marriage

1. 1. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife, and in some jurisdictions, between two persons of the same sex, usually entailing legal obligations of each person to the other.
   2. A similar union of more than two people; a polygamous marriage.
   3. A union between persons that is recognized by custom or religious tradition as a marriage.
   4. A common-law marriage.
   5. The state or relationship of two adults who are married: Their marriage has been a happy one.
2. A wedding.
3. A close union: "the most successful marriage of beauty and blood in mainstream comics" (Lloyd Rose).
4. Games. The combination of the king and queen of the same suit, as in pinochle.

[Middle English mariage, from Old French, from marier, to marry. See marry¹.]

Since the nineteenth century, complex issues in the study of marriage have involved the productive and reproductive powers of the body. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many scholars, such as Lewis Henry Morgan, Sigmund Freud, and James Frazer, viewed evolution in sexuality and family life as a crucial dynamic in the history of human civilization, asserting an evolutionary development from primitive promiscuity and group marriage to modern constraint, monogamy, and patriarchy. In the 1920s and 1930s, the increased practice of fieldwork — the extended practical observation of everyday life in societies — induced specialists in this ethnographic discipline, such as the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his students, to abandon the ‘conjectural histories’ of the evolutionists. Rather, they developed a view of sexual constraint and individual marriage — as opposed to promiscuity and group marriage — as common elements in many different types of societies. This new method, described in its earliest form as functionalism but modified considerably over time, has become a mainstay of the modern social sciences; it stresses the crucial significance of marriage for many aspects of group structure in all societies, including patterns of descent, residence, alliance, and classification of kin.

Definitions

These perspectives share a concern to define marriage, whether as a means to trace the evolutionary development of its different types or as a prelude to the identification of its distinctive functions in society. Many attempts have been made to identify the essential nature of marriage and to list its purposes, a project often as revealing of the observer's assumptions as of the observed practices. Across cultures, the ceremonial and social phenomena conventionally defined as marriage assume myriad forms and serve varied purposes, yet marriage is usually defined as the formal ideological recognition of a sexual relationship between one man and one woman (monogamy) ; among one man and two or more women (polygamy: polygyny) ; or among one woman and two or more men (polygamy: polyandry). Because sexual intercourse is approved in this relationship, the children of a marriage usually possess a status superior to children born beyond its boundaries.

In an argument against such essentialism, the anthropologist Edmund Leach rejected universal definitions and instead approached marriage as a ‘bundle of rights’. Among the classes of rights allocated by institutions ‘commonly classed as marriage’, Leach noted that in different societies ‘marriage’ may serve:

(i) to establish the legal father of a woman's children;
(ii) to establish the legal mother of a man's children;
(iii) to give the husband a monopoly in the wife's sexuality;
(iv) to give the wife a monopoly in the husband's sexuality;
(v) to give the husband partial or monopolistic rights to the wife's domestic or other labour services;
(vi) to give the wife partial or monopolistic rights to the husband's labour services;
(vii) to give the husband rights over the property of his wife;
(viii) to give the wife rights over the property of her husband;
(ix) to establish a joint fund of property, a partnership, for the benefit of the children of the marriage; and
(x) to establish a socially significant ‘relationship of affinity’ between the husband and his wife's brothers.

Leach's essay, and the debate it provoked in the late 1950s, had a seminal influence on approaches to marriage as an ethnographic problem, as a culturally specific set of beliefs, practices, and institutions. Because marriage did not establish all of these types of rights in any known society, Leach concluded that the ‘institutions commonly described as marriage do not all have the same legal and social concomitants’ and that the meaning of marriage in any society could emerge only from detailed investigation of its ethnographic context. At the same time, Leach's essay typified an approach that has focused on how marriage may structure relationships between individuals and among groups, and has stressed the interrelationship of principles of descent, rules of residence, and issues of power over property.

Yet such jural approaches have serious ethnographic limitations, as even the basic conditions of sex between spouses and reproduction of legitimate offspring are not invariably present in relations understood as marriage. A form of woman-to-woman marriage among the Nuer in eastern Africa, observed in the 1930s, created conjugal relationships that furnished heirs for barren women but excluded the sexual partner of the child-bearers from the marital relationship. Nuer also practised a form of ‘ghost marriage’ between dead men and living women — marriages undertaken by the male relatives, usually younger brothers, of men who died heirless — in order to preserve the names of the deceased in their lineages. In this context, the jural marriage existed between the living and the dead, not between the sexual partners. Furthermore, in several European states and in the US, weddings are performed for lesbian and homosexual partners and also for heterosexual partners who are incapable of sexual intercourse. The meanings and experience of marriage elude persistent efforts to define the custom in terms of legitimate sexuality, the approved reproduction of children, or other sets of formal ‘rights and duties’.

Recent trends

Two important recent developments in work on marriage have been the feminist critique of jural approaches and the revival of the broad historical and comparative perspective of the late nineteenth century, without its ‘conjectural histories’ and flawed evolutionist designs. A feminist perspective on marriage has suggested that the stress on ‘rights and duties’ too narrowly subsumes women's experiences under juridical issues and obscures the reciprocity between husband and wife and the informal power women wield within marriage. These insights have been useful in the analysis, for instance, of the competition for power among male heads of households and co-wives in polygynous marriage systems.

A second recent development in the study of marriage has revived the project of comparative social science as a complement to the ethnographic discipline of fieldwork. Avoiding what Jack Goody has styled ‘the ghastly warning of what can go wrong’ in the work of the earlier evolutionists, this approach uses ethnographic data, Goody's ‘clusters of interacting variables’, to address ‘problems of comparison and long-term change’ in social institutions. A major focus of comparison has been the correlation of marriage practices, patterns of inheritance, and other aspects of social systems, such as divisions of labour and forms of economic production, in the societies of Africa, Asia, and Europe. This comparative method has resulted in appropriately qualified correlations among (i) monogamy, dowry, status endogamy (like marrying like in class terms), and forms of plough agriculture in many Eurasian societies, producing more stratified social systems; and (ii) polygyny, bridewealth, exogamy, and horticulture in African societies, resulting in more open and interrelated social systems. Furthermore, a distinctive European pattern of marriage and inheritance has been identified, developing after the fourth century ce and marked by ‘extensive prohibitions’ of close or cousin marriage; abolition of the levirate and sororate (customary unions with the wife of a dead brother or the sister of a dead wife) and an increase in widows who did not remarry; the limitation of adoption; and the proscription of concubinage. More controversially, it has been suggested that this pattern resulted from the Christian Church's use of its power over laws of marriage and family to secure property for its temporal purposes.

— Dan Beaver

Bibliography

• Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1951). Kinship and marriage among the Nuer. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
• Goody, J. (1983). The development of the family and marriage in Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Rosaldo, M. and Lamphere, L. (ed.) (1974). Woman, culture, and society. Stanford University Press, Stanford

noun

1. The state of being united as husband and wife: conjugality, connubiality, matrimony, wedlock. See marriage/unmarried.
2. The act or ceremony by which two people become husband and wife: bridal, espousal, nuptial (often used in plural), spousal (often used in plural), wedding. See marriage/unmarried.

Definition: social joining of two people; a union
Antonyms: divorce, separation

The Supreme Court has affirmed the right of the states to prescribe most of the conditions of marriage. Before the twentieth century, the most contentious issue was comity. The Court generally held that states had to recognize the legitimacy of marriage entered into in other states. However, with Reynolds v. United States (1879), in which the justices refused to recognize polygamy as protected by the First Amendment, the Court began to create a national standard of marital rights.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Court limited state marital regulation significantly by protecting rights of individuals to wed. Justice William O. Douglas declared in dicta in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that marriage was a “noble” and “sacred” relationship, into whose privacy the state could not intrude without compelling reasons. In Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Court affirmed that marriage was a fundamental right and accordingly invalidated a state ban on interracial marriage. Zablocki v. Redhail (1978) voided a Wisconsin law prohibiting the remarriage of a noncustodial parent who failed to pay court‐ordered child support. All these challenged restrictions violated the right to wed that the Court found implicitly guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. However, most kinds of state regulation of marriage have survived judicial scrutiny.

