Marriage, a History
A friend lent me her copy of Marriage, a History with the advice "try not to throw it across the room."
In this non-fiction book, Stephanie Coontz reviews marriage with a strong emphasis on Western Europe and America, and does talk about the legal and social inequalities that have existed in marriage between men and women (presumably the bit that would cause me to throw the book across the room).
The crux of the book, though, is her claim that the institution has transformed radically, especially in the last 150 years or so. The very rough outline of the argument runs like this:
Coontz traces marriage to about 5000 years ago. At this time, a nuclear family simply did not have the resources to survive in the hunter-gatherer society that existed then. So people got married to acquire in-laws, i.e. human resources that would ensure survival and the survival of children.
Families gained more and more power over who married who when and both men and women were in effect married off to better ensure group survival.
The details of this changed over time, but ultimately it was the social networks and the economic benefits that mattered in marriage, not feelings of personal attachment.
(Incidentally, I discussed this book with my father and, trying to get a rise out me, he claimed that it was a completely reasonable set up. People got married for economic reasons and then the man had several mistresses. Equally straight faced, I agreed and said that the wife was probably glad to get the husband out of the house so long as it didn't impact her or her children's economic well-being.)
Coontz goes on to note that marriages started to become emotionally based about 150 years ago. She spends most of the second half of the book examining the last 100-odd years and what people's perceptions of a "good" marriage are, and how these perceptions impact the stability of the institution.
One of her most interesting ideas is that the modern perception of a "traditional" marriage (the male breadwinner and stay-at-home housewife) was actually a very short-lived phenomenon most strongly displayed in the 1950s (though the idea that this is the "ideal" arrangement had been around since the Victorian era).
When I started Marriage, a History, I found it a little disconcerting. Any book that rationally examines human social institutions and reveals their weaknesses and inconsistencies is always going to produce a feeling of unease. However, this feeling is a small price to pay for a better understanding of history and where society might head in the future.
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