Evolution of Marriage and Family Life in connection with Womens Evolution
There are several opposing views seen in this paper. It is larely influenced by the opposing views seen by the traditional patrilineal, patrilocal and patriarchal perspectives and the modern matrilineal and women-centric and women empowered society. This has seen the transformation of the social role and gender role of women from what it was in the past (which is limited and constricted) and what it is in the present and what it can be in the future, which is a more empowered and more forward-moving.
Two of the important institutions in society are marriage and family life. These two changed over time because of the role of, and transformation, of women. The evolution of marriage and family in America is strongly connected with the evolution of women because of the significant and important role of the women in marriage and family. Because of this issue, the study and tracing of the history of marriage and family life in America goes side by side the evolution of women in America. The evolution is characterized by specific areas of evolution, namely gender role, financial independence and economic evolution, social role and the sexual development.
The discussion of the paper takes many different paths to provide a reinforced and strongly cohesive idea presented in the paper. The paper moves from social to practical to moral implications of the changes. It tackles and attacks issues affecting home and society and community, from the personal level of the evolution and transformation to the societal level of change and how everything eventually came in place as it is seen today.
It is safe to say that as marriage and family life in America changes and transforms, a large part of it is because of the changes that women are experiencing at the same time. If there werent any changes in women and there is no evolution among the female in the society, there wouldnt be any form of catalyst that can change the structure, design and nature of marriage and family in America. Of course, there are also other factors. There are social factors that are beyond the power and control of women, like war, mass media and its influence in the thinking of the people and the civil rights movements which will eventually include womens rights. These things also are important components in how the evolution of marriage and family life in America took place. Above these things, what remains consistent is that the strongest source of change in marriage and family life and the changes that happen to the women in general. Because of that, the evolution of marriage and family life will always be connected and parallel to the changes in the evolution of the woman.
Even before the entry of the European explorers in the South and North America, the natives residing in this country already have their own form of marriage and family life structure. Travelling across prehistoric North America, natives utilized many different styles of family organization for their benefit (Kowtko 174). As in other places contemporary of pre-Columbian era, the family acts the basic unit of the society. The family forms the small groups and communities, which in turn, form the societies inside this country which is yet to have its own modern form of national governance. During that time, family is already important in the society. The main alliance and affiliation of the individual is to his or her family and to his or her tribe. Similarly, marriage is already established as an important institution in these societies. The communities, tribes and groups of people have varying practices that affect marriage, which, at the time is very much heterosexual. Marriage, as a practice and part of social life, involves the pairing of two individuals, a male and a female.
The ceremony of marriage sanctifies the union. Through marriage, the society or community is officially informed about the union. The couple and their families are officially allowed to the privileges that go along with the practice of marriage. During that time, the important role of marriage is for reproduction, to make sure that there are individuals that will continue the existence of the society and their culture and tradition. The more recent idea of marriage and family life results from a manifestation of what is called a romantic love between the two individuals. This hardly exists in the past family and marriage structure. During that time, marriage and family exists for their practical and socio-cultural purposes that serve the best interest of the society and the community. In The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love, the author explained that romantic love was hardly a reason at all why women involved themselves in marriage and family life (Coontz 3). It also explained why marriage and family life persisted and existed for thousands of years not just in America but around the world.
In many of the pre-Columbian North American tribes, one of the noticeable qualities inside the society is the subjugation of the women to the patriarchal and patrilineal society. In marriage, for example, it is often the father who chooses and approves of the partner that the woman would have in marriage. As a wife and mother, the woman is delegated to domestic tasks of maintaining and managing the family and attending to its basic day to day needs, like cleaning and feeding of the babies. Men are often sent out for other tasks, like food gathering and other tasks. In tribal settings, women often portray roles that made them secondary citizens to men. It was men who became leaders, who are crowned warrior kings, while women, at best, can be socially relevant because of their role in assisting birth giving, as healers and sorcerers still under the king or ruler.
The pre-Columbian North America and the family, marriage and women role here is one of the initial stages in the long process of evolution that family, marriage and women role would underwent. Not even the resulting European colonization can improve the condition of these three aspects in social life. European system is very much the same. They subjugate women, curtail them and limit their importance and significance in the family and more so in the society. They have men creating practices and tradition which, in turn, comprises the set of practices and beliefs that identifies the role, boundaries and importance of the woman in marriage and in the family life, as a wife, mother, aunt and female child.
There would always be male-dominated and male-designed roles exclusive for the woman as a wife, mother, aunt and female child in the society. These roles and characteristics appear to be constantly restrictive and limited compared to their male counterparts (husband, father, male child). The glimmer and realization of change would begin in the more modern era when socio civic thinking would revise the appreciation for and role of women in the society, which in turn, would impact the design of family and marriage and the womans participation and role in it.