Tensions between individual choice and state regulation continue to dominate the law. The Court has recently refused to recognize marital status and related rights of individuals involved in homosexual unions (see Homosexuality) or other cohabitation arrangements because, the Court maintains, such nontraditional unions do not serve the same social ends as matrimony. As the twenty‐first century began, same‐sex marriage became the most contentious issue in marriage law. The 2003 Massachusetts ruling upholding the legality of such marriages clashes directly with federal and state laws defining matrimony as the union of a man and a woman. The conflict raises anew fundamental questions about the limits of state family law autonomy and the obligations of domestic relations comity. These will have to be decided by the Court.

— Michael Grossberg

For more information on marriage, visit Britannica.com.

The Bible regards marriage as the natural ideal and as a source of fulfillment and blessing. This concept is established at the outset in the first story of creation: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him" (Gen 2:18) and "A man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Gen 2:24).

Biblical references perceive a twofold purpose in marriage. The first is procreation – "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28); when this is realized, it is a source of great blessing (Gen 9:1; 13:16; 22:17; Ps 127:3-5; 128) whereas childlessness is a tragedy and even a disgrace (Gen 16:4; 30:1-23).

In addition, marriage should be a source of satisfying companionship. "He who finds a wife finds a good thing" (Prov 18:22). The final chapter of Proverbs paints an idealized picture of the good wife and of her beneficial influence on her household. However, the Wisdom literature also contains a few uncomplimentary references to an unworthy wife (Prov. 12:4; 14:1).

Wives assumed a position of significance; their views were respected and even accepted, for example, in the stories of Sarah and Rebekah (Gen 16:5-6; 21:12; 27:1 ff). This is not to imply that there was equality between husband and wife, but to suggest that the wife's role could be quite central. However, the husband could revoke a vow that his wife had made to God (Num 30:10-14), and wives were occasionally classified along with chattel (Jer 6:12). In general they were subordinated to their husband who could determine their fate.

Polygamy was sanctioned in biblical times. Kings and the upper classes were permitted more than one wife (Gen 29:18, 25, 30; Deut 21:15; Judg 8:30; I Kgs 11:1-8; II Chr 11:21). The reasons for polygamy were love, desire for children, or political diplomacy. Yet there was an ideal of monogamy (Gen 2:24; Ps 128) as implied by many of the biblical laws (Ex 20:17; Lev 18:8, 16, 20; 21:13; Num 5:12; Deut 5:21; 22:22) and supported by the frequent description of God's relationship with his chosen people Israel through the metaphor of the husband-wife bond. Clearly such a literary device would have its point only within a monogamous framework.

There is reference to a covenant in marriage relations (Prov 2:17; Mal 2:14). Marriages were usually arranged by parents (Gen 21:21; 24:1-67; 28:2; 29:23, 28). In contracting a marriage, the bride's consent was also to be taken into consideration (Gen 24:5, 58). The husband paid the father of the bride for his daughter (Gen 31:15).

The first stage in marriage was betrothal, whereby both partners were mutually bound in a legal relationship which gave them married status, although the couple did not live together as husband and wife until the man took the woman to his home to consummate the marriage (Deut 20:7). But a betrothed woman was already under the ban of extramarital relationships (Deut 22:23-26). At the wedding ceremony itself, the bride was veiled (Gen 24:65); she wore special wedding attire (Is 61:10); and the wedding feast lasted seven days (Judg 14:12).

Marriage was strictly within the clan or tribe (Gen 24:4; 28:2; 29:19). Basically, this exclusivity was important for religious reasons (Ex 34:16; Deut 7:3-5) although economic factors also demanded that women who inherited land should marry within their own tribe, to prevent tribal land passing to extra-tribal descendants (Num 36:1-13). However, marriages outside of the clan are also recorded (Gen 36:2; 41:45; Ex 2:21; Lev 24:10; Ruth 1:4). In the post-exilic period those who married alien women were forced to repudiate them (Ezra 10:1ff).

Biblical marriage law is conditioned by further regulations. Levirate marriage required a surviving brother to marry his deceased brother's childless widow (Deut 25:5ff). This seems to have been a very ancient and widespread practice (Gen 38:8; Ruth 3:12-13) serving to retain inherited property within the tribe, and perpetuate the name and line of the deceased. Should the surviving brother refuse to marry his widowed sister-in-law, she could obtain a "release" from him after which she was free to marry anyone else (Deut 25:7-10).

The Bible prohibits marriage with certain categories of individuals, such as blood relations, as well as the wives of blood relations, whether of the husband or wife (Lev 18:6-18; Deut 27:20-23). Biblical law also excludes certain other groups such as the sexually self-mutilated for idolatrous purposes, the issue of an act of incestuous union, and an Ammonite or a Moabite because of their historical cruelty to Israel (Deut 23:2-7).

The institution of marriage does not figure prominently in the NT writings. The fact that Jesus, John the Baptist and Paul were unmarried, constituted a deviation from normal Jewish practice. Certain sayings, notably Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life, also he cannot be my disciple" place all institutions, including marriage, secondary to following Jesus or the Kingdom of God.

Jesus' views on marriage emerge from the decisions he was asked to render about divorce (Mark 10:2-9). He clearly affirmed that the marriage bond is rooted in the creative act of God himself; that the union is indissoluble; and that persons become an integral part of each other when they marry. His highest tribute to marriage is his use of it as a symbol to illustrate the nature of the Kingdom (Luke 5:34-35). The most positive contribution Jesus made to the institution of marriage derived from the place he allotted to women. By treating them fully as humans he gave an impetus to marriage unprecedented in history, for he revolutionized the institution of marriage by liberating one partner in it thus allowing the potential of such a union to be realized. Marriage was no longer seen as an institution for procreation but rather, as an aspect of the Kingdom and as a context in which people could serve the creator.

In Pauline congregations problems arose from implementing this radical view of a woman's role in marriage. There is moreover evidence that paul had to practice accommodation to his society. Nevertheless, like Jesus, he used the wedding or marriage metaphor to illustrate the profoundest truths (Eph 5:25ff) and did not hesitate to prescribe the most detailed codes of conduct for married people including the frequency of intercourse (as often has either partner likes cf I Cor 7:2-5). While there are some indications that paul saw marriage primarily as an anodyne for sexual drives (I Thes 4:1-6; cf I Cor 7:2), on the whole he perceived it as a partnership between two people committed to carrying out a higher will than their own. For this reason the household codes (Eph 5:22ff; Col 3:18ff) for which there was much precedent in his world, can be seen as fully integrated into his Christology for this is what it means to be "in Christ".

In the latter part of the NT, there is an apparently defensive attitude towards the institution of marriage (Heb 13:4), and even some hints favoring celibacy (Matt 19:12; Rev 14:4) but these views did not succeed. The overall position of the early church is that marriage and family are valid ways of serving the Lord and that whether one stays single or marries, both can be done fully in the Lord and each person must determine his or her calling. See also DIVORCE.

A civil contract and a religious sacrament, marriage in old France was intended to continue the lineage, to join together families and fortunes. For the lower orders at least, it was an economic necessity. It was much too important a matter to be left to the children. Affectivity or personal satisfaction had little to do with choice of partners by the parents; ‘love’ was a term reserved for God and ‘tendre amitié’ was a bonus in a relationship structured by patriarchal authority and female respect—the latter having definite overtones of fear.

The marriage ceremony would be followed by a feast and dancing, all characterized by a rich variety of local customs much recorded by folklorists. A dowry was normal for the bride, and although it was usually managed by the husband it remained legally the woman's property; a widow was entitled to the return of her dowry and a portion of the inheritance for her subsistence—so family strategies and struggles commonly developed in order to keep such monies in the family. The importance attached to the chastity of the bride and the close moral and physical control of her person show how crucial it was that the legitimacy of progeny be assured if inheritance strategies were to succeed. Clandestine marriages without parental consent could, after an edict in 1557, lead to disinheritance for men under 30 or women under 25 and to annulment for minors, while impediments such as consanguinity, civil and spiritual paternity (guardianship or godparenthood), ecclesiastical status, or impotence would all lead to annulment. Divorce was not possible until 1792, but was restricted by Napoleon and then abolished under the Restoration, to be brought back in 1884 only on grounds of adultery, cruelty, slander, and severe criminal sentence. Separation was possible, but for reasons of economic and moral constraint was practised almost solely by the richest and poorest couples; it could lead to divorce only after 1908.

