Emerging patterns of behavior in marriage: Deviations or innovations?

Abstract

The mass media are replete with sensational stories of free love, swinging, communes, and group marriages, usually implying ruptured standards, moral decay, and threats to the institution of marriage. Moralists point with alarm to one out of four marriages ending in divorce, freely circulating swinger ad magazines, campus orgies, and flourishing communes. Here is their proof that the minions of hell are fast taking over. Fortunately there is another, more positive, explanation for these phenomena. Viewed in the context of diffusion of innovation, we are witnessing the realignment of traditional marital relationship patterns rather than deviations from the norm. As Beigel (1969) indicated, this is a supportive development aimed at reforming monogamous marriage. Diffusion of innovation refers to the process of change and the generally accepted means of determining which of many possible changes is actually taking hold. It has been found that no matter how long a particular practice has been accepted by small groups here and there, such changes do not move into the main stream of society until approximately seven to ten per cent of the population adopt them (Pemberton, 1936). Once this level of saturation is reached, general acceptance rapidly follows, so that within a few years, the vast majority of people can be expected to accept ideas, or activities, that may have been the norm for a small percentage of the population for decades. As an example of this kind of change, despite social disapproval, some women were smoking cigarettes over a generation ago, but it was not until World War II that this activity was accepted generally as proper behavior. When acceptance did come, it happened almost overnight-in just under a decade (Ramey, 1963). This paper presents a paradigm, or model, for research in the area of evolutionary sexual behavior in marriage. This model serves three purposes. First, it provides a basis for systematic classification of current research on alternative sexual life styles for pair-bonded couples, particularly free love, swinging, communal living, and group marriage. We shall examine some of this research and shall organize anal