50 Kathleen Gerson, “Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender,” Gender & Society 16 (2002) and Children of the Gender Revolution: Growing Up in an Age of Gender and Family Change (forthcoming). For more on the spread of egalitarian views, despite the fact that women may be changing faster than men, see Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco, “Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (2001); Karin Brester and Irene Padavic, “Changes in Gender Ideology, 1977-1996,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000); Karen Mason, Noriko Tsuya, and Minja Choe, eds., The Changing Family in Comparative Perspective: Asia and the United States (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1998); Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers, She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).
51 Peggy Orenstein, Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love, and Life in a Half-Changed World (New York: Doubleday, 2000).
52 Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco, “Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s through the 1990s,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (2001); Gayle Kaufman, “Do Gender Role Attitudes Matter?” Journal of Family Issues 21 (2000); George Gallup, Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1996 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1997); Bruce Chadwick and Tim Heaton, Statistical Handbook on the American Family (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1999); DBB Needham Worldwide Survey; The 1995 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, Tobacco Documents Online, and John Schulenberg et al., “Historical Trends in Attitudes and Preferences Regarding Family, Work and the Future Among American Adolescents,” Monitoring the Future, Occasional Paper 37, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1994. My thanks to Dorion Solot, coauthor, Unmarried to Each Other, for directing my attention to many of these sources and compiling other figures indicating that women are becoming more reluctant to enter marriage.
53 Daniel Scott Smith, “A Higher Quality of Life for Whom?,” Journal of Family History 19 (1994); Michael Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical Family (Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin, 1973).
54 Thornton and Young-DeMarco, “Four Decades of Trends.”
55 For a discussion of how men tend to see their relations with children as mediated through their wives, see Nicholas Townsend, “The Package Deal”: Marriage, Work and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002).
Conclusion: Better or Worse? . . .
1 For polls showing married people’s happiness, see Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), Appendix, Table A-17, p. 451. For the most thorough collection of studies showing the benefits of marriage, although it ignores contradictory and conflicting evidence, see Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 2000).
2 International evidence confirms that we might lose many of the benefits of modern marriage if we try to force it back to its dominating role in social and personal life. Polls taken in the 1980s revealed several exceptions to the general finding that married people were happier than non-married ones. In Ireland, Greece, Spain, Japan, and France, couples living together outside marriage were more likely to report themselves very happy than were married couples. Interestingly, in four of these five countries divorce was hard to obtain or highly stigmatized and the pressure to marry was quite high, meaning that there were a lot of people stuck in unhappy marriages. In South Korea, where there are few alternatives to marriage, single women tell pollsters that they would be worse off in several respects if they got married, while married women in South Korea say they would be better off in most respects if they were single. A recent poll in Japan, where divorce is still highly stigmatized, found that six times as many Japanese schoolgirls as Americans disagreed that everyone ought to get married. Inglehart, Culture Shift, Appendix, Table A-17, p. 451; “Introduction, ” in Karen Mason, Noriko Tsuya, and Minja Choe, eds., The Changing Family in Comparative Perspective: Asia and the United States (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1998); “A New Class of Drifters,” JapanEcho 10 (2001).
3 Catherine Ross, “Reconceptualizing Marital Status as a Continuum of Social Attachment,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 57 (1995); Chloe Bird, “Gender Differences in the Social and Economic Burdens of Parenting and Psychological Distress,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997); Brian Baker et al., “The Influence of Marital Adjustment on 3-Year Left Ventricular Mass and Ambulatory Blood Pressure in Mild Hypertension,” Archives of Internal Medicine 160 (2000); Sharon Lerner, “Good and Bad Marriage,” New York Times, October 22, 2002; “Marital Stress and the Heart,” Harvard Men’s Health Watch 8 (2004); Marilyn Elias, “Over Time, Bickering Spouses Take a Toll on Well-Being,” USA Today, August 2, 2004. For a review of other studies of the impact of a bad marriage, see Timothy Loving et al., “Stress Hormone Changes and Marital Conflict,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004).
