ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why most Americans choose marriage, how they get married, and what they both expect and experience in that institution. The institution of marriage is found in some form in all human societies because it is an effective way to ensure societal continuity through reproduction and socialization, as well as societal extension through the kinds of alliances that are produced when families are joined. The structure of American marriage has retained its shape over the past three centuries, but the reasons that people choose marriage and the hopes and expectations that they bring to this institution have been radically transformed. Love as the basis for marriage was not a social invention of the nineteenth century, but it did take root then as part of the new ideology of individualism that was coming to define an ascendant middle class. The epitome of the cultural ideal of companionate marriage was reached in the 1950s.