The modern evolutionary phase of the transformation of women refer to the eras, decades and clusters of timelines which have become significant because of the marked development women has experienced during these periods. As mentioned earlier, there are very little, if any difference in the position, role and significance of women at home in marriage, family life an in the society before the entry of the Europeans and even after the US has significantly adopted the European culture and ways. The next step in the evolution of marriage and family life vis-a-vis women evolution and development would happen during the time when there are significant changes in the way women in the society thinks and lives. This will translate in the transformation and changes on how they perform their roles as mothers and wives, which in turn, would hint change in the marriage and family life in the America.
The first important positive and constructive change towards the upward evolution of women, and later the change in the institutions of family and marriage, is the change of the gender role delegated to women. This development is not a singular happening and did not happen over a course of several days, weeks, months or even years. This is characterized and explained better as something that happened in different parts of the world. This is a result of the new perspective and consciousness regarding the role and significance of women, regarding a re-visitation of what they can and cannot do, what they should and shouldnt do, what they can and cannot have. There are many social global events that acted as catalyst for this change.
There is the eruption of World War II and the participation of the US in this endeavour. There is the rise of civic rights in the US and around the world. Lastly, there is the feminist movement that identified and empowered a new, significant, politically power bloc in the United States previously tamed, untapped and unrecognised. All of these events acted as separate keys responsible for transforming and unlocking what would be womens new-found power that will transform the woman as an individual, the woman as a mother and the family life, and the woman as a wife and the married life. Women were previously delegated to domestic chores and are considered as either slaves to their own home, or the bourgeois, another elegant trapping of the house. The women found their deeper and more significance social importance when the United States resorted to employing more and more women for work, jobs which, in the past, are hands-off to women and exclusive to men alone. Most of the workers became soldiers during WWII. To allow the country to continue being productive despite the war, women started to occupy a bigger and bigger share in the workforce in the absence of their male counterpart, signalling the change in gender role.
This was the start of gender equality and the removal of the idea that there are social aspects that are gender exclusive (or more appropriately, exclusive to men), which was important to evolution and change. The struggles of women for greater equality have affected the family structure and its central dynamics in a variety of ways (Williams 6). This development was an important part in the transformation and evolution of women. As they transformed as individuals, there were resulting effects that are manifested in the changes in marriage and family life. Besides these, there was also the rise of civic movements geared at giving people regardless of ethnicity and gender equal rights.
Soon, the victories in this battlefield resulted to the right of the women to vote. They also had many other privileges allowing them to enter to what was previously known as exclusively mens turf. There were others who were not contented with such development, using gender equality as catapult to push for the ideologies of feminism which empower women. This was the key to many important socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-economic changes that affected and transformed women, and side by side, marriage and family life, based on how they affected these realms.
One of the important developments in the evolution of marriage, family life and women is the change in the financial and economic dependence of the woman. As a social structure that is dependent on one another, the family has long been designed so that there is breadwinner in the family, someone who gets the food, produces money and is the reason for the financial and economic stability of the family. For many years, this role has been exclusive to the father or the eldest man in the house. The exclusivity of the role as a bread winner in the family to the father alone made women dependent. Since they are dependent, they are easily subjugated by the dominant male.
This condition affected women in different levels. Women are tied to their responsibilities at home because this is her role and this is how she repays the man in the family putting food in the table. In marriage, women are constrained to marry even those they did not want, approve of and love. They are scared of the fact that as a spinster, they are subjected not only to ridicule but also to the prospect of being poor and starving to death (since most of the jobs are for men only). Women who are married and have sufficient reasons to leave and abandon the marriage cannot simply do that because of the prospect of ending up with nothing. The husband and the children would end up with the family money. Women cannot pursue what they want because they are indebted to the male figures in married and family lives since these are the providers and part of the design is giving the providers rule over the dependent members of the family.
This made wives plain housewives, without any other life or career once married and tied to marriage and family. Single women abandoned their other dreams and hopes and goals and aspirations because of the necessity of marriage and family life in lieu of what it can do to the economic and financial stability of the women. This has been the problem of the women that they have endured and suffered for long period of time until transformation and change slowly manifested itself in the form of empowering women to be economically and financially independent, resulting to change. Women are beginning to pursue personal goals independent of the goals they have for their families (Munhall, Fitzsimons 70). Women became financially and economically independent during the rise of women employment and the growth and support for single parent (women) starting at the middle of the twentieth century until today. Marriage and family life has changed. The structure of the American family has changed drastically such that the nuclear family is no longer the predominant configuration (OLeary, Jemmott 143). The empowered woman is now accepted as a single mother and this family structure is a deviation from traditional family form and is accepted today as part of the change and evolution of family, marriage and woman.
