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Historical Perspectives on Marriage
ОглавлениеArland Thornton, William G. Axinn, Yu Xie 1
We outline trends across both centuries, but place particular emphasis on the second half of the 1900s – an emphasis dictated both by the availability of data and by the setting of our detailed analyses in subsequent chapters in this period. Continuity and change in a number of dimensions of social and economic life are traced across these two centuries: the place of the family in society, the institution of religion, and the culture of liberty and equality. We also trace trends in marital status, marital dissolution, the process of contracting marriages, courtship, sexual experience, childbearing, and unmarried cohabitation. Although our primary focus in this period is the United States, we also look secondarily at Northwestern Europe to provide a comparative perspective. Again, we describe general trends without providing a full picture of counter trends and differences across societies.
Our historical review is limited to the past several hundred years, but we note that humans were mating and rearing children long before we had historical documents to record that experience. In fact, evolutionary scholars suggest that the patterns of human mating and reproduction observed during the past several hundred years co-evolved with many other features of the human condition over a very extensive period of time (Broude 1994, Buss 1994, Daly/Wilson 2000, Diamond 1992, Hrdy 1999).
Although human marriage and family life have strong biological foundations and appear to be universal, different world cultures exhibit an extensive array of family and marriage forms (Broude 1994). This variability among different societies, and the complexity of translating meaning across languages and cultures, have made it very difficult to define in any universal way the concepts of marriage and family. Among the central and unique features of the Northwestern European family, marriage, and household formation systems were: households primarily consisting of mother, father, and dependent children; a relatively late age at marriage; significant numbers of people never marrying; and an extensive involvement of young people in the mate selection process. Although a comparative analysis of cross-cultural family differences is beyond the scope of this book, we note some of these unique features in our discussion below.
Two Centuries of Change and Continuity in Social and Economic Life
The 1800s and 1900s in Northwestern Europe and North America witnessed dramatic economic, social, demographic, and family change, accompanied by substantial continuities. Here we outline many of these, with emphasis on the last part of the 1900s when certain changes were particularly dramatic. We begin with three sections documenting some of the central trends in social and economic structures, including the place of family life in the larger society, the content and authority of religious groups, and the growing emphasis on freedom and equality associated with the Enlightenment. Then come several sections devoted to continuity and change in marriage and personal life. In these sections we discuss, in turn, trends in the status of marriage and single life, marital dissolution, the process of contracting marriages, courtship practices, sexual experience, childbearing, and unmarried cohabitation. The breadth of these topics means our discussion provides only an overview. We do not attempt to cover all of the ups and downs in the trend lines or the many differences in various geographical areas.
1.Changing Modes of Social Organization
A key change during the 1800s and 1900s was the shift of social organization from its primary locus within families to a broader arena that included many nonkinship-based organizations and relationships (Coleman 1990, Durkheim 1984, Seccombe 1992, Thornton/Fricke 1987). The activities of individuals in these societies were increasingly conducted within schools, factories, and other bureaucratic nonfamilial organizations. In addition, individuals increasingly depended upon such nonfamilial entities as the government, medical organizations, schools, businesses, the mass media, commercialized entertainment, and the police for information, sustenance, and direction. Over these two centuries improvements in transportation and communication – including the advent of the automobile, airplane, telephone, radio, computer, and television – dramatically improved both the speed of interaction and the range of people, institutions, and ideas with whom people could interact. Today, these other institutions increasingly organize human life, although families continue to be important organizations.
Particularly important in this shift to nonfamilial institutions is industrialization and paid employment. Whereas economic production was previously centered primarily within families and households, industrialization in the 1800s and 1900s moved many of the work activities of family members outside the home to factories, offices, and other bureaucratic organizations. In the beginning, this movement away from the home for economic production was concentrated among men and unmarried women (Davis 1984, Hochschild 1989, Tilly/Scott 1978). With their primary commitment to home and family during this period, married women were increasingly cut off from many of their previous economic activities and became more focused on taking care of home and children. Consequently, as recently as the years immediately prior to World War II, relatively few married women participated in the paid labor force (Oppenheimer 1970, Spain/Bianchi 1996). This situation changed dramatically during World War II as numerous women were pulled into the war industries. In the last several decades of the 1900s married women, including mothers of young children, continued to increase their participation in the paid labor force while retaining primary responsibility for home and children (Davis 1984, Goldscheider/Waite 1991, Hochschild 1989, Spain/Bianchi 1996).
