The Norms of Marital Stability and Expression of Conflict

We insist, then, that happiness is not, and can not be, built into any family system as either a statistical average, or as a moral norm. As members of the society, we can not be morally required to be happy or unhappy. Family stability, on the other hand, can be the focus of major value complexes, and often is. Just as marital happiness can not be a moral prescription in any society, so can marital unhappiness or conflict not be morally proscribed. Social or physical inevitabilities are rarely, if ever, prohibited.

Of course, such matters are not left socially unstructured. Hostility or conflict can not be allowed to develop without check, for any such lack of harmony may become overt and thus disrupt existing and approved role relations. There are moral and ethical norms to prohibit many kinds of behavior which might tend to excite or intensify hostility and conflict. (Thus, it is wrong for me to sneer often at my wife.) We are also socialized to accept many common values so that grounds for conflict are lessened. (E.g., both my wife and I have been socialized to believe that we ought to live together, that we shall have sexual access to one another, etc.) Moreover, we are taught to regard many differences and difficulties as unimportant, so that we can overlook, or live comfortably with, potential sources of conflict. This is reinforced by values which state that we are "immature," "petty," etc., if we base our conflict on such differences. (Thus, I may not base my conflict with my wife on her failure to butter my toast properly.)

We need not outline these types of patterns systematically. We merely illustrate the fact that values and norms do proscribe conflict indirectly, by defining as improper various kinds of actions that might lead to conflict and hostility.

Correspondingly, the moral structure will not prohibit falling in love with someone who is not one's spouse, but it can and does define as improper those activities of married people which have a good chance of leading to outside love relationships: dating, courtship, being alone with the outsider, especially in situations culturally defined as romantic, and so on.

We therefore assert that some marital conflict is inevitable in any society so long as husband and wife are two different people, and their actions are important to one another.

Correspondingly one may surmise it to be an uncorrectable error in historical reconstruction and nostalgia to believe that our Victorian (or any other) ancestors lived in marital placidity. Doubtless they were stable, but their stability is no reliable index of happiness or of absence of conflict, and we have no objective data for exploring that traditional reconstruction adequately. We can accept neither the sketches of avant-garde literary men who for many reasons concentrated upon deviations, nor the preachments of latterday moralists and rootless urbanites who seek a calm in the past which can be no part of their present lives.