Chapter Two, will focus on the Individualism thesis, how the American Ideals of Marriage have been spread in the Western Cultures and how they've been adopted. It will talk about the significance of technological developments and globalization and expansion to a broader world, and how these have affected marriage, through an increasingly individualized society.
We can not ignore the importance of history and how our ancestors have lived this institution. What we are told today is that every individual is different, and therefore, every relationship and marriage will be different; something that in the past, as we have briefly outlined, was unthinkable, in fact, the aim of every individual was to be in accordance with the Society mores and the rest of the community. There is an evident disregard or lack of education in the matter, and that ignorance makes it very difficult for young people to understand how marriage could be integrated in today's fast paced world and new and dynamic generations.
This is the period of the biggest technological, scientific and medical discoveries. The universal acceptance of romantic love arose from an hedonistic and individualistic culture, a society where the self’s happiness was the man’s goal and purpose in life. Such culture was of course born in the Western Nations, after the Industrial revolution and the birth of modern capitalism.
"(Capitalism) dissolved all traditional relations, and for inherited customs and historical rights is substituted... 'free' contract..." Friedrich Engels
It is important to analyze the factors that let romantic love take place, and to do so, one must look at the politic and economical developments of America that came with the Enlightenment. With the end of totalitarian states and the resulting free-market society, people witnessed for the first time in history the possibility of a liberated human mind that could take control of all material existence. For the first time ever, humans were truly free to choose their own commitments and path in life, they had discovered the concept of individual rights. Along with the economic freedom, came the intellectual freedom. Therefore individualism, and this drastic evolvement in society’s mentality, affected enormously human’s relationships.
“The United States created a context in which the pursuit of happiness on earth seemed natural and normal and possible.”
(Branden, N., (2008) The Psychology of Romantic Love. p.22)
Generations that thanks to the incredible advances of modern technologies and the improvements in the quality of life, have become more and more individualistic and selfish. Not having to rely on family or close friends to find an adequate match ( which was previously basically restricted to your own neighborhood and place of work ) thanks to internet and the huge variety of global communications that in recent times allow any person to make friends and social connections that reach all over the World, the transformation of Marriage as an institution and its significance, has been of such depth as to make it a very different institution in all senses as it was only a couple of generations ago. Not to mention that the number of potential candidates has increased exponentially. And so have the temptations that surround men and women in our society now.
There are two important factors and stereotypes I would highlight from the American dream, or American ideals of love:
On one hand, there is the wild freedom of choice, which implies that getting married is not even a must, or the correct choice anymore. This evolution in Western societies has placed marriage from being a life priority to one in multiple choices of lifestyle, replaced by career ambitions and job opportunities, amongst others…
“The individualization thesis estates that “as a result of the weakening of traditions in contemporary societies, individuals are freer to make their own life choices … Jane Lewis (2001) carried out a study of commitment in the UK ... She found that the older generation felt they had no choice at all about cohabiting - it was too socially scandalous - but they also had no real choice about marrying because it was such a strong social convention.”
I do believe that we do not yet fully understand the consequences of what this individualism and independence have had on marriage. Perhaps another factor we have to take into consideration is that our modern western societies provide the individual with such an enormous array and variety of services that not surprisingly, we can affirm that never before men/women have enjoyed such a fantastic quality of life.
If we look at the figures, that show how one out of three marriages ends up in Divorce in the UK, and how one out of two divorce in the United Estates, we can clearly see that Marriage has lost all its force and probably much of its significance and meaning. We are standing in a completely different and new ground where new norms should be settled for marriage to succeed. One cannot help but wonder, whether this era of selfishness will work in the future for a long term or it will be interrupted by a general change in society's attitudes and believes towards sharing a lifetime with a partner. Because that is another thing, life expectancies now are to live up to 90 years. Committing oneself for life has a very different meaning if we expect to live together 20 or 30 years than if we expect to live 50 or 60 years together!
"Marriage is meant to mean love and happiness forever ,till death do us apart. Allow me to mention that in the Fifties, life expectancy was around 60 years. Life expectancy will acquire an important role in the times to come and very importantly in the evolution of Marriage."
