Marriage, a History

Marriage, a History PDF Author: Stephanie Coontz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101118253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.

Marriage, a History

Marriage, a History PDF Author: Stephanie Coontz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101118253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book Here

Book Description
Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Modern Age PDF Author: Christina Simmons
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350179787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Spanning cultures across the 20th century, this volume explores how marriage, especially in the West, was disestablished as the primary institution organizing social life. In the developing world, the economic, social, and legal foundations of traditional marriage are stronger but also weakening. Marriage changed because an industrial wage economy reduced familial patriarchal control of youth and women and spurred demands and possibilities for greater autonomy and choice in love. After the Second World War, when more married women pursued education and employment, and gays and lesbians gained visibility, feminism and gay liberation also challenged patriarchal and restrictive gender roles and helped to reshape marriage. In 1920 most people married for life; in the twenty-first century fewer marry, and serial monogamy prevails. Marriage is more diverse and flexible in form but also more fragile and optional than it once was. Over the century control of courtship shifted from parents to youth, and friends, as opposed to kin, became more important in sustaining marriages. Dual-wage-earner families replaced the male breadwinner. Social and political liberalism assailed conservative laws and religious regimes, expanding access to divorce and birth control. Although norms of masculinity and femininity retain huge power in most cultures, visions of more egalitarian and romantic love as the basis of marriage have gained traction-made appealing by the global spread of capitalist social relations and also broadcast by culture industries in the developed world. The legalization of same-sex marriage-in over twenty-five nations by 2020-epitomizes a century of change toward a less gender-defined ideal that includes a continued desire for social recognition and permanence. A Cultural History of Marriage in the Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage.

A Cultural History of Marriage in Antiquity

A Cultural History of Marriage in Antiquity PDF Author: Karen Klaiber Hersch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350179647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Marriage, across cultures, is often defined as a union between consenting adults that lasts for the life of the partners. But is marriage a blessing, or curse? Does marriage represent the union of two hearts, or was it a necessary evil? Did matrimony bring a person a helpmeet for life, or was it a societally approved state entered into to improve one's social standing and produce legitimate heirs? The authors of this volume show that the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean were divided on all of these questions, and reveal ancient Greek and Roman opinions on marriage that were as varied and complex as they are today. Readers will discover in this book that ancients juggled multiple ideas that to the modern eye may appear to be contradictory. Thus, for example, Greek and Roman wives were expected to come to their grooms spotless virgins, while Greek and Roman husbands could enjoy multiple partnerships outside the marital union. Guided by our experts, we take an extensive journey through time and space, encountering evidence from such sources as diverse as Hammurabic law codes, Egyptian papyri, Greek epic and tragedy, Roman inscriptions and writings on the lives of early Christians. Applying innovative approaches and diverse methodologies, the authors of this volume reveal the tension and reconciliation between representations of marriage in antiquity and its lived reality. A Cultural History of Marriage in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage.

Marriage and Modernity

Marriage and Modernity PDF Author: Rochona Majumdar
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
An innovative cultural history of the evolution of modern marriage practices in Bengal, Marriage and Modernity challenges the assumption that arranged marriage is an antiquated practice. Rochona Majumdar demonstrates that in the late colonial period Bengali marriage practices underwent changes that led to a valorization of the larger, intergenerational family as a revered, “ancient” social institution, with arranged marriage as the apotheosis of an “Indian” tradition. She meticulously documents the ways that these newly embraced “traditions”—the extended family and arranged marriage—entered into competition and conversation with other emerging forms of kinship such as the modern unit of the couple, with both models participating promiscuously in the new “marketplace” for marriages, where matrimonial advertisements in the print media and the payment of dowry played central roles. Majumdar argues that together the kinship structures newly asserted as distinctively Indian and the emergence of the marriage market constituted what was and still is modern about marriages in India. Majumdar examines three broad developments related to the modernity of arranged marriage: the growth of a marriage market, concomitant debates about consumption and vulgarity in the conduct of weddings, and the legal regulation of family property and marriages. Drawing on matrimonial advertisements, wedding invitations, poems, photographs, legal debates, and a vast periodical literature, she shows that the modernization of families does not necessarily imply a transition from extended kinship to nuclear family structures, or from matrimonial agreements negotiated between families to marriage contracts between individuals. Colonial Bengal tells a very different story.