The movement of economic production and the livelihoods of families to factories and offices fractured the historic link between economic production and marriage and households. Whereas in the past economic production was largely coterminous with the family and its married master and mistress, husbands and wives no longer produced their means of sustenance in their marital and family roles but as individuals interacting with nonfamilial institutions. Paid employment outside the home also shattered the historical integration of women’s economic activities with their care of home and children. Married women, especially mothers, increasingly have demanding dual careers in which they simultaneously hold jobs outside their families while maintaining primary care of the household (Goldscheider/Waite 1991, Hochschild 1989, Spain/Bianchi 1996). Women’s growing involvement in paid employment has greatly diminished their economic reliance on their husbands’ paychecks and provided important economic options to marriage. In fact, today’s women may find that marriage and motherhood are impediments to reaching their full career aspirations. The employment of both spouses in the labor market has also decreased the specialization of roles associated with marriage (Becker 1991, Goldscheider/Waite 1991).
Over the past two centuries, industrialization and paid employment outside the home have also affected the living arrangements of adolescents and young adults in Western societies (Goldscheider/DaVanzo 1985, Goldscheider/Goldscheider 1993, 1994, Kobrin 1976, Modell/Hareven 1973). As noted in the previous section, adolescents and young adults in Northwest European societies frequently worked and lived in the homes of other people as part of apprenticeships or life course servanthood. Industrialization and paid employment brought to an end the need for young people to leave their parents’ home for the households and economic units of other families. However, because new economic opportunities were more geographically concentrated, often in cities, young people in the 1800s and early decades of the 1900s frequently migrated from their farm homes to cities where they obtained room and board in private homes or factory-owned dormitories. In the later decades of the 1900s, with a very large proportion of the population living in cities, this kind of boarding and lodging virtually disappeared in the societies of Northwestern Europe and North America (Modell/Hareven 1973). Today, substantial fractions of young people leave their parental homes for college, for military service, or to live independently (either alone or with unrelated housemates) in apartments or houses. This means that many young adults live as independent householders between the time they leave the parental home and the time they enter a marital or cohabiting union (Goldscheider/Goldscheider 1994, Goldscheider et al. 1993).
The growth of school attendance and the increasing reliance on educational attainment for occupational achievement has also modified the transition to adulthood and the possibilities of entrance into courtship and marriage. As the duration of school enrollment has extended, with virtually all Americans now attending school into their late teenage years and many continuing into the twenties and even thirties, education has assumed an increasing fraction of the life course. This typically increases the time of economic dependency and investment in human capital for young people, and thereby delays their entry into independent adult roles. It also affects living arrangements, since many young people who attend college live away from home in dormitories or apartments, either by themselves or with housemates. Of course, the usual presumption is that college will lead to a wellpaying job that will facilitate a higher standard of living and the ability to support a family.
The implications of these shifts in social organization for marriage and family relations are dramatic and far-reaching. Of central importance is the toppling of the privileged position of marriage in structuring and defining adult life (Axinn/Thornton 2000, Gillis 1985). In the past, marriage was closely associated with household headship, independent living, and co-directorship of a unit of economic production, but it has become straightforward for a young person to attain independent living, household headship, and a good job without being married. In addition, as we discuss below, it has become increasingly acceptable and common for unmarried people to bear and rear children, activities previously associated with both adulthood and marriage. Marriage is, thus, no longer automatically and directly integrated with the other markers of independent adult status in Western societies (Axinn/Thornton 2000, Goldscheider/Waite 1991, Mead 1949, Rothman 1984, Thornton/Freedman 1982).
The establishment of work outside the home severed economic production from marriage, but it did not disconnect marriage from economic independence or household headship. Self-sufficiency before marriage and nuclear households remained standard features of family life2 (Gillis 1985, Franklin/Remmers 1961, Rothman 1984). In the United States today, the idea of economic independence as a prerequisite for marriage still predominates. In 2001, about five out of six never-married Americans in their twenties agreed that “it is extremely important to be economically set before you get married,” and four-fifths agreed that “educational pursuits or career development come before marriage at this time in your life” (Whitehead/Popenoe 2001: 11).
Men served as the primary breadwinner for families throughout most of the past two centuries, and prospective grooms were expected to hold jobs that earned a family wage (Oppenheimer 2000, Franklin/Remmers 1961, Rothman 1984). As women have increased their participation in the paid labor force, they are increasingly able to contribute to the establishment of independent married households and to post-marriage family economics. Nevertheless, the historical pattern of a couple depending more on the man’s earning capacity to marry continues to prevail (Oppenheimer 2000, Oppenheimer/Lew 1995, Smock/Manning 1997).
