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Marriage In The 1950's

Decent Essays

Marriage was put into rolls in the 1950s. Men would work and supply the money. Women would stay home, clean the house, and tend to the children. Now, in the twenty-first century, we no longer have rolls in marriage. Both parties work and supply money. Marriage has changed in many ways throughout the years. In the 1950s, almost everyone would get married right out of high school. If you didn’t get married, society thought there was something wrong with you, that made the other person not want to be with you. There were very few people that lived together that had kids but weren’t married. Living together, without being married, was frowned on back then; mostly because of religious beliefs. Churches frowned on divorce also. They believed that …show more content…

Getting married young was a real struggle, because the expenses were too much for some people to handle. There were many things a woman couldn’t do. In the 1960s, women couldn’t get a credit card unless their husband cosigned for it. They couldn’t serve on a jury because they were considered the center of the home and they were thought to be too fragile to hear gory details of crimes and too sympathetic. In 1961, the Supreme Court upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. They couldn’t get on birth control because it was looked at as another way of getting an abortion. The only way a woman could get on birth control was if she was married. Women fought for their rights in the 60s. In the mid 1970s, an anti-discrimination law allowed women to pursue careers that weren’t ever available for them. Women no longer needed men to financially support them. According to Dr. Ceren, “The value of monogamy began to erode bringing open marriage to the fore, but with the increase and awareness of STDs, many couples became more willing to commit to marriage” (Ceren). In the 70s, gay marriage wasn’t socially accepted. Gay marriages didn’t last but maybe three to four years on average because of the pressure that was put on …show more content…

Many legal and financial advantages can be attained through marriage. Instead of getting married after high school, people tend to go to college, get their life together, and then marry. The average groom is now thirty-seven and bride thirty-four (Discuss). According to Associated Press Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, “41 percent of spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional.” Couples these days aren’t communicating the proper way. Instead they get mad at each other and ignore one another. One or both people in the relationship have “checked out”, but they don’t want to divorce for the sake of the children. Or they still love each other, valuing each other as a support system and as close friends, but don’t feel that intimacy toward one another. As said in a marriage article from faqs.org, “The study, by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, found that the marriage rate among Americans is at its lowest point ever. Over the last forty years, the rate has fallen forty-three percent. In addition, fewer people are reporting themselves as being “very happy” in their marriages.” Today, most wedding ceremonies involve a religious service, which contains many traditional features that are significant to their cultures. Christian’s services contain wording that has been unchanged since the

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