, 2002). Such marriages may have resulted in love and companionship, but that was not their original goal. In fact, in many societies such intimate relationships were discouraged because they were seen as a threat to what was considered to be the more important relationship between a son and his parents.
In colonial America and the United States, arranged marriages were rarely the norm but marriages were most certainly subject to the approval of parents. The structure of land inheritance, as well as other cultural norms, created a high level of elder authority but colonial marriages differed from marriages contracted in Europe at the same time because of the availability of land. Land in New England at the time was seen as limitless, therefore giving couples some power to make their own decisions and begin a life without the help of their families. Despite the increased opportunity, breaking with the will of your parents was rare. The predominant reason it was rare was because of the power men yield in agrarian societies. Patriarchy became firmly entrenched during agricultural expansion creating customs and laws that favored the authority of the male head of household. For example, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Puritan fathers held legal and religious authority over their wives, children, and servants. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire laws allowed for the death penalty for children who cursed or struck their fathers (Aulette, 2002). As far at the relationship between husbands and wives, Puritans believed that wives should be submissive to their husbands and “should exhibit toward him an attitude of ‘reverence’ by which they meant a proper mixture of fear and awe” (Mintz & Kellogg, 1988: 11). Another example of the different status of men and women in colonial American can be found in the way married women were addressed. In colonial society, a married woman was never called by her first name, or even Mrs. John Brown, but rather John Brown his wife (Ulrich, 1991). And finally, the patriarchal authority of men can be seen as divorce practices and laws began to be established. Under the traditions of many agrarian societies, men could divorce their wives for failing to provide him a son or for expected infidelity, but wives were not allowed to initiate a divorce even for infidelity or abuse.
In closing the section on agrarian family systems, it should be noted that because agrarian marriages run the gamut of thousands of years and tens of thousands of societies, no one label can be placed on them in regards to the type and quality of marriages. In some societies, especially more contemporary agrarian societies, marriages can be identified as relatively equal partners both producing equally toward the economic survival of the family. More often though, agrarian marriages give the ultimate authority to men and in some cases women are seen as property of their husbands. This is not surprising given that most marriages contracted in agrarian times were products of patriarchal societies in which men dominated the social institutions. Taken all together, arranged or approved marriages, increased sexual regulations, and low status labor, most agrarian married couples do not have an equal partnership based on love and companionship. The model for colonial and early American marriages were, like in most agrarian societies, economic arrangements based on the accumulation and inheritance of land rather than personal choice and fulfillment. This becomes important to our discussion because it establishes a baseline for American marriages that are different than what most people perceive to be the case. Marriage formation in the Unites States has not always consisted of small nuclear families based on mutually fulfilling emotional ties. Instead, the basis for U.S. marriage is economic arrangements between extended families with one person having civil and religious authority over the other.
Modern / Industrial Families. Industrialization in the U.S. began in the late 1700s, but until the mid-1800s, our nation’s economy was primarily agricultural. Because industrialization started slowly, men did not move into factory jobs at a quick pace. In fact, early industrialization was actually fueled by the labor of women and children. Sacks (1984) estimated that 44 percent of outdoor laborers and mill workers in Massachusetts in 1875 were children. In an 1828 Rhode Island newspaper, the following advertisement appeared:
Family Wanted. Ten or Twelve good respectable families consisting of four or five children each, from nine to sixteen years of age, are wanted to work in a cotton mill, in the vicinity of Providence (Mintz and Kellogg, 1988: 94).
As industrialization became the primary feature of the new economy and child labor laws were established, men took control of the majority of the factory occupations and women were left to very undesirable factory jobs and domestic labor. Because men held the more prestigious factory jobs, in addition to the higher status jobs in other arenas, their contributions to the family became perceived as more important.
