This guide is designed to provide information for those who are interested in exploring cross-cultural customs and rituals associated with weddings and marriage.
Intercultural Marriage by Dugan RomanoAn insightful look at the stresses and challenges of intercultural relationships - from one who has been there. Today we live in a world without borders, a global village. Distance no longer defines who we meet, fall in love with or marry. The Internet and e-mail connect people around the world in seconds. Immigration, study abroad, travel and multinational business have created a thriving cross-cultural community. But the experiences shared across cultures and countries do not always bridge the fundamental differences in beliefs and behaviors that span diverse cultures. In Intercultural Marriage, Dugan Romano delivers a "reality check" for anyone already in, or contemplating, an intercultural marriage. This insightful book interweaves lessons learned from others and suggests that the joys of an intercultural marriage often result from turning the challenges of crossing cultures into an opportunity for a fulfilling and lasting relationship. Now in its third edition, Intercultural Marriage examines the impact of cultural differences in marriage and offers practical guidelines on how to deal with the complexities they bring to a partnership. Covering such topics as raising bicultural children, religion, values, male vs. female roles, sex and social class, Romano continues to give voice to hundreds of couples she has interviewed and followed for over a decade.
ISBN: 9781931930529
Publication Date: 2008 Click on book to view
International Encyclopedia of Marriage and FamilyThe second edition of the International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family revises and expands Macmillan's 1995 Encyclopedia of Marriage and the Family, adopting an international, cross-cultural approach to such diverse topics as adolescent parenthood, family planning, cohabitation, widowhood, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, codependency and commuter marriages. It includes articles specific to countries and to religious traditions, examining the history of family life within these cultures and discussing how families have been affected by political and social change.
ISBN: 9780028656724
Publication Date: 2002 Click on book to view
Making Marriage Work by Kristin CelelloBy the end of World War I, the skyrocketing divorce rate in the United States had generated a deep-seated anxiety about marriage. This fear drove middle-class couples to seek advice, both professional and popular, in order to strengthen their relationships. In Making Marriage Work, historian Kristin Celello offers an insightful and wide-ranging account of marriage and divorce in America in the twentieth century, focusing on the development of the idea of marriage as "work." Throughout, Celello illuminates the interaction of marriage and divorce over the century and reveals how the idea that marriage requires work became part of Americans' collective consciousness.
ISBN: 9780807832523
Publication Date: 2009 Click on book to view
Medieval Marriage by David L. d'AvrayThis study shows how marriage symbolism emerged from the world of texts to become a social force affecting ordinary people. It covers the whole medieval period but identifies the decades around 1200 as decisive. New arguments for regarding preaching as a mass medium from the thirteenth centuryare presented, building on the author's Medieval Marriage Sermons. In marriage preaching symbolism was central. Marriage symbolism also became a social force through law, and lay behind the combination of monogamy and indissolubility which made the medieval Church's marriage system a uniquedevelopment in world history. Symbolism is not presented as an explanation on its own: it interacted with other causal factors, notably the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform's drive for celibacy, which made the higher clergy like a third gender and less sympathetic to patriarchal polygamoustendencies. Sexual intercourse as a symbol of Christ's union with the Church became central, not just in mysticism but in society as structured by Church law. Symbolism also explains apparently bizarre rules, such as the exemption from capital punishment of clerics in minor orders provided that theymarried a virgin not a widow. The rules about blessing second marriages are also connected with this nexus of thought.The book is based on a wide range of manuscript sources: sermons, canon law commentaries, Apostolic Penitentiary registers, papal bulls, a gaol delivery roll, and pastoral handbooks. The collection of documents at the end of the book expands the source base for the history of medieval marriagegenerally as well as underpinning the thesis about symbolism.
ISBN: 9780198208211
Publication Date: 2005 Click on book to view
Alone Together by Paul R. Amato; Alan Booth; David R. Johnson; Stacy J. RogersMost observers agree that marriage in America has been changing. Some think it is in decline, that the growth of individualism has made it increasingly difficult to achieve satisfying and stable relationships. Others believe that changes, such as increasing gender equality, have made marriage a better arrangement for men as well as women. Based on two studies of marital quality in America twenty years apart, this book takes a middle view, showing that while the divorce rate has leveled off, spouses are spending less time together?people may be ?bowling alone? these days, but married couples are also eating alone. Indeed, the declining social capital of married couples?including the fact that couples have fewer shared friends?combined with the general erosion of community ties in American society has had pervasive, negative effects on marital quality. At the same time, family income has increased, decision-making equality between husbands and wives is greater, marital conflict and violence have declined, and the norm of lifelong marriage enjoys greater support than ever. The authors conclude that marriage is an adaptable institution, and in accommodating the vast changes that have occurred in society over the recent past, it has become a less cohesive, yet less confining arrangement.