"Marriage Means Something Different Now" by Stephanie Coontz - Article Analysis Essay

Introduction

In the 2005 text Stephanie Coontz hypothesis on the shift of traditional value and perspective of marriage in the article "For Better, For Worse: Marriage Means Something Different Now", by demonstrating the change of the different aspects that held families together in marriage. Her primary thesis in writing this article was to demonstrate the evolution of marriage from the orthodoxy elements that instituted conventional marriages to the contemporary trends in matrimonial unions. Throughout the text Coontz explores the important elements like love, financial dependency, child rearing, and socio-economic drives that initialized traditional methods but, their meanings and significant have faded in the modern age evolutional in the purpose of marriage and reasons for increasing rates of divorce today.

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Coontz (2005), laments that though different agents of change like the church and government have made efforts to promote the conventional properties and values of the family the evolutional perspective towards marriage is taking major shifts to decamp the actual values that defined the early marriage. The principal elements that defined traditional marriage as a public institution including intimacy, parenting, social responsibility, and labor division/gender roles are the very reason the tenets of modern marriage are changing the meaning.

According to Coontz over the years in memorial love was the primary elements that unified matrimonial coalitions. The use of love as the only bonding element between couples contributed to multiple divorce cases whenever love faded and married partners cease to love their partner anymore family disintegration was a sure thing. Other initial external elements like financial dependence of women in the previous regimes entering into marriages to gain support from their husband were swept out by the modern massive entry of women economic independence that has seen numerous cases of single motherhood. Restricting sexual coalition for married partners has in recent era changed; sexuality is currently readily available even to teenagers. The shift of marriage privileges due to people's turning their back on the original matrimonial values has contributed to a fragile meaning of marriages today. Decamping marriages in the conventional setting faced very strict and tedious process under the divorce laws but the vigor has changed to an easier contemporary system applied in dissolution cases.

Coontz application of her article titled "For Better, For Worse" is evident throughout her argument in the article. The literal meaning of this phrase used in the traditional marriage saw married stand by each other after joining the holiness on their matrimony to stick by each other at all times. The old perception of marriage did not expect that change of life for prosperity or failure could contribute to divorce or other forms of marriage dissolutions like separation. Coontz ironic application of this phrase "For better, for worse", signifies that the promises made in traditional marriages have in recent forms of marriages lost meaning. The earlier couple promised to love each other at all times, support each other morally and financially in abundance and in lack. However, this crucial element that drove the conventional marriages has since changed because the changes in the marriage atmosphere quickly subject the marriage into dissolution.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Stephanie Coontz' argument on the loss of meaning of the traditional marital factors that instituted people's unification through love, fidelity, intimacy and mutual fulfillment to illusionary expectation in the modern marriage. The change of guard in the values and purpose of marriage has seen the revolution of the categories of families that emerge today. Family composition and function is taking new shape with the change of traditional elements that defined the order of matrimonial coalitions.

Works Cited

Coontz, Stephanie. "For Better, For Worse: Marriage Means Something Different now" Washington Post, 1st May 2005, p. 171 - 175.