Inside the American Couple: New Thinking, New Challenges

275 Pages·2002·0.79 MB·English

by  Marilyn Yalom

Inside the American Couple
Inside the American
Couple
New Thinking/New Challenges
edited by
Marilyn Yalom and
Laura L. Carstensen
Estelle Freedman and Barbara Gelpi
Consulting Editors
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley . Los Angeles . London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
(cid:2)2002 by
The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Inside the American couple : new thinking, new chal-
lenges / Marilyn Yalom and Laura Carstensen, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-21975-9 (Cloth : alk. paper).—ISBN
0-520-22957-6 (Paper : alk. paper)
1. Couples—United States. 2. Interpersonal rela-
tions—UnitedStates. I.Yalom,Marilyn. II.Carsten-
sen, Laura L.
HQ801 .I67 2002
306.7—dc21 2002000716
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Thepaperusedinthispublicationisbothacid-freeand
totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum re-
quirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997)
(Permanence of Paper).

Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Laura L. Carstensen and Marilyn Yalom
1. Biblical Models:
From Adam and Eve to the Bride of Christ 13
Marilyn Yalom
2. Dearest Friend:
The Marriage of Abigail and John Adams 32
Edith B. Gelles
3. “The Thing Bartered”:
Love, Economics, and the Victorian Couple 50
Kate Washington
4. “Boston Marriage” among Lesbians:
Are We a Couple If We’re Not Having Sex? 74
Esther D. Rothblum
5. “You’ll Never Walk Alone”:
Lesbian and Gay Weddings and the
Authenticity of the Same-Sex Couple 87
Ellen Lewin
6. The Couple at Home:
Education’s Contribution 108
Nel Noddings
vi Contents
7. When One of Us Is Ill:
Scenes from a Partnership 125
Mary Felstiner
8. Wives and Husbands Working Together:
Law Partners and Marital Partners 136
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein
9. Grounds for Marriage:
Reflections and Research on an Institution
in Transition 149
Arlene Skolnick
10. Divorce, American Style 164
Deborah L. Rhode
11. What’s a Wife Worth? 174
Myra H. Strober
12. Toward an Understanding of Asian American
Interracial Marriage and Dating 189
JeanneL.Tsai,DianeE.Przymus,andJenniferL.Best
13. Arranged Marriages
What’s Love Got to Do with It? 211
Monisha Pasupathi
14. Marriage in Old Age 236
Susan Turk Charles and Laura L. Carstensen
List of Contributors 255
Index 257
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the support of many people who made
this volume possible. Mary Stiles provided exceptional and conscien-
tious technical support. Without exception, the contributing authors
were open and responsive to feedback from us and our consulting edi-
tors, Professors Estelle Freedman and Barbara Gelpi, both of whom of-
fered gracious assistance. We would also like to acknowledge the Stan-
fordInstituteforResearchonWomenandGender,whichfortwenty-five
years has housed a community of scholars whose critical analysis of
genderfromwidelyvaryingdisciplinesandperspectiveshashelpedmove
the field of feminist scholarship forward.
vii
Introduction
Laura L. Carstensen and Marilyn Yalom
Oneofthemostfundamentalurgesofhumanexistenceistoformapair.
Something in us calls for another—friend, lover, companion, spouse. Or
perhaps it is something notin us, some lack, some deficit, that hungers
for completion. In the Symposium,Plato fancifully expressed this crav-
ing by having Aristophanes contend that the first humans were unsep-
arated twins who, once they were split apart, pined away for the missing
half.
Sociobiologists assume that the search for a mate is propelled by an
animal instinct to copulate. Human attachment theorists locate the
source of adult pairing in the child-mother bond. Anthropologists look
to the central importance of kinship systems in human cultures as an
explanation for the universality of marriage. Political scientists under-
stand marriage as an institutional means of assuring societal stability.
Existentialists see the desire to merge with another as a way of attenu-
ating a basic sense of isolation. Jews and Christians traditionally believe
that marriage is ordained by God. Whether primacy is accorded to sex-
ual, psychological, anthropological, political, existential, or religious
factors, there is broad agreement that coupledom provides a viable an-
swer to a basic human longing.
Here we are at the dawn of a new millennium still cherishing the
belief that being half of a couple represents some central part of being
human. Individuals, despite gender and sexual orientation, continue to
search for soul mates, to move in together, to vow to love each other,
1
2 Introduction
and, when legally allowed, to enter into marriages. Despite myriad mod-
ern tendencies that could render long-term couplehood obsolete (such
as casual sex, cohabitation, and increase in divorce and single parent-
ing), more than 90 percent of Americans marry at some time during
their lives. However anxious we may be as a society in the face of dis-
solving marriages and dysfunctional families, individuals continue to
place their hopes in the marital bond. They exchange public promises
to remain together—for better, for worse, for a lifetime. And among
those who do not marry, partnering is still very widespread; few people
live through adulthood without at least one lengthy, intimate relation-
ship.
Our aim in this volume is to draw attention to issues that question
the unspoken traditional practices underlying coupling in America. To
accomplish this aim, we turned to feminist scholars who consider the
couple in their work and the dramatic changes couples have experienced
during the past fifty years, such as the proliferation of divorce, the in-
crease in ethnically mixed relationships, the preponderance of older cou-
ples, and the new visibility of same-sex unions. By focusing on some of
these changes, we hope to contribute to scholarly and public dialogue
about a fundamental unit in human societies.
Gender has been at the core of the traditional image of the couple in
America, an image generalized from an idealized middle-class marriage
inwhichhusbandshaveprovided(orwereexpectedtoprovide)financial
support for wives and children, and wives have carried responsibility
for housekeeping and child rearing. Even though this image has never
been reflected in working-class couples, the image itself has been held
up as the (often unmet) standard of the typical marriage. In cases where
the wife was employed, her work was often viewed as supplemental to
the husband’s work, even if she earned more than her husband. Yet, in
the second half of the twentieth century a significant sea change took
place. Women began to enter the workforce in record numbers, and the
separation of domestic and public spheres began to blur. Not only did
women work, as many always had, they also developed identities as paid
workers outside the home and pursued long-term careers. Although it
occurred less frequently, men began to enter the domestic sphere and
share more in household and child-care responsibilities. This overlap of
professional and personal boundaries, much feared by nineteenth-
century Europeans and Americans raised with an ideology of separate
spheresformenandwomen,becamerealityinthelatetwentiethcentury.
By many measures, the age-old education gap between men and