Marriage, therefore, was the strategic union between two kinship networks for mutual economic and ‘political’ advantage. Consequently, most marriages took place between representatives of families on the same social level, with similar fortunes and often within the same corporate group. A master tailor married a tailor's heiress if possible, a magistrate married the daughter of a colleague, a courtier another courtier, and unequal marriages simply for the sake of money were rare enough to be adversely commented upon. Kinship connections were a favoured route to advancement in society, and marriage meant access to a wider and more useful network.

Most other defining characteristics of unions were dictated by social group, wealth, and cultural geography. The nobility, for instance, married young, at 23-5 years old for men and 18-20 for women, with very young unions quite frequent. Other classes were more constrained by the diminishing prospect of an inheritance large enough to set up and support a household. Therefore, as the population increased and land-hunger developed as rural France slowly changed from a lightly populated state of 16 million inhabitants after the Black Death and Hundred Years War to the chronicly overpopulated territory of 28 million inhabitants in the late 18th and early 19th c., the average age of first marriage rose accordingly. In 1500 it was about 24 for men and 20 for women; by 1700 it had risen to 261/2 and 241/2 respectively, and in the late 18th c. reached about 28 for men and 24 for women (where it remained more or less steady until after World War II). Because mortality was so high and life-expectancy so short (38-40 for those who reached adulthood), remarriages were frequent in all classes of society, for one partner might die much earlier than the other. Men found it easier to remarry than older women, but step-parents, wicked or otherwise, were a normal fact of life for many children.

Under the ancien régime children tended to die young, a quarter before they reached the end of their first year and a quarter of those remaining before their fifth year—only half reached the age of 20. Mortality was particularly high for foundlings and those whom fashion or economic necessity dictated should be sent to wet-nurses. Each family would have on average five children, and with high mortality the population could increase only slowly. Prospects improved with the demographic revolution of the 19th c.; this consisted largely of a reduction of infant mortality and the control of some diseases. The population, however, rose only slowly to 39 million in the 1870s and stagnated thereafter, as late marriage and contraception (the ‘sinful secret’ of coitus interruptus was apparently discovered by the peasantry from the mid-18th c.) helped family limitation in the countryside. With greater mobility, the rise of cities, and the decline of the strict moral censure associated with small rural communities, there came an increase in cohabitation and illegitimacy.

In the household economy of the ancien régime (which continued in most cases throughout the 19th c.), spouses had hierarchically defined roles to play, the patriarch having responsibility for outdoor work, accounts, and discipline, while the wife's tasks were limited to less-valued, though essential ones such as cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing, but also including farm-work or serving in a shop in the case of a modest master craftsman's wife. The marriage was lived out in a household that usually included servants and often kin, such as an elderly parent or unmarried younger brothers or sisters. The nuclear family was the most frequent family structure, especially in towns, but the stem family was common at certain stages in the life-cycle in rural areas and predominated in some southern areas. Much depended on the inheritance customs in force in a region: they varied from primogeniture to equal partition, with many local variations, and all this affected marriage strategies. The main concern was to keep the family inheritance together, and if possible accrue more wealth. Romantic love developed late, along with individualism and a sense of the private sphere, and until the 20th c. existed far less in reality than in literature.

In the 20th c., and particularly since World War II, the picture of marriage has altered in several ways. After a brief flurry of postponed marriages had swollen the statistics up to 1950, the marriage rate was almost 95 per cent until the 1970s. French people married younger again, and the average age-difference between partners was reduced to only about two years. The massive rise in couples choosing each other stems from the decline of family strategies in a mobile society and the rise of romantic love—although for sociological reasons partners continue to be selected from similar social backgrounds. Divorce rose to 10 per cent in the 1950s, but marriages now lasted over 40 years as against 20 during the ancien régime. Within marriage, sentiment, and a whole ethic of intimacy and shared moments, have replaced the predominantly economic arrangement of earlier centuries. However, from the 1970s the trend changed: marriage in the last decades of this century is usually preceded by cohabitation, frequently supplanted by it, and one-third of the time ends in divorce (three-quarters of which are requested by the woman).

— Peter Campbell

Bibliography

• J.-L. Flandrin, Families in Former Times (1979)
• M. Segalen, Mari et femme dans la société paysanne (1980)
• Y. Lequin (ed.), Histoire des Français, vol. I (1984)

While Buddhism regards the celibate monastic life as the higher ideal (see Celibacy), it also recognizes the importance of marriage as a social institution. However, in Buddhism marriage is essentially a secular contract of partnership in which the partners assume obligations towards one another. Unlike in Christianity, marriage is not a sacrament, and monks do not officiate at wedding ceremonies. They are also prohibited by the Vinaya from playing the role of matchmaker or go-between in bringing couples together. Nevertheless, it is customary for newlyweds to attend the local monastery (vihāra) later for a blessing and a simple ceremony in which texts are chanted. An early text from the Pāli Canon, the Sigālovāda Sutta, summarizes the obligations of husband and wife as follows. ‘In five ways should a wife … be ministered to by her husband: by respect, by courtesy, by faithfulness, by giving her authority (in the home), by providing her with adornments’. The wife reciprocates by ensuring that ‘her duties are well performed, she shows hospitality to the kin of both, is faithful, watches over the goods he (her husband) brings, and shows skill and artistry in discharging all her business.’ While monogamy is the preferred and predominant model, there is much local variation in marriage patterns across the Buddhist world. Early documents mention a variety of temporary and permanent arrangements entered into for both emotional and economic reasons, and in different parts of Buddhist Asia both polygamy and polyandry have been tolerated. Buddhism has no religious objection to divorce, but due to social pressures in traditional societies it is much less common than in the West. Western Buddhist groups, like the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, have experimented with new models of community life without marriage, in order to overcome the perceived exclusiveness of the nuclear Western family unit.

Marriage as an institution in America has changed in a variety of ways over the last three centuries. From early colonial days, the differing marital practices and understandings of Native Americans, of africans, of European peasants, and eventually of all the peoples who brought their marriages to North America mixed with the more settled expectations and understandings that church and governmental authorities thought they were bringing from England. By the late eighteenth century, America was already understood as a society in which parental power was notably weak, a society in which children, including daughters, were genuinely free to choose who, when, and whether to marry. Geographical mobility often meant the movement of children away from parental homes and increased the isolation of married couples from their familial and ethnic communities. Couples forced to depend on each other might grow closer, become more interdependent; but hatred and the terrors of having to depend on an incompatible companion was also a possibility for couples living across America. Mobility and distance also made leaving a marriage—whether in the form of abandonment, separation, divorce, or bigamy—a possibility and a temptation, one that men in particular often found hard to resist. By the early nineteenth century, particular U.S. states were recognized as the easiest places in the world to obtain a divorce; and throughout the twentieth century, demographers and sociologists identified the United States as the world leader in its divorce rate.

American Marriage: Theory and Practice

For early modern Protestant theologians and political theorists, both in England and in the North American colonies, marriage had modeled the state. Within marriage, the relation of husband and wife offered the primordial example of the "law of persons," the dyadic hierarchical relations (parent and child, master and servant, guardian and ward, king and subject were other examples) out of which the "constitution" of a legitimate political realm was formed. The good Christian should know himself or herself as like the "bride of Christ," that is, he or she should submit to the governance of a loving savior. For civic republican theorists, including some, like James Harrington, whose writings framed the ideas of the makers of the American Revolution, the idea of a citizen, of a man capable of participating in the government of the realm was intimately tied to the idea of a husband, one who properly governed his dependents and properties. A man who ruled his household as a good man should became someone capable of participating in the governance (rulership) of the state.

What was the "marriage" that played these roles in early modern thought? It was a contractual relationship, given by God, free in its entry, but fixed in its terms. By entering in to marriage, men and women were transformed, though differentially so. They became wives and husbands, beings of a new order, though men also remained men as well as husbands. The antinomic relationship of wife and husband depended on a series of coercive metaphors and images drawn both from the English common law and from Protestant theology. Husband and his wife became "one flesh," united at least during the duration of their lives. A wife became a "femme" or "feme" "covert," a being covered over by her husband during her life as a wife, during her "coverture." Wife and husband were locked into a non-negotiable relationship of reciprocity, in which a husband's obligation to support a wife was conditioned on her dutiful obedience and sexual availability, and vice versa.

