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Introduction

The Austin Family on Christmas (2012)

My parents met at 36 and 42 years old on a blind date. My father, “D”, had been married previously, with no kids, and my mother, “Suz”, had been ready and waiting to marry since her college graduation. When they met, they clicked, and had both experienced enough of life at this point to know exactly what they wanted from a partner. If you ask them, the accounts are conflicting whether they were engaged after 4 months of dating or 6, but its indisputable that they had a beautiful wedding one year after first laying eyes on each other, and their first daughter, me, 9 months after that. Their romance moved along quickly, but it has only grown stronger after 20 years of marriage for one key reason, as my dad put it, “I think she compliments me very well.” Their upbringings provided differing perspectives on family, which have in part manifested into different parenting styles that maintain the same philosophies. While they both worked, the burden of bills and childrearing evened out to be egalitarian, and left each parent satisfied with their familial role. They drew on their upbringings to provide congruous parenting styles, and a balanced approach to work and family. Divorce is common in the modern era in part due to what Andrew Cherlin described in his work The Marriage Go Round as the conflict between individualism and marital values. It is because these two values were mutually satisfied through my parents’ compatible personalities and strengths that they maintained a happy marriage, and divided their roles in a way that satisfied shared familial philosophies.

The Austins in Tucson, AZ (2013)
The Austins after Morgan's high school graduation (2015)

My parents’ marriage is analyzed through two themes: first, the role of complimentary values, and second, the congruence of the cultural models of individualism and marriage. The first is developed in the section titled “Different Upbringings,” to show how my parents’ respective childhoods shaped their parenting styles, and in “Shared Values,” which analyzes their implementation of concerted cultivation and avoidance of helicopter parenting. The latter theme is first discussed in “The Path to Happily Ever After,” which contextualizes their individualistic and marital modes before marriage. Finally, how exactly they achieved marital and personal satisfaction is analyzed in, “A Balancing Act: Work and Family Life.” These themes are the differentiating factors that allowed my parents to escape America’s “Marriage-Go-Round” while still upholding ideals of the individual and marriage.