SOC 174 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Mass Incarceration, The Marriage Market, Ambivalence
Document Summary
By the 1800s most young adults in the united states at least shared with their parents their responsibility of choosing a spouse. Courtship is a publicly visible process with rules and restrictions through which young men and women find a partner to marry. The words publicly visible emphasize the important role of the community - and, in particular, parents - in watching over, and participating in, the courting a young adult does. By cohabitation, commonly called living together, i mean a living arrangement in which two adults who are not married to each other but who have a sexual relationship share the same house or apartment. Before the 1960s, cohabitation was common mainly among the poor and near poor. With little in the way of resources to share and little prospect of leaving money or possessions to their children, the poor had less reason to marry. For many, cohabitation had served as an acceptable substitute for legal marriage.
