, the authors focus on the implications of and reasons for longer live spans between 1800 and 1980. Watkins asserts that notwithstanding higher divorce rates and "declining fertility," women in the 1960 to 1980 window of time "spent more years in marriage and as parents than did earlier generations" (Watkins, et al., 1987, p. 346). While Watkins offers a great deal of data about families and marriage, she also says there is a "lack of historical data" to back up some of those assertions. The article goes through some mathematical calculations and models that attempt to explain family status with reference to how long people lived, their marriage patterns and fertility patterns (Watkins, 347). The bottom line for the Watkins article is to establish "…an essential skeleton for the social history of the family" along with a perspective from which today's family can be understood.
The data the authors used and the methods and models they employed are not important for this paper, but the conclusions they reached are pertinent to the subject of family issues and relationships. The life patterns -- vis-a-vis families and longevity -- that this article presents are worthy of evaluation. For example, when the parents life longer, "people remain sons and daughters longer," and that in turn keeps the nuclear family alive and strong longer (Watkins, 349). In the years between 1800 and 1980, the percentage of women with at least "one surviving parent" has gone up "dramatically"; for example, under 1980 social condition, about 60% of women reaching the age of 55 still have a living parent. That is "10 times more than under 1800 conditions," Watkins explains (349).
The good news that is associated with these data is that families are together longer, and children get to benefit from the wisdom and love of their parents deeper into their lives. Moreover, though this article doesn't mention it, grandparents that are still alive...
So longer lives for grandparents provides huge benefits for families.
Meanwhile in "The Trajectory of the Self," the author launches the research on marriage not too far from where Stone left off earlier in this paper. That is, though marriage in those past centuries was "strongly influenced by economic conditions" and manipulated by parents or relatives, in modern times -- due in part to "the rise of romantic love" -- marriage is based on "emotional satisfaction" and is initiated by a true relationship bond (89). The author asserts that marriage of late is "reflexively organized" -- open and freely chosen between two people who are known to eschew the advice of parents in many instances (91).
There are many jokes in contemporary American society about the fact that men are the ones most often accused of shying away from "commitment," and there is likely a lot of truth in that. In the article the author explains that "commitment" basically replaces the "external anchors" of the past; that is, it used to be parents and relatives deciding who should marry whom, but today that glue that seals the bond between two people is their willingness to commit to each other ((92). That means the committed person "is prepared to accept the risks" that are entailed in leaving his or her present comfort zone as single people.
This article hits home for me, because of the way the author discusses the "pure relationship" in the context of commitment. Beyond commitment, the article focuses heavily on intimacy (defining it as "the heart of modern forms of friendship and established sexual relationships"), followed by the need for intimacy in terms of keeping the bonds close. Trust, too, is part of it (96), but without…
