Marital Negotiations Research Articles

Model Letters Declining Arranged Marriages: Changing Formulas for Family Correspondence in Modern China

This paper examines model letters declining arranged marriages exchanged between young people and their elders in Republican China. These new models deserve special attention for creating a subtle tension in the family hierarchy during the early twentieth century. Notwithstanding their common purpose, model letters declining arranged marriages produced by different publishers differ in format and tone. While certain model letters reinforced Confucian patriarchy and positioned the elders superior to the young, other model letters provided the standard lines of appeal that sought to ease tensions between the younger and older generations as the young consciously appropriated the emergent discourse to legitimize their dissent. The marital negotiation thus allows us to glean insights into the changing dynamics of family letters under the influence of new ideals about family and marriage in modern China.

Ethical and Legal Issues in Psychotherapy.

Ethical and Legal Issues in Psychotherapy.

Courtship, Slander, and Treason: Studies of Mary Queen of Scots, the Fourth Duke of Norfolk, and a Few of Their Contemporaries, 1568–1587 by Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freeman

Reviewed by: Courtship, Slander, and Treason: Studies of Mary Queen of Scots, the Fourth Duke of Norfolk, and a Few of Their Contemporaries, 1568–1587 by Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freeman Thomas M. Mccoog S.J. Courtship, Slander, and Treason: Studies of Mary Queen of Scots, the Fourth Duke of Norfolk, and a Few of Their Contemporaries, 1568–1587. By Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freeman. (London: Distributed by Maggs Bros Ltd. 2019. Pp. ix, 401. £35.00. ISBN 978-0-993376-22-1.) Two distinct but complementary sections comprise this work: "Mary Queen of Scots and the Fourth Duke of Norfolk: The Literature of the 'Forbidden Match,' 1568–73" by Arthur Freeman; and "The Trial and Death of Mary Queen of Scots in Contemporary Report: A Codicological Study" by Janet Ing Freeman. The studies are not, as the authors explain in the Prefatory Note, "retellings or reinterpretations … but essentially surveys of contemporary literature—narrative, argumentative, judgemental, propagandistic, and libellous—devoted thereto" (p. vii). Both sections begin with a clear, concise presentation of the historical background; indeed, a very helpful time line from 1509 to 1603 concludes the book. Each text is examined for style, locution, date of composition, authorship, printed and manuscript editions, circulation and influence. Particularly in the exposition of authorship, Arthur Freeman delineates and often refutes attributions proposed by other scholars and canonized by the Revised Short Title Catalogue. Alas, in a short review, I must restrict my comments to a few texts. Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived in England in May 1568. Four years earlier as Mary was looking for a suitor, Queen Elizabeth recommended Robert Dudley, soon to be Earl of Leicester, and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Mary preferred Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and Norfolk was not interested. After the events of the intervening four years, the possibility was revived. A Discourse touching the pretended match published around the same time as the Northern Rising (1569–70) and Regnans in excelsis, Pope [End Page 630] Pius V's excommunication of Queen Elizabeth (1570), attacked the proposed marriage. Freeman rejects the attribution of this work to Thomas Norton: "Anonymous A Discourse emerged from the press; anonymous, in my view, it remains" (p. 50). "An Answer to a slanderous booke," the full text of which is printed here for the first time, rebuts the accusations and defends Mary and Norfolk. Here too the author remains unknown. A Treatise of treasons (1572), arguably the best known of the texts analyzed, defended the honor of Mary and, equally important, denounced the Elizabethan establishment as constructed by "new men" William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon. The author of this important treatise remains unknown despite various efforts at identification. We must, according to Freeman, console "ourselves, if at all, by at least one significant exclusion: the [John Leslie] Bishop of Ross" (p. 165). It is surprising that Freeman fails to mention that Cecil's friends dissuaded him from refuting the treatise: instead the government retaliated with a proclamation against seditious works, especially attacks on Bacon and Cecil. The bishop of Ross did, however, author "A Discourse conteyning a perfect accompt," and "A Brief discourse of the friendly and honest part," another text printed here for the first time. Leslie's frequent appearance again highlights the lack of a monograph on his role and significance in his advocacy of Mary's cause, in the proposal of an "Association," joint sovereignty, for Mary and her son James VI, and in the formation of alliances aimed at her liberation. Recent works by Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes on marital negotiations and the succession would have benefitted Freeman. The late Regius Professor Patrick Collinson once commented on the different terms used by literary critics and historians to describe the documents of their trade. The latter speak of sources, archival and published, from which data are extracted; the former speak of texts scrutinized from different perspectives with measured judgments. Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman are literary critics whose analysis has revealed much to this historian who has strip-mined some of these documents for information. [End Page 631] Thomas M. Mccoog S.J. Loyola University Maryland Copyright © 2021 The Catholic University of America Press

