This is something I wrote back in 2004 in reaction to this battle of same sex marriages in Oregon.  Marriage is not so sanct, and has never been when it comes to our history in America.  What follows is research I did on the history of marriage in America.

This is long, so please feel free to skip through and read later if you wish.

Affirming Traditional Marriages

At the center of the debate over same-sex marriage is the ideal “traditional marriage”.  Opponents have said repeatedly (to me and to others) that same-sex marriage will undermine a long-established ideal role of a union between a man and a woman.
On the subject of “traditional family”, Encarta says:
There has never been a typical or single traditional family form in the United States. In the early 21st century, the ideal family is a vehicle for self-fulfillment and emotional satisfaction. The family in early America had different functions as producers of food, clothing, and shelter. There has always been a gap between the ideal family and the more complicated reality of family relationships. While Americans value their families and resent outside interference, they have also been willing to intervene in the family lives of those who seem outside the American ideal.
The Early Days of Marriage in America

American history reveals a long and ever-changing view of marriage, starting in the 17th and 18th century.  Families from European backgrounds living in the new land viewed their families as “households” – people who happened to live together.  These units were formed, not out of love, but out of a primitive need for what the man and woman could provide for survival.  Men who could care for livestock, fields and merchant duties paired well with women who could produce basics such as dairy products, meats, or even services such as midwifery.  Such unions promised individual survival.  Children were created to help work the farm and perform household duties, not out of a sense of parental longing or love.  The household was run much like a business.  Disobedience by children was met with harsh punishment, often times mandated by law.  If one child died, there was no great familial loss.  Often, another child would be born and given the same name as the deceased.  Children were sold to other families as early as age 12 for servant duties.

All Aboard the Love Train

It wasn’t until the late 18th and early 19th century that the concept of marrying for love entered our society.  The familiar view of children was becoming more sentimental and less labor-driven.  The initial shifts occurred in wealthy, educated urban families.  Later, the concept spread to the rural and poorer Americans.  The reason for this shift was due to an economic boom, which meant that families didn’t have to work as hard for themselves when others could work for them.  The production of the necessities of life shifted outside the home, providing more leisure time to spend with family, as well as providing opportunities to reflect on the meaning of family and happiness.  A new philosophy by John Locke promoting the idea that children were blank slates that in which goodness can be instilled by showering them with kindness and love and by shielding them from the bad things in this world.  In contrast, “traditional” Christian values dictated that children were born “sinners” and needed constant supervision and correction.

Enter the 19th Century

New ideas about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” invaded the upper and lower culture of the 19th century.  Romantic desires to have it all wrapped up in one neat little family package became the new view of marriage.  Wifely obedience to her husband switched from an obligation of house law to an act of love for him.  Men ruled their households still, but were encouraged to do so with the delicacy of their wife’s heart in mind.  Inequality and abuse never fully disappeared, however.

Instead of milking cows to provide for the household, raising children became the main focus of a wife in America.  The harsh punishments of the “old days” for children were replaced with less severe consequences, rewards and love.  During this time fiction and religion took major strides toward promoting the ideal family picture.  Magazine articles, novels and religious publications all did their best to promote the new perfect family.

As the Industrial Revolution took shape, men were taken to work outside the home, often in other towns.  Women were left with the duties of caring for the children by themselves, as they were considered “too delicate” to conduct themselves in the working world (note:  it is interesting to see the shift from a “hard working woman” to a “delicate” woman in just 100 years).  Interestingly, according to Encarta:

It was also common in middle- and working-class families for sons to be sent to school, while their teenage sisters supported this schooling by working in a factory, teaching in elementary schools, or taking in sewing. Such work was considered acceptable as long as it was either done in the house or by unmarried young women.

However, due to severe poverty associated with the low wages of the Industrial Revolution and increased housing costs, the old “tradition” of family crept back into every day life.  Children were sent off to factories to work for the family, and women and men again married simply for the sake of survival.

The 20th Century Family

As the Progressive Moment grew, Social Workers played vital roles in helping families through the new difficulties of maintaining the new family, such as drug use, physical abuse, or abandonment.  Social Workers often held to the “traditional” roles for wives, and advised women that they should stay with their abusive husbands, because that was their role.

In an effort to hide “sins” from social view, single white girls who were not married and pregnant were carried off to undisclosed locations, where their children were taken from them.  The girls were returned to their families and their “real lives”, traumatized by this horrible experience.  When “black” unmarried girls and women were found to be pregnant they were classified as immoral and racially inferior.  They were held up in public derision, and forced to go home and raise their children alone.

World War II saw the blossoming of “girl power” and Rosie the Riveter.  After the war ended, divorce rates climbed to astonishing levels.  From Encarta:

The marriage rate went from 12.2 per 1,000 people in 1945 to 16.4 in 1946. The divorce rate, which had been slowly increasing during the century, leaped from 3.5 to 4.3 per 1,000 people. One reason for the extraordinarily large number of divorces in 1946 was that couples who had married in haste before they were shipped overseas for the war found that they had little in common after three to five years apart.

Suddenly, the concept that a marriage could be so easily dissolved entered our society.  Even the presence of children in a relationship did not diminish the numbers significantly.

Grizzly Adams, meet Ozzie and Harriet

The 50’s and 60’s brought the ultimate in denial for mainstream America.  Television was all the rage, and families sat themselves in front of the tube regularly.  In an effort to present the ideal image of America to the rest of the world, shows such as Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best were created.  The whole world, including many Americans, thought that every single household was cut out of the same mold as these fictional families.  The “traditional marriage” was now idealized, fictionalized, and fantasized about.  The reality, however, was much different.  According to Encarta:

This idealized middle-class American family began to show cracks during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In response to the demands on men to create and support expensive domestic paradises, a mythical world of adventure and freedom eventually arose in popular culture. Movies about secret agents and Western gunslingers contrasted with the regimented suburban, corporate lifestyle of many men. The demands on women to be all things to all people—a sexy wife, a caring, selfless mother, a budget-minded shopper, a creative cook, and a neighborhood volunteer—and to find satisfaction in a shining kitchen floor often produced anxious feelings of dissatisfaction.

