The evolution of marriage in America brings us to a unique place in history. Contemporary observers in the 1790s, 1890s, and 1920s noted concern during each of those periods that marriage was in trouble. Despite every previous generation’s assertion that the younger set is ruining the traditions of marriage, the institution today has become more inclusive and less restrictive, which are inherently good qualities when it comes to the loving partnership we understand to be marriage. More significant changes have taken place between men and women in the past 30 years than in the past 3,000, and those changes have had a substantial impact on the structure and perception of marriage.
The notion that marriage was mostly about political alliances and property gains, rather than personal affection, lasted thousands of years. Affluent families married off their sons and daughters as a personal benefit to increase wealth, share resources, and increase labor pools. Even lower-class families considered the practical and economic benefits of marriage over the romantic, albeit on a much smaller scale. Marrying a suitable partner and producing children to help with farms and businesses was more important than a couple’s attraction to one another. Despite the strategy behind these couplings, people did fall in love, sometimes with their spouses and sometimes not. If a woman hoped to find love within her marriage but was thwarted, she was required to suffer in silence while her husband was permitted to seek affection elsewhere. The institution of marriage was simply too vital to economic and political stability to be based on something as seemingly frivolous as love. Marriage played the additional role of demarcating the division of labor within a household, with gender and age determining on whom the power was bestowed: men.
In addition to marriage’s institutional and practical functions, the human element of the arrangement didn’t always conform to the legal, cultural, or philosophical model of the times. Marriage is, in most cases, a relationship between two people that brings them face-to-face with both the challenges and joys of sharing a life. For far too many years, men had a legal right to physically abuse their wives and force on them their marital privilege of sex. Even in loving marriages, this was a common and acceptable practice.
Throughout most of our country’s history, marriage and property laws mimicked those brought over by English colonists, which gave a husband legal possession of his wife as if she were his property. Women were unable to hold assets or control their earnings. Like children and enslaved people, women were considered dependents. With limited ability to make it on her own economically, a woman relied on marriage as a means to survive, making her legally beholden to her husband in all matters.
Print shows Francis LeBaron and Mary Wilder during their wedding ceremony in Plymouth, 1695, with many guests, in a room, possibly in the magistrate’s residence, officiated by a clergyman.
With marriage comes divorce, which was uncommon but not unheard of in colonial America. Each colony had its own policies on divorce, usually mirroring those of English law. When marriages didn’t work out as a couple expected in colonial and early national America, couples could execute an exclusive contract on their own to live separately and divide their assets. Sometimes they relied on the judgment of legislative authorities to grant them divorces. Another form of separation during that time was called a “wife sale,” a folk custom of early modern England. This oddity took place after a couple agreed to part ways, and the symbolic sale of the wife was granted, most often to a relative, but sometimes to her paramour. Some communities considered this an acceptable form of divorce. Women whose husbands skipped town and were unheard of for seven years or more could obtain permission to remarry. Otherwise, remarrying was not allowed and women relied on relatives to support them.
For the Cherokee, in the early days of white colonization and evangelization, tribes were both matrilineal and matrilocal, meaning a man lived with his wife in her family’s home. A husband had no right over the property of his wife, their children, or the fields in which they grew crops. Women had full control over the growing, harvesting, and trading of goods. They signed deeds in property transfers and, as late as 1785, participated in negotiations. In 1818, the United States was working toward the removal of Native Americans from their land. A group of Cherokee women recognized that under the new state guidelines of property allotment and patriarchal standards, they would cease to be property owners, with all ownership transferred to their husbands; they refused to sign allotment agreements.
Marriage has always changed with the times. The Victorian Era ushered in the concept of romantic love but maintained the patriarchal structure of it. Baltimore Unitarian pastor George Burnap published a series of lectures in 1841 called The Sphere and Duties of Woman. In them he described marriage as “that sphere for which woman was originally intended, and to which she is so exactly fitted to adorn and bless, as the wife, the mistress of a home, the solace, the aid and the counselor of that ONE, for whose sake alone the world is of any consequence to her.” Even as free choice in marriage became the cultural norm and represented emotional safety for men, the pitfalls of marriage increased for women. They became dependent on their husbands for economic stability and remained without legal status. Their role was to bear and raise children, care for the home, and obey their husbands. If anything went wrong within that arrangement, they had little to no recourse.
Slavery, like marriage, denied women independent legal existence. Enslaved women (and men) were the property of the men who were responsible for them through ownership. During the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon to find newspaper advertisements placed by men who publicly relinquished their obligation to pay an estranged wife’s debts or the debts for slaves who escaped. Enslaved women had no rights. They were utterly dependent on their owners, often sold or traded despite their familial status. While slaves were forbidden to marry, many did so without legal or religious recognition of the union, and at the risk of forced separation.