English Literary Renaissance (Winter, 2017, pp. 1–192; Spring, 2017, pp. 193–323; Autumn, 2017, pp. 325–448)

English Literary Renaissance (Winter, 2017, pp. 1–192; Spring, 2017, pp. 193–323; Autumn, 2017, pp. 325–448)

Sibling Affection and Domestic Heterosexuality in Lodovick Carlell’sThe Deserving Favorite

AbstractLodowick Carlell’s play The Deserving Favorite (1629) deploys the ideological strategy of using erotic “likeness” to validate marital unions as consensual and erotically compatible. In an era before the normalization of heterosexuality, the play suggests that sexually passionate marital relations earn legitimacy to the degree that they emulate the affectionate relations between women and between siblings. Although eroticized female friendship approaches the ideal of a consensual and sensual partnership, intimate relations between women seem best to thrive in a separatist environment removed from courtly social and economic exchanges, including the marital negotiations crucial to cementing dynastic and political alliances. Brothers and sisters can model loving intimacy between men and women, yet siblings are too close in blood to be married. Female-female and brother-sister relationships thus constitute complementary yet socially unsustainable models of consensual marital union. [M.D.]

The dilemma of arranged marriages in people with epilepsy. An expert group appraisal.

Matrimony remains a challenging psychosocial problem confronting people with epilepsy (PWE). People with epilepsy are less likely to marry; however, their marital prospects are most seriously compromised in arranged marriages. The aim of this study was to document marital prospects and outcomes in PWE going through arranged marriage and to propose optimal practices for counseling PWE contemplating arranged marriage. A MEDLINE search and literature review were conducted, followed by a cross-disciplinary meeting of experts to generate consensus. People with epilepsy experience high levels of felt and enacted stigma in arranged marriages, but the repercussions are heavily biased against women. Hiding epilepsy is common during marital negotiations but may be associated with poor medication adherence, reduced physician visits, and poor marital outcome. Although divorce rates are generally insubstantial in PWE, divorce rates appear to be higher in PWE undergoing arranged marriages. In these marriages, hiding epilepsy during marital negotiations is a risk factor for divorce. In communities in which arranged marriages are common, physicians caring for PWE are best-equipped to counsel them about their marital prospects. Marital plans and aspirations should be discussed with the family of the person with epilepsy in a timely and proactive manner. The benefits of disclosing epilepsy during marital negotiations should be underscored.

Contextualizing Women's Agency in Marital Negotiations: Muslim and Hindu Women in Karnataka, India.

We use 36 in-depth interviews, with 18 Muslim and 18 Hindu women in Karnataka, India, to explore the relationships between women’s educational attainments and women’s exercise of agency in spousal selection and the timing of marriage. We have outlined three kinds of agency, namely, convinced, resistance, and complicit, and the contexts in which they were deployed by our participants during their marriage negotiations. Our examination of the role of education across this spectrum of agential capacities during marriage negotiations suggests that the linkages between education and agency are not straightforward. Rather, the normative context, and how parents and daughters interact with it when fixing marriages, makes the use of agency by the woman and by their parents much more complicated than standard narratives that claim that “modern” education for girls will inevitably enable women to play decisive roles in realizing their personal preferences. Our data lead us to challenge this framework and we argue that the link between education and agency is not always positive and linear, as it widely thought to be.

Greedy Spouse, Needy Parent: The Marital Dynamics of Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Intergenerational Caregivers.