These images had real power in the world, and a good deal of the law of marriage was taken up with elaborations of logical implications drawn from these images. Thus, to take one example, a wife's settlement, the town in which she could receive poor relief if her husband abandoned her (or in other cases of need), was her husband's town, the town of his birth, not the town of her birth. For the duration of her marriage, her home was by definition her husband's, though if he died or if she violated the terms of the marriage relationship by disobeying him or deserting him, once her coverture was at an end, then her settlement of birth became the place from which she could claim poor relief. As a second example, marital rape was something close to an oxymoron. As late as the 1950s, a standard definition of the crime of rape was when a man had "illicit sexual intercourse with a woman not his wife without her consent." And though a husband's sexual coercion might give his wife grounds for separation or divorce, and an order granting her alimony and custody of their children, it would not subject him to criminal punishment.

These images were formalisms, often radically inconsistent with the real lives led by American couples. Yet they were no longer united in fact, and such couples worked out the terms of their lives, often understanding themselves as separate individuals, sometimes holding on to the idea of being married. When men sought gold in California or signed on to shipping expeditions and wives remained behind caring for children and taking care of households, they were still understood as legally united, though separated by a continent or an ocean. How resources were distributed, who held practical power, how relationships evolved over time, and who did what within a relationship were improvisational narratives of particular marriages shaped by changing cultures, extended family networks, economic circumstances, and the individuals themselves.

Marital Law and Its Effects

From a legal standpoint, what most shaped marriage as an institution was the peculiar structure of American federalism, which left the governance of marriage to the individual states. Different states had the power to institute their own distinctive marital laws. And by the second third of the nineteenth century, significant differences appeared between various states, particularly in the rules for obtaining a divorce and in the ability of a wife to secure her own property. A few jurisdictions even adopted a version of a European civil law tradition of community property, rejecting the English common law understanding that nearly all property within a marriage would come under the effective ownership of the husband. The continuing experiments of various states with laws that allowed divorce on a variety of grounds and with marital property reforms that authorized married women to hold property produced endless legal complexities and enormous quantities of litigation, as mobile Americans moved from jurisdiction to jurisdiction across the political landscape of American federalism. Did they move because of the diversity of marital regimes? Perhaps the most important reason for the litigation this diversity produced were uncertainties about liability in law suits between husbands (and sometimes wives) and creditors and other "third parties" to the marriage. In addition, we should not exaggerate the variation in the marital laws the different states produced. To be a husband in a community property jurisdiction, for example, still meant that one had full managerial control over all property held by the community. Marriage as an institution remained recognizable in its structure and in the structured relationship it offered and imposed.

Received images of marriage played a part in some national enterprises and controversies. The fact that no North American slave jurisdiction recognized the legitimacy of slave marriages—putting all slave relationships on the wrong side of the bright line between marriage and sin—became for abolitionists a core and politically potent feature of the wrongs of slavery, and for pro-slavery apologists, a continuing embarrassment. From the 1850s through the 1890s, the control of Mormon polygamists over territorial Utah created a long constitutional dilemma in a national political culture that regarded any deviation from monogamy as abusive to women and inconsistent with republican virtue. (To the Republican Party it became in 1860, along with slavery, one of the "twin relics of barbarism.") By the end of the nineteenth century, the triumph over Mormonism had implicated and changed American federalism and the law of church and state, although not the commitment to state control over domestic relations.

Immigration law constituted one area of continuing national responsibility where marriage and marital status was (and has remained) of crucial concern. The 1858 immigration law passed by Congress reversed an earlier understanding, identified with the writings of Joseph Story, which separated citizenship from the institution of marriage. Thereafter, a non-American woman who married an American would become an American. She would take on a political identity derived from her husband, because of the nature of marriage. There were racial exceptions to this conclusion. During the era of Chinese exclusion, from the 1880s to the 1920s, a Chinese woman who married an American was likely to be labeled a prostitute, not a wife. But what of the converse situation: would an American woman who married a non-American lose her political identity? Federal courts went back and forth on the question for the next half century. In 1912 the Supreme Court finally decided the logic of marriage would be sustained: a native-born American woman would become an alien if she married an alien, a conclusion that held until after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, when citizenship was again separated from marriage within legal doctrine and administrative practice.

Changing Perceptions

Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, there were voices that challenged understandings of marriage as a hierarchy and as the responsibility of individual states. Drawing from abolitionism, anti-Calvinist strains of Protestantism, and a universalistic reading of egalitarian texts like the Declaration of Independence, woman's rights activists, the first generation of American feminists, formulated a critique of orthodox marriage as an unjust institution. They sometimes compared it to chattel slavery, and they insisted on an individual Christian woman's direct relationship with God, unmediated by a husband. In novels and in prescriptive texts, middle-class readers found a romantic remaking of marriage, one that denied hierarchy and alternately insisted that marriage be understood as a partnership or as an ecstatic union between apparent equals. "Free lovers" (a term that can only make sense in a culture where marriage was defined as "unfree") created alternative models of sexual relationships, at first in rural utopian communities, later in Bohemian enclaves like Greenwich Village of the early twentieth century. On the other side, conservatives unhappy with the messiness of marital life in America, and in particular with the relative ease of Divorce, would regularly issue calls for national laws that would recreate discipline and national virtue.

Still, the foundational understanding of marriage as a fixed hierarchical relationship governed by the states did not change over nearly two centuries of American history. After the Civil War, when Republican congressional leaders defended the new Fourteenth Amendment against claims that it was destroying the fabric of American life, they assured Democrats and others the egalitarian and transforming provisions of the amendment would not apply to marriage, which would remain a distinctive responsibility of the states and within a protected private sphere of male life. Woman's rights activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who since the 1840s had challenged legislators and theologians by describing orthodox marriage as a radically unjust institution, were outraged. To them the Fourteenth Amendment ought to have been understood as having made a new departure in American constitutionalism, one that required subjected existing institutions, even longstanding ones like marriage, to a standard of substantive equality. It would be a century, however, before their claims would be revived, and a constitutional reconsideration of marriage would occur.

The Late Twentieth Century

In 1968, when David Schneider published American Kin-ship, his now-classic portrayal of the structure of the American family, it was still possible to portray heterosexual marriage as the linchpin of family life and the embodiment of American culture. Perhaps 1968 was the last possible moment when such a portrait could have been presented as descriptive truth. Within two years, California's revision of its divorce law would provide a model for no-fault divorce that would soon sweep across the nation. The increasingly widespread availability of contraception, combined with a cultural sexual revolution, was already making sex outside of marriage "normal," no longer shameful, criminal, and destructive to the respectability of young, unmarried women. By 1972, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Supreme Court held that allowing distribution of contraceptives to married, but not to unmarried, people violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Along the way to that decision, Justice Brennan marked the revolution underway in marital identities, asserting that "the married couple" was "not an independent entity with a mind and heart of its own, but an association of two individuals each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup." The year before Schneider's study appeared, in Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional state antimiscegenation laws, definitively interposing the antisubordination concerns of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against the claimed exclusive authority of the states to legislate the terms of marriage within their borders. In later decisions, federal and state courts, influenced by second-wave feminism, applied Fourteenth Amendment equal protection standards to marital identities, making constitutionally problematic the gendered identities once central to marriage. Other decisions, under the heading of sex discrimination law, made illegal many of the traditional understandings that had excluded women from many remunerative occupations, understandings that had long made marriage the plausible and economically acceptable choice for young women. Meanwhile, a trail of state cases, following the California Supreme Court's landmark decision in Marvin v. Marvin (1976), gradually recognized that non-marital cohabitation of a variety of forms could produce economic obligations only barely distinguishable from those imposed by marital union.

By the 1980s, the "fact" that more than 50% of all marriages ended in divorce (a figure that had been reached after more than a century of growth in the divorce rate) had become one of the clichés of public discourse. The divorce rate was then of a piece with, though some thought it an explanation for, the greater diversity of family forms found across late-twentieth-century America, filled as it was with children born outside of marriage, stepparents, joint-custody arrangements, complex open adoptions, and fluidity and renegotiation in what some still assumed were traditional roles and obligations.

