Are you preaching to me about marriage ? I have been married for a long, long, time, and I have been faithful through the thick and the thin. I grew up in a time where the nation was more in tune with traditional marriage, but slowly that changed into what you are trying so desperately to defend now, and it didn't change willingly, but instead it was forced to change by outside forces that became either hostile towards it or was influential by way of Hollywood and the government who has duped this nation into believing in fairytales. Outside forces had absolutely nothing to do with any of this you say ? Well how do you think that this nation has changed over the years then, and has it been a change for the better or for the worse in your opinion ? Tell the truth now...Hell you won't tell the truth, because you live in a fantasy land, and you will justify anything probably, even if it means assigning words or meanings to things that people did not say or rather you reinterpret them to say. You do this in order to try and make it look as if they said something that meant one thing according to you, even though they meant something else according to them. Actually your ilk is way worse than any Phil Robertson in this nation could ever be, and that is why we are where we are at right now in all of this to date. Actually you are one of those outsider advocates trying to work to change the meaning of things in which people don't want changed in their lives, I mean just listen to your own self in these post that you write.
Divorce rates have been climbing dramatically over the past 150 years and it has nothing to do with Hollywood and more to do with longer life expectancy, mobility, and increased levels of education and opportunity for the general public. The wealthy, who had more income and opportunities than the rest of us, have always had higher rates of divorce than the poor.
In 1867 - the first year for which divorce statistics were available, the divorce rate was 3%. Most people lived in rural communities and spent their entire lives in the general area of where they were born. A person's life expectancy was less than 50 years. The economy was based on agriculture and most people did hard physical work on their farms from dawn until dusk. People had neither the time nor the energy for recreation or dissatisfaction with their situations.
What you seem to be missing is that as life in North America changed, the divorce rate steadily increased. By 1900 it had more than doubled to 7%. At that point in history, there was no Hollywood, no mass media, and yet the divorce rate climbed. By 1925, it had more than doubled again, to 25%. Newspapers of the day decried the loose morals of the age - jazz and liquor. I would say that automobiles, electricity, the telephone and public education had a lot more to do with the climbing divorce rate than jazz and liquor.
People had more options. The cheap availability of cars made it easier to travel and broaden one's horizons. Public education meant that more people could read and learn about other places, other ways of life, and other opportunities. Electricity gave rise to leisure time. People didn't go to bed when it got dark, they simply turned on the lights. Life expectancy had now increased by nearly 10 years.
Throughout the Great Depression, the divorce rate stabilized. People simply couldn't afford to divorce, but as the unemployment rate dropped, the rate of divorce increased.
The biggest factor to change marriage in the 20th century was not Hollywood, it was World War II. Men went off to war, leaving their wives at home to take care of things by themselves, and women got a taste of independence and responsibility that they had never known before. Factories and armaments manufacturers needed workers to build the tools of war, and with every able-bodied man signing up to fight the war, women were encouraged to work and contribute to the war effort. Placed in a position of making their own money, their own decisions and being head of the household, women loved the freedom and independence.
When the war ended, women were expected to return to their homes and their subserviant roles as wives and mothers. Many chafed at their loss of freedom and independence. They found their traditional role and lack of control demeaning and stifling, and yearned for respect and independence. Men could be whatever they chose to be. Women could be wives and mothers. The divorce rate in 1946 - the year that men came home from the war in large numbers, was 46%.
During the post-war years, the rate of divorce declined to around 25% where it stayed throughout the 1950's as the the Baby Boomers were born, raised and grew up, as the most highly educated group of people in world history. People were expected to get a good education and good jobs. But with their children safely in high school and post secondary schools, the women who had first achieved a measure of freedom and independence in WWII, began to get restless and the women's movement was born and the divorce rate once again, began to rise.
Your desire for a traditional form of marriage leads me to believe that you are an older man. No woman longs for the good old days because for women, they weren't that good. Men could chose their path in life. Women were expected to support that choice and be a good wife and mother, regardless of their talents, abilities or intellect. When their children left home, they had no role, no purpose and were often adrift.
Modern appliances and conveniences had reduced or eliminated the drudge work in maintaining a home. Laundry no longer took all day, nor was it a physically arduous job. Supermarkets meant that women didn't have to maintain a kitchen garden, nor did they can or preserve summer's bounty for winter. They didn't sew their own clothes or knit their own sweaters. Women had a lot more time on their hands and little to do with it. They longed for a life of their own, jobs - a purpose. With 25% of marriages ending in divorce, many women were left by husbands who had moved on to a younger prettier, "trophy wife", and the first wife was left with no job, no marketable skills, dependent on alimony or social services to provide for her and her children. Few men honoured those obligations.
Hollywood has reflected the changing social landscape, it has never lead it. In the 1950's, it reflected a traditional family with men as the wise, all-knowing head of the house. Women were loving and supportive. As kids, we used to laugh at the families in Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best. No mother I knew wore pearls and a dress to vaccuum the living room like Mrs. Cleaver.
I say again, if the mythical "traditional family" you yearn for really was the bedrock foundation of American society, it would not be so fragile. Society has changed since the 1860's. Our life expectancy has doubled. The skills women needed to cook, clean, make a home, and feed and clothe their families in the 1800's are no longer needed since everything we need for our homes can be purchased at Walmart. Planes, trains and automobiles have opened up the world. Electricity, modern appliances, and the vast array of consumer goods available, have changed society, not Hollywood.
What conservatives like you want, is the Hollywood myth of traditional marriage, not the reality of what my mother and your mother actually lived.
