It wasn’t that long ago that two people formerly had very little say in their mate selection. That major decision was left up to their parents, specifically those of the woman. Oh, how times have changed. Today, a couple sometimes doesn’t even seek the approval of their parents and their personal preferences take precedence. However, the early stages of family formation can be affected by many things in society. The three earliest stages, consisting of dating, including the emergence of the hook-up culture, cohabitation and marriage are often affected heavily by race, social class or socioeconomic status, and gender. In this paper I will be analyzing how each of these social aspects affects each of the early stages of family formation in the order in which they typically occur starting with dating and ending with marriage.
When discussing dating in today’s society one must first consider the new approach many young adults have towards dating. This new approach, known as the hook-up culture, is quickly becoming the most common first step towards a relationship. Today, almost fifty percent of relationships in college begin with a hook-up. According to Blow (2008), the beginning of the typical relationship in today’s world starts with a few hook ups then moves on to a more typical first date if there is mutual liking between the two people involved. This means that more people are beginning to see the idea of hooking up as a good way to test the waters and see if you like someone before investing too much time into a relationship. Hooking up has received the stigma of being a college campus phenomenon, however, that may be where the idea was first formulated but it is now extending further into adulthood. This extension ...
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...“The Demise of Dating.” The New York Times. December 13.
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In the article “Grounds for Marriage: How Relationships Succeed or Fail” by Arlene Skolnick talks a lot about how the attitudes towards marriages now a days is much different then what peoples attitudes have been in the past. The article talks about how there are two parts of every marriage “the husband’s and the wife’s”. This article touches on the affects cohabitation, and how cohabitation is more likely to happen among younger adults. This article talks about how the younger adults are more inclined to cohabitate before marriage, and that currently the majority of couples that are interring in to marriage have previously lived together. The article stats that some of the Possible reasons for couples to live together before marriage might include shifting norms
Belongingness is an emotion that everyone longs to feel throughout the course of their lives. Starting in adolescence, we as humans are naturally attracted to others in a romantic way. Girls in junior high start wearing make-up and dressing nice in order to impress the boys and get their attention. During this time, both girls and boys want a boyfriend or girlfriend, and are interested in this idea of “dating.” As boys and girls progress into high school, dating becomes even more of the thing to do. As a young teenager, I wanted to date, but my parents were against it. Many parents have a negative outlook about dating because of the consequences it may lead to, mainly sexual activity. Some believe that dating has changed drastically for the worse, but Beth Bailey believes differently. In Bailey’s article entitled “From Front Porch to Backseat: A History of the Date,” she analyzes the history of dating and how numerous people have not conceptualized this idea correctly. By showing authority, evidence, and values, Bailey presents an effective argument about the history of dating.
DeVault, C., Cohen, T., & Strong, B. (2011). The marriage and family experience: Intimate relationships in a changing society. (11th ed., pgs. 400-426). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth cengage learning.
In her text, she states that cohabitation has become very famous in the United States. Jay also reports that young adults in their twenties see cohabitation as a preventive way to avoid divorce. The perception that she contradicts by pointing out that people who cohabit before marriage are more at risk of divorce because once they are married they become unsatisfied of their marriage, she calls this phenomenon the cohabitation effect. The author also punctuates that the problem of the cohabitation effect is that lovers do not really discuss their personal perception of cohabitation or what it will mean for them. Instead, they slide into cohabitation, get married, and divorce after realizing that they made a mistake. She proves her point by presenting a research which shows that women and men have a different interpretation of cohabitating prior marriage. Furthermore, the author emphasizes her argument by saying that the problem is not starting a cohabiting relationship but leaving that relationship which can be the real issue after all the time and money invested. Finally, Jay indicates that American’s mindset about their romantic relationship is changing and can be illustrated by the fact that more Americans started to see cohabitation as a commitment before
Cohabitation, over the last two decades has gone from being a relatively uncommon social phenomenon to a commonplace one and has achieved this prominence quite quickly. A few sets of numbers convey both the change and its rapidity. The percentage of marriages preceded by cohabitation rose from about 10% for those marrying between 1965 and 1974 to over 50% for those marrying between 1990 and 1994 (Bumpass and Lu 1999, Bumpass & Sweet 1989); the percentage is even higher for remarriages. Secondly, the percentage of women in their late 30s who report having cohabited at least once rose from 30% in 1987 to 48% in 1995. Given a mere eight year tome window, this is a striking increase. Finally, the proportion of all first unions (including both marriages and cohabitation) that begin as cohabitations rose from 46% for unions formed between 1980 and 1984 to almost 60% for those formed between 1990 and 1994 (Bumpass and Lu 1999).