It is well established that married heterosexual women do more intergenerational caregiving for aging parents and parents-in-law than married heterosexual men do. However, gay men and lesbian women's recent access to marriage presents new questions about the gendered marital dynamics of intergenerational caregiving. We use dyadic data with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses to examine the marital dynamics of intergenerational caregivers. Results show that gay and lesbian spouses provided intensive time and emotional support for an intergenerational caregiver. In contrast, heterosexual women described their intergenerational caregiving as rarely supported and at times even undermined by their spouse. Dyadic data on heterosexual men corroborate women's accounts; heterosexual men rarely reported providing intergenerational caregiving, and thus heterosexual women rarely described providing spousal support. These findings provide new insight into the intermingled roles of "greedy" marriages and "needy" parents, wherein marital negotiations around caregiving vary by gender for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marital dyads.

Marital Mobility in the Bangladeshi Middle Class: Matchmaking Strategies and Transnational Networks

In this paper, I take marriage as the point of entry for exploring social alliances amongst an affluent cluster of the Bangladeshi middle class. Using semi-structured interviews, biographies, family histories, intergenerational data, matrimonial biodata, chat histories, group discussions and blogs, I traced marital genealogies from Bangladesh to Britain in order to understand the strength of their transnational network. I argue that homogamy has become instrumental for this class in consolidating its power as new networks are forged through marriage and in which women play a significant role. These alliances result in the conflation of different kinds of capital, generating a convergence of influence and access among individuals that transcends national boundaries, reconfiguring the group as a cosmopolitan class. This provides a novel perspective on how Bangladeshi women of this class exercise power in marital negotiations while navigating normative practices and patriarchal structures.

Conduct Shameful and Unshameful in The Franklin’s Tale

Conduct Shameful and Unshameful in The Franklin’s Tale Wan-Chuan Kao “Dictus vero Johannes fatetur quod promisit ipsam ducere in uxorem sub hiis verbis, ‘Volo te ducere in uxorem si bene facias.’ “ [The said John admits that he promised to marry the woman with these words: ‘I will take you as my wife if you conduct yourself well.’] —Registrum primum, Act Book, Ely, 1381 “If I am a bright housewife, I may be ashamed because too much of my work is too exclusively muscular.” —Silvan Tomkins In the marital negotiation that opens The Franklin’s Tale, Dorigen and Arveragus premise their marriage on an interlocking set of conduct obligations applying to both sexes. Dorigen, having observed Arveragus’s worth, vows to be a “humble trewe wyf” and permits him to possess “swich lordshipe as men han over hir wyves.”1 And Arveragus pledges obedience to Dorigen’s will, on the condition that she preserves his “name of soveraynetee, / That wolde he have for shame of his degree” (V.751–52). Each would be wife or husband only if certain behavioral conditions are met: her wifehood is conditioned on his display of gentillesse, and his husbandhood on her consent to his name of soveraynetee. The agreement set out here falls, in certain respects, under what R. H. Helmholz has categorized as “conditional marriages.” In his analysis [End Page 99] of marriage litigation in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England, Helmholz notes a particular category concerned with disputes over the precise meaning of various conditions stipulated in marriage contracts, especially those involving a woman’s conduct. In a 1365 marriage case in York, for example, a man contended that he had agreed to marry a woman “sub bono gestu suo” [under the condition of her good conduct]. In 1381, a man in Ely claimed that he had pledged to a woman, “Volo te ducere in uxorem si bene facias” [I will take you as my wife if you conduct yourself well]. And in a 1417 Norwich case, a man testified that he had promised marriage only if a woman could demonstrate “bonam gestionem” [good conduct]. According to Helmholz, such conditional matrimonial contracts caused real difficulties of legal interpretation. The courts did not possess any useful tradition of precedents to help clarify the ambiguities, nor were they able to establish definitive rulings.2 The records of the 1381 Ely case, he notes, offer no conclusive ruling or legal clarity. The origins of medieval theories of conditional marriage have been traced by Bartholomew Timlin to the School of Bologna in the twelfth century.3 Gratian, the first to speak of giving marriage consent with a condition, picked up Augustine’s discussion on the validity of marriage to an infidel on the condition of his or her conversion. John Faventinus contended that marital conditions must not be against canon or civil law. Alexander III (Roland Bandinelli) asserted that marriage engagements are contracts, and he distinguished present consent from future consent. Condition of present consent (consensus de praesenti sub condicione), however, was rejected by Huguccio of Pisa, who allowed conditional sponsalia de sponsalia de futuro and affirmed that sexual consummation makes marriage unconditional. To Tancred of Bologna, a thirteenth-century Dominican canonist, present consent may be declared with a condition, but the condition must refer to a future event. The theoretical debates also centered on the honorableness of conditions, the verification of which would validate a marriage immediately. By the second decade of the thirteenth century, the doctrine of conditional marriage was met with wide approval by canon lawyers.4 [End Page 100] In a crucial sense, contractual disputes over conditions of female conduct centered on the contested meaning of si bene facias, and I want to suggest that a similar semantic difficulty exists in Dorigen and Arveragus’s marital contract. What exactly is the sense of shame that Arveragus possesses or of the “name of soveraynetee” that he demands? The idea of shame, rather than eliminating maistrie and upholding the Franklin’s ideal of “an humble, wys accord” (V.791), reintroduces the question of a power differential into their marriage and constrains the free love to which, purportedly, they subscribe. Shame is...

