How Mormon Polygamy In The 19th Century Fueled Women’s Activism

Many states still followed the common law Doctrine of Coverture, which declared a woman civilly dead once she married. It’s not just…

GROSS: So she had no legal rights over her money, her property. She had no ownership over them.

ULRICH: Her money, her – her money, her property – she couldn’t sue or take a case to court except under a father or a husband – so dependency. The right to divorce – although divorce laws were greatly liberalized in the 19th century in most parts of the country, it was definitely – you had to prove either adultery – it took a while for physical abuse to be grounds for divorce.

.. Utah had no fault divorce from the beginning. It was very, very open and pretty common. And particularly, I think that made plural marriage workable. If you didn’t like it, you could leave.

.. It’s a very different world than we imagine. And so instead of comparing plural marriage in the 19th century to our notions of women’s rights today, we need to compare plural marriage, monogamy and then other institutions that really distressed people in the 19th century, like prostitution for example, different kinds of bigamous relationships.

So Mormons would argue, many American men have multiple sexual partners. They’re just not responsible. They don’t acknowledge them. They don’t give them dignity. They don’t legitimate their children. So polygamy is a solution to the horrendous licentiousness of other Americans.

 

.. So one of the things you’re famous for is a phrase that you originated in – I think it was like an academic paper in the 1970s – and the phrase has since shown up on like T-shirts and bumper stickers. I know you’re asked about this all the time, but the phrase is well-behaved women seldom make history.

Now, knowing your work, knowing that you write about, quote, “ordinary women” who kept journals, and you’re trying to understand what the lives of, like, ordinary women were in their time, I interpret that quote as meaning if you’re just looking at history, you won’t understand the lives of ordinary women because ordinary women seldom make history. But I suspect that that has been – that quote has been interpreted as ordinary women seldom make history so women don’t be ordinary, do something special so you can make history. Don’t be ordinary.

.. Yes. It’s been turned upside-down. On the other hand, you know, I was an ordinary girl from Idaho who got involved in the feminist movement and I’ve been on a collective bargaining team, and my former university, you know – I’ve done a lot of not very well-behaved things. And so I guess I embrace both sides. I embrace the contradiction of that crazy accidental slogan.

Women just aren’t that into the ‘marriageable male’ anymore, economists say

The “marriageable male” has steady income. He pays his bills on time and could help support a child, too. He has long captured the interest of economists, who associate him with a healthier economy.

.. Historically, bursts of prosperity among blue-collar men have reduced the share of kids born to unwed parents.

.. The commitment to childbearing with marriage in the ’70s and ’80s is just no longer there.”

.. Riley Wilson, calculated that every $1,000 per capita increase in an area’s fracking production was linked to an additional six births per 1,000 women. About half of those extra babies, she said, were born to married parents.

In other words, more money seemed to bring more kids — regardless of the parents’ marital status.

This baby boom wasn’t as shocking to Kearney as the unofficial relationships. Babies, she explained, are viewed as “normal goods” — a demand that increases when income increase

.. A 10 percent increase in earnings was tied to a 9.6 percent decrease in the share of unmarried women (ages 15 to 34) — and a whopping 25 percent reduction of children born to single moms.

.. In the United States, 40 percent of children are born to unmarried women

.. Educational differences skew the share, however: Sixty-two percent of such kids have mothers who lack a college degree.

.. In his groundbreaking book, “ The Truly Disadvantaged,” Wilson sought to explain why single motherhood was on the rise in predominately black communities and found that employed women were outnumbering employed men. That imbalance, he concluded, reduced women’s incentive to marry.

 

This is How the Elite Poisons Our Culture

The New York Times Magazine takes an open-minded view of open marriage.

A thriving culture needs leaders who don’t just live the right values, but work diligently to advocate for them against our baser desires. Cultural leadership isn’t just about walking the walk; it’s about talking the talk, too.

.. our secular elite speaks blue, but largely lives red. In other words, our wealthy, progressive, urban centers are hardly hedonistic enclaves. They’re chock-full of intact families, featuring moms and dads who waited until marriage to have children, value education immensely, and work hard to make sure that their kids make the same choices they did.

.. When it comes to actually arguing for the traditional family values they practice in their own lives, though, liberals are silent. They wouldn’t dare go so far as to pass moral judgment on those who live differently.

.. Indeed, they may even take great pleasure in embracing the few “transgressive” couples in their orbit as living symbols of progressive tolerance.