Many still married; indeed, many reproduced the marital forms of their parents' and grandparents' marriages. And many voices pressed on those contemplating parenthood that a "two parent" household was a necessity for healthy childrearing. And for gay men and lesbian women, historically excluded from the privileges that marriage retained, single-sex marriage became an aspirational rights claim and a focus for political and legal struggles. But all those who married or aspired to marriage at the end of the twentieth century did so in a culture that had accepted the separation of marriage from sexual expression and (more reluctantly) from childrearing. Marriage had become a private choice, an act of private freedom.

Bibliography

Clark, Elizabeth Battelle. "Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery, Contract and the Law of Divorce in Nineteenth-Century America." Law and History Review, 8:1 (Spring 1990): 25–54.

Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.

DuBois, Ellen. "Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the United States Constitution, 1820–1878." Journal of American History, 74 (December 1987): 836–862.

Grossberg, Michael. Governing the Hearth: Law and Family inNineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Hartog, Hendrik. Man and Wife in America, a History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Lystra, Karen. Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and RomanticLove in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Schneider, David M. American Kinship: A Cultural Account. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Stanley, Amy Dru. From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Marriage lay at the heart of early modern society. It created the basic social unit, the household: the site of childrearing, economic production, and mutual care and affection. Marriage tied families together in economic and social networks and, at higher social levels, cemented political alliances and even royal dynasties. It was also a major means of transmitting wealth through dowries, the resources that a woman brought to a marriage. Moreover in contemporary eyes marriage had the moral functions of channeling sexuality, creating new Christians, and supporting the divinely ordained patriarchal, or male-dominated, order.

Such a complex institution interested many beyond the individual bride and groom. Parents tried to use children's marriages to improve their family's economic or social situation, sometimes clashing with their children over choices of spouses. The inhabitants of a couple's neighborhood or village also sought to enforce community norms regarding the suitability of a couple. Religious and secular legislation regulated different aspects of marriage, and in the sixteenth century church and state revised marriage laws to gain more control over their subjects. Some historians believe that marriage practices did not change during the early modern period, but many think that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries legal developments along with economic and cultural shifts contributed to a more explicit valuation of love, a diminution of parental control, and a simplification of weddings.

Finding a Partner

As a rule a person married someone who came from roughly the same social class. The aristocracy in particular, especially in France and Italy, deplored the misalliance. But people also recognized that marriage was an important means of social mobility, as when a wealthy but common father married his generously dowered daughter to an impoverished but noble groom. Common people tended to take marriage partners from geographically nearby and from within their own or their families' occupations. A servant marrying a servant or an apprentice marrying his master's daughter were typical patterns. Aristocrats had to range farther geographically to find socially appropriate spouses. Both nobles and peasants favored cousin marriages to consolidate property. Catholic canon law placed limitations called "impediments" on marriages between close kin. But people frequently obtained dispensations from these rules, and the Protestant Reformation significantly reduced them.

Age at first marriage depended on economic circumstances and varied according to social status and geographic location. Canon law set the minimum marriage age at twelve for girls and fourteen for boys, although betrothals could be arranged earlier. Aristocratic women were married quite young by modern standards, generally in their midteens to men in their late twenties or thirties, although this difference lessened in the eighteenth century. Commoner spouses tended to be close in age, marrying in their mid- to late twenties after each had worked for several years, the woman for her dowry and the man to obtain the resources and skills necessary to establish himself in an occupation. Urban dwellers, who relied on wage labor, generally married younger than rural inhabitants, who often had to wait for the deaths of their fathers to inherit land. As proto-industrialization in the mid-eighteenth century turned more people into wage laborers, marriage age fell slightly among common people.

While marriage was considered the natural state for adults and most people got married, a noticeable number never married, ranging from 5 percent in some times and places to 25 percent in others. Economic circumstances and family strategies usually kept a person single. Because marriage was an economic partnership, among the common people a woman's lack of a dowry or a man's inability to establish himself in a trade or on a piece of land frequently prevented them from marrying. Some places formalized these controls, like German cities that forbade men to marry until they had become masters in a trade, or towns that barred poor couples from marrying, fearing that such families would become an economic burden. At the same time, however, some institutions and individuals, especially in Italy, gave dowries to poor women to prevent them from becoming prostitutes. Unmarried people usually remained in positions of dependence as servants in the houses of others or as laborers on the farms of their married siblings. Some, however, supported themselves with wage labor in cities, sometimes forming households with other single people.

In the seventeenth century a rapid rise in dowries coupled with a rigid sense of family honor triggered a decline in the numbers of European aristocrats who married because many fathers could not afford noble marriages for all their children. In eighteenth-century Spain dowries could exceed twelve times the bride's family's annual income. In mid-seventeenth-century Milan three-quarters of female aristocrats never married. Especially in Italy and Spain, spinsters frequently entered convents; in Protestant regions they often lived with kin. This trend was less notable in England, where fathers were more willing to marry their daughters with smaller dowries to social inferiors. Unmarried sons often entered the church or the military. Though single, these men might still establish families by having children with concubines.

Peasant and artisan youths had many opportunities to find marriage partners in their daily lives, laboring in the fields, attending festivals, running errands, or working in occupations employing both sexes, like hat making or household service. A young man might court a woman at her house, bringing along a male friend and talking at the door or window. At this social level the amount of parental control over children's marriage choices varied widely. Because young people frequently left home to work in their early teens, some seldom or never saw their parents, leaving them a great deal of freedom of choice. But some parents, even quite poor ones, arranged their children's marriages, sometimes at a young age and occasionally using force or threats, in order to create social alliances or enlarge landholdings. While some historians argue that marriages in this period were expected to be loveless, most scholars agree that early modern people expected that two people who loved each other would want to get married, although they subordinated emotions to practical concerns. In most cases parents and children probably tried to agree on a match balancing love with material concerns.

Aristocratic courtship usually only followed family arrangement of a match. Wealthy and especially aristocratic parents tightly controlled their children's, particularly their daughters', contact with members of the opposite sex and also consistently chose their children's spouses to further family strategies. Many wealthy parents distrusted passionate love, believing it formed an insecure base for such an important union. Some, however, tried to ensure that their children agreed with their choices and even that they felt some affection for their intendeds. A few children sought to evade their parents' control to marry partners of their own choosing.

In the eighteenth century the balance between love and material concerns appears to have shifted. Influenced by the Reformation's and especially the Enlightenment's positive evaluation of love, some members of the upper middle class and aristocracy began to consider love the primary goal of marriage and perhaps also to act on this idea. In the same period the rise of proto-industry, cottage production of goods for the market, and wage labor, freed many people from the constraints that land considerations imposed and allowed love to play a larger role in how they chose their spouses.

Getting Married

The Catholic canon law that governed marriage formation from the twelfth century through the mid-sixteenth century rested on the consensual definition of marriage that held that a valid marriage required only the freely given consent of the bride and groom. If the words used were in the present tense, no further action was needed; if they were in the future tense (a marriage promise), then sexual consummation completed the union. Such minimal legal requirements allowed local marriage practices to vary widely, shaped by a combination of communal norms, local law, and diocesan regulations. Everywhere, however, throughout the sixteenth century and much of the seventeenth century marrying was not a moment but a series of steps that created new property arrangements, changed the couple into man and wife, and made the union publicly known. Because of the length of the process, it was not always clear at what point a marriage became irrevocable.

Marriage negotiations centered on property settlement: the bride's dowry and any money the groom granted the bride, sometimes known as the morning gift. The details were often finalized in a written contract. As the wife's contribution to the new household, a dowry generally consisted of items such as a bed, linens, cooking implements, and clothing but sometimes also trade or farming implements. Elite dowries contained more opulent household and personal items as well as money and sometimes real estate. Local dowry laws and practices varied, but generally a husband managed the dowry and any revenue it produced during a marriage. A wife gained control of it and the morning gift only if her husband died, when she would need it to support herself or to make a new marriage.

