NARME: Call for Presenters / Marriage History / Celibacy Perspective - 1/10/11

[Smartmarriages]

- APOLOGIES
- HEALTHY MARRIAGES ­ HEALTHY FAMILIES CONFERENCE JUNE 2011
- THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE ­ HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
- CELIBACY AND VIRGINITY ­ ONE WOMAN¹S PERSPECTIVE

- APOLOGIES
I somehow typed June 8 instead of January 8 (they both start with J??) for
the airing of the Fox family film and the launch of  the LOVE IS promo. A
lot of you let me know but I didn¹t see your emails in time to sent the
correction.  I hope most of you figured it out.....
I¹ll try to get the next notice right ­ for the film Dear Annie on the same
series.  - diane

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- HEALTHY MARRIAGES ­ HEALTHY FAMILIES CONFERENCE JUNE 2011
NARME, the National Association of Relationship and Marriage Educators, has
set their first annual ³Healthy Marriages ­ Healthy Families² conference for
June 27-30, 2011 in Houston and have issued a Call for Presenters.  Visit
their website http://www.narmeconference.com/ for details. On the site it
explains that sessions will be 90 mins long and should ³provide insightful
information that will enhance the abilities of organizations, practitioners,
and/or individuals to provide services to couples, fathers, families, and
youth and single adults from diverse backgrounds including information on
effective programs for marriages, fatherhood and families, best practices,
tools and resources, and research.   They will also offer one, two and three
day trainings in marriage and family education programs during the body of
the conference.  
Download the application here:
http://www.narmeconference.com/index.php?option=com_rsform&Itemid=53

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- THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE ­ HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Stephanie Coontz
The Washington Post, Sunday Outlook section
January 9, 2011 

. . . We are near the end of a two-stage revolution in the social
understanding and legal definition of marriage. This revolution has
overturned the most traditional functions of the institution: to reinforce
differences in wealth and power and to establish distinct and unequal roles
for men and women under the law.

For millennia, marriage was about property and power rather than love.
Parents arranged their children's unions to expand the family labor force,
gain well-connected in-laws and seal business deals. Sometimes, to
consolidate inheritances, parents prevented their younger children from
marrying at all. For many people, marriage was an unavoidable duty. For
others, it was a privilege, not a right. Often, servants, slaves and paupers
were forbidden to wed.

But a little more than two centuries ago, people began to believe that they
had a right to choose their partners on the basis of love rather than having
their marriages arranged to suit the interests of parents or the state. . .
. 

. . . .      Over the ages, marriage enforced an unequal division of labor,
wealth and power between men and women. Traditional English and American law
gave the husband sole control over all property that his wife brought to
their marriage and any income she earned during it. Husbands had the legal
right - and the duty - to impose their will by force. A husband couldn't
cede any rights to his wife, said the courts, "because that would presuppose
her separate existence," according to Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws.

By the early 19th century, the old ideas that women needed to be under male
authority because they were more prone to sexual passion and religious error
than men, and that husbands ruled the home just as monarchs ruled their
kingdoms, had given way to a gentler but equally rigid gender ideology. Men
were recast as benevolent breadwinners who exercised authority not because
they were the patriarchal bosses of the family labor force, but because they
were women's natural providers and protectors. Women were frail dependents
whose nurturing nature and innate sexual purity predisposed them to sweet
submission. 

This redefinition of gender allowed 19th-century Americans to reconcile the
new ideal of married love with a continued claim that husbands and wives had
completely different rights and duties. And in the 20th century, even as the
right of individuals to choose their partner became the cultural norm and
legal reality, the insistence that marriage united two distinct gender
stereotypes became increasingly shrill.

And, so on....for the full article:
http://tinyurl.com/4f9a7b8
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- CELIBACY AND VIRGINITY ­ ONE WOMAN¹S PERSPECTIVE
Single, Female, Mormon, Alone
By Nichole Hardy
The New York Times / Modern Love Series
January 9, 2011
        
 OF all the places I felt sure I¹d never go, Planned Parenthood  topped the
list. . . . . I was a 35-year-old virgin, preparing for my own ³first time,²
which, incidentally, didn¹t happen until I was well into 36.

I was not frigid, fearful or socially inept. Not overweight or unattractive.
Didn¹t suffer from halitosis  or social anxiety disorder. I was a practicing
Mormon, and Mormons ³wait² until marriage. So I had waited, spent the first
two decades of my adult life celibate and, for the most part, alone. Because
only after the trial of my faith would I be blessed with an eternal
marriage, which, I prayed, would also blow my mind in the bedroom.

It never occurred to me that I would remain unmarried, especially in a
system where marriage is not only a commandment, but also one of life¹s
primary purposes. Turns out, though, that there is no place in that
community for a single woman who doesn¹t want children.

My only available choice within the church was to wait for my reward in
heaven, as Mormon doctrine promises that single members denied marriage,
family and sex lives on earth will have them after death. Needless to say,
this wasn¹t a compelling argument.

Most troubling was the fact that as I grew older I had the distinct sense of
remaining a child in a woman¹s body; virginity brought with it arrested
development on the level of a handicapping condition, like the Russian
orphans I¹d read about whose lack of physical contact altered their
neurobiology and prevented them from forming emotional bonds. Similarly, it
felt as if celibacy was stunting my growth; it wasn¹t just sex I lacked but
relationships with men entirely. Too independent for Mormon men, and too
much a virgin for the other set, I felt trapped in adolescence.

For the full article: http://tinyurl.com/4um63vx

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