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So... another example where the relationship between real trends and statistics and the ones people hear/believe are basically estranged. Pun intended, I sincer

So... another example where the relationship between real trends and statistics and the ones people hear/believe are basically estranged. Pun intended, I sincerely apologize. Beyond that.., i still have not heard a narrative that rang true to me. In some nontrivial senses, I think the instinctive conservative explanations are probably true. Society did unravel, as women's liberation and other big cultural shifts happened. Some of this is very simple, financial independence of both people changes what a marriage is and makes divorce possible. A lot of this was probably down to feedbacks. Divorce became more common, more normal than it had been This made it an option, where it hadn't been. I suspect that the "people just got flakier" narrative is mostly "kids today" BS, but who knows. The way coupled get together has been totally rattled every generation for 4-5 generations now. In any case, it's interesting that the trend is reversing. My general instictive guess is quasi-femenist. The nature of gender relations & marriage completely changed, starting in the 50s (or maybe the 20s). This basically broke marriage, as an institution. Maybe we've been putting it back together in our generation. This is pretty vague though. I'm still waiting to stumble across a sociological narrative that tickles my "ah, that makes sense!" nerve. It's an interesting question.

felipellrocha 8y ago
Don't apologize for the pun. It was a beautiful pun. Be proud of it.
msla 8y ago
One of the big specific changes was the fact marriage got redefined with the end of coverture. "Coverture" isn't even in Firefox's spell-check, which I suppose points to how obscure it is these days. It used to be part of what marriage was: It was the fact that a married couple was a single legal person for many purposes, that person being the husband. Wives couldn't own property in their own names, couldn't have bank accounts in their own names, and, to a large extent, couldn't exist in their own names, but had to rely on their husband to function as an adult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture > Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, a feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture arises from the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one person. [snip] > After the rise of the women's rights movement in the mid-19th century, coverture came under increasing criticism as oppressive towards women, hindering them from exercising ordinary property rights and entering professions. Coverture was first substantially modified by late 19th century Married Women's Property Acts passed in various common-law legal jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by subsequent reforms. Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States. Quoting Blackstone: > By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. I speak not at present of the rights of property, but of such as are merely personal. For this reason, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence; and to covenant with her, would be only to covenant with himself: and therefore it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage. Same-sex marriage wasn't a redefinition of marriage: Same-sex marriages are exactly like all other modern marriages, by which I mean post-coverture marriages, in terms of the rights and abilities of the married persons and how they relate to each other legally. However, same-sex marriage is flatly impossible in any system with coverture: There couldn't be two males in a marriage, because there could only be one legal person, and there couldn't be two females in a marriage, because there had to be a legal person. It was as if the law was asking "Which one of you is the husband?" and expecting an answer.
- Terr_ 8y ago
  I imagine the was a rather small silver-lining: If the husband -- an extra-loaded term in this context -- ran afoul of the law or king, wouldn't the wife be considered innocent or "just following orders"?
jclardy 8y ago
This doesn't seem to compare the actual number of marriages happening in these decades - my guess is that fewer people are getting married and/or they are marrying later in life. Meaning people aren't pursuing marriage just because that is what they are supposed to do, but instead because they actually want to. As for people being flakier - I still think that is actually true - but as a result of communications technology. When you had to agree on meeting someplace a week in advance and not have contact with that person till then, you inherently have to be more "reliable," otherwise you would become known as being flakey for not showing up. So I don't think it is the people that have changed, just that we still are adjusting to having the ability to be instantly connected with everyone in our lives.
amyjess 8y ago
One thing that people don't talk about much is how much people just suffered before divorce was normalized. People who call their spouse "the old battleaxe" or "the ball and chain". Old married couples who are miserable, hate each other's guts, and fight all the time. People who spend as much time as humanly possible at work (both at the office and travelling for business) so they don't have to go home. People who sit there and take it as their spouse cheats on them again and again and again. People who silently suffer through abusive relationships and just have become highly skilled at covering up bruises. People who become abusive because they can't stand their spouses and are taught that it's more wrong to leave your spouse than it is to hit your spouse. And you'll still see it to this day in religious communities where divorce is stigmatized. My ex-best friend once told me about his brother's marital problems. At the time, he was about 50 and got married very young. He couldn't stand his wife anymore, to the point where he became a violent suicidal alcoholic. At one point after one fight where he put his fist through a wall inches away from his wife's head, he walked into his shed. Several minutes later, his mother followed him in, and she found him with an empty handle of whiskey on the ground and a shotgun pointed under his chin. He had quickly emptied one object into his head, and he was about to do the same with the other object. She talked him out of suicide. And according to my ex-friend, that was a regular thing. Why didn't he leave her? Because he—and the whole family—was very religious, and their church (a small ultraconservative sect of the Churches of Christ) didn't recognize divorce. Even if he legally got a divorce through the courts, his church would consider him an adulterer and disfellowship him if he ever got remarried. And his church was the center of his life, so he couldn't go against them. Because his church doesn't allow divorce, he abused his wife, nearly killed himself, and traumatized his mother (who was still on antidepressants after losing her husband in a farm accident 15 years ago). I'm not excusing his abusive behavior—it's reprehensible no matter what, and he's a terrible human being—I'm just pointing out that stigmatization of divorce only helps encourage and normalize abuse.

