Marriage

 "Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined, that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them" - Sydney Smith, quote printed in the March 9, 1966 Wagg'n Tongue newsletter

In March 1956, Willa Rae Brown of East Carolina College sent a letter to the State’s Mates asking for information regarding “the happiness of college marriages and the problems encountered by couples attending college.” Bowen wanted to use the information for a panel discussion that was scheduled in the same month. The main topic centered on college marriages. Although only three opinions were represented, the State’s Mates responded with a one-page outline of the problems they felt plagued their relationships. The problem stated at the top of the list read: “Most of husband’s time is consumed in studying,” which specifically affected them because the “responsibilities that would normally be taken care of by the husband are placed on the wife’s shoulders,” and also because “Absolute quiet must be maintained while he is studying, thus causing tension especially when there are children in the family.”  Although the women explained their problems so specifically, the State’s Mates asserted that, “we feel that we share more happiness as student wives than all of the problems we have to face.” 

The topic of college marriages was popular in the second half of the twentieth century. For many scholars figuring out the state of family life since WWII was perplexing: the rise of single-parent families and divorce by the 1960s was a cause for concern. Social scientists were busy trying to make sense of the attitudes and behaviors that produced a contemporary family life that was thought of as so unfamiliar. In the 1950s, Talcott Parsons, a social theorist, argued that the “nuclear family” represented the “normal” arrangement of American families; this “isolated nuclear family” was characterized as having economically independent parents and their children who lived in a residence that was separated from the parents’ own families and was reliant on the occupational income of the husband-father. Additionally, the roles between the husband and wife were shared but divided upon biology, ability, and disposition. Thus, the man was breadwinner; the woman was homemaker. Although families had been arranged in this manner prior to the postwar years, Parson and his model of the “nuclear family” was understood by some scholars to be an authentic reality. 

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