In America, potential marriage partners are free to choose their spouses. Naturally, there are some constraints. Some people will never have a chance to meet because of class, regional, ethnic, or racial differences. Also, parents usually make their preferences known.

However, the American norm is that despite these constraints, love is to conquer all, people are free to choose their marriage partners, to "fall in love."

This emphasis on love would seem strange to many people of the world, where the choice of one's spouse is often dictated by considerations of family, wealth, and other domestic considerations taking precedence over love.

The American emphasis on love is highly compatible with a kinship system that emphasizes the nuclear unit. It fits in well with the needs of a bureaucratic-industrial society.

By casting the family adrift from close ties with extended kinship systems, industrial society has created an extremely mobile population (both physically and socially).

Since it is the couple who must live alone, it is appropriate for them to select each other on the basis of such non-familial and non-utilitarian traits as love and compatibility.

Couple this insubstantial foundation with the internal and external conflicts on the present American family structure, and the wonder is not that the divorce rate is so high, but why it isn’t higher.

In general, the traditional expectation is that males are to be the "breadwinners." They are to earn enough money to support the family.

Traditionally, females were to perform domestic chores:

Increasingly these traditional roles no longer fit the needs of people living in a hyper-industrial society. Consequently, there is tremendous pressure on the American family to change.

The most powerful force for change comes from women entering the workforce. With two breadwinners, some of the male role are thrust into some confusion.

For example, how much is the father to be involved in daily child care and in household chores?

Who should change the diapers, wash dishes, shop, transport children, and do other traditional female activities. As wives have entered the workforce they have begun to recognize the drudgery of housework.

Many women are finding it difficult to work full time and to perform traditional household and motherhood roles.

To date, most men have refused these tasks, forcing many women to both work outside the home and to perform most domestic chores.

Although the average women earns substantially less than a man, women are no longer as heavily reliant on their husbands for economic support.

Women who are newly confident of being able to support themselves are much more likely to abandon a marriage that has gone sour, Husbands are also much more likely to abandon such a relationship.

Having no or fewer children does not place a great strain on the family unit, but it does make it less stable. Not only do people work at marriage more if children are involved, but children are often a shared interest of the couple.

Adolescents are in the awkward period where biologically, at least, they are adult but have few of the social a bureaucratic role playing skills necessary to participate in adult roles.

It is inevitable that some parents and their biologically mature offspring will come into some conflict. Especially since the young are increasingly socialized by other and gaining new experiences that are often at variance with their parents

We are the sum total of our roles, and our roles are constantly changing. Because so many husbands and wives work, they themselves are changing.

You may marry a teacher in your 20s and find yourself married to a banker in your 30s. People change values with their jobs. "We grew apart" is one of the most common reason given for divorce.

Sources of strain are built into the American family system. Because industrial society demands a mobile workforce, other kin are unlikely to be around to shoulder household burdens, deflect emotions, care for children, care for aged parents, counsel adolescents, and to otherwise help family members to cope.

The functions of the extended kinship system have been taken over, to a large extent, by formal service organizations staffed by professionals, steeped in the ideology of individualism, who have on personal stake in the marriage itself.

The glue that holds the union together is romantic love. But romantic love is build on fantasy, mystery, spontaneity, bursting emotion, and surprise.

When these expectations are confronted with the garbage, the diapers, and the weariness after a day's work, they tend to shrivel.

And when they do, millions of Americans assume that because the "thrill is gone" the partnership must have failed.

The American family has lost most of its basic functions in hyper-industrial society.

The primary function remaining is that it has become a "haven from the outside world," the center of our emotional life. As such, it has become extremely unstable.

When it fails to live up to unrealistic expectations of permanent bliss, people tend to cut and run.

As the functions of the American family change, its structure changes as well.

Where we appear to be moving is toward a marriage system based on serial monogamy.

This is the process of moving into (and out of) a series of monogamous relationships.

And this, of course, has consequences for our children, our personal finances, our economy, political systems, as well as our norms and values.