When I was selecting earrings for my wedding, I was not thinking about my research. Nevertheless, it was inevitably an occasion for the expression of marital meaning. When I remarked that a particular pair was a bit too expensive, the salesperson tried to convince this reluctant spender by saying, “Yeah, but these are for once in a lifetime.” Then, acknowledging the times, she added, “hopefully”—an adverb that even on the threshold of marriage nods in the direction of divorce. This was neither the first nor the last time that I heard such trailing adverbs. While the “once in a...

In their classic article, “Marriage and the Construction of Reality: An Exercise in the Microsociology of Knowledge,” Berger and Kellner (1964) provided a detailed and insightful portrait of how marital “realities” are constructed over time. Marriage is described as a “dramatic act in which two strangers come together and redefine themselves.” Socially constituted selves inevitably change as the spouses’ once separate social circles gradually merge. Marriage entails constructing and objectifying a shared subworld embedded in the private sphere and serves to siphon off surplus, potentially disruptive energy. In Berger and Kellner’s account, the narrowing and stabilization of personality brought about...

Divorce is only one thread in the fabric of family and social change we have witnessed in recent decades. Demographers Ahlburg and De Vita (1992, 1) remarked that “The family has changed so much in just a few decades that it is difficult for individuals and social institutions to keep up.” In addition to divorce, salient developments have included cohabitation, domestic partnerships, gay and lesbian marriage ceremonies, blended families, single parenthood, and dual-job couples. All have contributed to the diversification of relationship ideals and the decline of the reigning ideal. While they are all distinct developments, together they question fundamental...

From the early years of their marital commitment, the ’50s couples have watched the clouds of divorce gather on the distant horizon. Over the decades, the clouds have grown in number, changed their shape, and moved closer to home. From the time of the first adult interviews in 1958, when the U.S. divorce rate stood at a low (relative to a surge after World War II) of 2.1 per thousand population, to the early 1980s when it had more than doubled to around five per thousand, the volume of divorce increased tremendously (Cherlin 1992; Glick and Sung-Lin 1986).¹ Whether these...

While I was conducting my research, I had a chance encounter at an airport with a man who was about sixty years old. Upon hearing that my research was about divorce, he said, “I’ve told my wife she better do as I say, or I’ll divorce her and she’ll find herself in the poor house.” In the same breath, he both showed his knowledge of many women’s downward mobility after divorce and demonstrated how the combination of male dominance and divorce culture can work. For those whose beliefs are rooted in divorce culture, the door to divorce is always open....

Unlike the Dominicks or the traditionalist Stones, some ’50s spouses take advantage of changes in women’s roles to redefine their marriages in terms of gender equality while retaining their belief in “marriage as forever.” Divorce culture and gender equality become salient at a time when the ’50s couples are well into their marriages. By and large, the children have been raised and occupational demands have subsided. In short, incentives and deterrents to divorce have shifted in relation to the life course. Because the gendered division of labor regarding child rearing and wage earning can become less central in later years,...

By the early 1980s, the generation marrying around 1950 has traversed the conformist 1950s, turbulent 1960s, and experimental 1970s and entered a decade nostalgic for, but hardly a duplicate of, the 1950s. These couples married when marriage culture prevailed. Yet the longer their marriages have endured, the more divorce proliferates around them, the more stigma recedes, the more legal and economic hurdles are lowered, and the more gender equality marks cultural expectations. Marriage culture and male dominance are losing their hegemonic hold. Still, only a few ’50s spouses challenge all the old terms. These spouses talk in terms of optional...

The first divorce 39-year-old Patrick Reeves can recall is that of an older cousin who divorced in the early 1960s. Patrick, who was about 10 years old at the time, replays his reaction: “Whoooa, it shook me to the core that that could happen.Andthey had children—smallchildren—even to me at that time.” From the vantage of the early 1990s, Patrick describes a ripple effect through his extended family after this cousin’s divorce: “That like broke the logjam or something and then the next five years, there must have been probably three or four [divorces]. And eventually...

As Bill Gilmore discusses the models for his marriage, he notes that his “perception of marriage” is drawn from his “parents and other people.” The “other people,” he explains, were “who I associated with that were married when I wasn’t married … who for the most part aren’t married anymore.” Bill remarks that an era followed when they were the “odd couple out” because all their “friends were single or divorced and we were married.” He reports that among his friends “the majority of people that we associate withnoware married” and that “there are no visible signs of...

The comic strip “Cathy” provides a daily slice of popular culture through the story of a white, middle-class, single woman who continually wrestles with the prospect of marriage. The particular strip below captures the way a culture of marriage competes with a culture of divorce and smuggles in gendered stereotypes in the process.¹ Cathy tabulates weddings and points to traditional meanings of marriage, including “commitment,” “stability,” and “nurturance.” Irving’s reply, by emphasizing “this season inreallife,” accords divorce a realism denied marriage and points to a competing cultural reality. When Irving comments that the spouses “by all accounts, were...

In spite of the challenges and changes represented by divorce culture and gender equality, traditionalism is alive and well in the 1990s. “Traditional,” as I have used the term, refers to spouses who embrace not only the ideals of marriage culture, but also male authority. The ’50s traditionalists never felt the need to defend their beliefs—even after the 1970s watershed of gender and marital change. For the Older generation, the process of defending one’s ideals and practices from widespread social influences was more pertinent for the “divorcee,” the “egalitarian” or the “single mother.” However, the ’70s traditionalists have not...

When 39-year-old, Euro-American Roxanne Kason-Morris is asked to address the meaning of marriage in the 1990s, she notes the high divorce rates and wonders about changing roles in recent generations:

In the old times, no one questioned what the woman’s and the man’s role is.Now it's all topsy-turvyand uh … then who’s going to take care of the children is a big question and um, two working parents, of course, you have to divide the responsibility and the woman is forever resentful toward the man who doesn’t take his full share—or half the share. [ … ]...

When people marry they do not simply tie a knot, but weave a complex of relationships according to pre-existing patterns. In U.S. history, the institution of marriage has been like a loom through which several threads of social relations have been woven. Marriage has been a monogamous, lifelong commitment that has regulated gender, sexuality, and the physical and social reproduction of the generations. This Western marital pattern is being redesigned. We are still responding to the tapestry of old, but the various threads are being disaggregated and rewoven. Our society is deeply divided regarding the value and meaning of these...