The major change that industrialization caused within the family institution was the separation of work from family life. In every other family system, work and family life were not distinct entities. With the advent of industrialization, work became something that you do away from the home. The separation of work and family life impacted marital systems in several ways. First of all, families transitioned from large extended family systems to smaller nuclear households. The need for families to move to the cities where job growth was occurring, as well as the slow progression from agrarian society, ultimately separated many extended families and created a different family form. In agrarian societies, marriages were economic partnerships between extended families but as industrialization progressed, the need for such arrangements was reduced. The livelihoods of young adults, especially men, were not as directly tied to the family farm, and thus the authority of the family patriarch. This break created the possibility for marriage to develop into an institution where economic ties between families were no longer the goal but finding someone to love and cherish slowly came into play. The transition to marriages based on love was not quick, and as I will describe in a moment, women continue to have some aspects of their status erode, but the increase in the number of smaller, isolated, nuclear families ultimately has a dramatic effect on marriage. At this point it should be noted that these changes brought about our first taste, over two hundred years since colonization, of the “traditional” isolated nuclear marriage and family.
The advent of the industrial economy also facilitated the transition from a producer to consumer culture. In the earlier family systems, families produced all the goods they needed from shelter to food and clothing. Now, adults work for a pay check so they are able to purchase the goods and services they need. This shift from producers to consumers has impacted the marital arrangement significantly. For instance, moving to a consumer-based society ultimately meant that children shifted from economic assets to liabilities which eventually lead to a reduction in fertility rates. Specifically, fertility in the U.S. fell nearly 40% between 1855 and 1915 (Coontz, 2000). While this transition took years, if not generations, to be completed, women in modern / industrial societies eventually were no longer judged to the same degree based on their ability to produce male children. Rather that viewing this as a positive or negative change, it should be seen as evidence that the roles of women significantly change as the economic model of a society changes. Again, the institution of marriage has always been a state of change and redefinition.
Also of extreme importance was the manner in which separating work and family life impacted marital structure. By placing work and family activities into two separate spheres, the labor of women and men came to be seen as extremely distinct. Even though significant numbers of women were in the labor force during all periods of industrialization, the perception was that women stayed home and took care of the domestic duties while men went off to work. Given that work is now seen as something that takes place away from the home, domestic labor was no longer viewed as real work. This resulted in an even greater loss of status for women as a whole. Women were now seen as protected and cared for commodities, playing the role of domestic supporter for their hard working husbands. This view, though prominent in the literature, is both classist and racist. The reality of many women living in modern / industrial times is that they participated in labor outside the home. According to Coontz (1992):
For every 19th century middle class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle there was an Irish or German girl scrubbing floors in that middle-class home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making ‘ladies’ dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase (p.11-12).
Middle and upper-class white families are the only group that have been able to form marriages around what has been called the “traditional marriage” model, and this group has only be able to practice such unions as a majority for a short time in U.S. history. The “traditional marriage” is described as a married couple with a bread-winning husband, a stay-at-home mom, and children. In fact, in the 1920s, for the first time a slight majority of children lived in male breadwinner / female homemaker families (Hernandez, 1993). This slight majority only lasted until the mid 1960s.
Despite the fact that what many people refer to as the breadwinner / homemaker model is relatively new in terms of family change, many people have the idea that men historically and traditionally have always been seen as the “providers” of the family. This is, in fact, not the case. The concept of men being seen as providers was a product of the 1830s when it was assumed, because of class bias and the hidden labor of women, that many men were the sole provider for their family. As we have established, women of each family system have been intimately involved in providing for the needs of their families. With industrialization, women simply lost credit for much of the work they do within the marriage and family relationships.
This perception follows women into the paid labor market. Because the jobs available to women have historically more likely been service jobs, they are similar to the work they do at home for free. And so, if a woman is doing the same duties, say working as a seamstress or waitress, that she does at home, why should we pay her a decent wage? In fact, it is believed that her labor force participation is simply providing “extra” income and therefore does not have to be a rewarded at the same rate that men are paid. At this point you have a circular problem. In short, women in the labor force often earn significantly less than their husbands so their employment is not seen as significant while because their work is not seen as significant, they are not paid as much as men. As a result, the belief that men work and women do not work as hard is fostered. To compensate men for their labor, they are provided with a home to relax in while not at work whereas women are provided a home that must be cared for regardless of their work status. This distinction helps to further the system where marriage is not yet between equals.
