The transformation of marriage: A historical interpretation of a triple change

This chapter lays out the transformation that the marital institution has undergone in the past decades. Same-sex marriage is probably the most conspicuous recent event, but it can be situated in a broader historical development, and that is what this chapter aims to do. Part I discusses the period, running from around 1800 until around 1960, when civil marriage was ‘invented’ and remained the obvious framework for sexuality and procreation. Part II shows how the law, but equally the status of civil marriage, has undergone a fundamental and lasting metamorphosis. In conclusion, the progressive transformation of the marital institution from the 1960s–1970s onwards reveals three fundamental new characteristics. Firstly, marriage has henceforth a facultative status and has to tolerate other, socially evenly accepted forms of relationships alongside it, outside of the law or legal rivals. Secondly, marriage is no longer the linchpin of parentage law, and in addition it is decreasingly the factual framework for procreation. In both cases, the unity of one normative model makes way for a pluralism of possibilities. And thirdly, whereas marriage wasn’t anymore the only structure where the different generations are connected, its exclusive characteristic is neither the junction of the sexes anymore.