4 Steven Nock, Marriage in Men’s Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Marilyn Elias, “Miserable Marriage Can Make You Sick,” USA Today, March 12, 2001; Lerner, “Good and Bad Marriage” and “Marriage Taken to Heart,” USA Today, March 4, 2004; May Blom et al., “Social Relations in Women with Coronary Heart Disease,” Journal of Cardiovascular Risk 10 (2003); Marilyn Elias, “Marriage Taken to Heart,” USA Today, March 4, 2004; Mary Duenwald, “Discovering What it Takes to Live to 100,” New York Times, December 25, 2001; Judith Hibbard and C.R. Pope, “The Quality of Social Roles as Predictors of Morbidity and Mortality,” Social Science and Medicine 36 (1993).
5 Betty Carter and Joan Peters, Love, Honor and Negotiate (New York: Pocket Books, 1996). For other helpful marital advice books, see chap. 17, n. 4.
6 Sanjiv Gupta, “The Effects of Transitions in Marital Status on Men’s Performance of Housework,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61 (1999); Scott South and Glenna Spitze, “Housework in Marital and Nonmarital Households,” American Sociological Review 59 (1994); Marbeth Mattingly and Suzanne Bianchi, “Gender Differences in the Quantity and Quality of Free Time,” Social Forces 81 (2003).
7 John Gottman, James Coan, Sybil Carrere, and Catherine Swanson, “Predicting Marital Happiness and Stability from Newlywed Interactions,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 60 (1998), p. 6; Esther Kuwer, Jose Heesink, and Evert Van de Vliert, “The Marital Dynamics of Conflict over the Division of Labor,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997), p. 649. Predicting marital success is a tricky endeavor, and researchers have important differences of emphasis. Women have to be open to change too, of course, and that includes giving up the control that comes from being the household “experts” and learning to recognize that men may express their love through practical action rather than intimate talk. To get a flavor for the areas of agreement and disagreement, see John Gottman and Clifford Notarius, “Marital Research in the 20th Century and a Research Agenda for the 21st Century,” Family Process 41 (2002); Scott Stanley, Thomas Bradbury, and Howard Markman, “Structure Flaws in the Bridge from Basic Research on Marriage to Interventions with Couples,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000); Frank Fincham and Thomas Bradbury, The Psychology of Marriage (New York: Guilford Press, 1990).
Index
Abelard, Peter
Aborigines
abortion
absolutism
abstinence
“Acres of Diamonds” (Conwell)
Acton, William
Adams, Abigail
Adams, Clifford
Adams, John
Adler, Felix
adoption
adultery
Christian Church and
clergy and
and restrictions upon women
in Rome
adulthood
Aelders, Etta Palm d’
Aeschylus
Afghanistan
Africa
divorce in
economic cooperation in
extramarital relationships in
feuding kin groups in
inheritance rights in
marital love as viewed in
political marriages in
residential arrangements in
same-sex marriages in
sharing in
African Americans
veterans
working women
age of marriage
conformity and
dwindling prospects and
laborers and
in Middle Ages
partner differences in
premarital sex and
Agnes
agriculture
plowing
see also peasants and farmers
Akiko, Yosano
Alberti, Leon Battista
alcohol
temperance movement and
Alexander the Great
Alfred the Great
Amato, Paul
Amenhotep III
Amenhotep IV
America
colonial
American Institute of Family Relations
American Naturalist
American Revolution
Declaration of Independence
ancient world:
aristocracy in
political and economic marriages in
see also Greece, ancient; Rome, ancient
Anderson, Margaret
Andreas Capellanus
animal behavior
Anjou, Count of
annulment
Anthony, Susan B.