felipellrocha 8y ago

Don't apologize for the pun. It was a beautiful pun. Be proud of it.

msla 8y ago

One of the big specific changes was the fact marriage got redefined with the end of coverture. "Coverture" isn't even in Firefox's spell-check, which I suppose points to how obscure it is these days. It used to be part of what marriage was: It was the fact that a married couple was a single legal person for many purposes, that person being the husband. Wives couldn't own property in their own names, couldn't have bank accounts in their own names, and, to a large extent, couldn't exist in their own names, but had to rely on their husband to function as an adult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture > Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, a feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture arises from the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one person. [snip] > After the rise of the women's rights movement in the mid-19th century, coverture came under increasing criticism as oppressive towards women, hindering them from exercising ordinary property rights and entering professions. Coverture was first substantially modified by late 19th century Married Women's Property Acts passed in various common-law legal jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by subsequent reforms. Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States. Quoting Blackstone: > By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. I speak not at present of the rights of property, but of such as are merely personal. For this reason, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence; and to covenant with her, would be only to covenant with himself: and therefore it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage. Same-sex marriage wasn't a redefinition of marriage: Same-sex marriages are exactly like all other modern marriages, by which I mean post-coverture marriages, in terms of the rights and abilities of the married persons and how they relate to each other legally. However, same-sex marriage is flatly impossible in any system with coverture: There couldn't be two males in a marriage, because there could only be one legal person, and there couldn't be two females in a marriage, because there had to be a legal person. It was as if the law was asking "Which one of you is the husband?" and expecting an answer.

Terr_ 8y ago
I imagine the was a rather small silver-lining: If the husband -- an extra-loaded term in this context -- ran afoul of the law or king, wouldn't the wife be considered innocent or "just following orders"?

jclardy 8y ago

This doesn't seem to compare the actual number of marriages happening in these decades - my guess is that fewer people are getting married and/or they are marrying later in life. Meaning people aren't pursuing marriage just because that is what they are supposed to do, but instead because they actually want to. As for people being flakier - I still think that is actually true - but as a result of communications technology. When you had to agree on meeting someplace a week in advance and not have contact with that person till then, you inherently have to be more "reliable," otherwise you would become known as being flakey for not showing up. So I don't think it is the people that have changed, just that we still are adjusting to having the ability to be instantly connected with everyone in our lives.

amyjess 8y ago

One thing that people don't talk about much is how much people just suffered before divorce was normalized. People who call their spouse "the old battleaxe" or "the ball and chain". Old married couples who are miserable, hate each other's guts, and fight all the time. People who spend as much time as humanly possible at work (both at the office and travelling for business) so they don't have to go home. People who sit there and take it as their spouse cheats on them again and again and again. People who silently suffer through abusive relationships and just have become highly skilled at covering up bruises. People who become abusive because they can't stand their spouses and are taught that it's more wrong to leave your spouse than it is to hit your spouse. And you'll still see it to this day in religious communities where divorce is stigmatized. My ex-best friend once told me about his brother's marital problems. At the time, he was about 50 and got married very young. He couldn't stand his wife anymore, to the point where he became a violent suicidal alcoholic. At one point after one fight where he put his fist through a wall inches away from his wife's head, he walked into his shed. Several minutes later, his mother followed him in, and she found him with an empty handle of whiskey on the ground and a shotgun pointed under his chin. He had quickly emptied one object into his head, and he was about to do the same with the other object. She talked him out of suicide. And according to my ex-friend, that was a regular thing. Why didn't he leave her? Because he—and the whole family—was very religious, and their church (a small ultraconservative sect of the Churches of Christ) didn't recognize divorce. Even if he legally got a divorce through the courts, his church would consider him an adulterer and disfellowship him if he ever got remarried. And his church was the center of his life, so he couldn't go against them. Because his church doesn't allow divorce, he abused his wife, nearly killed himself, and traumatized his mother (who was still on antidepressants after losing her husband in a farm accident 15 years ago). I'm not excusing his abusive behavior—it's reprehensible no matter what, and he's a terrible human being—I'm just pointing out that stigmatization of divorce only helps encourage and normalize abuse.