2.Changing Status of Marriage and Being Single
We believe that these substantial changes in social and ideological structures have been important forces changing the ways in which people view and approach marriage and family life (Axinn/Thornton 2000). They have probably been especially powerful because, despite marriage being privileged structurally, Western culture and Christian traditions have long had an ambivalent attitude toward celibacy (Chambers-Schiller 1984, Seeman 1999, Shahar 1990). Roman Catholicism – basing its views on Saint Paul in the Bible – has a history extending back into the first millennium valorizing the celibate role that denies marriage and sexual relations (Brundage 1987, Chambers-Schiller 1984, Seeman 1999). In fact, this history suggests that true celibacy and the devotion of service to God and the church is superior to marriage itself – a belief that has spawned a substantial celibate clergy within Catholicism. Without this kind of service and commitment to abstinence, however, remaining single was viewed as both inferior to marriage and possessive of the potential for spiritual damnation.
Despite the negative connotations surrounding celibacy in America, several non-Catholic religious groups formed in the 1700s and 1800s to renounce sexuality and marriage and to advocate celibacy as a superior way for ordinary people to serve God (Chambers-Schiller 1984, Kitch 1989, Seeman 1999). The Shakers were probably the best known of these groups. Other groups also questioned the historic pattern of marriage and advocated communitarian forms of life that did not rest on the marriage patterns of the past (Gillis 1985). Although none of these groups accumulated many followers, they did offer a challenge to the idea that marriage was necessarily the best state for women and men.
The 1800s in America also witnessed a new movement outside of Catholicism that suggested that although marriage and motherhood were valued professions, they were not the only ways to happiness and fulfillment of one’s destiny (Chambers-Schiller 1984, Norton 1980). By forgoing marriage young women in this new movement would have the freedom and flexibility to pursue self-fulfillment and the noble vocations of nursing the sick, helping the poor, and assisting the oppressed. A small, but significant, number of women followed this route, but most were disappointed in the rewards of remaining single as they found that they were never able to outgrow the dependent status of daughter and enjoy independent household headship.
Despite these movements, many of the old views concerning marriage and single life continued into the first several decades of the 1900s. Marriage continued to be viewed by many, both in popular opinion and literature, as the natural and desirable condition of adult life (Ehrenreich 1983, Hurlock 1968, Kuhn 1955a, Mead 1949, Rothman 1984). Mature unmarried men and women were still portrayed in literature in unflattering and negative ways (Cargan/Melko 1982, Deegan 1951, Ehrenreich 1983, Gillis 1985, Mead 1949, Ruitenbeek 1966).
The systematic survey data that became available after World War II demonstrate that a substantial number of people continued to hold negative views of remaining single, but that such views were far from universal during this period. In a 1957 national survey of adults in the United States, slightly more than half reported negative (sometimes very negative) views of people who did not want to marry, while nearly one-half were neutral or positive (Thornton/Freedman 1982, Veroff et al. 1981). The same study asked people how they thought marriage changed a person’s life, and two-fifths suggested a positive influence, meaning that three-fifths thought the changes were neutral or even negative.3 Despite some of the ambivalences about marriage and single life, young Americans in the 1960s clearly envisioned marriage in their futures. Only eight percent of female and three percent of male high school students in the United States in 1960 said that they did not expect to marry (Thornton/Freedman 1982).
The marriage behavior of young people in Northwestern Europe and the United States in the years immediately after World War II showed little ambivalence about the relative merits of marriage and remaining single. Although marriage timing and prevalence had fluctuated significantly in the United States and elsewhere, the marriage boom following World War II was probably the most prominent change throughout the 1800s and 1900s (Fitch/Ruggles 2000, Gillis 1985, Haines 1996). During this period the rate of marrying increased dramatically and the age at marriage dropped (Cherlin 1992, Fitch/Ruggles 2000, Kiernan 2000, Rodgers/Thornton 1985). This marriage boom also helped to fuel the postwar baby boom that reversed, at least temporarily, the long-term decline in fertility that was occurring throughout the Western world (Morgan 1996).
Although the marriage boom continued in most of the countries of Northwestern Europe and North America through the 1950s and most of the 1960s, these years were immediately followed by substantial and rapid declines in marriage rates and increases in ages at marriage (Carmichael 1995, Casper/Bianchi 2002, Cherlin 1992, Eldridge/Kiernan 1985, Kiernan 2000, Kuijsten 1996, Lesthaeghe 1995, Prinz 1995, Rodgers/Thornton 1985, Trost 1978, van de Kaa 1987, 1994). In fact, the age at marriage is now higher in the United States than at any previous time in our history (Fitch/Ruggles 2000).
