Failure of Marriage in the United States - Essay Example

Nowadays lots of U.S dwellers prefer not to give the marriage oaths, and lots of marriages break after few years of existence. The tendency exists that in the United States less people marry, and the marriages are broken more easily and quickly than they were fifty or even thirty years ago. This paper will research different aspects of this problem, including the roots of this phenomenon, and its consequences. Before researching the phenomenon of failure of marriage in the United States we should first define what marriage is.

The 2004 Cultural Anthropology defines marriage as a "more or less stable union, usually between two people, who are likely, but not necessarily, to be co-resident, sexually involved with each other, and procreative with each other" while Michael A. Park, the author of Introducing Anthropology: An Integrated Approach states that marriage is "a set of cultural rules for bringing men and women together to create a family unit and for defining their behavior toward one another, their children, and society.

" In this paper the "Elmer" Social Science Dictionary definition of marriage will be used, which is a "socially approved and legally acknowledged emotional, sexual, and economic relationship between two or more individuals". To find out what turned wrong with marriage in the U.S, we should first define the reasons for which people actually get married. It's obvious for the contemporary people, who dwell in the United States that marriage should be voluntary. In this paper involuntary marriages are not envisaged.

We can assume that there are some inner and outer factors that stimulate people to formalize their relationship, and to let the society know they are going to live, and, possibly, raise kids together. Let's first look on the inner determinants of marriage. Singer and Hopkins (1995) talk about the existence of the theory that states that the search for love is genetically programmed in human beings. In the contemporary society marriage is a legitimate mean to get this love, thus lots of people marry to be loved.

The other theory developed by Lewis (1971) states that marriage is the consequence of Eros. This author defines Eros as "being in love". For him Eros is thinking about the person, accepting him/her the way he/she is, and being happy jus because this person exists on this planet. Lewis states that sexual desire is just a part of Eros, and that it is the logical consequence of the development of Eros. The author states that there are few couples who marry because of sexual desire, but millions of people make a match because they want to be near each other, and because they love each other.

The 20th century was marked by the fact that it was the period when people began to consider love as one of the main reasons for getting married. Before that marriage and love were different notions. During some period of time in the European history love was even considered harmful for marriage. At those times people got married to survive, and to produce healthy breed, and love, which at that times was associated with the tempest of feeling numerous poets expressed in their opuses, wasn't the most suitable ground for those goals.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, many philosophers, poets, and psychologists have been researching the nature of married love. Unfortunately, after people marry they sooner or later find out that their feelings towards