As with other family systems, marriages within the modern / industrial framework did not stay stable. As industrialization progressed, so did the American family and marital institution. As society moved closer and closer to the post-modern economy, the value of women’s labor has increased. For example, since the 1960s the increased educational attainment of women, enhanced labor force participation, the impact of the Civil Rights and contemporary feminist movements, and a decrease in fertility have improved the status of women as well as altered what women and men are looking for in marital partners. Beginning in the early 1900s, unions were being sought for more emotional and intimate attachments. Even though the “companionate marriage,” identified by sociologists in the 1920s, demonstrated the shift in emotional center of family life from mother-child relationships to the importance of the husband-wife relationship, the transition was not smooth. With increased expectations come the potential for increased disappointment. Marriage standards that were once considered adequate were beginning to be described as problematic, and as a result what became acceptable grounds for divorce changed (Mintz & Kellogg, 1988). Not surprisingly, these issues were accentuated as we move into the post-modern economy.
In concluding my historical examination of marriage, it should be clear that this institution has constantly been in state of change. As a result of this constant change, we should not be asking, “Why is the American family changing?” but “What are the current changes taking place in the American family?” Given this perspective, we will now examine the post-modern family, the economic system now encompassing the U.S.
Post-Modern Families. Today’s marriages and families are referred to as post-modern. These current institutions have been built on the ever-changing patterns of social and economic interaction. All of the family changes we have discussed have slowly been setting the stage for the family to be less of a dominant economic / institutional force and arguably a more dominant emotional force in people’s lives.
In brief, a post-modern economy is characterized but a reduction in good-paying industrial jobs and an increase in service sector jobs. For instance, by the 1970s the expansion of government benefits and real wage increases had slowed drastically and experienced a reversal in some cases such as with the falling of real wages beginning in 1973 (Coontz, 2000). Such a change, like other economic shifts already described, directly impacted marriages.
Marriages contracted in an economy based on a more volatile economy tend to be based on economic cooperation. In some ways, marriages of today resemble the cooperation forged in hunting and gathering societies. Instead of focusing on the daily replenishment of the food stock, today’s marriages focus on the consumption of goods and services. The trend of moving from producers to consumers that began with industrialization has been transformed into an art form with the post-modern family. In today’s families, we purchase almost all the products and services necessary to live comfortable existences. In addition to the household items that families stopped producing during industrialization, we now purchase important, and expensive, services once assumed could only take place within the family such as child care.
Given this need for economic cooperation, one of the most dramatic shits in marital unions has been the fact that dual-earner marriages have now become the norm. Female labor force participation has been on the rise since the early 1900s but today’s rates of participation, especially in states like Minnesota, are fast approaching the rates of labor force participation of men. Women with pre-school aged children demonstrated the greatest shift in labor force participation. In 1950, only one quarter of all wives were in the paid labor force and only 16 percent of mothers worked outside the home (Coontz, 2000). Today, approximately 60 percent of wives and mothers, including mothers of preschoolers, are in the paid labor force. In modern / industrial times, women were much more likely to drop out of the labor force when they had children.
Increased labor force participation among women has increased, especially since the 1960s, for a variety of reasons. Specifically, the trends of increasing educational attainment among women and decreased fertility that were sparked during the modern / industrial family have continued. These changes have brought about more opportunities for women outside the domestic realm and decreased the economic dependence of one sex upon the other. As a result, the median age of first marriage continues to climb, currently sitting at approximately 27 year of age for men and 25 for women.
Given that increased labor force participation among women has been partially driven by economic cooperation and need, as well as being driven by increased opportunities, the reason people decide to marry, and the perceived need to marry, have changed. As marriage has become less of an economic and material necessity, we have redefined it as a means of gaining emotional satisfaction. Granted, discussing marriages as a means to emotional satisfaction was noted in the early 1900s with the “discovery” that many marriages could be labeled as “companionate,” but such marriages still had strong historical, legal, and economic constraints that made marriage more crucial for the survival of women. The current process of increasing the importance of emotional satisfaction in marriage has arguably helped to create an increased quality of marriage in most cases, but it has also facilitated marriage in becoming a more fragile union. In short, the bonds forged by working together and being economically dependent on each other, and each to other’s family, are simply more difficult to sever than bonds established on emotions. Emotional bonds, while personally satisfying are basically more volatile. Despite the belief the “love will conquer all,” our heightened expectations for emotional satisfaction are contributing, in part, to an increased divorce rate.
