Marital Monogamy as Ideal and Practice: The Detraditionalization Thesis in Contemporary Marriages

In contemporary Western society, changing norms around marital monogamy represent one possible element of a broader transformation in the institution of marriage. To capture these transformations, many scholars over the past three decades have drawn upon a detraditionalization thesis that details a marked shift in the way marriage is constructed in Western societies following World War II. This body of research suggests a growing focus on individual satisfaction and mutually fulfilling partnerships as the foundation of contemporary marital forms (Cherlin, 2004; Giddens, 1992; Gross, 2005). Such shifts in the construction of marriage have been attributed to a range of factors, including advances in reproductive technologies (Giddens, 1992), the late modern process of individualization (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, 2002), and as an outcome of social movements (Castells, 1997). Further, historical shifts in political economy, perhaps most importantly women's mass entry into the labor market, are believed to have brought about fundamental challenges to the traditional nuclear family, including the distribution of domestic labor and bifurcated gender roles associated with male breadwinning and female domesticity (Gerson, 1993, 2011; Giddens, 1992; Hochschild, 1989; Laslett & Brenner, 1989; Luxton, 1980).While some respond to detraditionalization with nostalgia for (an apparently) lost world of moral order, other theorists celebrate the emergence of norms and practices that challenge traditional social arrangements long held together by patriarchal power, such as nonmarital childbearing and cohabitation, as well as same-sex, interracial, and interreligious relationships (Casper & Bianchi, 2002; Rosenfield, 2007; Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). To be sure, while marriage is still conceived as an important milestone in adult life for many individuals (Cherlin, 2004), others are opting for alternative intimate relationships that "queer" traditional institutions (Weeks, 2007). One critical question arising in the face of these broad social changes is how gender and sexual orientation may bear on the construction and practice of monogamy in the context of state-sanctioned marriage.In this article, we draw on an original qualitative study of 90, largely White, urban, middle-class, Canadian heterosexual and same-sex marriages to explore the detraditionalization thesis with respect to how contemporary couples conceive of and structure sexual relations within their marriage. The race and class characteristics of this self-selected sample make it especially useful for a consideration of the detraditionalization thesis which, if valid, should be reflected most strongly among men and women of this demographic (i.e., the socially enfranchised citizens of Western society). Furthermore, comparison of heterosexual and homosexual marriages is particularly timely because same-sex civil marriage has rapidly become a legal reality throughout parts of the Western world, thus raising the empirical question of the applicability of the detraditionalization thesis to these new, state-sanctioned marital forms. Same-sex marriages also offer a unique window into how gender may matter in shaping diverse marital forms in light of the detraditionalization thesis.Toward this end, we first turn to existing research on the strength of traditional social norms surrounding marriage and an attendant literature on relationship practices among heterosexual and same-sex couples. Next, we outline the methodological procedures upon which this study is based. In the following section we draw from our in-depth interviews with heterosexual and same-sex married participants to address how couples conceive of and negotiate the normative emphasis on sexual fidelity in marriage. These data suggest patterned variation along three dimensions of detraditionalization, including (1) general attitudes toward marital monogamy, (2) beliefs about the place of monogamy within the respondent's own marriage, and (3) the actual behaviors that characterize the intimate life of the respondents' marriage. …