Accompanying these changes in marital behavior of the last few decades have been similarly dramatic changes in attitudes and values concerning marriage and single life. Although marriage remains a central element in the transition to adulthood as Nock (1998) has recently argued, it plays a smaller role in determining adult femininity and masculinity, and it is no longer viewed as the only mainstream course to happiness and fulfillment. Negative stereotyping of singles has declined sharply. A 1976 replication of the aforementioned 1957 American study found that the fraction of respondents who reported negative views on a person who did not want to marry declined from about one-half to one-third (Thornton/Freedman 1982, Veroff et al. 1981); and the proportion who thought that marriage changed a person’s life for the better declined from 43 to 30 percent. Similar trends occurred in several Western European countries (de Boer 1981, Thornton/Freedman 1982, van de Kaa 1987).
In the United States in the 1980s, only about one-third of respondents in a national study agreed that “it’s better for a person to get married than to go through life being single.” (Bumpass et al. 1991: 924, Thornton/Freedman 1982). Furthermore, only about one-third of the eighteen-year-olds in the Intergenerational Panel Study (IPS) in 1980 said that they would be bothered a great deal if they did not marry, while an equal number would be bothered only a little or not at all (Thornton/Freedman 1982). The mothers of these young people expressed even less concern about the possibility of their children remaining single (Thornton/Freedman 1982).
Among some people, the rejection of the necessity of marriage to achieve a satisfactory life has been accompanied by positive endorsement of forgoing marriage and remaining single. The percentage of adult Americans positively evaluating a person who did not want to marry increased from 10 to 15 percent between 1957 and 1976, and the fraction evaluating marriage as altering a person’s life negatively increased from 23 to 28 percent. Furthermore, in the IPS survey of eighteen-year-olds in 1980, about 30 percent endorsed the idea that “all in all, there are more advantages to being single than to being married,” a proportion that declined as they grew older and entered marriage (Thornton 1989: 879, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001). Yet, most Americans continue to believe that a good marriage and family life are very important and plan and expect to marry. For example, among adults under 35 in the United States in the late 1980s, all but 5 percent had married or expected to marry (Sweet/Bumpass 1992). Similarly, in recent decades less than 10 percent of high school seniors in the United States reported that they do not expect to marry (Thornton 1989, Thornton/Freedman 1982, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001, also see Axinn/Thornton 2000, Glenn 1996). In fact, the importance of marriage is high enough today that more than four-fifths of all college women participating in a national survey in the United States in 2000 agreed that “being married is a very important goal for me” (Glenn/Marquardt 2001: 4). In addition, even in economically poor communities where marriage often is postponed for many years, people express a high value for marriage, even giving it such importance that it should be postponed until after the achievement of economic success and stability (Cherlin 2004, Edin/Kefalas 2005, Smock 2004).
3.Changes in Marital Dissolution
The principle of marital indissolubility was breached, albeit only minimally, by the Protestant reformation in the 1500s (Rheinstein 1972). Although the Protestant reformers generally believed that divorce should be very difficult, they accepted its legitimacy in some very limited circumstances. The laws remained very restrictive for centuries, but were gradually amended to make divorce generally easier (Chester 1977, Phillips 1988, Rheinstein 1972, Riley 1991, Weitzman 1985). Big changes in divorce laws occurred in the 1960s and 1970s as no-fault divorce laws were adopted in almost every state, making it very easy to end a marriage (Freed/Foster 1980, Glendon 1976, 1977, Weitzman 1985). These no fault divorce laws also represented a long-term movement of the government away from its previous support of marriage as a lifetime commitment and toward support of individual autonomy and freedom (Glendon 1977, Regan 1999, Weitzman 1985).
In addition, negative attitudes toward divorce have softened in the United States (Thornton 1989, also see van de Kaa 1987 and Lesthaeghe 1995 for the Netherlands). In 1962, about half of the mothers participating in our IPS survey disagreed that “when there are children in the family, parents should stay together even if they don’t get along.” (Thornton 1989: 880). In 1980, 80 percent of these same women disagreed with the proposition.
The overall trajectory of divorce in the United States has been generally upwards for at least as long as we have had reasonably good records – back to about 1860 (Jacobson 1959, Preston/McDonald 1979, Riley 1991, Thornton/Freedman 1983). In fact, this trajectory has been so persistent that demographers in the 1890s accurately predicted the divorce rate nearly 100 years later in the 1980s (Willcox 1897/1981). With some fluctuations associated with depressions and wars, the American divorce rate increased slowly but steadily throughout the century from 1860 to 1960. Prior to 1960, this increase in divorce was countered by the steady decline in the mortality rate, which kept the overall marital dissolution rate relatively constant (Thornton/Freedman 1983). However, in the two decades after 1960 the divorce rate more than doubled, so that by the beginning of the 1980s approximately one-half of all marriages would end in divorce. The rate remained high throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Bramlett/Mosher 2001, Bumpass 1990, Casper/Bianchi 2002, Ventura et al. 1995, Whitehead/Popenoe 2001). The level of divorce in Northwestern Europe, while lower, also increased dramatically during the same period (Ahlburg/De Vita 1992, Kuijsten 1996, Prinz 1995, van de Kaa 1987, 1994).
