Enduring maritonormativity in times of marital decline: observations from South Africa and the United States

Michael W. Yarbrough

Chapter 8 in Handbook on Politics and Society, 2025, pp 146-166 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Marriage rates have markedly declined in South Africa, the United States, and many global societies. Yet even still, evidence abounds that marriage continues to play a key role in organizing the social world. Using observations from the US and South Africa, this chapter develops the concept of maritonormativity as a lens for understanding this seeming paradox. Drawing inspiration from the concept of heteronormativity, maritonormativity describes a social system that privileges marriage as the ideal relational form and is produced through a wide range of ongoing social action. The chapter identifies regulative, distributive, cognitive, and narrative mechanisms that all work together to sustain maritonormativity in South Africa and the US. Using this lens, the chapter argues that recent declines in marital practice reflect neoliberal transformations in the mechanisms of maritonormativity, with distributive inequalities built around marriage growing in importance as regulative mandates to marry recede.

Keywords: Family; Marriage; Colonialism; Neoliberalism; South Africa; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301898
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