SOME summers are sizzling, others are balmy. This June turned out to be the former variety for romance in the United States, albeit of the reckless kind.
In the space of a month, a well-known Los Angeles media personality, two prominent politicians and America's leading reality TV couple went public with their affairs and troubled marriages.
On June 16, Senator John Ensign of Nevada confessed his dalliance with a member of his campaign staff. A week later, South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford admitted to having an Argentinian paramour. Both married politicians were seen as rising stars in the Republican Party.
After 10 years together, Jon and Kate Gosselin of Jon & Kate Plus 8 fame - a reality TV show about their lives raising their eight-year-old twins and five-year- old sextuplets - called it quits in an episode watched by 10.6 million US viewers.
Writer, actress and radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh went a step further. Writing about how her infidelity had upended her 20-year marriage in the latest edition of cultural and literary magazine, The Atlantic, she urged people to avoid marriage or suffer the breakup of a long-term union at mid-life.
Americans are no strangers to high-profile breakups, but the spate of broken relationships seemed to prompt deeper than usual soul-searching about the value of saying 'I do' in a landscape littered with broken marriages.
In the weeks that followed, people asked hard questions, laying bare their misgivings and fears.
What is the purpose of marriage today, given that lifestyles which were once frowned upon, such as cohabitation and having children outside of marriage, are no longer stigmatised?
Has marital fidelity become the exception rather than the rule? Should an unfaithful spouse be given a second chance?
An excessively cynical line of questioning for people living in a country where 85 per cent of citizens are expected to marry, against less than 70 per cent in some European states, some might think.
'Americans are still generally obsessed with marriage. They uphold it as a cherished ideal just as they did five decades ago, but it is also true that the institution of marriage has taken a beating in modern times,' said Dr Kristin Celello, a historian at the City University of New York and author of Making Marriage Work: A History Of Marriage And Divorce In The Twentieth-Century United States.
Dr Charles Foster, director of the Boston-based Chestnut Hill Institute, which offers psychotherapy and family therapy, said: 'Fifty years ago, marriage was almost everyone's unquestioned destiny. Today, it is something a great many people question, debate, agonise over, resist, and, in some cases, oppose.'
These conflicted feelings can be linked to the spectre of divorce, the education and economic independence of women as well as gains in birth control that have allowed couples to separate sexual activity from procreation, experts say.
As a result, marriage is no longer the dominant and single acceptable form of living arrangement for couples and children in the US, notes Dr David Popenoe, director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
'Today, there is more family diversity. Fewer adults are married, more are divorced or remaining single, and more are living together outside of marriage or living alone,' wrote the marriage expert in his latest annual State Of Our Unions report on the health of marriage in the US.
While some see the current situation pushing the US towards a non-marriage culture, others are betting on the resurgence of old-fashion family values.
'It is baloney to think that Americans have or will forsake marriage,' said Dr Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Centre on Children and Families. 'Marriage has been under assault for a long time, but it has been holding up well.'
He points to research which has found that after more than a century of rising divorce rates in the US, rates have gradually declined since the 1980s and are now at their lowest levels in three decades.
Some attribute the dip to adults becoming better educated and marrying at a later age. However, others reckon it is because more are cohabiting.
Another indicator which has led to the perception that Americans suffer from marriage fatigue - the oft-quoted statistic that half of all US marriages end in divorce - is misleading, Dr Haskins said.
That figure is derived by comparing the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people with the annual divorce rate. But researchers say the couples divorcing in any given year may not be the same ones who got married. New studies have put the divorce rate closer to 40 per cent.
'For every revolution, there is an equal and opposite counter-revolution. I am optimistic that the counter-revolution towards marriage is coming,' said Dr Haskins, a former White House and congressional adviser on welfare issues.
And the ones most likely to inspire it? Dr Haskins feels it could be the First Family itself, pointing out that 'Mr Barack Obama shows a great example of marriage and a commitment to kids'.
He notes how the US President - who grew up with an absent father - urged dads to be more involved in bringing up their children in a moving Father's Day speech last month.
Dr Haskins added: 'I wouldn't be surprised to see over the next 20 years, more emphasis on how important two parents are, how married couples are happier and better for the well-being of their children.'
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This article was first published in The Straits Times.