The rising divorce rate has undoubtedly reinforced the historical concerns of young people about forming a bad marriage. However, now these concerns are not centered as much on having to endure a bad marriage as having to deal with the social, personal, and economic dislocation and trauma that can be associated with a marital dissolution. In fact, about one-half of young single adults (in their twenties in 2001) indicated that one of their biggest concerns about marriage was the possibility that it would not last (Whitehead/Popenoe 2001). This concern over the fragility of marriage has very likely contributed to the increase in unmarried cohabitation, as three-fifths of all unmarried young Americans believe that a period of living together prior to marriage will facilitate marital stability (Whitehead/Popenoe 2001). It is interesting to note that this belief persists despite many studies showing that marital stability is actually lower among those who cohabit before marriage (Axinn/Thornton 1992a).
This concern over divorce is also reflected in the recent finding that nearly 90 percent of young Americans believe the divorce rate is too high and should be lowered (Whitehead/Popenoe 2001). In fact, nearly one-half of Americans believe that laws need to be changed so that divorce is more difficult to obtain (Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001, Whitehead/Popenoe 2001). Modifications to no-fault divorce laws have been suggested in many states, and covenant marriage – a new form of marriage contract involving premarital counseling and more difficult divorce – is now available in at least three states with a large fraction of Americans wanting to make it more widely available (Feld et al. 2002, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001, Wardle 1999). However, the number of couples actually choosing covenant marriage is still very small (Nock 1998).
4.Dating and Going Steady
With the structural and cultural changes of the 1800s and 1900s came forces that influenced the ways young women and men met, interacted, courted, and eventually entered marriage and cohabitation. The expansion of schooling into the late teens and early twenties provided a new locus for extensive male-female interaction supervised by school authorities rather than by parents. School expansion also helped formulate a youth culture built around peer groups independent of parents. The growing tendency for young people to live in work and college dormitories or to reside in their own apartments – either alone with others – provided new opportunities for interaction and courtship. Automobiles provided both the means to spend time away from parental supervision and surveillance, along with many new forms of public entertainment.
During the early part of the 1900s a system of dating and going steady evolved, and by the years preceding and following World War II, it had become an institution with its own expectations and norms (Bailey 1988, Fass 1977, Modell 1983, 1989, Rothman 1984). Although dating could include multiple couples, it frequently involved only one two-some. Dates generally took young people away from home where they could enjoy privacy and anonymity, frequently in public settings. An automobile was not necessary for a date, but it was frequently part of the dating scene, providing both privacy and accessibility to a wide range of activities.
As Modell (1983, 1989) has suggested, dating seems to have been closely connected with the youth culture of the high schools and their extracurricular activities such as dancing. Dating became so extensive in high schools in the 1930s and 1940s that nearly all of the students – both male and female – had dated by the end of high school (Modell 1983, 1989). Substantial fractions had begun dating by their freshman and sophomore years. A 1960 national study of American high school students indicated that two-thirds or more of ninth graders had commenced dating (Modell 1983, Schofield 1965 for England). During these younger years dating was frequently a recreational activity not usually directly connected with the possibility of marriage (Bailey 1988, Fass 1977).
Frequent dating of the same person often blended into “going steady,” which meant that each member of the couple was “taken,” even if only temporarily, and that neither “could date anyone else or pay too much attention to anyone of the opposite sex” (Bailey 1988: 51). Going steady provided both the security and status of having a stable partner (Bailey 1988, Modell 1989), and yet young people might have several steady boyfriends or girlfriends before becoming seriously engaged in courtship connected to the possibility of marriage. However, even with this distinction from marriage or even engagement, going steady frequently appropriated some of the symbols previously associated only with marriage – such as the exchange of tokens, including rings and articles of clothing (Bailey 1988).
As young people matured into the later years of high school and college, their dating and going steady experiences often became more serious. Of the substantial fractions of young people who went steady in high school, many gave serious consideration to marrying their steady, and significant numbers made public or private commitments to marriage, even though these commitments may have fallen short of formal engagement (Heiss 1960, Modell 1989). Furthermore, some high school romances blossomed into marriage, especially following World War II when many marriages occurred at young ages. In fact, approximately 30 percent of young women during the postwar years had married at age 18 or younger (Michael et al. 1994). This connection with early marriage – and the added potential for sexual intercourse – probably motivated many parents to discourage their children from going steady at a young age (Hollingshead 1949, Modell 1989).
