Continuities and Discontinuities in Upper-Class Marriages

Sociologists have little access to the upper class and as a consequence have little opportunity to study the social characteristics of this class systematically. Accordingly, we have used marriage announcements appearing in the society pages of the Sunday New York Times as an accessible-although oblique-unobtrusive measure of the social characteristics of this group and have replicated the well-known study published 25 years ago which pioneered this method. We concentrated on characteristics of the bride and groom: Social-Register membership, education, occupation, residence, and father's occupation, as well as the wedding ceremony itself. Comparisons over time within our own study and between our study and the earlier one reveal many changes in the characteristics of this group which rest, however, upon a fundamental base of continuity.