Marriage and How It Has Changed Essay

sexual union has g nonpareil through complex changes over the last five decades, exactly we continue to speak about it as though its the same old familiar pattern. To see how much has changed I am going to look at the transmutation from the forties, to the sixties, to today. In 1968, less than a year after the famous Summer of Love, as they utilize to say out in the country, The times they were a-changing. The agitateual revolution, Viet Nam, drugsthe youth of the day were convinced the world would never be the same again. Yet they didnt think about how such changes would affect wedding party. It seemed as if they model it would be about the same as it had been for their parents, except better because they (like most youth of most times) concept they were better than their gray and jaded parents that represented the Ameri lav Gothic portrayed that day.No matter how you eviscerate it, it was a powerfully attractive vision. The average age at which Americans got married dropp ed drastically, to just 19 for women. The issue of children soared higher than it had for decades, to a peak of 3.7 children per woman in 1957. The goal back then was domesticity, and both partners worked for itone to earn the pay, the different(a) to make the home. If a man was a good provider, if he didnt take up or beat his wife, if he was a good father to his children, he was a good husband. A good wife had to be a decent cook and housekeeper, take care of the children and provide randy support to her husband. Polls taken during that time show that more than than 90 percent of people could not imagine an unmarried person being happy. When asked what they thought they had given up for marriage and family, most women said, Nothing.Since the fifties, weve tag personal happiness, career and self-fulfillment and assumed that marriage and family would someways fit in. One sign of this shift is the percentage of couples who say they would stay together for the sake of the childr en, which sank from about 50 to 20 between 1962 and 1977. Weve muddled something else, something far more surprising the pure sexual drama of marriage. In Goin to the Chapel Dreams of Love, Realities of Marriage, Charlotte Mayerson describes some galvanize discoveries about the Ozzie and Harriet generation. While talking in-depth to 100 middle-class women of all ages about their marriages, shefound that those who enjoyed a fervent sexual relationship with their husbands were almost certain to have come of age in the fifties. In contrast, sex just wasnt that important for younger women.Time and time again, the younger women say, On a graduated table of one to ten, sex, I would say, gets a three, Mayerson writes. These younger women had plenty of sexual relationships before they married, and the thrill was gone before the wedding day. For many older women, however, the excitement of sex had been a reason to marry, and the passion remained. Those Ozzie and Harriet marriages, Mayer son suggests, could be well more passionate than those that have come since the Sexual Revolution. Baby boomers didnt rebel against domesticity, they just took it for granted. Marriage wasnt a treasure for which they worked and sacrificed, they thought of it as an adventure that happened because you fell in love and it competed with other adventuressex, travel, success, saving the planet.Today, the fifties serve as an ideological battleground. For conservatives who regret the changes that have come, those years are a reminder of the good old days. For liberals who push society to escape oppressive patriarchal arrangements, they are a dreaded Dark Ages. Their constant cry is, We cant go back to the fifties Indeed, we cant. But we would do well to recognize what weve lost and might regain. Weve lost the emphasis on marriage and children that provided so much stability. Back then, a mans career was to provide for the family, not his ego a womans ambitions were put on the shelf if the y conflicted with the childrens needs. That was certainly restrictive to some, but it created a strong social fabric. Since the fifties, weve chased personal happiness, career and self-fulfillment and assumed that marriage and family would somehow fit in.The situation is hardly hopeless. After all, if something like half of all marriages ends in divorce, that means the other half dont. We cant guarantee that our children will succeed, but we can certainly piddle them and support them to be numbered among the successful. For previous generations, marriage was an inevitable destination. It didnt take any special blueprint it was a stage in life. For the 00 generation, marriagewill have to be a much more intentional act. They need encouragement, they need mentors, and most of all they need straight talk. We must ask them Do you know what youre doing? Are you prepared to make this a success? We often hear that if we do not learn from the past, we are bound to relive it. In my opinion, it is certainly something that wouldnt hurt us a single bit in this particular situation.Works CitedMayerson, Charlotte. Goin To the Chapel Dreams of Love, Realities ofMarriage. 1996. Basic Press