BookWatch

Stephanie Coontz has a new book, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, which sounds like it should be required reading for everyone over the age of sixteen. Monica Mehta reviews the book and interviews Coontz at Alternet today in this article: The Myth of Marriage. It's a subject I was actually thinking about last night, for reasons I'm not clear on - the "institution" of marriage, and how it has changed over the years of human occupation of the planet. All the brouhaha taking place right now seems to me to be a symptom of everyone's dis-ease with it changing yet again. As Ms. Mehta states in her review:

...human unions have gone through a number of evolutions. We would be remiss to think that it was ever a stable institution. Instead, it has always been in flux. It has only been based on the concept of love for 200 years; before that, it was a way of ensuring economic and political stability. Through painstakingly-detailed descriptions and anecdotes from hunter-gatherer days to the modern era, Coontz points out that "almost every marital and sexual arrangement we have seen in recent years, however startling it may appear, has been tried somewhere before." So when we think of cohabitation, gay marriage, or stepfamilies as deviating from the "norm," we are wrong, because there has never really been a "norm."

Exactly. The "norm" is societal, and as society continues to change so will this institution. Marriage: A History sounds like a good read and good sense, full of interesting research and sane conclusions. Shall I send a copy to Dr. James Dobson?

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