Post-divorce representations of marital negotiation during marriage predict parenting alliance in newly divorced parents

Literature demonstrates that marital and co-parenting subsystems are intercorrelated and have autonomous functions in the family system. This study explored representations of marital negotiation strategies for conflict resolution during marriage and parenting alliance relationship after divorce, using data from Portuguese newly divorced parents. In multiple regression analysis, representations of marital negotiation strategies for conflict resolution during marriage used by ex-spouses predict positive parenting alliance relationship after divorce. These results suggest that representations of pre-divorce marital relationship influence positively current interparental relationship regarding child rearing after marital dissolution. Implications for clinical interventions are also discussed.

Between Harmony and Conflicting Interests: Gendered Marital Negotiations in Hungarian Post-socialist Farm Family Enterprises

This paper explores decision making processes in farm families with off farm working wives in post socialist Hungary based on an interview material with ten farm families. Decision making concerning issues of consumption and production is seen as a key arena for the articulation of gender relations within the farm family. Farm families with the husband being the head of the enterprise and the wife having an off farm wage labour constitute a specific case. Off farm incomes, in Hungary, played a crucial role in the capital accumulation phase of the farms. As previous research indicated, off farm incomes often constitute an integral part of the overall farm strategy. Off farm working wives contribute to the reproduction of the farm enterprise in diverse ways, such as through direct participation in the farm labour, through their reproductive labour and by releasing the farm from supplying consumption expenses by bringing in additional assets. Meanwhile, the economic boundaries (i.e. ownership of assets and economic liability) of the family farm are intimately interwoven with the family as a reproductive, kinship and consumption unit. This paper explores family relations as formed along dynamics of power (i.e. of equality vs inequality) and dynamics of solidarity (focus on individual autonomy vs processes strengthening couple relations). With roots in the capability approach participation in decision making is seen as an expression of the ability to voice, negotiate and or enforce initiatives grounded in individual interests.

MEN, MEAT, AND MARRIAGE: MODELS OF MASCULINITY

Gender permeates all aspects of life, including foodlife, and can be examined using singular and multiple models of genderedness. Singular models of masculinity gender-type foods as masculine and feminine, suggesting that men and women “do gender" by consuming gender appropriate foods. Meat, especially red meat, is an archetypical masculine food. Men often emphasize meat, and women often minimize meat, in displaying gender as individuals. Dealing with gender in joint marital food choices requires negotiations about sharing masculine and feminine foods as partner foods in joint meals. Contemporary Western “proper meals” center around meat, creating masculine marital meals that reproduce wider patterns of male dominance. Meat is often a contested food in marriage, with food negotiations conflicting about whether, what types, when, and how much meat is consumed. Multiple models of masculinities suggest that marital meat consumption does not necessarily follow formulaic, hegemonic gender patterns. These plural masculinities offer various adjectival gender scripts that can be selectively invoked in negotiating meals shared between partners. Multiple cultural scripts for strong men, healthy men, wealthy men, sensitive men, and other conceptions of masculinities are employed in marital negotiations about “doing meat.” “Doing marriage” involves negotiating and managing masculinities and femininities in food choices that reflect, reproduce, and oppose a variety of gendered societal food scripts. Both singular and multiple models of masculinity offer insights about meat and marriage.

