Marriage Costums in Colonial America

To start my quest, I began researching courtship in the colonial era. Yes, the first colonies were all men, but eventually women did begin to make the trip to the New America. To my dismay I discovered that this time period was not as pristine as I had imagined. I guess no sheet is fully clean. It was not surprising to find that most women were married before the age of fifteen. I did not know that it was socially humiliating for women if she was not married before the age of twenty-five. Because of the importance of religion in this time period, I believed that there was absolutely no premarital sex. An article written by Andrew G. Garner stated, “…in the mid to late 1700s, more than one girl in three was pregnant when she walked down the aisle. In parts of Britain, 50 percent of brides were great with child.” Marriage was to immediately occur if word of pregnancy spread. Most families tried to wed couples before the bride-to-be started showing, so there would be no shame upon the family. The value of virginity is still strong in many Asian countries. There are places, such as India and Arabia, where arranged marriages are customary practices. Arranged marriages eliminated the hunt to find an attractive spouse. In the modern era, girls use tight clothing to attract a girl. For religious reasons girls wore long dresses and skirts, but I have confidence in the fact that attire would be different if marriages were not arranged. Class, property, and status are as important in an arranged marriage at this time, as they were in colonial times. Many marriages of this time missed a key factor; love. Because marriages were arranged, the participants of the marriage would have to learn to coexist with his/her spouse. My findings were very disappointing. I began to be grateful for the way things were. I would have been depressed in a loveless marriage, and I would be ashamed if I became pregnant out of wedlock. Luckily, I did find positive traditions. I remembered a scene from The Patriot, a movie, where the eldest son laid in bed with his fiancé, but in wrapped in different covers. The separation of lying in the same bed is called bundling. Bundling is defined as the traditional practice of wrapping one person in a bed accompanied by another, usually as a part of courting behavior. I cannot fathom any of my male friends willingly lying in a bed with a girl, without touching her. The major form of courtship in colonial America was dancing. Unlike grinding which is shown on most music videos, these dances did not require girls’ butts to rub against guys hardening penis. Women of this time were expected to be the ultimate homemaker. A wife was expected to cook, clean, care for her children, satisfy her husband, and know the bible. What this era had that the twenty-first century does not is the importance of virginity, family acceptance, and religion. I believe the reason marriages stayed together is because of the fact that everything was so community based, and separation would cause shame for both of the parties’ families. The research of this time period surprised me, but it is nice to be able to accurately compare the two eras.