Matrimony and the market

Fernando Kaskais

Jun 6

Slade helping his girlfriend Kari move into a trailer provided as temporary housing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in Joplin, Missouri, August 2011. Photo by Eric Thayer/Reuters

The sexual revolution promised new norms of intimacy based on egalitarianism. So far, only the rich have cashed in

Daniel Tutt is a writer and lecturer in philosophy. He is the author, most recently, of Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family (2022) and What the Left Needs to Know About Nietzsche (forthcoming, 2024). He lives in Washington, DC.

Most people have a view on the sexual revolution of the 1960s but, to borrow an adage about the impact of the French Revolution, its consequences continue to unfold. In his book Between Sex and Power (2004), on the family in the 20th century, the sociologist Göran Therborn says the sexual revolution brought entirely new conceptions of romantic love and marriage. We can see its changes in how intimacy and romance now emphasise maximising pleasure. People today often seek out partners to satisfy our deeper emotional needs first and foremost. In her book The End of Love (2019), the sociologist Eva Illouz defines this new type of intimacy as one in which people look for partners who will 'alleviate anxiety, increase their (emotional) performance, and make investments in uncertain futures.'

The reality is that the ludic demands of the sexual revolution have been realised, but on terms dictated by the market, not by the libertines who pushed for communal living, abolition of the family and more liberated sexual expression. Marriage and family remain highly popular. In a 2019 survey, more than 84 per cent of LGBT people hold that love is a 'very important' reason to get married (versus just 46 per cent of the same cohort who said the legal benefits of marriage are very important). The most common reasons cited for divorce now tend to be 'emotional' considerations, and in a study of a large, statistically representative sample of young women in the United States, both single and married, more than 80 per cent stated that they value a husband's capacity to express his feelings over his capacity to provide as the most valuable trait of a would-be partner.

For men, this change in the norms of intimacy tends to mean that marriage and the possibility of starting a family is no longer about realising values of masculinity through providing for a woman and children. Rather, a new intimacy has fused with market terms so that a contractual logic centred on protecting one's self-worth, self-esteem and dignity governs modern marriage. Illouz points out that romantic relations for couples in the US and Europe, whether they be in heterosexual, homosexual or non-normative relationships, are all set on the goal of securing each subject's self-worth.

At first blush, these new norms of intimacy and marriage seem to indicate a more egalitarian structure for marriage and family norms. They seem to point to an environment that has moved beyond and overcome some forms of gender hierarchy and masculinist power dynamics that socialist-feminist scholars have long criticised in the patriarchal, middle-class family.

The new intimacy based on self-worth is egalitarian seeming but its promises are not widely experienced. Since the late 1970s and accelerating up to the present, the prospects of marriage and family have receded for many people, especially for the working class. Marriage now follows a pattern known as 'assortative', which means that people tend, at a greater rate, to marry partners from a similar class background. We can see the problem of the new intimacy of self-worth another way too: concurrent with the rise of assortative marriage, national data for the US points to a 'divorce divide' between classes. Since the 1970s, divorce has increased among the working class while at the same time it has significantly decreased among highly educated men and women. Marriage requires that couples pool their incomes, that both partners work full-time, and that they invest heavily in their children's development. These economic demands weigh heavily on couples with lower education and on working-class families, and prevent the prospect of starting a family or making a family work in the long run. The benefits of marriage – from sharing income and accruing assets, to the sense of dignity and purpose that family and children bring – are growing more distant for working-class Americans.

To understand these changes a little better, it is helpful to look at macro-social policies in the US over the past 40 years. 'Neoliberalism' is a term that can help us understand these new class divides and conflicts. Neoliberalism is a political movement that gained traction in the late 1970s, one that elevates the market as the primary vector of self-making and self-discipline...

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https://aeon.co/essays/on-class-and-the-perils-of-the-new-norms-of-intimacy