Marsha Garrison

Marriage at the Crossroads: Legal Regulation of Twenty-First-Century Families

A primary theme of this volume is that recent sweeping changes in marriage and family life present important challenges for family law. Half a century ago, both law and deeply entrenched social norms prescribed marriage as the only acceptable family form. Marriage was exclusively heterosexual, and both marital roles and entitlements were based on spousal gender. As the various contributors to this volume have explained, much has changed. Across most of the industrialized world, the proportion of families based on marriage has declined substantially. Increasingly, couples choose to live together before marriage or as an alternative to marriage. A 2011 survey found that barely 50 percent of American adults were married – a record low (Pew 2011). A growing number of children are born to unmarried mothers, who often live in informal unions with their childrens fathers. As a result of higher divorce rates and the dissolution of nonmarital families, many more children live in a succession of households involving a single parent, that parents new partner, and, sometimes, the children of the partner or of the parent and the new partner. Same-sex couples also form families and raise children today in a way that was uncommon fifty years ago and, increasingly, these couples have been successful in advocating for legal recognition of their unions. Several contributors describe how the institution of marriage itself has changed dramatically over the past half-century. Differentiated social roles for husband and wife are no longer prescribed in the way that they once were, and the law has taken a strong stand in support of gender equality (Goldberg, Chapter 11). The new equality norm is associated with increasing equality in spousal earnings and a somewhat more egalitarian apportionment of household work (Brinig, Chapter 3). Moreover, the meaning of marriage has evolved from a role-based, “institutional” model to one based on companionship or, more recently, individual personal fulfillment (Amato, Chapter 6). Under modern divorce law, spouses have unprecedented freedom to leave unhappy marriages, and public opinion increasingly favors such freedom (Schneider, Chapter 12).

International Family Change and Continuity

I examine the international influence of developmental idealism in changing people’s beliefs and values, in producing family and demographic change, and in bringing cultural clashes within and between societies. Developmental idealism is a belief and value system stating that societal and familial attributes defined as modern are better than attributes defined as traditional, that modern societies produce modern families, that modern families facilitate the achievement of modern societies, and that freedom and equality are human rights. I discuss the international dissemination of developmental idealism and how it has clashed with local cultures, been resisted, and changed lives and social systems. I discuss the influence of developmental idealism in international human rights treaties, including those focused on children and women, in the modernization programs of such countries as China and Turkey, in campaigns to eliminate polygamy and female veiling, and in efforts to spread gender equality, family planning, low fertility, freedom of spouse choice, older ages at marriage, and the recognition of same-sex relationships. It has also been an influence bringing more personal freedom, with implications for divorce and sexual relations and childbearing outside marriage. I also discuss how developmental idealism produces resistance against it, national and international clashes of culture, and tensions within and between generations. Likely effects of developmental idealism in the future are also considered.