Marriage and Divorce
Americans’ experiences of marriage and divorce have been, and
still are, entwined with ideas and laws about property, family, sexuality,
violence, race and, ultimately, first-class citizenship. African Americans’ rights
to marry were subverted by slavery. Until 1967, some all-white state
legislatures prohibited marriages between men and women of different races.
Being poor in America has made it harder both to marry and to divorce.
Presumptions that husbands had the “natural right” to control their wives
meant that 19th-century married women had to organize to win control of their
own property and, as recently as the 1960s, banks could refuse a loan to a
married woman if her husband did not approve. The same stubborn notion that
women as wives should be under their husbands’ control also severely limited
women’s right to divorce even physically abusive husbands into the late 20th
century.
State legislatures and state courts, not the federal government, control
much of marital law-making. They decide how hard or easy it is to get married
or divorced, who can marry whom, what benefits flow to married couples, and
what constitutes grounds for divorce. This is why the currently fierce
campaigns over gay marriage are being waged stated by state. It matters where
you live in the United States.
American ideas about marriage and divorce today are in flux. Most Americans
no longer see divorce as immoral. Remarrying and creating new “blended
families” is commonplace. While the debates over same-sex marriage remain
heated, more Americans now say they accept gay marriage. And, as the country
has become more racially diverse, and state anti-miscegenation laws have
fallen, marriages between people of different races have become more common.
Yet, many Americans are eschewing marriage altogether. And having a “partner”
no longer automatically means being married.
Source: Reproduced from The Real State of America Atlas by
Cynthia Enloe and
Joni
Seager, Penguin and University of California Press, 2011 ©
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