By: Easton Montgomery
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ asked Shakespeare back in the 16th century. ‘Mr Novinsky, may I have your daughter’s hand in marriage?’ asked my grandpa in the 1950s—a practice that’s slowly fading out. ‘I met her on Tinder’, said many young teenagers in 2014. Has love itself ever changed? Perhaps not. But the way we discover it and express it has. Over generations the customs of love have evolved, but the emotional feeling of love itself has remained constant.
The customs of love have managed to change pretty drastically over the past two generations. In my interview with Maryann Thill, my grandmother, she went on to tell me the life of a teenage girl in the 1950s. …show more content…
Marriage isn’t even considered until the late twenties and even into the thirties. In a NY Times article written by Patricia Cohen it states, “Marriage and parenthood - once seen as prerequisites for adulthood - are now viewed more as lifestyle choices, according to a new report released by Princeton University and the Brookings Institution." We in today’s world view it as nothing more than an ending to our present lives and a time to be serious and settle down. Fifty years ago my grandma said she got married at 17 years old. Straight out of high school. According to many sources that was the norm. Fifty percent was after high school and the rest was to be married during the next stage of schooling. The goal for many young girls was to be engaged during high school. Now some of this falls onto what was going on within the society at the time. Young men were being trained and shipped off to fight in the Vietnam War. This made them want to settle early and have someone that they could write home to. Some even would start a family months before shipping off overseas.
We talked briefly about the impact of social media on the current relationship and if it helped bring them closer or tear them apart. Maryann answered swiftly implying that it neither helped nor destroy anything they had between them. All it gave them was a way to share memories, and to get ahold of each other faster. In today’s generation social media has had a dramatic impact …show more content…
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Cohen, Patricia. “Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 June 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/us/13generations.html.
Thill, Maryann. Interview over Love. 1, March 2018.
“Why Dating In Today's Society Sucks.” The Odyssey Online, 28 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/why-dating-todays-society-sucks.
Yatziv, Ofer. “How Courtship and Marriage Have Changed Over Time -.” The Good Men Project, 27 Feb. 2016,