MARRIAGE
Our society assumes that the majority of men and women will marry and, generally speaking, it considers marriage evidence of an adequate social and sexual adjustment. It is also taken as evidence of a willingness to assume responsibility, and of a desire to create long-lasting intimate relationships and to conform to the dictates of public respectability.
We have considered as a marriage any common-law marriage (one in which a man and woman live openly together as husband and wife although no legal marriage ceremony has occurred) that lasted continuously for at least one year. The number of common-law marriages that do last this long or longer may surprise the readers who belong to the upper and upper-middle classes where such marriages are rare. The control group made the fewest common-law marriages—only 4 per cent. Next are 11 groups with percentages of from 8 to 17 inclusive. The remaining four groups have large proportions of common-law marriages: the peepers (22 per cent), the homosexual offenders vs. adults (23 per cent despite their higher socioeconomic status), the homosexual offenders vs. minors (24 per cent), and the aggressors vs. children (32 per cent). The large figure for the aggressors vs. children fits in with their general alcoholic, disorganized, and shiftless style of life. The two homosexual-offender groups and the peepers, however, pose a problem. Since all three had unusual difficulty in adjusting to a heterosexual life, perhaps their common-law marriages represent a hesitant experimental approach and qualified commitment to the legal sexual relationship society expects and demands.
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