As dating and going steady spread, it appropriated not only some of the symbols of engagement and marriage but some of the rights. Although firm data are scarce, it appears that kissing and fondling – previously acceptable only among older courting couples – became increasingly accepted and practiced at younger ages and at a time when marriage was only a very distant possibility (Bailey 1988, Franklin/Remmers 1961, Modell 1989, Newcomb 1937, Rothman 1984). In fact, the expression of intimacies in adolescent dating became so common and institutionalized that new terms developed – necking, petting, and making out – to describe the intimacies exchanged between dating partners. A common theme of the first half of the 1900s was increasing tolerance and frequency of necking and petting and its extension to younger and younger adolescents (Bailey 1988, Fass 1977, Franklin/Remmers 1961, Modell 1989, Newcomb 1937, Rothman 1984, Reiss 1960, 1967). By the early 1960s about one-half of adult Americans believed that petting was acceptable before marriage when accompanied by affection. Approval was even higher among young people, and greater among young men than young women (Reiss 1967).
In more recent decades the formality of the dating and courtship system has declined substantially (Glenn/Marquardt 2001). Young people today interact more informally, “hanging out” with friends and “hooking up” in less steady relationships (Glenn/Marquardt 2001). Also, as we discuss in more detail below, the male-female scene has become much more sexualized.
Although dating and courtship are often viewed as a system run by youth, these activities continued to involve the advice and consent of parents throughout the mid-1900s. For example, a survey of adolescents in the state of Minnesota in the late 1940s revealed that two-thirds believed that parents should be consulted before making or accepting dates, with such parental involvement accepted more by girls than boys (Modell 1989). A national study of American high school students in 1961 revealed that about two-thirds thought it was very desirable for their parents to approve their future spouse, with more young women than young men holding this view (Franklin/Remmers 1961). Furthermore, it appears that some dating and courting activities continued to be located in one of the parental homes, and, with engagement, the couple increasingly became integrated into their parental families (Le Masters 1957, Leonard 1980 for Wales).
5.Marriage and Childbearing
The rather close association between marriage and childbearing has also been substantially attenuated in the past two centuries. In the Northwestern European past, unmarried childbearing was both unacceptable and infrequent, while marital childbearing was “natural” in that few married couples consciously tried to restrict childbearing (Himes 1970, van de Walle/Knodel 1980). The “natural” connection between marriage and childbearing was broken in the 1800s and 1900s. Increasing numbers of couples used contraception, sterilization, and abortion to restrict their childbearing, and fertility rates fell. New and especially effective means of contraception in the 20th century made fertility regulation especially easy (Coale/Zelnik 1963, Dawson et al. 1980, Forrest/Singh 1990, Mosher/Pratt 1990, Sanderson 1979, van de Kaa 1987, van de Walle/Knodel 1980). Although fertility had declined substantially in the century before World War II, the norms for having at least one child remained strong and very few couples voluntarily remained childless. In the early 1960s, five-sixths of the mothers participating in the Intergenerational Panel Study said that all married couples who can have children ought to have them. However, the normative imperative to have children declined substantially in subsequent decades, and only about two-fifths expressed this view in the 1980s and 1990s. The adult daughters of these mothers in the 1980s and 1990s were even less insistent on universal parenthood than their mothers (Thornton 1989, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001, also see van de Kaa 1987 and Lesthaeghe 1995 for the Netherlands). Despite this attitude, however, little evidence indicates that personal desire for childlessness has increased (Thornton 1989, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001). For example, less than 10 percent of high school seniors from the middle 1970s through the middle 1990s thought that it was unlikely that they would want to have children.
Just as the normative prescription for married couples to have children has declined, tolerance of childbearing without marriage has increased, although still below the acceptance of unmarried sexual union and cohabitation (Pagnini/Rindfuss 1993, Thornton 1995, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001). For example, among high school seniors in the United States the percentage saying that unmarried childbearing was destructive to society or violating a moral principle declined from about 45 percent in the mid-1970s to about 35 percent in the 1990s (Axinn/Thornton 2000, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001). Another study found that more than two-fifths of American adults agreed that “it should be legal for adults to have children without getting married”; similar fractions agreed that “there is no reason why single women shouldn’t have children and raise them if they want to.” (Pagnini/Rindfuss 1993: 334). Another study found that less than three in 10 young adults agree that “single women should not have children, even if they want to.” (Moore/Stief 1991: 373).
Rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing have fluctuated substantially over the past centuries. They were apparently low in many Western countries before the middle of the 1700s, then increased through the last part of the 1800s, and then declined through the initial decades of the 1900s (Laslett 1980, Shorter et al. 1971). The decline in the late 1800s and early 1900s paralleled the decline in marital fertility and has been attributed to increasing contraception among both married and unmarried women (Laslett 1980, Shorter et al. 1971).