Making Marriage Work

Making Marriage Work PDF Author: Kristin Celello
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807889822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
By the end of World War I, the skyrocketing divorce rate in the United States had generated a deep-seated anxiety about marriage. This fear drove middle-class couples to seek advice, both professional and popular, in order to strengthen their relationships. In Making Marriage Work, historian Kristin Celello offers an insightful and wide-ranging account of marriage and divorce in America in the twentieth century, focusing on the development of the idea of marriage as "work." Throughout, Celello illuminates the interaction of marriage and divorce over the century and reveals how the idea that marriage requires work became part of Americans' collective consciousness.

The Psychology of Marriage

The Psychology of Marriage PDF Author: Carol Cronin Weisfeld
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498541259
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
From their location in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, the Weisfelds’ lab has reached out for thirty years to couples in long-term partnerships around the world. In living rooms of Detroit, London, Moscow, Beijing, and beyond, couples of all types and ages have shared their insights into adult romantic relationships. This book, The Psychology of Marriage, is a distillation of these findings, which have appeared in dozens of book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. The book also provides new systematic comparisons that offer insights into the mysteries of marriage and other committed relationships. Scholars, professional counselors, and family therapists will find a helpful framework for thinking about cultural similarities and differences in marital dynamics. Researchers will be introduced to a robust new instrument, the Marriage and Relationship Questionnaire (MARQ), which can be used in heterosexual and same-sex couples in virtually any cultural setting, along with ethical guidelines for conducting this research. Anyone who is interested in why committed relationships work (or do not work) will find the book filled with compelling new insights.

The Marriage Book

The Marriage Book PDF Author: Lisa Grunwald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439169675
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
The definitive anthology of wisdom and wit about one of life’s most complex, intriguing, and personal subjects. When and whom do you marry? How do you keep a spouse content? Do all engaged couples get cold feet? How cold is so cold that you should pivot and flee? Where and how do children fit in? Is infidelity always wrong? In this volume, you won’t find a single answer to your questions about marriage; you will find hundreds. Spanning centuries and cultures, sources and genres, The Marriage Book offers entries from ancient history and modern politics, poetry and pamphlets, plays and songs, newspaper ads and postcards. It is an A to Z compendium, exploring topics from Adam and Eve to Anniversaries, Fidelity to Freedom, Separations to Sex. In this volume, you’ll hear from novelists, clergymen, sex experts, and presidents, with guest appearances by the likes of Liz and Dick, Ralph and Alice, Louis CK, and Neil Patrick Harris. Casanova calls marriage the tomb of love, and Stephen King calls it his greatest accomplishment. With humor, perspective, breadth, and warmth, The Marriage Book is sure to become a classic.

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Empires

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Empires PDF Author: Paul Puschmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350179752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
During the age of empires (1800–1900), marriage was a key transition in the life course worldwide, a rite of passage everywhere with major cultural significance. This volume presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage. Using this framework, this volume explores global trends in marriage. In nineteenth-century Western Europe, marriage was increasingly regarded as the only way to reach happiness and self-fulfilment. In the United States former slaves obtained the right to marry, leading to a convergence in marriage patterns between the black and white populations. In Latin America, marriage remained less common, but marriage rates were nevertheless on the rise. In African and Asian societies, European colonial powers tried to change indigenous marriage customs like polygamy and arranged marriages, but had limited success. Across the globe, in a time of turbulent political and economic change, marriage and the family remained crucial institutions, the linchpins of society that they had been for centuries.

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Empires

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Empires PDF Author: Paul Puschmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350179744
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
During the age of empires (1800–1900), marriage was a key transition in the life course worldwide, a rite of passage everywhere with major cultural significance. This volume presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage. Using this framework, this volume explores global trends in marriage. In nineteenth-century Western Europe, marriage was increasingly regarded as the only way to reach happiness and self-fulfilment. In the United States former slaves obtained the right to marry, leading to a convergence in marriage patterns between the black and white populations. In Latin America, marriage remained less common, but marriage rates were nevertheless on the rise. In African and Asian societies, European colonial powers tried to change indigenous marriage customs like polygamy and arranged marriages, but had limited success. Across the globe, in a time of turbulent political and economic change, marriage and the family remained crucial institutions, the linchpins of society that they had been for centuries.

Marriage in Culture

Marriage in Culture PDF Author: Janice E. Stockard
Publisher: Cengage Learning
ISBN:
Category : !Kung (African people)
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
This text presents an ethnographic study of marriage practices in four cultures: !Kung San; Chinese; Iroquois; and Tibetan.