Antiochus
Antony, Mark
Archer, Paul
Argelliers, Raymonde d’
aristocracy
age of marriage among
ancestry of
in ancient world
Christian Church and marriages of
convents and
in Greece
illegitimate sons and
justice and
in medieval Europe
merchants and
in Rome
women’s bloodlines in
see also political marriages
Aristotle
Ashanti
Asia
Asia Minor
Assyrians
Astell, Mary
Athens
Atlantic Monthly
Augustus (Octavian)
Auletes
Austen, Jane
Australia
Austria
Axayacatl
Aztecs
baboons
Baby and Child Care (Spock)
baby boom
Babylonians
Bahn, Paul
Bailey, William
Baldwin IV, Count
banns
Barbie
Bari
Basch, Norma
Beatrice of Savoy
beauty standards
Beauvoir, Simone de
Beck, Ulrich
Becker, Gary
Beck-Gernsheim, Elizabeth
Beecher, Henry Ward
Belgium
Bella Coola
Bemba
Benson, Mary and Edward
Bentham, Jeremy
Berenice
Bianchi, Suzanne
Bible
New Testament
Old Testament
birds
birth control
Great Depression and
Nazis and
pill
birthrates
baby boom and
birth control and
Roman laws and
world population and
Black Death
Blackstone, William
Blackwell, Henry
Blake, James
Bob Cummings Show, The
Bock, Gisela
boiling water, ordeal of
Boleyn, Anne
Boniface IV
Bora, Katharina von
Bossard, James
Botswana
Brabant, Duke of
Bracton, Henry de
Bradbury, Thomas
Bradstreet, Anne
Brazil
breadwinning:
and divorce in Middle Ages
male breadwinner/female homemaker marriages, see male breadwinner/female homemaker marriages
shared
see also labor, division of
Breckinridge, Lucy Gilmer
bridal tours
bridewealth
Britain, see England
Brok, Richard de
Bromley, Dorothy Dunbar
Brown, Charles Brockden
Brown, Geoffrey
Brown, Helen Gurley
Bryant, Anita
Burgess, Ernest
Burgundy
Burma
Burton, Linda
Bush, George W.
Bushmen
business:
medieval women in
plague and
Byzantine Empire
Caesar, Julius
Caesarion
Cai Hua
Caird, Mona
Cameroon
Canada
Canadian Home Journal
candor
Cantarella, Eve
Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer)
Capet, Hugh
Carson, William
Carter, Betty
Carter, London
Catherine of Aragon
Catholic Church, see Christian Church
Cato, Marcus Porcius (Cato the Elder)
celibacy
of clergy
Central America
Champagne, Countess of
“charity girls,”
charivaris
Charlemagne
Charles, Prince
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Charles of Lorraine
Charles the Bald
Charles the Simple
Charlotte Temple (Rowson)
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Cherlin, Andrew
chess
Chestre, Alice
Child, Lydia Maria
childbirth
and age of marriage
birth control and, see birth control
and erosion of social controls on courting
high-achieving women and
rates of, see birthrates
reproductive technologies and
risks of
childbirth, out-of-wedlock
adoption and
inheritance rights and
legitimacy status and
rates of
royal succession and
Childebert
childlessness
child rearing
division of labor in
extramarital and cospousal relationships and
feminism and
in hunter-gatherer societies
and invention of plow
in Na society
in Rome
shift in attitudes toward
by single parents
by unwed parents
children
adoption of
Athenian democracy and
divorce and
employment of
chimpanzees
China
Confucian philosophy in
family relationships in
footbinding in
gender inequality in
ghost marriages in
love and intimacy as viewed in
marrying up in
Na people of
political marriages in
princesses in
Chlodomer
Christian Church
clerical celibacy and
Clovis and
consent doctrine of
convents and monasteries of
development of
dispensations granted by
/> family justice and
incest as defined by
Lothar and
marriage among lower classes and
marriage as viewed by
marriage validated by
political marriages and
popes of, see popes
Protestant Reformation and
queens and noblewomen and
women’s purity and
Christmas
Church of England
Cicero
civil rights movement
clandestine marriages
Clarissa (Richardson)
Clark, Anna
Clark, Lincoln
Cleaver, Robert
Cleisthenes
Cleopatra
“Climax” (Oaks)
Clothar
Clothild
Clovis
cocaine
cohabitation
divorce and
legal recognition of
in Rome
types of
college students:
marriage between
women
community(ies)
choice of spouse and
home as refuge from
reliance on
united by marriage
Comstock Law
Condorcet, Marquis de
conformity
see also gender roles
Confucian philosophy
Congo
consent for marriage:
Church’s doctrine of
parents and
consent for sex, age of
Constance of Castile
Constantine
consumer economy
convents
Conwell, Russell
Cook, Joseph
Cormany, Samuel
Cosmopolitan
Cott, Nancy
cotton mills
Council of 500
Council of Trent
Council on Contemporary Families
courtly love
courtship and dating
covenant marriages
coverture
Crack in the Picture Window, The (Keats)
craftsmen and artisans
Czech Republic
Dahomey
Daily Telegraph
dating and courtship
Davis, Katharine death
Marriage, a History Page 56