Rates of non-marital childbearing have increased dramatically again in the past half century – by more than six times between 1940 and 1993 in the United States (Ventura et al. 1995). One of the essential forces producing this dramatic increase in nonmarital childbearing was the reduction in the likelihood of marriage among pregnant unmarried women (Abma et al. 1997, Bachu 1999, Morgan 1996, Morgan/Rindfuss 1999, Parnell et al. 1994, Raley 2000, Ventura et al. 1995). This substantial increase in unmarried childbearing, coupled with declines in marriage and marital childbearing rates, has produced equally dramatic increases in the percentage of children born out of wedlock (Bachu 1999, Casper/Bianchi 2002, Morgan 1996, van de Kaa 1987, Ventura et al. 1995). Although the fraction of American children born to unmarried mothers remained relatively constant at around onetwentieth between 1940 and 1960, the fraction jumped to about one-third in the mid-1990s – a period when the fraction of women’s first births that were out of wedlock reached two-fifths (Bachu 1999, Ventura et al. 1995). Substantial increases in the percentage of children born outside of marriage have also occurred throughout most of Europe (Carmichael 1995, Kiernan 1999, Lesthaeghe 1995, van de Kaa 1987, 1994). The one-third fraction of children born outside of wedlock in the United States is very similar to the fraction in the United Kingdom and France, but higher than the 13 to 15 percent in Germany and the Netherlands, and lower than the 46 to 50 percent in Denmark and Sweden (Kiernan 1999, Moore 1995, Prinz 1995). Another indication of the separation of childbearing and childrearing from marriage is the sharp decline in the percentage of children born out of wedlock in the United States who are adopted into the homes of married couples (Bachrach et al. 1992, Ventura et al. 1995). There is also growing evidence that in many economically poor communities childbearing is seen as a behavior that is highly valued in young adulthood while marriage should be postponed until after economic stability is achieved – often later in life (Edin/Kefalas 2005, Edin/Kafalas/Reed 2004).
The fact that unmarried fertility has increased dramatically, and currently accounts for about one-third of all births in the United States, does not mean that “marriage is irrelevant to contemporary childbearing.” (Morgan 1996: 44). Birth rates for unmarried women – both the single and the cohabiting – are still substantially lower than for married women (Carmichael 1995, Casper/Bianchi 2002, Morgan 1996, Ventura et al. 1995). Yet, it is also clear that the monopoly once held by marriage over the bearing and rearing of children has been broken (Carmichael 1995, Prinz 1995).
6.Birth Control
Another element of social change related to marriage in the last two centuries is the spread of the medical means of birth control. Most historical demographers agree that humans have long practiced nonmedical forms of birth control, such as rhythm methods, withdrawal, and abstinence, as a means of avoiding or delaying pregnancy. By the 1940s more effective medical means of birth control began to be widely available (Freedman et al. 1959). Barrier methods, such as the condom and the diaphragm, substantially increased the effectiveness of individuals’ efforts to avoid or delay pregnancy even while engaging in sexual intercourse. These methods are coitally specific – that is, they must be used at the time a couple is having sex. So, although highly effective, such methods also require couples to be highly motivated at the time of sexual intercourse to avoid or delay pregnancy.
From the 1960s onward a steady stream of new non-coitally-specific methods of birth control became widely available to the general public (Westoff/Ryder 1977). These methods include the oral contraceptive pill, the IUD, Depo-Provera and implants such as Norplant. Oral contraceptive pills are generally taken daily; Depo-Provera is often taken as an injection every three months; implants or the IUD can be inserted for over a year of effectiveness. All of these methods allow the decision to avoid pregnancy to be separated, at least in time, from the decision to engage in sexual intercourse.
The availability and knowledge of these methods may have influenced cohabitation and marital behavior in the second half of the 1900s. Some argue that these birth control methods may have encouraged women to pursue careers and delay marriage with confidence in their ability to avoid pregnancy while engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage (Goldin/Katz 2000). Such a reaction may also have also contributed to the rise in unmarried cohabitation because childbearing could be avoided among cohabitors who believed they should be married before having children. Thus, the perceived necessity of marriage as a precursor to sexuality may have declined among some because these methods of birth control reduced the link between sex and childbearing.