Miguel Ortiz Valderrama 2012
What I am certain about is that these dramatic changes in the roles of men and women already have consequences on the young generations. As I analyzed in the very beginning of this dissertation, marriage was once, meant to be the pillar from where to start a family, children being the main purpose of it. Today, in many cases, children are nothing but a complication that stands in between a couple, they are not the priority anymore. A couple that may or may not get along, a couple that may or may not desire a stable relationship, a couple that may or may not fight for their children's custody... The bottom line is, and without focusing on the children too much, because that is a different story, that when those children become adults, they will have a completely different perspective and concept of marriage of the one his parents were taught by their grandparents. The decision making process of those kids in the future, will be based on a completely different point of view; what he has to make sure of is to do exactly the opposite of what he's experienced with his parents, to make his own marriage work. And that is the complicated task young generations have to deal with today, being pioneers in a new agreement that will allow them to have successful marriages; something they, many times, have not lived before or, if they have, it was most times under different conditions (ie. the son of a mother who was a housewife, his father responsible for bringing the money home, marries now an independent woman who does not need his economical support; the old example he received at home of share of duties may not be applicable anymore).
"A word of caution is necessary when trying to understand trends in relationships, especially when the changes in Western cultures since the 1950s have been dramatic and statistics on the decline in marriage, the rise of cohabitation and the increase in divorce can be combined to give the impression of chaos and instability. The first problem with over-interpreting change is that we have to choose our baseline carefully." (May, V. (2011) Sociology of Personal Life. p.78)
It is always difficult to say when looking at the present statistics of divorce, whether marriages were more successful or not in the past, because we have no evidence due to the lack of means to divorce or women's inferior status then. A commonly used argument and explanation to the number of Divorces today, apart from the evident choice that was not a possibility in the past, is because in the present people put less effort to make marriages work, due to the present culture, that rejects the idea of sacrificing ourselves for another person. I will emphasize the word Sacrifice because it has been widely spread amongst our younger generations that "loving someone should not be a sacrifice". And that is I believe, where a major problem lies, people have to differentiate very clearly between being in love and making a marriage successful, because that requires concessions and yes, sacrifice and selflessness.
"Perhaps as a counterattack to the submission of women to men, as a rejection to arranged marriages and the vulnerability that both women and men have suffered from marriage in history, the future generations are taught not to sacrifice, quite the opposite, they are taught that their own happiness is above everything else."
Miguel Ortiz Valderrama 2012
Is this American ideal what is ruling the Western concept of happiness? Self satisfaction?
I do not wish to be misunderstood here, of course there are some individuals who are more giving than others, and yes of course, there are still many life time partners. I am not criticizing people so much as I am being critical about the education, that the new generations, us, receive about marriage. Unfortunately, our previous generations cannot teach us much about it. Marriage´s main purpose is not to have a family anymore, not necessarily, marriage is not a vehicle for women to find men's economical support and protection, not necessarily, and marriage is definitely not, a lifetime compromise, any more.
We aim to create a new concept of Marriage based on Love, Trust, friendship and Common Projects and closer in fact to its new reality. And I feel that we all want to believe in this new idea of marriage that our great grandmothers once dreamed of and some fought for, however, like any new concept, there is no prove that this new type of Marriage will work, unless every individual that chooses to marry understands that, as modern as we get, Marriage will always imply a huge compromise, and every compromise has its sacrifices, and as long as we do not accept this simple fact, this lifetime promise will never succeed in our contemporary, individualistic Western Culture.
Of course there are many factors we would have to consider, specially now that gay marriages have been accepted and legalized in many Western Nations something that to traditional spirits is totally abhorrent, but that have been completely accepted and even assumed as natural by the younger generations and therefore become one more option in our lives nowadays .Another important consideration has to be given to the fact that the protection of procreation has ceased to be a reason for marriage and finally, perhaps we should consider other options, like "term" marriages, which funny enough were practiced by the Incas in South America many centuries ago, under the name of "Servinacuy", that is marriages arranged for a trial period of one or two years, after which, the man AND the woman, would decide if they wanted to make it definitive. Or perhaps it has finally(!) come the time, due to the overpopulation of women in some societies to reintroduce the Polygamous marriage again, in Australia for instance, due to the population disproportion of 8 women to one man, and accordingly, Polyandrous marriage in those societies with an excess population of men, like China today. Just a theoretic consideration as alternatives to the present fragile and undefined state of the matrimonial institution.
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