The subject of my TED Talk will be the shift from the idea of marriage as a way to gain wealth and status to it being based on the emotion of love.
As my first point, I will bring up how in the old days, people did not believe in love and viewed is as being a frivolous emotion that should not be the basis of any decision. I will talk about how important marriage was viewed to parents of young kids, as dowries were made in preparation. The end goals of women were essential just to get married to a rich man and raise children. Happiness was an after thought for them.
As found on theweek.com,
“The first recorded evidence of marriage contracts and ceremonies dates to 4,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia. In the ancient world, marriage served primarily as a means of preserving power, with kings and other members of the ruling class marrying off daughters to forge alliances, acquire land, and produce legitimate heirs. Even in the lower classes, women had little say over whom they married. The purpose of marriage was the production of heirs, as implied by the Latin word matrimony, which is derived from mater (mother).”
I will also tell a personal story of my grandparent’s arranged marriage and how they learned how to live together because divorce was simply out of the question. They come from a small town in Italy and divorce was not allowed to even be considered. This forced couples to find a way to make it work, because that was all they could do to get by.
As the next point, I will talk about the need for why people thought love was just a waste of time, and why is was not accounted for at all in relationships. “In fact, love and marriage were once widely regarded as incompatible with one another.”
I will use this to transition into when it did become the central part of relationships and the reasoning behind this. This will be the main theme of the paradigm shift.
The idea of love in marriage came about during the 17th and 18th century. This was because it was the era of Enlightenment and people were concerned with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” People began to take more control over their lives and what made them happy. Divorce began to be viewed as a common event that was done to preserve the happiness of an individual.
I will end the talk, relying it back to the present day on how the argument on the “pursuit of happiness” has allowed society to become more accepting of same sex marriages and how divorce is more common then ever. According to statistics, 50% of marriages now end in divorce.
As marriage had once began as a sacred gesture, perfectly planned, and done for a reason, it is now viewed as disposable. If this relationship doesn’t work out, there’s always other fish in the sea right? Because relationships are largely based on emotion over function, do you think it makes it harder or easier to get through the tough times?
For my ted talk I’m talking about female jobs from the 1900’s to now, and I do talk a little bit about marriage in my ted talk so it’s interesting to see how our ted talks might align. In the beginning when you talk about marriage in the old days, I think it would be helpful (and increase your credibility) to find one or two stats about the amount of women who married at a young age to reinforce the argument that marriage was all about wealth; in my research I found some stats on the amount of women who married when they were 23 (the ideal age) – so you could maybe find a similar stat and explain how there is a huge possibility that they married young so they could immediately be wealthy.
The personal connection with your grandparents is a good addition to the ted talk as it is different from the rather straight-forward researched information about marriage. It will keep the audience engaged in your topic because it is something more personal to you.
As far as what you will talk about in the end (about marriage ending in divorce) I had no idea divorce rates were as high as they are. If it fits into your ted talk smoothly, it might be interesting to talk about why marriages end in divorce, and connect this reasoning back to one of the shifts. For example, if you researched that most marriages end in divorce because the couples aren’t happy (I’m just guessing this would be a possible reason, I obviously haven’t done the research on this topic so I’m not entirely sure) you could talk about the irony in this considering marriages today shifted from being about wealth to being about emotions of love and happiness.
You have a nicely organized ted-style talk and I think the audience will be engaged throughout the whole talk. Make sure to include some visuals!