The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

In the 1970s and 1980s popular magazines began publishing articles about the importance of privacy, self-development, individual growth, and identity apart from marriage. Cherlin explains: A new style of marriage was emerging in which both the wife and the husband were expected to develop a separate sense of self.… They asked themselves questions such as: Am I getting the personal satisfaction I want from my marriage? and Am I growing as a person? The result was a transition from the companionate marriage to what we might call the individualized marriage.111 This cultural shift was obviously related to the simultaneous women’s movement (which we discuss in more detail in Chapter 7), but it was not limited to the gender balance within marriage; marriage itself was becoming more optional and more fragile. The cultural shift toward individualized marriage contributed to a sharp rise in divorce and cohabitation.