Pre-Marital Rituals in Contemporary France. Inventing a New "Tradition"?

In 1960s France, marriage was an obligatory stage of couple and family formation and the marriage process followed a clear-cut pathway that remained relatively uniform from one individual to the next.  Newly formed couples went out together - without living together – for two years on average.  During this period, the future spouses presented their partner to their families, often through an official celebration of their engagement.  While more than half of all marriages at the time were preceded by an engagement, the practice then declined.

In this paper, we analyse trends in engagement since the 1970s.  Has the practice disappeared, or do couples still choose to become engaged? If so, who are the fiancés of the 21^st century? The actual content of the engagement process will then be analysed. Are family networks becoming increasingly autonomous, in the sense that engagement is no longer a direct concern of the parents of the future spouses? If so, are they replaced by friends, or is the engagement a more private affair ?

Last, our attention will turn to a new form of pre-marital ritualization, namely "bachelor"  or "bachelorette" parties, often seen as a "tradition" by the persons involved.  We will examine the emergence and spread of these rituals among the social groups that practice them in order to test the idea that parties have now replaced formal engagement.  

We will use the initial findings of the "Study of Individual and Conjugal Trajectories" survey conducted by INED and INSEE in 2013 on a representative sample of 8000 persons aged 25-64.  Focusing specifically on the couple formation process, the survey will be used to study couples formed from the early 1970s up to today.  It includes a specific set of questions on rituals for detailed studies of engagement and bachelor/bachelorette parties.