It's Just as Easy to Marry a Rich Man as a Poor One! Students' Accounts of Parental Messages About Marital Partners

Abstract

Finding appropriate marital partners for their children is a universal concern for parents. In contrast to traditional societies where parents actively seek and select marital partners for their offspring, American society presents illusion that children have freedom and choice in selecting marital partners. No society, however, really allows people to actually choose their marriage partners on a completely individual basis (Eshleman 1988, p. 254). American parents have not left these important decisions solely to chance. Even though single Americans may assume they are making independent choices, years of socialization lead them to prefer certain categories of persons for marriage and they can only exercise limited freedom of choice (Eshleman 1988, p. 255). Especially for first and early marriage, couples face considerable social pressure from both parents and peers if they choose to ignore this socialization. Another American folklore is that couples should only marry if romantically in love (Lee 1982, p. 173). William Goode (1959), however, argues no society allows love to reign without boundaries. Instead, he suggests that societies structure opportunities and settings where ideal love can occur with higher social classes attempting to exercise more effective control over love than lower classes. In United States homogamy in race, religion, occupational class, education, and age range occurs at levels higher than expected by chance (Eshleman 1988; Rockwell 1976; Adams 1979). Even in second marriages where parental influence is usually minimal, homogamy in above categories is still practiced (Peters 1980). Over thirty years ago sociologist Marvin Sussman described American parents as threatening, cajoling, wheedling, bribing and in other ways attempting to deter their children from what they considered to be poor marriages (1953, p. 80). He noted parents sought to control love by influencing informal social contacts of their children, through such means as moving into appropriate neighborhoods, sending students to approved schools, and hosting weekend and holiday parties so that children only had opportunities to meet eligible partners. In Crestwood Heights, a community study of a Canadian suburb, parents asserted that their children's marriages should be based, ...on love, sympathy, compatibility, without regard to race, creed or color or above all-the ugly wordl-money. (Seeley, Sim and Loosley 1956, p. 96). Yet, authors concluded: the marriages that do occur are not notably different from those