Family, The | Introduction
When asked why they got married, most people say that they fell in love. American society associates marriage with romantic love and lifelong companionship. For most of history, however, marriage was a contractual arrangement that had more to do with practicality than love. Marriage was the primary institution through which the rich exchanged property and the poor found their main work partner. However, in the nineteenth century, marriage changed dramatically from a practical arrangement to a satisfying personal relationship. The primary reason for this shift was that the Industrial Revolution enabled people to earn a living that was independent of their parents’ or spouse’s wealth. This freedom allowed people to choose husbands or wives based on factors other than wealth, such as attraction, affection, and compatibility. As stated by E.J. Graff in What Is Marriage For?, “Precisely because we can each make our own living, with or without our families of origin, with or without a spouse, we have vastly more choice in matters of the heart.”
Prior to the eighteenth century, marriage was strictly a financial arrangement. The deal usually began with the youths’ parents setting the size of the dowry and bride price. A dowry is a marriage gift from the bride’s family to the groom’s family, and the bride price is a gift from the groom’s family to the bride’s family. In most marriages, neither the bride nor the groom, particularly of the upper class, had much say in their parents’ (or more specifically, their father’s) choice of spouse. Kings might marry their daughters to foreign royalty and unite their kingdoms, nobles could marry their sons to nearby landowners and combine their lands, or destitute earls might regain their fortunes by marrying wealthy merchants’ daughters. As stated by Graff, “Your marriage choice was not simply your own. Your family and friends were your board of directors, experienced people with a direct stake in guiding you to a successfully concluded merger.”
People of the lower classes exchanged dowries and bride prices too, but they often had to earn their own instead of relying on inherited wealth. Large fortunes, tracts of land, or titles were not at stake, so, by earning their own dowry, working class individuals had more, though not sole, choice of whom they married. Marriage among the lower classes was still regarded as a practical arrangement or contract, however, and people married individuals who could help them earn a living. For example, a farmer’s wife was regarded as his business partner, and she contributed as much to the family’s upkeep as he did. According to historian Olwen Hufton, “The farmer’s wife generally tended livestock, particularly chickens and pigs. . . , grew vegetables, did dairy work, kept bees, preserved and pickled, helped prepare goods for sale and perhaps took them to market, [and] lent a hand at harvest and during haymaking.” A lower class individual’s total life income depended upon marriage, so it was practical to marry an able business partner who brought a substantial dowry or bride price to the marriage.
Social systems that centered on arranged marriages, dowries, and bride prices emphasized duty and obedience, and people had limited individual choice. Nearly everyone lived under the control of a master. A patriarchal family was a microcosm of the larger community and even larger kingdom. Children were subject to their parents just as peasants were subject to nobles and nobles were subject to royalty. Children were taught the value of obedience and duty and were even seen as their parents’ property. As stated by historian Lawrence Stone, “Children are so much the goods, the possessions of their parents that they cannot, without a kind of theft, give themselves away without the allowance of those that have the right [to] them.”
Choice was also limited because youths’ daily lives differed little, if at all, from their parents’ daily lives. Children typically took up the family business, married someone from their community, and rarely left their hometown. Children typically performed the same chores, ate the same food, and wore the same kinds of clothes as their parents. Adolescents’ day-to-day lives were nearly identical to their parents’, so it made sense to adopt their parents’ traditions and methods for survival. Moreover, their parents often had survived famines, disease, or wars, so they knew how to overcome adversity. As stated by Graff, “For most people in most places, daily survival was achieved by obedience. . .: do as I did and you’ll be more likely to live and thrive.”
Around the eighteenth century, this system began to change, partly because the Industrial Revolution transformed society from an agriculture-based economy to a trade-based economy. New industries—textiles, mining, steam power, electrical power, transportation, and communication—sprang up all over the Western hemisphere. These industries powered a simultaneous growth in cities, as people flocked to urban areas in search of work. At the end of the seventeenth century, nearly 80 percent of people had lived in rural areas and earned their living from agriculture. By the end of the nineteenth century, nearly one-half of Europe’s population resided in cities and made their living through trade.
The Industrial Revolution fostered a trade economy that helped free youths from their parents’ control because it provided life options that had never been available before. For the first time, most people earned their own wealth and were not dependent upon their families to earn a living. They traveled to new towns, learned new trades, and, in the process, developed means of survival that deviated from those of their parents’. With these novel experiences, young people were devising new life philosophies that encouraged the pursuit of an independent, personally fulfilling lifestyle. As stated by Graff, “Children were slipping free from their parents’ control—as more and more of us were becoming free to earn and therefore to travel, love, marry, and eventually think.”
By 1850, the preindustrial system of marriage as a financial arrangement was nearly extinct in the West. In its place, the ideal of romantic love had triumphed. Of course, romantic love had existed before the nineteenth century, and some people may even have felt love for their spouses. How- ever, the goal of marriage, prior to the nineteenth century, was not love but livelihood. After 1850, love became the guiding principle in choosing a spouse, and a loveless marriage was regarded with sadness and pity. People who married for reasons other than love were seen as mercenary and shallow. This romantic concept of marriage, with love as its essence and foundation, is what most contemporary Americans yearn for.
Social changes during the Industrial Revolution freed people to earn their own living, and in doing so, gave them the freedom to make their own decisions about marriage. Americans enjoy more individual wealth today than at any other time in history, and, in consequence, most Americans are free to enter into marriages of their choice that ideally fulfill their need for romantic love. The Family: Opposing Viewpoints examines marriage and other issues related to the American family in the following chapters: What Is the State of the Family? Is Conventional Marriage Necessary for Healthy Families? Does Adoption Benefit Families? How Can Families Best Be Supported? Examination of these issues provides readers with a broad understanding of the state of the American family today. To be sure, most Americans would agree that despite the many pressures threatening the marriage institution today, marriages based on genuine love have the greatest chance of success.