It should be noted that the finger cannot be pointed solely at increased expectations. The increase ability of women to provide for themselves economically has meant that many women are not trapped in unsatisfying, or even abusive relationships. In addition, as divorce becomes more frequent, it becomes more acceptable. Conversely, as divorce becomes more acceptable, it becomes more frequent. As a result of our higher expectations and expanded options, we have seen more or less of a steady increase in the divorce rate from agricultural times until the historical high was reached in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the current divorce rate is slightly lower that its peak over 20 years ago, it has still doubled since the early 1960s. Now over one-half of marriages will end in divorce and approximately 40% of first marriages will eventually fail. Despite these statistics, the increased termination of marriages should not be seen as Americans giving up on marriage. Over 90% of Americans eventually marry and approximately two-thirds of divorced adults remarry. This high rate of remarriage might indicate the increasing acceptance of serial monogamy, the tendency to have multiple monogamous partners over the course of adulthood. This shift serves as additional evidence of the fluidity of heterosexual marriage.
Despite the issue of increased levels of divorce, the shift away from seeing marriage as solely an institution for economic cooperation and the production of children have opened up a myriad of options in today’s society. Not only do post-modern marriages tend to be much more egalitarian than agrarian and modern / industrial marriages, opportunities for forming relationships outside of marriage have also expanded. Because of the increased education and workforce opportunities for women, remaining single for an expanded period, even indefinitely, is a real option. This is not to say that all pressures to marry have vanished, but marrying for economic survival is no longer the norm. Our independence from our extended families has also produced options once considered taboo. Rates of cohabitation, single parenting, couples remaining voluntarily childless, and the openness of same-sex partnerships have also expanded within the post-modern framework.
Even though the acceptance of same-sex partnerships continues to be slow, the focus of the debate is beginning to shift based on the changes in the post-modern family. Today, more civil discussions surrounding the expansion of marriage address such unions in terms of legal and civil rights in addition to moral and religious acceptance. Given that the discourse is becoming more open and hopefully respectable, the legal and social benefits of post-modern marriages regardless of sexual orientation have become increasingly clear. As outlined by Chambers (1996), because same-sex couples are not allowed to marry, there are three general categories of benefits that are denied. They include the:
· Recognition of affective or emotional bonds that most spouses feel for each other—decision-making powers granted if one partner becomes incompetent, immigration preference for spouses, and protection of confidential communication between spouses.
· Recognition of marriage as an ideal or most appropriate context for raising children—laws pertaining to custody, adoption, foster care, and stepparenting.
· Recognition of the economic arrangements between partners and the couple and the state—laws regulating taxes, inheritance, governmental benefits, joint property, and health insurance (Chambers, 1996 as quoted by Coontz, 2000: 211).
Such benefits are not trivial. Because of their importance, we should expect the discussion of the role of marriage in post-modern society to continue on the national level as well as in our churches and at our kitchen tables. Ultimately what is happening is that marriage, though still widely practiced, is beginning to be seen as one of several options open to adults. This shift in thinking has begun to open the door for an increased dialogue concerning the practice of intimate relationships. In short, the current discussion of the role of marriage for same-sex partners continues the institutional shift that has always engulfed family life.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to face head-on what I believe most readers of this paper are currently thinking. Given that this paper was written for a discussion group on how gay and lesbians fit into the framework of marriage, it should be painfully obvious by now that this discussion focused almost entirely heterosexual relationships. This was deliberate. I have made a conscious decision to talk about the historical progression of heterosexual marriages not to offend the audience for which this essay has been written, but because I wanted this document to be an examination of historical changes that demonstrate the great variability among heterosexual unions. The debate around same-sex marriage is often placed in the context of how recognition of such unions will be a significant alteration to the long-standing assumptions of marriage. While this may be partially correct, the purpose of this paper is to dispel the myth that heterosexual marriages are stagnant institutions whose foundation will be rocked by even discussing the recognition of other groups. In taking this approach, the stage has been set for our public discussion on April 23rd, 2005.
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