Many couples promised to marry each other in private but also celebrated a formal betrothal. In this ritual the men of the two families—the bride's father, the groom, and other male kin—declared their agreement to the union before witnesses, shaking hands, usually publicly in a church, the town square, or even a tavern but sometimes in a house or before a notary. If the bride was present, she and the groom would also clasp hands. In most places a meal and the couple's exchange of gifts followed: a small token like a handkerchief from the bride and a more substantial gift like jewelry from the groom. Especially in northern Europe, the parish priest then published the banns, or announced the betrothal, at mass on several consecutive Sundays in order to discover legal impediments to the union. Ecclesiastical and popular opinion considered betrothals strongly binding. Most communities permitted commoners to begin sexual relations even when their betrothal had been arranged in private, which, although discouraged by the church, transformed it into a valid marriage under canon law. Highborn brides were expected to be virgins until after the wedding.

Weddings usually followed several weeks or months after the betrothal. The heart of the ceremony was the couple's words of consent sealed by the ring and kiss. To ensure public knowledge of the union, in northern Europe rowdy village processions accompanied the couple to the church door for the exchange of consent, with music and revelry invoking fertility and highlighting gender roles. Churchmen fearful of remnants of paganism tried to control them. In Italy, where the bride's house was the normal place for the wedding, a procession marked the bride's progress to her new home. In some localities a notary guided the couple through the exchange of vows; in other places the bride's father, a priest, a neighbor, or even the couple themselves played this role. The celebration that followed, as lavish as the couple could afford, ranged from meals at taverns, where the guests paid, to huge feasts with dozens of dishes attended by the whole neighborhood and guests from other cities. Local statutes often limited—with little success—the number of guests and dishes.

Clandestine Marriage and Marriage Reform

While most people married publicly, the lack of formal requirements meant that a marriage or betrothal contracted without witnesses, or clandestinely, could still be valid though difficult to prove. Churchmen urged couples to obtain their parents' consent and to celebrate publicly, but ecclesiastical courts also enforced unions that violated these injunctions. Because private betrothals were common and popularly held to permit sexual activity, some women were seduced under false promises of marriage and abandoned. Disputes also arose when one party decided to break a private engagement and marry another—particularly if the repudiated fiancée was pregnant. Some people exchanged marriage vows in secret, usually to escape parental opposition, like Romeo and Juliet. Rates of clandestine marriage and betrothal are impossible to determine, but it is clear that ecclesiastical courts everywhere in Europe were full of suits in which couples disputed whether or not they were married.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries many people—especially fathers and secular authorities but also some churchmen—began to find clandestinity particularly troubling, arguing that it caused confusion and dispute while undermining authority, especially of fathers. Secular legal penalties against clandestine marriage, notably in northern Europe, became harsher in this period, ranging from heavy fines to the loss of the bride's dowry to disinheritance. Despite some important differences, Catholics and Protestants responded similarly to the problem, reforming marriage laws to try to turn a sometimes indefinite social process into a definite legal moment overseen by authorities.

Placing new importance on marriage, Protestant reformers abolished celibacy of the clergy and legitimated divorce. Rejecting the consensual definition of marriage, most territories also made parental consent and the presence of witnesses and a minister at the wedding conditions for validity, and placed marriage under secular jurisdiction. England, however, retained the old canon law of marriage until 1753. Catholics responded with new decrees on marriage at the Council of Trent in 1563, rejecting the necessity of parental consent and reaffirming marital indissolubility, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, clerical celibacy, and the principle that free consent created a marriage. However, like Protestants, post-Tridentine Catholics had to exchange consent before a priest and witnesses for the marriage to be valid, and parish priests began keeping written records of marriages.

Despite these formal changes, through the seventeenth century popular practice continued to treat marriage as a process, grafting new requirements, like the priest's presence, onto the existing steps. People also continued to find ways to marry in secret. Catholic couples could dash in and exchange words of consent in front of an unwitting priest, as Alessandro Manzoni described in The Betrothed (1825–1827), though a more common route for both confessions was the secret betrothal, which continued to function essentially as clandestine marriage had because courts continued to enforce betrothals. When increasingly secularized marriage courts ceased doing this in the eighteenth century, betrothal lost its importance. This, combined with a loosening of community ties associated with protoindustrialization, and the growth of reliable recordkeeping that diminished the need for publicizing rituals, contributed to the transformation of marriage from a lengthy process into the moment of the couple's exchange of vows.

Husbands and Wives

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries everyone agreed that duty defined the relationship of husband and wife. Churchmen of both confessions held the purpose of marriage to be preserving people from sin by channeling sexuality into procreation. Husbands and wives owed each other the "conjugal debt" of regular (though not passionate) sexual relations, and adultery was a serious crime justifying separation or divorce and even meriting death in some lands. Moralists taught that marriage was a hierarchy that upheld the patriarchal social and political order. The husband, by virtue of his superior masculine reason, ruled the family. Law gave him broad powers to control family property and dependents' behavior, including that of his wife, using moderate physical force if necessary; but it also held him to support his wife adequately and especially manage her dowry responsibly. The duty of the wife—who had few legal or financial abilities—was to help and to obey.

Popular views shaped by daily experience somewhat moderated the rigidity of the learned notions, emphasizing spouses' interrelated fortunes and reciprocal obligations. Husbands and wives were expected to protect each other's person, property, and honor by caring for each other when ill, being frugal and hardworking, treating each other with respect, and refraining from scandalous behavior. Communities used such practices as charivaris to enforce these standards; spouses sometimes went to court seeking separations when they were breached.

Marriage formed an economic unit in which the labor of both spouses was usually essential. Economic interdependence made it difficult for unhappy couples to separate or divorce but probably also brought spouses together with a sense of shared purpose. Commoner spouses performed different but complementary tasks: an artisan wife sold her husband's products; a farmwife oversaw the farmyard and house and at harvest might join her husband in the fields. At higher social levels, tasks were usually less directly cooperative. While merchants' wives might oversee business matters when their husbands traveled, aristocratic spouses more often occupied two distinct spheres. A wife's duties running a large household involved significant responsibilities, but her main economic contribution, her dowry, was completely under her husband's control. Highborn spouses' common disparity in ages probably reinforced this separation. Still, some elite husbands spoke of their wives as companions and in their wills granted widows great responsibilities overseeing children and property.

Evidence exists of deep love between some spouses from all social levels, nurtured by the cooperation in their daily lives and perhaps by raising their children. While desirable, people did not hold love to be an essential aspect of the relationship. Sex was an important part of marriage, recognized even by disapproving churchmen, who tried to limit it to the passionless business of procreation. The practice of birth control (mainly male withdrawal) and abortion—though forbidden—and the existence of infertile couples point to the fact that sex enhanced married life in more ways than simply the production of children.

Historians disagree on the degree and chronology of change, but most believe that in the seventeenth century and especially the eighteenth century many people began to see marriage in a different way, as a companionate relationship emphasizing love rather than duty whose goal was happiness. Many point to the Protestant Reformation's more positive evaluation of marriage and particularly to the Enlightenment's emphasis on freedom of choice, affection, and equality in marriage as causes of this change. The secularization of control of marriage reinforced this by increasing the influence of laymen imbued with Enlightenment values. Others argue, however, that for most people the freedom from traditional constraints brought by proto-industrialization enabled them to focus on affective rather than practical aspects of marriage.

Remarriage

High mortality rates from disease and childbirth meant that a marriage lasted on average less than twenty years. As many as a quarter to a third of marriages were not first marriages but remarriages following the death of a spouse or, much less frequently and only in Protestant regions, divorce. Dissolving a marriage also dissolved an economic unit. A widower almost always remarried quickly, needing someone to run his household, help in his occupation, and raise his children. The advanced age of the groom frequently angered young unmarried men, who banded into groups to harass the prospective spouses in charivaris. Widows, especially those with small children, often had trouble remarrying unless they had property. Without a man's income, widows and their children made up a significant portion of the urban poor.

Bibliography

Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago and London, 1987.

Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford, 1997.

Gaudemet, Jean. Le mariage en occident: Les moeurs et la droit. Paris, 1987.

Gottlieb, Beatrice. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age. New York and Oxford, 1993.

Hacke, Daniela Alexandra. Women, Sex, and Marriage in Counter-Reformation Venice. Aldershot, U.K., and Burlington, Vt., forthcoming.

Harrington, Joel F. Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.

Houlbrooke, Ralph A. The English Family, 1450–1700. London and New York, 1984.

