It is incredible how marriages still exist with the current trend in the society where divorces and domestic violence is almost an everyday highlight. All odds are against getting married especially in America where divorce rates are so high and cohabiting coupling has become a better option for many souls seeking to avoid the tussles and huddles in marriage life. Perhaps we can do away with these marriages anyway and live a happier healthy and satisfying kind of life without being answerable to anyone at all. Why would someone get married and then get divorced in ten years and thereafter live a miserable life?
Thesis statement: Although the role that marriage was playing in the past century has shifted to a more sophisticated kind full of challenges and controversy in the modern context, marriage still remains an important part of the American life.
Deterioration of Marriage in America
Marriage in the modern day context has been assigned a different role and Americans are now marrying for a different reason. The symbolism and status that marriage has been accorded strikes the contrast to how marriage was viewed a century ago. In the modern context, marriage has been associated with success and once one has attained the standards set by the society as being successful that’s when one thinks of marriage contrary to the past when as long as you had attained the right age for marriage then you are deemed qualified for marriage. This shift in the role that marriage was playing forms part of the reason for the deterioration of marriage in the American society. Marriage in the modern context has been taken to be almost the last step in an adult life, it is taken as if it is the last thing that an American adult would do after gaining reaching the stipulated marriage age and of course being financial stable.
Causes of Deterioration
The economic factor attached to marriages has seen adults with relatively poor economic prospects shy away from the rite of passage. Those with stable financial positions are at liberty to marry though most of them end up facing divorce sooner or later, this has made others opt for childbearing outside of marriage (Wolfinger 16). The American culture has also contributed the trend of childbearing outside marriages as this norm is widely accepted and practiced in the American society and makes marriage more of an optional institution unlike in the past century when childbearing outside wedlock was considered shameful.
Effects of Deterioration
The association of marriage with the economic situation of the person has eroded the purpose of marriages in the American society. The main objective in today’s marriages is not to unite two families of the couples but it is rather a display of the financial capabilities of the couples and a celebration not really a ceremony. Unlike in the past where the families will contribute and in fact plan the wedding ceremonies, today’s ceremonies are planned and financed entirely by the couples and the families of the bride and the groom are just treated as spectators coming to witness a union of two individuals. According to the American Wedding Study, done by the Bride magazine, 26 percent of couples paid the entire cost of their wedding receptions in 2012 (Cherlin 2). As the couples therefore completely take over the planning and the financing of the wedding ceremonies, the meaning of these ceremonies is lost and it becomes more of a celebration than a union.
Causes of divorce and its effects on childbearing
Short-term cohabiting relationships are common in the current American modern context; some young women prefer childbearing within these short-term unions rather than wait for marriage in order to bear children. The meaning of child bearing and reproduction has completely shifted and even most of these women finally end up marrying not necessarily the person they had reared a child with but a different person. The link between marriage and childbearing has therefore been weakened (Esteve and Lesthaeghe 13).
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the role that marriage has taken in modern American context is clearly different to what it used to be in the past. However, this is not to say that marriage is less important in the current American society as compare to how it was in the past century. The perception that Americans have with regards to marriage is the reason for all the shift in role that marriage has taken over the recent years, the significance of marriages how ever has not changed and in fact marriage is equally as important as it was before in an American life. The increase in divorce rates and cohabitation does not necessarily mean that Americans are disregarding the important role that marriages play in their life but it is just a reaction to the changing role that marriages are taking in the American society thus most adult Americans are still trying to fit in into the new roles allocated to marriage life.
Works Cited
Cherlin, Andrew J. "In the Season of Marriage, a Question. Why Bother?" The New York Times, [New York], 27 Apr. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/why-do-people-still-bother-to-marry.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed 15 Feb. 2018.
Esteve, Albert, and Ron J. Lesthaeghe. Cohabitation and Marriage in the Americas: Geo-historical Legacies and New Trends. 2016.
Wolfinger, Nicholas H. Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages. Cambridge UP, 2005.