Before the Civil War, partially in response to the abolitionist movement that argued slavery undermined the institution of marriage within the African American community, and partly because it was economically sensible to do so, owners of the enslaved took an interest in promoting their marriages. They felt it pacified their slaves and provided an incentive for them to stay on their plantations rather than seek freedom without their spouses. After the Civil War, marriage was one of the first civil rights granted to African Americans.
In the early nineteenth century, Connecticut Supreme Court Justice, Tapping Reeve, wrote the first treatise on domestic relations published in the United States. Believing that the courts didn’t recognize women’s social and business contracts out of fear of male coercion, he argued that the law did not consider husbands and wives one person operating under the husband’s power; they were two. He also discussed a second factor that contributed to the restrictive rules on women’s contracts: male marital privileges. If a woman engaged in any agreement that might result in legal actions taken against her, she could go to prison, leaving her husband to fend for himself both in the kitchen and the bedroom. To most American men at the time, that was unacceptable. Once the idea took hold that love and intimacy should be the cornerstones of marriage rather than the arranged alliances of yore, people began to insist on the right to dissolve their marriages. Demanding equal rights for women was, in part, to ensure they could earn and keep their wages. In doing so, they could support themselves financially rather than endure a loveless marriage.
During the 1920s, acceptance of female sexuality seemed revolutionary to the Victorian parents of young women. Sigmund Freud’s work influenced psychologists of the time who promoted positive views on sexuality (but only in heterosexual contexts). Birth control became mainstream in middle-class marriages as a means to an emotionally fulfilling relationship that allowed for sexual pleasure without procreative consequences.
What sometimes gets painted as the golden age of marital ideals, the 1950s, while exceptional in many ways, was an anomaly in the history of marriage. For thousands of years prior, families relied on the contributions of women and children to keep their households afloat. The shared tasks associated with being the breadwinner were spread across an entire family unit. For the first time in American history (and elsewhere in the world), a majority of households consisted of a single, male provider who worked outside the home and a full-time homemaker who only worked within the home, providing all domestic support. This new system was the culmination of over 150 years of marital evolution.
It was only in the mid-twentieth century that opportunities arose in a way that allowed the majority of families to survive on a single income. The outdated patriarchal model of marriage was replaced by a love-based model that relied on the male as breadwinner, maintaining his position of power within the family. More than ever before, people accepted the ideals of love and companionship as the basis for marriage. However, loveless marriages were less likely to end in divorce, and the lack of equality between men and women was still accepted. When people comment on what they perceive to be the ultimate stability of marriages in the 1950s and 1960s, they fail to recognize the turmoil and dissatisfaction that was brewing under the surface.
In the last forty years, that model has been turned upside down as we enter uncharted territory in the marital landscape. Even though women today are steadily rising to the tops of their fields, enjoying rights and opportunities that eluded their grandmothers, studies show they are less happy in their marriages than men. In most heterosexual unions, women continue to do more of the unpaid housework, kin keeping, and childcare. They are more likely than their husbands to sacrifice personal and career goals in exchange for time spent fulfilling the needs of their families. Inequality still exists, and marriage can be less beneficial to women than it would be to remain single. When women get divorced, they report increased levels of happiness as divorcees and are more likely than men to enjoy their single status.
At a time when women don’t have to rely on partners to support them financially, love and emotional support still provide reasons to marry. However, with marriage rates continuing to decline, it’s apparent that men and women still form bonds, live together and raise children, but sometimes without the formality of a legal marriage. The transition currently taking place in both married and non-married partnerships seems to be one of parity where both partners work full-time and take on the domestic tasks that are simply part of life, including childcare. As American women strengthen their independence and ability to thrive economically in society, the shift isn’t always to abandon the institution of marriage. Instead, it may emphasize working toward a marriage that better suits both partners and is happier.
A line from the 1996 film Jerry Maguire had a culturally impactful effect on our perception of love. When Tom Cruise’s teary-eyed character says to the wistful Renee Zellweger, “I love you. You complete me,” there was a collective melting of American’s hearts. That line has infected our notion of true love for 24 years too long. Yes, it was a romantic cinematic moment, but should it dictate our expectations of real-life romance? We’ve evolved beyond that. “We are born wise; we are born complete.” This quote was printed onto the little tag attached to a teabag and offers a more pragmatic approach to the self-acceptance required for a healthy partnership.
If we learn anything from history as it pertains to marriage, it’s how few precedents are still applicable to today’s marital landscape. We’ve moved from women having little or no choice in who they married to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Death used to end many more marriages than divorce does today. A husband used to own his wife’s property, earnings, and sexuality while a woman who bore a child out of wedlock became a social castoff, only able to survive as either a mistress or prostitute.
When Justice Anthony Kennedy authored his opinion on same-sex marriage, he wrote:
While women continue to gain footing in America and across the globe, we can expect to see continued changes in how marriage is interpreted and practiced. As long as equality, respect, and yes, love, are at the forefront of those unions, the institution will remain one of reverence.