Hufton, Olwen. The Prospect before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe. Vol. 1: 1500–1800. New York, 1996.

Kamen, Henry. The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter Reformation. New Haven and London, 1993. Especially chapter 6.

Ozment, Steven. Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife. New Haven and London, 1989.

Roper, Lyndal. The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg. Oxford, 1989.

Watt, Jeffrey R. The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neuchâtel, 1550–1800. Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1992.

—EMLYN EISENACH

The legal status, condition, or relationship that results from a contract by which one man and one woman, who have the capacity to enter into such an agreement, mutually promise to live together in the relationship of husband and wife in law for life, or until the legal termination of the relationship.

Marriage is a legally sanctioned contract between a man and a woman. Entering a marriage contract changes the legal status of both parties, giving husband and wife new rights and obligations. Public policy is strongly in favor of marriage based on the belief that it preserves the family unit. Traditionally marriage has been viewed as vital to the preservation of morals and civilization.

The traditional principle upon which the institution of marriage is founded is that a husband has the obligation to support a wife and a wife has the duty to serve. In the past this has meant that the husband has the duty to provide a safe house, pay for necessities such as food and clothing, and live in the house. A wife's obligation has traditionally entailed maintaining a home, living in the home, having sexual relations with her husband, and rearing the couple's children. Changes in society have modified these marital roles to some degree as married women have joined the workforce in large numbers and some married men have become more involved in child rearing.

Individuals who seek to alter marital rights and duties are permitted to do so only within legally prescribed limits. Antenuptial agreements are entered into before marriage, in contemplation of the marriage relationship. Typically these agreements deal with property rights and the terms that will be in force if a couple's marriage ends in divorce. Separation agreements are entered into during the marriage prior to the commencement of an action for a separation or divorce. These agreements are concerned with child support, visitation, and temporary maintenance of a spouse. The laws governing these agreements are generally concerned with protecting every marriage for social reasons whether the parties desire it or not. Couples should try to resolve their own difficulties because that is more efficient and effective than placing their problems before the courts.

In the United States, marriage is regulated by the states. At one time most states recognized common-law marriage, which is entered into by agreement of the parties to be husband and wife. No marriage license is required nor is a wedding ceremony necessary. The parties are legally married when they agree to marry and subsequently live together, publicly holding themselves out as husband and wife. The public policy behind the recognition of common-law marriage is to protect the parties' expectations, if they are living as husband and wife in every way except that they never participated in a formal ceremony. By upholding a common-law marriage as valid, children are legitimized, surviving spouses are entitled to receive social security benefits, and families are entitled to inherit property. These public policy reasons have declined in popularity. Most states have abolished common-law marriage, in large part because of the legal complications that arose concerning property and inheritance.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states are permitted to reasonably regulate marriage by prescribing who can marry and the manner in which marriage can be dissolved. States may grant an annulment or divorce on terms they conclude are proper, because no one has the constitutional right to remain married. There is a right to marry, however, that cannot be casually denied. States are proscribed from absolutely prohibiting marriage in the absence of a valid reason.

The Supreme Court, for example, struck down laws in southern states that prohibited racially mixed marriages. These antimiscegenation statutes were held to be unconstitutional in the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010, because they violated equal protection of the laws.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court ruled in 1878 that polygamous marriages (having more than one spouse simultaneously) are illegal. The requirement that marriage involve one man and one woman was held to be essential to Western civilization and the United States in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 25 L. Ed. 244. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, writing for a unanimous court, concluded that a state (in this case Utah) may outlaw polygamy for everyone, regardless of whether it is a religious duty, as the Mormons claimed it was.

All states limit people to one living husband or wife at a time and will not issue marriage licenses to anyone who has a living spouse. Once someone is married, the person must be legally released from his or her spouse by death, divorce, or annulment before he or she may legally remarry. Persons who enter into a second marriage without legally dissolving a first marriage may be charged with the crime of bigamy.

The idea that marriage is the union of one male and one female has been thought to be so basic that it is not ordinarily specifically expressed by statute. This traditional principle has been challenged by gays and lesbians who, until recently, have unsuccessfully sought to legalize their relationships. In Baker v. Nelson, 291 Minn. 310, 191 N.W.2d 185 (1971), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 810, 93 S. Ct. 37, 34 L. Ed. 2d 65 (1972), the Minnesota Supreme Court sustained the clerk's denial of a marriage license to a homosexual couple.

The 1993 decision of the Hawaii Supreme Court in Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44, 74 Haw. 530, revived the possibility of homosexual marriage. In Baehr, the court held that the state law restricting legal marriage to parties of the opposite sex establishes a sex-based classification, which is subject to strict constitutional scrutiny when challenged on equal protection grounds. Although the court did not recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it indicated that the state would have a difficult time proving that the gay and lesbian couples were not being denied equal protection of the laws. On remand the Circuit Court of Hawaii found that the state did not meet its burden and enjoined the state from denying marriage applications solely because the applicants were of the same sex (Baehr v. Miike, 1996 WL 694235 [Hawaii Cir. Ct., Dec. 3, 1996]). However, this decision was stayed pending another appeal to the Hawaii Supreme Court. In the wake of Baehr, a number of states prepared legislation to ban same-sex marriage and prohibit recognition of such marriages performed in Hawaii. In 1996 Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and permits states to refuse same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Each state has its own individual requirements concerning who can marry. Before a state will issue a marriage license, a man and a woman must meet certain criteria. Some states prohibit marriage for those judged mentally ill or mentally retarded. In other states, however, a judge may grant permission to mentally retarded persons to marry.

Every state proscribes marriage between close relatives. The prohibited degree of relationship is fixed by state law. Every state forbids marriage to a child or grandchild, parent or grandparent, uncle or aunt, and niece or nephew, including illegitimate relatives and relatives of half blood, such as a half brother who has the same father but a different mother. A number of states also prohibit marriage to a first cousin, and some forbid marriage to a more distant relative, in-law, stepparent, or stepchild.

Age is an additional requirement. Every jurisdiction mandates that a man and a woman must be old enough to wed. In the 1800s the legal age was as low as twelve years old for females. Modern statutes ordinarily provide that females may marry at age sixteen and males at age eighteen. Sometimes a lower age is permitted with the written consent of the parents. A number of states allow for marriage below the minimum age if the female is pregnant and a judge gives permission.

Every couple that wishes to marry must comply with a state's formal requirements. Many states require a blood test or a blood test and physical examination before marriage to show whether one party is infected with a venereal disease. In some statutes, for example, the clerk is forbidden to issue a marriage license until the parties present the results of the blood test.

Most states impose a waiting period between the filing of an application for a license and its issuance. The period is usually three days, but in some states the period may reach five days. Other states mandate a waiting period between the time the license is issued and the date when the marriage ceremony can take place. Many states provide that the marriage license is valid for a certain period of time. If the ceremony does not take place during this period, a new license must be obtained.

It has been customary to give notice of an impending marriage to the general public. The old form of notice was called "publication of the banns," and the upcoming marriage was announced in each party's church three Sundays in a row before the marriage. This informed the community of the intended marriage and gave everyone the opportunity to object if any knew of a reason why the two persons could not be married. Today the names of applicants for marriage licenses are published in local newspapers.

Once a license is issued, the states require that the marriage commence with a wedding ceremony. The ceremony may either be civil or religious because states cannot require religious observances. Ceremonial requirements are very simple and basic to accommodate everyone. In some states nothing more is required than a declaration by each party in the presence of an authorized person and one additional witness that he or she takes the other in marriage.

See: Celebration of Marriage; Domestic Violence; Family Law; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Miscegenation; Necessaries.

n.

The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

Quotes:

"I'd marry again if I found a man who had 15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage and guarantee he'd be dead within a year." - Bette Davis

"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it." - Baskins

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance." - Jane Austen

"I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success." - J. Paul Getty

"When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband!" - Shana Alexander

"When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one." - Helen Rowland

See more famous quotes about Marriage

Marriage in a dream symbolizes commitment of oneself to another. It can also represent the inner marriage of formerly disjunctive aspects of oneself. (See also Bride/Bridegroom)

"Married" and "Matrimony" redirect here. For other uses, see Married (disambiguation) and Matrimony (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Marriage (disambiguation).

