Question

What does it mean when scholars argue that marriage is deinstitutionalizing? Name two trends that are talked about when explaining this deinstitutionalization.

Answer 1

BACKGROUND:The growing tolerance of new relationships is often described as a commentary on the institution of marriage. Some see new relationships as a rebuke to marriage — evidence that the marital institution is no longer fulfilling societal requirements nor meeting individual needs. Pointing to such behavioral indicators as the increase in non-marital fertility, the decline in household gender specialization, and the rise in cohabitation, Cherlin (2004) concludes that marriage is on the road to deinstitutionalization. Having resonance as a cultural ideal and even a status symbol, marriage may still be desired by most people, but the increasing tolerance of non-marital arrangements implies a weakening of the normative expectations for couples.
New relationships testify that marriage is not the only agreed-upon standard for organizing partners’ behavior. With declining expectations that sex, co-residence, and childbearing be linked only to marriage, the institution has lost its hegemonic position as a principle for bringing order to adult lives. Indeed, the increasing similarities between marriage and its alternatives — what has been termed the “blurred boundaries” between cohabitation and marriage in function, social acceptance, and legal treatment (Musick and Bumpass 2011) — can be read as offering additional evidence for the deinstitutionalization of marriag
OBJECTIVE:Acknowledging the conceptual distinction between expectations for behavior inside and outside marriage, we address the deinstitutionalization debate by testing whether support for marital conventions has declined for a range of attitudes across countries.
METHODS:Based on eleven International Social Survey Program items replicated between the late 1980s and the 2000s, OLS regressions evaluate attitude changes in up to 21 countries.
RESULTS:Consistent with the deinstitutionalization argument, disapproval declined for marital alternatives (cohabitation, unmarried parents, premarital and same-sex sex). For attitudes on the behavior of married people and the nature of marriage the results are mixed: despite a shift away from gender specialization, disapproval of extramarital sex increased over time. On most items, most countries changed as predicted by the deinstitutionalization thesis.
CONCLUSIONS:Attitude changes on ‘new relationships’ and marital alternatives are compatible with the deinstitutionalization of marriage. Beliefs arguably more central to the marital institution do not conform as neatly to this thesis. Because results are sensitive to the indicators used, the deinstitutionalization of marriage argument merits greater empirical and conceptual attention