7.Unmarried Cohabitation
The necessity of a wedding for heterosexual couples setting up a joint household has also declined dramatically in recent decades. Despite the difficulties of detecting unmarried cohabitation in the historical record, especially separating it from common law marriage, evidence indicates that some fraction of couples have cohabited without marriage in many settings, including Australia in the formative years of the early 1800s, industrializing England, urban France, and Sweden (Bradley 1996, Carmichael 1995, 1996, Gillis 1985, Ratcliffe 1996). Although there were probably unmarried cohabitors in other parts of Northwestern Europe and in the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s, the experience was relatively uncommon as recently as the 1950s (Bumpass/Sweet 1989, Carmichael 1995, Kiernan 2000). A national study of American adults interviewed in the late 1980s revealed that only two percent of the people born before 1928 and reaching adulthood before or shortly after World War II reported cohabitation before a first marriage (Bumpass/Sweet 1989). Experience with unmarried cohabitation increased substantially over the last half of the 1900s. About one-ninth of all persons marrying for the first time between 1965 and 1974 in the United States had cohabited previously, a fraction that was to increase by five times to 56 percent for the first-marriage cohort of 1990-94 (Bumpass/Lu 2000, Bumpass/Sweet 1989, also see Bramlett/Mosher 2001, Casper/Bianchi 2002). Even higher fractions of second marriages were preceded by cohabitation. The increases in cohabitation in the United States in recent decades have been substantial enough to offset a significant fraction of the decline in marriage (Bumpass/Sweet 1989, Bumpass et al. 1991). Trends in cohabitation have been similar in most of the countries of Northwestern Europe and in countries with strong European roots, with the prevalence of cohabitation increasing sooner and reaching considerably higher levels in some countries such as Sweden than in the United States (Carmichael 1995, Cherlin 1992, Kiernan 2000, 2004, Kuijsten 1996, Prinz 1995, van de Kaa 1987, 1994). Children born to cohabiting couples account for an increasing fraction of out-of-wedlock births, about two-fifths in the early 1990s, and in fact, explain most of the recent increase in out-of-wedlock childbearing in both the United States and most of Europe (Bumpass/Lu 2000, Carmichael 1995, Kiernan 1999).
Evidence indicates a strong generation gap in values and attitudes concerning both premarital sex and cohabitation without marriage (Bumpass 1998, Macklin 1978, Reiss 1967, Thornton 1989, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001). During the 1980s and 1990s, the mothers participating in our study (IPS) were opposed to unmarried cohabitation by a margin of about two to one, whereas their children accepted it by a similar or higher margin (Thornton 1989, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001; also see Macklin 1978, Sweet/Bumpass 1990). Today, more than three-fifths of young people in the United States agree that “it is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married,” and less than a fifth express strong moral disapproval (Axinn/Thornton 2000, Bumpass 1998, Moore/Stief 1991, Schulenberg et al. 1995, Thornton 1989, Thornton/Young-DeMarco 2001).
It is amazing that the efforts and success of the church and state over hundreds of years to regulate marriage and intimate relations have been largely reversed in the last several decades, as individuals and couples exercised more autonomy and control of their private lives (Lesthaeghe 1995). For at least a 1,000 years, marriage in the Western world has been an interesting mixture of simple consent, elaborate ritual and celebration, and public recognition – with wide variation in the combination of these elements. For much of that history, social forces have moved to formalize the marriage process, which has been reflected in the involvement of the church and state, the invalidation of common law marriage in most of America, and the growing elaboration of the marriage ritual. In more recent decades this trend has reversed, and the community and state have largely withdrawn from regulating union formation, marital dissolution, and related behaviors. In addition, unmarried cohabitation has become recognized in social interaction, public opinion, legislation, and judicial action in many settings.4 It seems that Americans and many others in the Northwest European sphere have reclaimed from the community and larger social system control over crucial elements of the union formation process. The desire for privatization and individual control is reflected in findings from a recent survey that eight-tenths of young Americans believed “marriage is nobody’s business but the two people involved,” and that nearly one-half believed that “the government should not be involved in licensing marriages.” (Whitehead/Popenoe 2001: 13).
Although unmarried cohabitation today has many features that make it unique from informal marriage, common law marriage, and other marital forms over the centuries, it also shares important features with some of these earlier forms.
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1Copyright © 2007 by The University of Chicago. (shortened) (In: Thornton A., Axinn W. G., Xie Y. (eds.): Marriage and Cohabition. Chicago, 24-75.)
2One exception to this linkage of marriage, economic self-sufficiency and household headship, occurred in the period after World War II in the United States when substantial numbers of young people married while they were still in college and dependent upon their parents (Bailey 1988, Hogan 1981, Modell et al. 1976).
3In both of these questions women were asked about female persons and men were asked about male persons.
4Interestingly, there is even growing support for the expanded legal recognition of common-law marriage in the United States in order to protect the rights of individuals living as husband and wife but without the legal formalities of marriage (Ammons 1999, Blumberg 2001, Bowman 1996, Caudill 1982, Estin 2001, Oldham 2001, Vaughn 1991, Westfall 2001).