In the past, it is almost impossible for women to be separated from her husband because of moral, financial and economic concern. However, when women finally became financially capable and independent, it also gave rise to new forms of family and marriage structure. In place of the traditional family structure are single parent families that are run by the mother. The economic and financial role and importance of the women also changed families with a father and a mother, with the mother also working full time and earns equal to or even sometimes greater than her husband.
This is the status of the financially enabled and empowered women, family and marriage set up. Because of the growth of the economic and financial power and earning capability of the woman, the family and married life are also characterized by modern legal concepts and practices. Example of this is the pre-nuptial agreement or simply the pre-nup that stipulates that the earnings and properties of the husband and the wife shall not become conjugal property and remain separated even after marriage. Until today, the financial and economic transformation is one of the important stages in the evolution of the woman, the evolution of the married life and family life in the United States.
Indeed, the new-found financial and economic power and the resulting state of independence that it gives a woman have removed the stigma of being a plain housewife by force of social structure. Women, now, can be a housewife and a career person too. The transformation gave many women a chance to ponder at who and what they are inside the building of marriage and family life before and after this transformation and ability for financial and economic independence. Many have realized that changed has indeed come when women are not already tied and there is one less gender role enforced upon them. This was an insight succinctly written and discussed by Hekker when she talked about, among many things, the prospect of full time housewife as the main occupation of women, becoming obsolete (Hekker 2).
Another factor that is hinged in the changes in the women that changed and contributed to the evolution of the family and marriage institutions in the US is the change in the social role of women. Social changes in mid nineteenth century America affected womens role in the family, the work that women performed, and ideas about femininity (Carroll 83). Women finally had the chance and opportunity to vote, to work and earn their living and to be socially accepted as independent individuals who is in command of their own house in the absence and removal of the husband in the new family and marriage life settings. However, there are also other social changes in the woman that influenced change in family and married life.
During the era of the beginning of women empowerment, women became leaders in different fields and sectors of the community including business and politics which allowed for the continued change in how women act inside the society and inside family and the married life. Privileges and rights previously denied women transformed women when these things were finally extended to them, including their political as well as socio-civic rights. Among the many proofs of evolution of women and the married and family life is the rise of women as an important political sector of the society and their role in important fields, like business, science and technology and other aspects of life.
One of the most important stages of the evolution of the woman affecting marriage and family life is the sexual development and evolution. In the past, one of the problems of women is that they are restricted and curtailed when it comes to their sexual freedom. There are many taboos. Women are discouraged strongly by the society to explore their sexuality, especially in conservative societies wherein sex is merely for reproduction. Sexual activities and actions exceeding that is considered as immoral and unethical and is strongly disapproved and frowned upon by the society. As women and society evolved, the society and the women became more comfortable with their body. Their sexuality and the empowered women who became significant in socio cultural and socio political realms supported the efforts at giving the womans sense of sexuality freedom.
The sexual revolution affected women and their behaviour and changed women. In turn, these transformed women impacted family and married life structures. Wives are not afraid or reluctant to demand from their husband pertaining to sexual matters without appearing like a sexual addict and immoral. Womens health and reproductive issues are addressed, making married life more in tune with these kinds of concerns among women. Inside the family, women (wives and female children) are getting what they need and deserve to address issues upon this matter. Females are being taught about sexuality and health. Women stopped becoming mere obedient bed mates but are equal individuals in bed. This means that they should get and give what their male counterparts get and receive, resulting in a change in womens role in marriage and family life.
Women are empowered to refuse sex if she is not dispensing full consensus on the matter. It became grounds for rape and sexual assault even against a legal husband. This step protected women and made family and married life less and less patriarchal, patrilineal and male-dominated and male-centred. Women are becoming more able and aware of their rights. However, the sexual revolution was also a cause for concern among social critics. They believe that this was the main reason why more women are being involved in the practice of having sex and intimate relationships with different individuals without the strings of responsibility and the prospect of marrying and settling down to build and raise a family (Wilcox, Marquardt 2). This is something that many people still see as deviation from the traditional values and practice. Although this is strongly debated among those for and against this practice, still, this mirrors the change and evolution in women, how they think and act and how their behaviour contributed to the change in family life and marriage. This is especially true since the rise to popularity and public acceptance of such set-up has lessened the pressure of marriage and weakened the lasting power of marriage. Couples can opt for divorce or annulment when both parties are not happy any more with the marriage.
The evolutionary stage discusses how evolution as a process changed the woman, and how the changed woman changed family life and marriage the changed woman as an individual, the changed woman as a wife and the changed woman as a mother. All of these things tie woman development and transformation to the transformation and development of family and married life. There are many factors and components in the society that can change marriage and family life. In the review of the history of the transformation of women, it can be seen that as they transformed, they affected marriage and family life and was key to the transformation of these two institutions as well.
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