Marriage becomes more romantic and more fair

SCRIPPS HOWARD

Standing at the altar, gazing into each other’s eyes, a bride and groom may feel like they’re setting sail on a sparkling sea. The matrimonial voyage will take them through storms and sun, just the two of them against the weather. But couples don’t really board the boat alone.

Their baggage, packed with expectations, comes, too. Then there are the stowaways: exes, children from previous marriages, fathers and mothers.

That’s not always a bad thing. Friends and relatives –– with the right attitudes –– can propel married couples into calmer waters, and even help them avoid drifting toward divorce.

It works for a particular community in Africa. Couples who marry in the Pare (pronounced “Pah-ray”) society of Tanzania aren’t the only ones who vow to stay together till death do they part. On the wedding day, their best man and maid of honor also promise to remain allies long after the wedding cake is gone. And that cake is shared with key elders from both families.

The “best man” and “best girl,” as they are known in the Pare community, “take on the responsibility to help resolve conflicts, and to bring (disputes) to other relatives, if need be, for adjudication,” said Karen Porter, a University of Puget Sound anthropology professor.

If all this sounds unromantic, that’s because marriage, for the Pare people, is about much more than love. It’s about the sharing of scarce resources and about rearing children in a stable community, Porter said.

And the system works: Divorce is rare in Pare society. Today’s American couples, in contrast, are mobile and more likely to leap across geographical fences to grass that looks greener.

Without community traditions dictating behavior, American couples are at a kind of crossroads, said Stephanie Coontz, an author and Evergreen State College professor.

The ongoing debates over same-sex unions, cohabitation and single-parent households pose the thorny question: Which kinds of partnerships are really best for bringing up children? Some political and religious groups assert that the old-fashioned man-woman marriage is the ideal.

Families Northwest, a Bellevue, Wash., nonprofit that offers marriage- enrichment courses to churches around the Puget Sound, is such a group. “Marriage has to do with more than just two people relating to each other. It has a lot to do with procreation and gluing both mothers and fathers to children,” said executive director Jeff Kemp.

Following the sexual revolution, Kemp added, many Americans adopted the attitude that people should be able to dissolve bonds when the going gets rough. “So yeah, there is freedom, but after 30 years, we’ve seen some consequences ... that have been very damaging. You can hardly find anyone who hasn’t been touched by divorce.”

Coontz, however, feels no nostalgia for the era before the divorce rate exploded. American culture locked husbands and wives into rigid roes: Men had to provide while women cooked, cleaned and didn’t complain. “There are no answers in the past,” Coontz said. “There was an awful lot of suppression of individuality, for women and for men.”

She hopes that American society at large can instead find ways to support all kinds of healthy relationships.

“We have to learn to hold two contradictory ideas: One, it’s possible to construct a healthy marriage. Two, not everyone is going to be able to do that, or choose to do it.” If spouses do stay together, it is for different reasons than they would have 50 years ago, said Kate Stirling, a University of Puget Sound economics professor. Before women began entering the workforce in huge numbers, wives needed husbands to support them. In 1955 women who worked full time earned 63.9 percent of what full-time male workers earned; in the 1970s, a college-educated woman earned less than a man who had only a high school diploma. By 1999 women’s earnings had increased to 72.2 percent of what men make.

While the financial reasons to marry have diminished, “the human need for companionship and affection still attracts us to marriage,” Stirling added.

At the same time, spouses are expecting more of each other. A mate is expected to be cheerleader, confidant and ardent lover. And since many marrieds don’t have time to maintain other friendships, they pile all of their emotional eggs into the spouse’s basket. When trouble starts, they turn not to family or friends, but to a therapist.

Today, therapy is about acceptance, Coontz said. “There are some healthy trends going on ... Marriage has never been more fair.” Or more romantic.

Coontz cited a survey of college students in the 1960s: Three-fourths of the women said they would marry men they didn’t love, if those men had other qualities such as being a good breadwinner, not drinking too much and not being physically abusive.

Only one-fourth of the men said they’d marry women they didn’t love. In a recent poll on the same topic, 97 percent of both sexes said love is the top priority. Still, love has to settle down and face some mundane daily tasks.

“I don’t know a single couple where the man and woman agree they do an equal share of housework,” said Bob Podrat, a Seattle therapist.

Usually the wife brings her husband into counseling, hoping to move toward two goals: a more equal division of work and an increase in intimacy of all kinds.

Podrat, who devotes many hours to discussions of housework division with clients in their 30s, 40s and 50s, said there’s much to look forward to, especially for couples who turn toward, not away from each other as they age. “Retirement is a huge development issue,” he said. “After the kids have left home, the couple may ask, ‘What kind of shared dreams can we build together?”