A surprisingly similar dynamic operates in the very different world of courtship and sexual relations. Clearly, in both cases, participants regularly mingle economic transactions with strong intimacy. Although moralists and participants often invoke hostile worlds concerns when sexual relations are at risk, in fact the differentiation of relations, the marking of boundaries, and the matching of relations with transactions and media go on intensively in the overlapping worlds of courtship and sexual relations. Conventional forms of courtship that frequently lead to marriage operate somewhat differently from relations that might produce intense sexuality but are unlikely to end with marriage (Laumann et al. 2004). They also call up contrasting sorts of moral concerns. At one end we have the specter of a woman’s ruined virtue, at the other, the specter of crass prostitution.
Consider courtship first. Defined broadly, courtship includes all the relationships that have some significant chance of leading to long-term public cohabitation—the whole range from flirtation to the verge of marriage. Courtship necessarily involves economic transactions in a number of ways:
• The couple frequently undertake immediate mutual expenditures, such as shared entertainment, meals, and gifts.
• Courting couples mark transitions in their relationships with costly ceremonies, festivities, investments, and gifts; in recent years, for example, U. S. expenditures on the costliest such events of all—weddings—range from $40 billion to $130 billion a year (Holson 2003: 1; Howard 2000; Mead 2003: 78; Otnes and Pleck 2003).
• Courting couples often anticipate and prepare for their future economic household collaboration by such devices as establishing a trousseau or saving for a house. During an average month, engaged couples spend about $250 million on furniture, the same amount on tableware, and a little under $200 million on housewares (Mead 2003: 86).
• Couples regularly connect their families to each other, often depending on their families’ economic support.
• Over the long run, the families themselves often develop an interest in the economic return from those who marry in.
• Often families incorporate newcomers into family farms, businesses, or housing.
From dating to the brink of marriage, therefore, the mingling of courtship and economic transactions occurs continuously.