As “concern” over music, sexuality, and morals grew in the 60’s, suddenly the “traditional marriage” was touted as the only savior for the family.  People were not willing to admit that the pressure associated with maintaining a “picture perfect family” resulted in long hours at work, bored wives and unmotivated children.  Children grew and rebelled at the notion that they had to fit into little suburban cut-outs of behavior, thereby creating their own culture.

The 60’s and 70’s

Traditional roles of family and child-rearing were turned upside down.  Men began taking an interest in raising their children, and women took it upon themselves to earn a living and provide for their futures.  The times of church and state looking into the bedrooms of the American family had come to and end.  The Sexual Revolution had begun.  At the same time, gays and lesbians were asserting their rights to equal recognition of relationships.  Sometimes these relationships were based on the traditional model of marriage, and other times they were based on newer ideas.  Communal living became a popular alternative to traditional families, providing a community of like-minded individuals who could share the duties and enjoy more of life’s freedoms.

As the roles in family shifted, men felt inadequate because the demands of the new “traditional marriage” couldn’t be met by one person.  The picture perfect marriage and family were expensive and difficult to maintain.  Women became “working moms”, trying to balance all the household duties with a full-time job.  The amount of stress in trying to maintain this façade caused many couples to break up.  It also forced new couples to reconsider their fantasies of marriage and what it really meant.

Today’s Trends

According to Encarta:

In 1998 there were 2,256,000 marriages in the United States, a marriage rate of 8.4 per 1,000 people. This rate was down from 10.6 per 1,000 in 1980. The year 1998 also saw 1,135,000 divorces in the United States, a rate of 4.2 per thousand people. One estimate is that 50.3 percent of marriages will end in divorce. Divorce rates have been rising since 1920, when records were first kept and when the divorce rate was about a third of the 1995 rate. Although the divorce rate has been declining since it peaked in the early 1980s, America still has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. The majority of divorced people eventually remarry.

The strict roles of man and woman in a marriage are no longer relevant.  The “traditional marriage” has been replaced with working moms and dads who SHARE the household burdens.  Women are increasingly making sure that they are provided for, as well as their families.  Men are increasingly bonding with their own children in ways that would have been considered “feminine” a century before.

The term “family values” appeals in our modern-day because people want to relate to the old ideals of communication, Sunday dinners at Grandma’s house, and tradition that accompanies the dream.

We are working toward better communication and understanding within our families.  However, children still seem to be suffering.  Anxiety, depression, and loneliness are common in two-parent households, and even more common in single parent situations.  These are often acted out in violence toward others.  It is not uncommon for children to see psychiatrists, social workers, or even doctors for treatment.  Interestingly, Encarta says this phenomena is “peculiar” to the United States:

The safety net for families and community support for parents and children have been rolled back at the end of the 20th century. The United States lags behind other developed nations in educational standards, social welfare programs, infant mortality rates, marriage rates, legitimacy rates, public safety, and other measures of family well-being. Crime, violence, drug abuse, and homelessness are problems that arise from these situations and also weaken existing families. Some of the problems with family life come not from a rejection of the family or from stresses on the family, but from the high and idealistic expectations that Americans place on their marriages, sexual relationships, and parent-child relationships. Many Americans hope for a perfect spouse and a perfect family and will experiment until they find satisfying lives for themselves. The cost may be tenuous relationships (emphasis is mine).   Although there is concern about these social changes, few would want to return to the days when women were expected to stay in abusive marriages or fathers were routinely denied custody of their children. The majority of Americans accept new attitudes on sexual expression, birth control, abortion, divorce, and child custody, although many personally view homosexuality as immoral, have mixed feelings about abortion, and want to make divorce more difficult to obtain. Both liberals and conservatives agree there are hopeful and troubling aspects of the American family at the end of the 20th century. The family is not dead, but it exhibits the plurality of interests, hopes, and troubles that the American people face at the end of the century.

Having noted the preceding history of “traditional marriage”, it seems that the only thing consistent with the tradition is that of change.  The very meaning of marriage has evolved over the last 300 years, even in the last 50.  The pressure to maintain a socio-religious ideal has caused families to crumble and children to suffer.  Those who would put forth a moral responsibility by the United States to reinforce “traditional marriage” legally may want to consider the social consequences based on the results of recent history.  Marriage, as we know it today, is completely different than it was 30, 50, 100, 200 and 300 years ago.  It has to be able to adapt in order to survive.

Those who preach “traditional marriage” the loudest can not claim to live it practically in their lives.  President Bush has not successfully raised his family in the manner which he would hold the rest of the country accountable.  Ministers and conservatives who seek to push legal restrictions on marriage cannot themselves claim to have successfully met all the challenges that they would mandate to others.

Efforts to “preserve the institution of marriage” are efforts to push an entire belief system upon a nation, a belief system that is driven by a base hatred for homosexuals.  Simply put, those who seek to ban same-sex unions feel that the “scriptures” condemn homosexuality, and based on what the bible says we are “sinners” and do not deserve to live in happiness.  This concept of God-ordained “sin” allows conservative Christians to easily justify condemnation and judgment against anyone they wish.  Some have even carried out their judgments with murder.

I close with this question:  Are these extreme reactions a just foundation for the preservation of “traditional marriage”, or are their condemnations and judgments the real threat to the very fabric of our American society?

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