Revolution of Love and Marriage
During the periods of World War I and World War II, a revolution occurred in the relationship between men and women. Women learned that they could do almost anything men could do-as well as, and in many instances better. It was realized that women live longer, are healthier, have a higher threshold of pain than men, and can successfully compete with men scholastically.
This realization offered to women a new spectrum of satisfactions and opportunities, based in large measure on an improved self-image, which had long been denied them. For them it indicated the end of the primarily male-dominated and male-structured society. The modem woman in the first half of the twentieth century desired equality in every way, beginning with sex and the vote.
At about the same time, contraceptive devices were perfected.
Now woman could be man’s equal not only in society, in business, and in scholarship, but also in sexual convenience; the sex act could be enjoyed by both without the woman’s having to fear an unwanted pregnancy.
In past centuries in Western society, it has been considered important for a bride to be a virgin, whereas this condition seldom was required of the male, or even considered desirable. Today, though people may pay lip service to the idea of the virgin bride, in practice it is not generally considered important. Evidence from Kinsey and other authorities indicates that during the past thirty years women have practiced premarital sexual relations at an increasing rate.
Probably promiscuity has always been common in certain lower socio-economic groups, but in the upper middle class it was considered relatively rare until twenty years ago; at least it was not as obvious. The desire for extramarital intercourse has been increased by the advent of mass-communication media, particularly television and advertising. These have tended to make sex both in and out of marriage-appear to be the most important thing in the lives of most Americans. The effect of the growing sex emphasis is shown, for example, in the fact that in the year 1962 in California 57,000 babies were born to "child mothers" twelve to eighteen years old.
Thousands of high-school students are being married annually.
In California, one third of these are in the ninth and tenth grades. A great many of these couples marry not because they wish to, but because the girl is pregnant. The frequency of premarital intercourse among these California high-school students has considerable Significance because it indicates a corresponding trend among adults-a trend less clearly reflected in statistics concerning adult women, despite their greater opportunities for sexual activity, because they have easy access to contraceptives and sexual information usually unavailable to their teen-age counterparts.
Two forces remain to be considered in this survey of the history of marriage. The first is religion: When the Holy Roman Empire was at its peak, the Church exerted control over all facets of human life in Western Europe by means of canonical law. The most stringent canonical laws concerned marriage. For many ages marriage laws and customs had been civil, but then the Church moved in and took control. The first step was to make marriage a Holy Sacrament, for in the New Testament there is no proviso for this.
The hold of the Church for many centuries was so complete throughout Western Europe that almost everyone believed and accepted anything (religious or nonreligious) which came from Rome. One breach occurred in the sixteenth century with the discoveries of Copernicus. His declaration that the planets, including the earth, revolve about the sun, that the earth is not the center of the universe, as the Church maintained, was heard throughout Europe. More and more, men of learning doubted some of the edicts which came from Rome. Also, with the emergence of the Protestant Churches, Roman Catholic control over many aspects of life was reduced. It became possible for the elite to divorce without having the Pope’s permission.
The growing disbelief in the Church’s infallibility also resulted in time in the rejection of the Church’s definition of male and female characteristics, including the evil nature of woman and the natural superiority of man.
Another force which influences marriage is economics. Until the nineteenth century, the European family was a unit of economic survival. Most people lived on the land or maintained family industries. The larger the family, the more hands there were to work at home. This arrangement may have been hard on the wife, but no one seemed to care about that in the male dominated society.
