Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz

I honestly can’t remember how I stumbled across this book, but it was a fascinating read. Marriage, a History is exactly that: a history of marriage. Coontz began researching the book in response to the apparent turmoil that exists around marriage in the United States today, ranging from divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, to same-sex marriage and shifting sexual standards among teenagers. The purpose of the book is to look back on marriage throughout history in order to understand the role of marriage in society and individual lives today. Coontz gives a detailed (and very readable) account of the place of marriage in communities and nations and individual lives, of gender roles and family relationships, and shows how social forces came together in the last couple hundred years to cause an upheaval that is in some ways for the worse, but in others very much for the better.

One of the main premises of the book is that marriage based primarily on love and personal fulfillment is an incredibly recent phenomenon, that even though people have been falling in love with each other as long as people have been around, the idea that this should be central to a marriage relationship was unthinkable in most eras of history. The love-based marriage combined with an increase in personal choice and gender equality, as well as social acceptance of singlehood and more lenient divorce laws, mean that marriages today are less stable, and yet have far greater potential, than at any time in the past. “The historical transformation of marriage over the ages,” writes Coontz, “has created a…paradox for society as a whole. Marriage has become more joyful, more loving, and more satisfying for many couples than ever before in history. At the same time it has become optional and more brittle. These two strands of change cannot be disentangled.” The book is about how these conditions came to be. And while much of the book focuses, rather discouragingly, on how marital stability has been unalterably undermined by much larger social forces, it also ends on a positive note, showing that these changes have also paved the way for much stronger relationships and greater fulfillment in marriage than have been generally available in the past.

Although I read this book because social trends, the cultural aspect of history, and human relationships all fascinate me in general, I like to think that understanding the larger context has some value for the individual as well. Reading made me think about my own expectations regarding marriage and relationships, family, friendships, even life and career goals. It also gave me a different perspective on a lot of societal concerns that we hear about today. My favorite books to read these days are the books I enjoy reading, but that also make me feel like I have learned something, not in the sense that I can now quote back a few facts and figures, but in the sense that the book causes me to look at some aspect of the world differently than I did before. This book did that for me, and so I loved it. And yes, I recommend it.