'Marriage and How It Has Changed Essay\r'

' spousal has g cardinal through profound changes everywhere the last five decades, but we hide to speak close it as though it’s the same(p) old acquainted(predicate) pattern. To see how some(prenominal) has changed; I am going to look at the switching from the forties, to the sixties, to to daytime. In 1968, less than a socio-economic class after the famous Summer of Love, as they used to say out in the country, â€Å"The times they were a-changing.” The cozy revolution, Viet Nam, drugsâ€the youth of the day were convinced the world would never be the same again. Yet they didn’t come back about how such changes would affect jointure. It seemed as if they thought it would be about the same as it had been for their pargonnts, except repair because they (like virtu each(prenominal)y youth of most times) thought they were better than their gray and jaded pargonnts that represented the â€Å"Ameri stand Gothic” portrayed that day.\r\nNo offspr ing how you describe it, it was a powerfully spellbinding vision. The average age at which Americans got marital dropped drastically, to fitting 19 for women. The number of children soared higher(prenominal) than it had for decades, to a peak of 3.7 children per wo military man in 1957. The goal back then was domesticity, and both partners worked for itâ€one to earn the pay, the other to cause the home. If a man was a hefty provider, if he didn’t drink or beat his wife, if he was a â€Å" in force(p) father” to his children, he was a slap-up husband. A good wife had to be a decent cook and housekeeper, analyze care of the children and provide emotional obtain to her husband. Polls subscriben during that time stage that more(prenominal) than 90 percent of quite a little could non imagine an unmarried mortal being happy. When asked what they thought they had given up for wedding and family, most women said, â€Å"Nothing.”\r\nSince the mid-fifties , we’ve chased in the flesh(predicate) happiness, career and self-fulfillment and assumed that marriage and family would close tohow fit in. One ratify of this shift is the percentage of couples who say they would retain together â€Å"for the sake of the children,” which sank from about 50 to 20 between 1962 and 1977. We’ve missed something else, something far-off more surprising: the pure versed drama of marriage. In Goin’ to the Chapel: Dreams of Love, Realities of Marriage, Charlotte Mayerson describes some startling discoveries about the Ozzie and Harriet generation. While talking in-depth to 100 middle-class women of all ages about their marriages, she found that those who enjoyed a passionate sexual relationship with their husbands were almost certain to seduce come of age in the fifties. In contrast, sex just wasn’t that distinguished for junior women.\r\nâ€Å"Time and time again, the younger women say, ‘On a scale of one to ten, sex, I would say, gets a three,” Mayerson writes. â€Å"These younger women had push-down stack of sexual relationships before they married, and the thrill was kaput(p) before the wedding day. For many old women, however, the excitement of sex had been a debate to marry, and the passion remained.” Those â€Å"Ozzie and Harriet” marriages, Mayerson suggests, could be considerably more passionate than those that have come since the informal Revolution. Baby boomers didn’t rebel against domesticity, they just took it for granted. Marriage wasn’t a consider for which they worked and sacrificed, they thought of it as an adventure that happened because you cast in love; and it competed with other adventuresâ€sex, travel, success, bringing the planet.\r\nToday, the fifties serve as an ideologic battleground. For conservatives who regret the changes that have come, those years are a reminder of the good old days. For liberals who push soc iety to escape autocratic patriarchal arrangements, they are a dreaded Dark Ages. Their constant cry is, â€Å"We can’t go back to the fifties!” Indeed, we can’t. But we would do happen uponty to recognize what we’ve lost and might regain. We’ve lost the emphasis on marriage and children that provided so much stability. Back then, a man’s career was to provide for the family, not his ego; a woman’s ambitions were put on the shelf if they conflicted with the children’s trains. That was sure as shooting restrictive to some, but it created a strong social fabric. Since the fifties, we’ve chased face-to-face happiness, career and self-fulfillment and assumed that marriage and family would somehow fit in.\r\nThe situation is only hopeless. After all, if something like one-half of all marriages ends in divorce, that means the other half don’t. We can’t promise that our children lead succeed, but we can sure prepare them and support them to be numbered among the successful. For preceding generations, marriage was an inevitable destination. It didn’t take any special intention; it was a stage in life. For the ’00 generation, marriage will have to be a much more intentional act. They need encouragement, they need mentors, and most of all they need like a shot talk. We must ask them: â€Å"Do you pick out what you’re doing? Are you prepared to identify this a success?” We often hear that if we do not learn from the past, we are bound to relive it. In my opinion, it is certainly something that wouldn’t hurt us a single bit in this concomitant situation.\r\nWorks Cited\r\nMayerson, Charlotte. Goin’ To the Chapel; Dreams of Love, Realities of\r\nMarriage. 1996. Basic disturb\r\n'