Tension between institutional and individual views of marriage

Key Words: divorce, family policy, marriage, social institutions. In 1972, feminist scholar Jessie Bernard authored a classic book, The Future of Marriage. In 2003, the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) conference in Vancouver revisited this theme. As conference chair, I picked this theme for three reasons. First, given the importance of marriage, a conference focusing on this topic was long overdue; the last time an NCFR conference theme referred to marriage was in 1958! Second, as the articles by Cherlin (2004), Oropesa and Landale (2004), and Seltzer (2004) demonstrate, marriage in the United States changed significantly during the second half of the 20th century. During this period, the marriage rate declined, nonmarital cohabitation became common, the proportion of births that occur outside of marriage rose, and the divorce rate increased. Similar trends occurred in other western countries, including Canada (Le Bourdais & Lapierre-Adamcyk, 2004) and England (Seltzer). The 2003 conference provided NCFR members with opportunities to discuss the causes of these changes, the implications of these changes for the well-being of adults and children, and how marriage may continue to change in the future. Third, marriage has become a major focus of social policy. During the last decade, three states (Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas) implemented covenant marriage, a form of marriage in which spouses vow to seek counseling if their marriages are in trouble and to refrain from seeking no-fault divorces. Oklahoma established the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative and trained hundreds of individuals to provide free premarital education to people planning to marry. Other states incorporated relationship skills and conflict-resolution courses into high school curricula, distributed information on marriage to newlyweds, and funded public education campaigns to promote the value of marriage. At the federal level, the Bush administration in 2003 pledged $1.5 billion to fund programs to support healthy marriages. Many people are skeptical about the value of these steps, and a debate has emerged about the appropriate role of government in promoting marriage. On another front, the Hawaii State Court, in a 1996 ruling, appeared to open the door to gay and lesbian marriage. The U.S. Congress reacted to this decision by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, which recognized marriage exclusively as a union of one man and one woman. On November 18, 2003 (the day before the NCFR conference started), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that marriage between gay and lesbian couples is a right guaranteed by the state constitution. In response to this court decision, many lawmakers support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay and lesbian marriages. The heated debate over this issue further highlights the fact that marriage was a topic of unusual public interest in 2003. To address these issues at the 2003 conference, I invited many of the leading experts on marriage in the United States and Canada to present their research and ideas at a series of plenary and special sessions. Many (although not all) of these excellent presentations are available in this special symposium. THE MARRIAGE DEBATE The debate between family scholars who adopt a marital decline perspective and those who adopt a marital resilience perspective is a useful starting point in understanding the current status of marriage. Some scholars view the retreat from marriage and the corresponding spread of single-parent families as a cause for concern (Glenn, 2001; Popenoe, 1996; Waite & Gallagher, 2000; Wilson, 2002). According to a marital decline perspective, American culture has become increasingly individualistic in recent decades, and people have become preoccupied with the pursuit of personal happiness. Because people no longer wish to be hampered with obligations to others, commitment to traditional institutions that require these obligations, such as marriage, has eroded. …