Silenced Reality: Power Relations between Marital Blueprints in Israeli Marriages

In this study we examined the effect of job insecurity on couples' relationships in the context of recent macro‐level economic changes in Israel. Based on Hajer's discourse interaction approach, we conceptualized marital relationships and particularly the marital conversation as contested terrain reflecting power relations between social forces and their related discourses. We interviewed seventeen couples in which at least one of the partners suffered from job insecurity in order to trace forms of emotion work and silence in their marital interaction. We found that couples experienced a decreased ability to speak with each other. In their accounts of this experience, gendered “story lines” that we interpreted as “new” to the relationship emerged. Women's emotion work was indicative and halted change‐directed marital negotiation. The possibility that authoritative gendered relationships are reinforced in Israeli marriages during times of job insecurity is thus supported.

Mars and Venus Collide: A Discursive Analysis of Marital Self-Help Psychology

Relationship self-help advice often blames women for relationship difficulties and endorses relatively traditional gender roles. Its appeal to female consumers is thus somewhat puzzling. This paper uses critical feminist discourse analysis to explore two Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus relationship self-help texts. Both these texts construct gender as a set of natural dichotomies, claim that women and men are fundamentally different in relationship needs, and hold women responsible for maintaining relationship harmony. Thus, they reproduce a discourse that historically has been oppressive to women. However, like all texts, these afford multiple readings. I argue that their rhetoric may be deployed to voice dissatisfaction with inequality and to encourage change in a partners behavior. By affording openings for marital negotiation, these self-help texts and others like them may undermine the ideology of fixed gender differences in relationship orientation and may serve to hold both partners accountable for maintaining marital satisfaction.

The Language Ideologies of Courtship Ritual: Maya Pentecostals and Folk Catholics

The Language Ideologies of Courtship Ritual:Maya Pentecostals and Folk Catholics Nancy Forand (bio) Abstract This article examines the traditional Mayan practice of negotiating marital alliances, which is played out in a series of ritualized dialogues between two families. A Pentecostal hybrid ceremony incorporates evangelical symbols and speech forms that index a religious identity and ideology founded on biblical authority. In intergroup marriage negotiation, Mayan Pentecostals and traditionalists employ an accommodated form of ritual speech that works around irreconcilable differences pertaining to authority and the relationship with the divine. Ritual speech in traditional societies is a relatively stable linguistic form, but formal speech practices are, nevertheless, sensitive to historical processes (Kuipers 1998:5-7). In a rural Mayan village in Quintana Roo, Mexico, marriage brokers offer gifts of bride-price to the girl's father on behalf of the boy's father, using ritual speech to evoke common identity and interest. The emergence of an evangelical form of the ceremony, which introduces Bible reading and new ways of speaking, underscores the fact that Protestantism has become an integral part of the social landscape of the community. In addition, intermarriage between Mayan Evangelicals and traditionalists (also called "folk Catholics" in this article) provides a context for constructive dialogue between the two parties. This article examines the ways in which ritual speech is linked to forms of religious practice. It compares a traditional marriage negotiation event with a Pentecostal variant that combines traditional and Pentecostal ways of speaking in a format that models a Pentecostal prayer service. Analysis of a third event, a marriage negotiation between a Pentecostal and a traditionalist family, demonstrates that ritual performance has the power to ratify and enact substantive change in the social order. Rules governing ritual speech guide the formation of mixed marriages, once considered unacceptable. The existence of variant speech forms that are supposedly "ancient" linguistic genres indicates that a significant social transformation and realignment is taking place in Yucatec society. Marriage negotiation is a ritual frame in which the families act out proper relations, as they arrange for the customary transfer of "property." As life-cycle rituals that define a network of social relations, shifting courtship practices clearly "lie at the [End Page 332] heart of the production and reproduction-and transformation and change-of the sociocultural order" (Lave 1993:30). Chief among the factors impinging on contemporary marriage customs is the emergence of evangelical Protestant groups in rural communities that once were (at least nominally) folk Catholic. In a pluralistic Mayan community where various religious groups struggle to get along with one another, ritual marital negotiation was the sole context of shared intergroup religious expression that I observed in two years of fieldwork. Part of this research is grounded in practice theory (Bourdieu 1977), which focuses on how social interactions affirm the social order and relations of power, but it goes beyond examining how the everyday ways of speaking, dressing, eating, et cetera (habitus) foster group solidarity. The first example of ritual speech, the traditional Mayan courtship, illustrates the connection between ritual speech and social identities shared by the participants. The second example, Pentecostal courtship practice, investigates how shifting speech styles index an evangelical identity and arouse new kinds of interests among participants. In Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's terms (1991), speech forms and practices cultivated in a Pentecostal "community of practice" are grafted onto the traditional framework of courtship ritual. The third example considers how power relations are mediated between folk Catholic practice rooted in Mayan tradition and Mayan Pentecostal practice authorized by the Bible. The negotiation of an interreligous marriage, a match once stigmatized but now considered acceptable by some, suggests that a traditional hierarchy, empowering wife-givers over wife-takers, mediates the emergent relation between families from different faith communities. Many Voices, Many Ways of Speaking Mayan parents are preoccupied by the need to arrange "proper" marriages for their children, unions that are sanctioned by True God.1 For example, Don Pedro, a desperately poor farmer, visited three times the home of the girl his son wished to marry, each time laden with generous gifts for her and her family. On one occasion, he had presented clothes and gold...