People have different motives to why they get married. And those reasons can range from anything like family backgrounds, money or gender bargains within relationships. Also depending on social class and economics can have an effect on marriages and relationships. “We use the idea of class most critically to describe who is likely to marry whom, who is willing to live with whom, and how prospective parents view the appropriate family structures for raising children” (82) By that being said Carbone and Cahn explains how society can change who people date and how they live. Another example of Carbone and Cahn idea of marriage is expressed by this statement, “Instead, shifts in the economy change the way men and women match up, and over time, they alter young people’s expectations about each other and about their prospects in newly reconstituted marriage markets” (80). Meaning young people over time lose the true meaning of marriage and how they even
Traditional forms of dating are very rare on college campuses, but now, “hooking up has become the alpha and omega of young adult romance.” (191) This culture has become so prevalent on college campuses that many young adults have difficulty making the change to serious, committed relationships in their post-college lives. Not only are men “delaying adulthood,” they are “entering it misinformed and ill prepared.” (192) In this culture, young men and women are constantly rating each other. Men need to belong to the cool fraternity, dress well, and be smooth, while women have to have “effortless perfection.” Although hooking up may seem equally desirable for both sexes, it “enhances his reputation whereas it damages hers” (197). Kimmel references an interview he had with one young man who said that as he was having sex with a girl, all his could think about was how excited he was to brag about it to his friends. He didn’t care at all about her preference to keep it between them. This is a classic example of how “girls live in Guyland, not the other way around. Whereas guys are permanent citizens, girls are legal aliens at best. As second class inhabitants, they are relegated to being party buddies, sex objects, or a means of access to other girls.” (245) In Guyland, a girl can either be a bitch, a babe, or a bro. Women are never equals, they are merely “prizes to be collected and conquered”
Billingsley, Andrew P.H.D. "Understanding African- American Family Diversity." The State Of Black America 1990., National Urban League, 1990.
The changing of American families has left many families broken and struggling. Pauline Irit Erera, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, wrote the article “What is a Family?”. Erera has written extensively about family diversity, focusing on step-families, foster families, lesbian families, and noncustodial fathers. Rebecca M. Blank, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, where she has directed the Joint Center for Poverty Research, wrote the article “Absent Fathers: Why Don't We Ever Talk About the Unmarried Men?”. She served on the Council of Economic Advisors during the Clinton administration. Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University wrote the article “The Origins of the Ambivalent Acceptance of Divorce”. She is also the author of several other books on the changing profiles of American family life. These three texts each talk about the relationship between the parent and the child of a single-parent household. They each discuss divorce, money/income they receive, and the worries that come with raising a child in a single-parent household.
It is not a new thought that today’s young Americans are facing issues, problems and difficult decisions that past generations never had to question. In a world of technology, media, and a rough economy, many young adults in America are influenced by a tidal wave of opinions and life choices without much relevant advice from older generations. The Generation Y, or Millennial, group are coming of age in a confusing and mixed-message society. One of these messages that bombard young Americans is the choice of premarital cohabitation. Premarital cohabitation, or living together without being married (Jose, O’Leary & Moyer, 2010), has increased significantly in the past couple of decades and is now a “natural” life choice before taking the plunge into marriage. Kennedy and Bumpass (2008) state that, “The increase in cohabitation is well documented,such that nearly two thirds of newlyweds have cohabited prior to their first marriage”(as cited in Harvey, 2011, p. 10), this is a striking contrast compared with statistics of our grandparents, or even parents, generations. It is such an increasing social behavior that people in society consider cohabitation “necessary” before entering into marriage. Even more, young Americans who choose not to cohabitate, for many different reasons, are looked upon as being “old-fashioned”, “naive”, or “unintelligent”. This pressure for young people to cohabitate before marriage is a serious “modern-day” challenge; especially when given research that states, “... most empirical studies find that couples who cohabited prior to marriage experience significantly higher odds of marital dissolution than their counterparts who did not cohabit before marriage”, stated by Jose (2010) and colleagues (as c...
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Aguirre, Adalberto, and Jonathan H. Turner. American Ethnicity: The Dynamics and Consequences of Discrimination. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Print.
One of the problems with the hookup culture is that courting and traditional dating has decreased and sexual behavior outside of traditional committed romantic pair-bonds has become increasingly typical and socially acceptable. Monto and Carey use England’s Online College Social Life Survey to point out that “78% of a sample of students from a Northeastern university reported hooking up, with 47.5% of men and 33.3% of women reporting that the experience included intercourse” (Monto and Carey 605). The popular media have claimed that the hookup culture is a widespread phenomenon that has suggested that the traditional romantic date is nearly dead on campuses and has been replaced by casual sexual relationships (607). A decline in traditional dating and courtship practices has occurred on American college campuses (605). As a sexual solution for the demands of college students, hooking up became incorporated into notions of what the college experience should be (Hamilton and Armstrong 604). Students are involved in hookup culture to get experiences in their college lifestyle, and they think that hooking up is fun and nonthreatening without the demands of serious
Oliver, M. B., & Hyde, J. S. (1993). Gender difference in sexuality: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 29-51.
In recent discussion between change in generations, a controversial question has been whether dating and marriage for Generation Z improved for the better or for the worst. From this perspective, marriage and the definition of dating has changed so much from the older generations. Generation Z has brought in many new features to dating and marriage, some features are the acceptance of dating or marrying the same gender or different race, and many more. In the words of (Taylor Markarian), she gives a main view on how families of the two “lovers” were involved almost all of the time. A view on generation Z is that many of these different types of relations make it seem like it’s an on the daily thing you see around the world, because of that