Marriage Confidential

Starred review from May 23, 2011
After second-wave feminism won many important battles, the movement resigned itself essentially to nonexistence. Now Haag (Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism) reveals what she feels is the stark truth of the modern marriage: the ground gained by feminism is a loss for womenâand marriage. In the so-called "Post-Romantic" age we are in, married men and women occupy a relationship category more similar to friend or partner than lover. The needs of children dominate (to the point that Haag suggests that they are the true "spouses"). Both partners may work; alternately, liberated men (who Haag comically calls "Tom Sawyers") may stay home or take supplementary wage-earner roles, enabled to discover their true callings (a la Revolutionary Road's Frank Wheeler), and watch their wives bring home the bacon (and fry it up in a pan). Affairs are often tolerated; indeed, they're presented as part-problem/part-solution. Haag gets to the bottom of the existential dilemma, focusing on what she calls the low-conflict/semi-happy marriage, likely to end in divorce (60% by her estimates). Throughout her initial analysis she is spot-on, but when discussing the desirability and viability of open marriages, her sharp, erudite style drifts. But her gained range from heartbreakingly tragic to fascinatingly awkward; Haag has her capable finger on the pulse of the American marriage.

May 1, 2011

This keen study of contemporary marriage balances the juicy expose for a popular audience implied by its title and the serious, footnoted analysis suggested by the author's credentials as a Ph.D. historian and former director of research for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. Accessible to lay readers with an understanding of such key terms as "melancholy" and "queering," Haag's book considers how some spouses are now changing the rules of standard secular marriages, including the division of labor in careers and parenting, family relationships, living arrangements, and, centrally, sex. While options for what Haag calls the low-conflict, semi-happy marriage are generally limited to unsatisfying lifelong monogamy, unsanctioned extramarital intimacy, or divorce, she proposes a fourth marital path--that of ethical nonmonogamy, which incorporates intimate relationships outside the marriage under conditions mutually agreed upon and consented to by the spouses. She argues that the societal outrage this sort of arrangement might provoke can be likened to past outrage over interracial marriage. VERDICT A solid choice for women's studies and marriage studies scholars and professionals, this could also be a provocative, intriguing option for book discussion groups.--Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2011

The question that engages historian Haag--what's happening to the institution of marriage--gets a complicated and sometimes murky answer.

The author, former director of research for the American Association of University Women, interviewed dozens of people, conducted online surveys and perused scholarly literature and contemporary newspapers and magazines to discover what marriage means to people today. As her subtitle indicates, her view is that society has entered the post-romantic marriage era. The romantic paradigm of marriage, in which marriage was entered into for love, is being replaced by a new cultural view, just as traditional marriage, in which marriage was needed for status and procreation, was replaced by the romantic view. In this post-romantic era, she finds that low-conflict, low-stress, semi-happy marriages are common, and she proposes that alternative ways of thinking about marriage are needed. Through the stories of individuals whom she calls marriage pioneers, she illustrates some of the pressures exerted by such factors as work, parenting and sex, and shows how some couples are changing the rules and choosing to look at and handle such matters differently. For example, where monogamy was central to the romantic marriage, in the post-romantic marriage, extramarital affairs are often no longer regarded as deal breakers; where romantic marriage was presumably "til death do us part," the post-romantic marriage may be term-limited. Post-romantic spouses may be more like best friends or congenial companions, and rather than constituting a twosome, may be part of a more open network of colleagues. In other words, in this post-romantic era, marriage may be losing its special place and becoming more like other kinds of relationships in people's lives. Haag's use of couple's stories (including some from her own marriage) to illustrate trends makes the book an easy read with a low jargon quotient, and readers looking for parallels to their own marital situations may well find them here.

Despite a title that seems ripped from a tabloid, this is a serious examination of contemporary marriage and a fruitful source of discussion material for women's groups.

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