Marriage is dying – sound the alarm! Divorce rates are through the roof, gays are poised to storm the altar, and people are cohabiting more than ever; it is time to revert to a “traditional” understanding of marriage if the institution is to survive into the future. This at least was the central message proffered in a recent article by members of “True” Love Revolution (TLR), a campus group that believes itself the defender of all things holy. Their article, however, is nothing more than a recycling of clichés without any serious consideration of underlying sociological nuances. The statistics they regurgitate succeed in demonstrating only one thing – marriage is changing. Their central claim that marriage is dying, however, is entirely unsubstantiated.
Yes, divorce rates are high in the Untied States relative to other industrialized nations, but so is the rate of remarriage. In America, for example, 50% of children who experience a breakup in their parent’s marriage find themselves in a new stepfamily within three years; a rate much higher than in Sweden (33%), Germany (29%), France (23%), or Italy (8%). If the US divorce rate suggests marriage is dying in America, the rate of remarriage suggests the opposite. What is more, 90% of people in the United States are projected to marry (a figure that has remained stable for the past couple of decades and shows no signs of decreasing). These two paradoxical findings – high rates of both divorce and marriage – indicate that there is more to the story of marriage in America than the TLR article suggests. If marriage were dying, it would not be such a popular institution, nor would so many people rush to remarry after experiencing divorce.
Professor Andrew Cherlin of John Hopkins University, widely regarded as the preeminent researcher in family sociology, explains this paradox by analogizing the state of marriage in the United States to a merry-go-round. American’s are hoping off and on the marriage wagon at a rate much higher than their counterparts in Europe. Cherlin suggests that the confluence of two strong cultural ideals – individualism and matrimony – explains this turbulence in American marriage relationships. They are the cultural forces that spin America’s marriage-go-round, which simultaneously pushes people into and out of marriage relationships.
Although the USA can loosely be described as individualistic since its inception, sociologists use the term expressive individualism to describe American culture in the modern context. This variant form of individualism arose as women began to participate more fully in the labor force and is characterized by an added emphasis on the self. That is, it emphasizes personal and emotional growth and establishes this as the ultimate standard of success. By this new standard, however, many marriages in time fail. Whereas before, women had no choice but to remain in troubled and or devitalized marriages, women in the modern age face no such contraints. Indeed, both sexes have come to regard personal development and growth as the primary purpose of marriage. This cultural ideal pushes many unions toward dissolution and it is one of the main reasons why divorce rates are so high in the United States.
The rate of marriage and remarriage in the United States, however, also remains high. Cherlin explains this by observing that marriage in America remains a strong cultural ideal:
The United States is unique among nations in its strong support for marriage, on one hand, and its postmodern penchant for self-expression and personal growth, on the other hand. You can find other Western countries where marriage is strong, such as Italy…and you can find Western countries with highly individualistic values, such as Sweden…but only in the United States can you find both.
The Cherlin thesis is thus, in one respect, the exact opposite of that offered by “True” Love Revolution. Cherlin posits that it is precisely because marriage remains a strong cultural ideal in America, coupled with the equally strong cultural ideal of individualism, that we see in the United States high rates of marriage, divorce, and remarriage – a situation unique among Western nations.
Who is correct then? There clearly is a mass of sociological literature on both sides of this matter, as there typically is on all hot button issues. There is no need, however, to resign the search for objectivity. Readers should carefully evaluate the explanatory power of the Cherlin thesis, relative to that advanced by “True” Love Revolution. If marriage is dying, why do marriage rates in this country hover around 90%? Why do remarriage rates remain so high after divorce? And why is debate on the definition of marriage so heated in America, relative to other nations? It is precisely because marriage remains a strong cultural ideal in this country that the aforementioned phenomena are observable. It is precisely because marriage still means something important in our society that both liberals and conservatives are fighting so ardently to define it.
The whirlwinds of individualism and matrimony have left marriage in the United States viable, yet fragile. I share with members of “True” Love Revolution a concern for this new fragility and the deleterious effects it has on the rearing of children. I disagree with them, however, on how best to remedy the situation. The TLR article suggests that only in reverting to a “traditional” definition of marriage can we strengthen matrimony. This remedy is nothing more than empty words. If there is one consensus in the sociological community on matters of family, it is that there is no such thing as a “traditional” marriage. Marriage has meant something different from one culture to another and from one generation to the next. Moreover, numerous sociological studies confirm that various family-types are suitable for the proper rearing of children once one controls for confounding variables such as poverty. In the end, the single greatest factor that contributes to the well being of children is stability – something that grandparents, heterosexual parents, and homosexual parents can equally provide.
How to achieve stability in marriage is a question I will not attempt to answer here in any great detail. However, I very much doubt that stability in our time will be found by looking to the past. Newly emerging research suggests that peer marriages, where men and women have equal and indistinguishable roles in matrimony, offer a more resilient marriage model for the present era. Indeed, the circumstances that place modern marriages under duress are unique in world history. For this reason, those who seek to remedy the present situation by offering a pill marked “traditional” offer a therapeutic that has already expired.
Concluding Thoughts
Marriage is not dying; it is only changing. The rise of expressive individualism in the United States coupled with the continuing strength of marriage as a cultural ideal has created a uniquely American context characterized by high levels of both divorce and marriage. For the time being, the confluence of these two cultural forces has resulted in marriages that are much more fragile than has historically been the case. There is hope, however, that in the future new progressive norms around marriage may add stability to these relationships. In the end, marriage itself (no matter how badly bruised by modern forces) remains a viable institution. Indeed, the very fact that marriage is changing suggests its viability. That is a point that perhaps is lost on some conservatives, who time and again fail to see that in society, as in nature, the only things that die are those that fail to evolve.