Marriage at the Crossroads

by Garrison, Marsha; Scott, Elizabeth S.

• ISBN13: 9781107623705
• ISBN10: 1107623707
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-31
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

The institution of marriage is at a crossroads. Across most of the industrialized world, unmarried cohabitation and nonmarital births have skyrocketed while marriage rates are at record lows. These trends mask a new, idealized vision of marriage as a marker of success as well as a growing class divide in childbearing behavior: the children of better educated, wealthier individuals continue to be born into relatively stable marital unions while the children of less educated, poorer individuals are increasingly born and raised in more fragile, nonmarital households. Meanwhile, growing numbers of same-sex couples seek access to marriage as an important political and personal goal. These trends have generated political controversy and pose a number of challenges for policy makers: Should access to marriage be extended? Should lawmakers increase or reduce government support for marriage? The interdisciplinary approach offered by this edited volume provides tools to inform the debate and to assist policy makers in resolving questions about marriage at a critical juncture. Drawing on the expertise of social scientists and legal scholars, the book will be a key text for anyone who seeks to understand marriage as a social institution and to evaluate proposals for marriage reform.

Table of Contents

Introduction

History, Demographics, and Economics - Multiple Perspectives on Families

International family change and continuity: the past and future from the developmental idealism perspective

Red v. blue marriage

The division of labor across time and generations

Marriage at the crossroads in England and Wales

The curious relationship of marriage and freedom

Empirical Research on Family Change

Institutional, companionate, and individualistic marriages: change over time and implications for marital quality

Marriage and improved well-being: using twins to parse the correlation, asking how marriage helps, and wondering why more people do not buy a bargain

Fragile families: debates, facts, and solutions

Should marriage matter?

Family Policy and Law for the Twenty-First Century

Forsaking no others: coming to terms with family diversity

Why marriage?

Essential to virtue? The languages of the law of marriage

The pluralistic vision of marriage

Comments

The growing diversity of two-parent families: challenges for family law

Legal regulation of the twenty-first-century family

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