Familjelivets organisering - ekonomiska resurser, kön och manlig dominans

There is now an extensive body o f feminist research on gender inequalities in marriage based on the assumption that power plays an important causal role here. However, in much of this research the concept of power is implicit rather than investigated explicitly. This artide discusses how the processes of power and differences in power between spouses influence the management of the family finances and the division of labor in the home. One of the most influential sociological theories in this field of research (resource theory) predicts in the first place that the balance of power rests with the partner who contributes most to the family in terms of income, education, status etc. Secondly it makes a connection between the relative economic power of the spouses and how housework is divided between them. This article presents research findings which support such connections - including results from a recent Swedish study by Ahrne & Roman (1997), but the argument put forward here is that the decisionist conception of power applied in the resource theory approach has some serious limitations. Some of these are clearly illustrated by results from the Swedish study mentioned above. The data indicate not only the existence of frequent and open conflicts over the division of labour - where husbands tend to get their own way - but they also suggest that hidden aspects of power shape negotiations between spouses. Even more seriously, the resource theory approach to the balance of power in marriages tends to overlook the importance of ideological and cultural factors, i.e. gender, in reinforcing or counteracting the effects of differences in financial power and resources or of economic equality between spouses. There are, for instance, crucial dimensions of power that do not find expression either in overt or in covert conflicts. A case in point is male authority, which clearly influences marital negotiations among heterosexual couples.

Trouble on the Farm: Conflicting Lifestyles and Parent-Adolescent Discord

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the despair that can emerge within farm families when there is an alternative career and lifestyle choice made by adolescent children. When young people choose not to pursue an agricultural career and lifestyle, many parents become distraught knowing that their life long work may not be continued. Along with a case example describing clinical intervention, the various stages that are experienced by families who face this dilemma are addressed and include: (1) parental anger and coercive change strategies, (2) loss and grieving, (3) paternal depression and marital discord, and (4) negotiation and healing.

The marital balance of power and quid pro quo: An evolutionary perspective

Although the marital therapy literature recognizes the importance of quid quo in marital negotiations, there has been little attention to certain important sources of power for men and women in that process. This paper will show how parental investment, certainty of paternity, patterns of mate preference, intrasexual competition, and reproductive status all affect the bergaining positions of men and women. Both premarital and marital negotiations will be discussed. Put into a developmental perspective, this will help clarify what is at stake in the common sources of conflict between the sexes. These considerations form a central part of the socioecology of marriage.

Triangulation and the Art of Negotiation

Using a “win-win” approach to negotiation, a therapist using the technique described in this paper may further the self-determination of clients by helping a couple's ability to strike a benevolent balance of influence. A strategic approach to marital negotiations using a certain set of rules is described. Self-determination is defined as a balance in interpersonal influence. An essential part of this intervention is the spouses’ triangulation with the therapist in a fashion which blocks the negative influence of other third parties.