Close relationships

Types of relationships Boyfriend · Bromance · Casual · Cicisbeo · Cohabitation · Concubinage · Courtesan · Domestic partnership · Family · Friendship · Girlfriend · Husband · Kinship · Marriage · Mistress (lover) · Monogamy · Non-monogamy · Pederasty · Polyamory · Polyfidelity · Polygamy · Romantic friendship · Same-sex relationship · Significant other · Soulmate · Widowhood · Wife Major relationship events Mating · Courtship · Bonding · Divorce · Infidelity · Relationship breakup · Romance · Separation · Wedding Feelings and emotions Affinity · Attachment · Compersion · Infatuation · Intimacy · Jealousy · Limerence · Love · Passion · Platonic love · Polyamory · Psychology of sexual monogamy Human practices Bride price (Dower · Dowry) · Hypergamy · Infidelity · Sexuality Relationship abuse Child abuse · Elder abuse · Infidelity · Spousal abuse · Teen dating violence

v • d • e

Family law

Entering into marriage

Prenuptial agreement Marriage Common-law marriage Same-sex marriage

Legal states similar to marriage

Cohabitation · Civil union Domestic partnership Registered partnership Putative marriage

Dissolution of marriage

Annulment · Divorce · Alimony

Issues affecting children

Paternity · Legitimacy · Adoption Legal guardian · Foster care Ward · Emancipation of minors Grandparent visitation Child Protective Services (United States) Parental responsibility Contact (including visitation) Residence in English law Custody · Child support

Related areas

Spousal abuse · Child abuse Child abduction · Child marriage Adultery · Bigamy · Incest

Conflict of laws

Marriage · Nullity · Divorce

v • d • e

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged by a variety of ways, depending on the culture or demographic. Such a union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding and the marital structure created is known as wedlock.

People marry for many reasons, most often including one or more of the following: legal, social, emotional, economical, spiritual, and religious. These might include arranged marriages, family obligations, the legal establishment of a nuclear family unit, the legal protection of children and public declaration of love.^[1][2]

Marriage practices are very diverse across cultures, may take many forms, and are often formalized by a ceremony called a wedding.^[3] The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved. In some societies these obligations also extend to certain family members of the married persons. Almost all cultures that recognize marriage also recognize adultery as a violation of the terms of marriage.^[4]

External recognition can manifest in a variety of ways. Some examples include the state, a religious authority, or both. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution irrespective of religious affiliation, in accordance with marriage laws of the jurisdiction. If recognized by the state, by the religion(s) to which the parties belong or by society in general, the act of marriage changes the personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it.

Contents 1 Definitions 1.1 Anthropological definitions 2 Etymology 3 History 3.1 European marriages 3.2 Recognition by the state 3.3 Chinese marriage 3.4 Same-sex marriage 4 Selection of a partner 5 Marriage ceremony 6 Cohabitation 7 Sex and procreation 8 Marriage law 8.1 Common-law marriage 8.2 Rights and obligations 8.3 Marriage restrictions 8.4 State recognition 9 Marriage and religion 9.1 Christianity 9.1.1 Liturgical Christianity 9.1.2 Protestantism 9.1.3 Latter-day Saints 9.2 Judaism 9.3 Islam 9.4 Bahá'í 9.5 Hinduism 9.6 Sikhism 9.7 Same-sex marriage 10 Financial considerations 10.1 Dowry 10.2 Bride price and dower 10.3 Modern customs 10.4 Taxation 10.5 Other considerations 11 Termination 12 Statistics 13 Societal considerations 14 Post-marital residence 15 Contemporary views on marriage 15.1 Criticisms 15.2 Controversial views 16 See also 17 References 18 External links

Definitions

According to Confucius, "Marriage is the union (of the representatives) of two different surnames, in friendship and in love, in order to continue the posterity of the former sages, and to furnish those who shall preside at the sacrifices to heaven and earth, at those in the ancestral temple, and at those at the altars to the spirits of the land and grain."^[5]

Philosopher, historian, and literary essayist Thomas De Quincey defined marriage as "a union between two persons, who lived in harmony so absolute with each other, as to be independent of the world outside."^[6]

In lexicography, words have changed and expanded in accordance to the status quo.^[7] According to the first edition of Webster's Dictionary of the English Language published in 1806, marriage was defined as "the act of joining man and woman..." although this failed to recognize other types of marriages, such as Polygyny, Polyandry, etc ^[8]

By 2009, all major English language dictionaries dropped gender specifications, or supplemented them with secondary definitions to include gender-neutral language or same-sex unions.^[9][10][11]

Anthropological definitions

Attempting to encompass the various types of marriage in various cultures without knowing if they have a common origin,^{[citation needed]} anthropologists have proposed several competing definitions of marriage.^[12] Edvard Westermarck, in his book The History of Human Marriage (1921) had said "The institution of marriage has probably developed out of a primeval habit. The relations between the sexes and parental care among the Invertbrata" including both monogamous and polygamous unions.^[13] The anthropological handbook Notes and Queries (1951) defined marriage as "a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners"^[14] and due to Nuer of Sudan allowing same sex marriages limited only to females who lack sons, Kathleen Gough suggested modifying this to "a woman and one or more other persons."^[15] Leach criticized Gough's definition for being too restrictive in terms of recognized legitimate offspring and suggested that marriage be viewed in terms of the different types of rights it serves to establish. Leach expanded the definition and proposed that "Marriage is a relationship established between a woman and one or more other persons, which provides that a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of the relationship, is accorded full birth-status rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum" ^[16]

Bell also criticized the legitimacy-based definition and has said that some societies do not require marriage for legitimacy.^[12] In societies where illegitimacy means only that the mother is unmarried and has no other legal implications, a legitimacy-based definition of marriage is circular.^[12] Edmund Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all cultures. He offered a list of ten rights associated with marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children, with specific rights differing across cultures.^[17] Duran Bell proposed defining marriage in terms of sexual access rights.^[12]

Etymology

The modern English word "marriage" derives from Middle English mariage, which first appears in 1250-1300 C.E. This in turn is derived from Old French marier (to marry) and ultimately Latin marītāre (to marry) and marītus (of marriage).^[18]

History

The way in which a marriage is conducted has changed over time, as has the institution itself. Although the institution of marriage pre-dates reliable recorded history, many cultures have legends concerning the origins of marriage.^[19]

One of the oldest known and recorded marriage laws is discerned from Hammurabi's Code, enacted during the Mesopotamian world (widely considered as the cradle of civilization). The legal institution of marriage and its rules and ramifications have changed over time depending on the culture or demographic of the time.^[20]

Various cultures have had their own theories on the origin of marriage. One example may lie in a man's need for assurance as to paternity of his children. He might therefore be willing to pay a bride price or provide for a woman in exchange for exclusive sexual access.^[21] Legitimacy is the consequence of this transaction rather than its motivation. In Comanche society, married women work harder, lose sexual freedom, and do not seem to obtain any benefit from marriage.^[22] But nubile women are a source of jealousy and strife in the tribe, so they are given little choice other than to get married. "In almost all societies, access to women is institutionalized in some way so as to moderate the intensity of this competition."^[23]

European marriages

For most of European history, marriage was more or less a business agreement between two families who arranged the marriages of their children. Romantic love, and even simple affection, were not considered essential.^[24] Historically, the perceived necessity of marriage has been stressed.^[25]

In Ancient Greece, no specific civil ceremony was required for the creation of a marriage - only mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife accordingly.^[26] Men usually married when they were in their 20s or 30s ^[27] and expected their wives to be in their early teens. It has been suggested that these ages made sense for the Greek because men were generally done with military service by age 30, and marrying a young girl ensured her virginity.^[28] Married Greek women had few rights in ancient Greek society and were expected to take care of the house and children.^[29] Time was an important factor in Greek marriage. For example, there were superstitions that being married during a full moon was good luck and, according to Robert Flacelière, Greeks married in the winter.^[28] Inheritance was more important than feelings: A woman whose father dies without male heirs can be forced to marry her nearest male relative—even if she has to divorce her husband first.^[30]

Like with the Greeks, Roman marriage and divorce required no specific government or religious approval.^[25] Both marriage and divorce could happen by simple mutual agreement.^[25] There were several types of marriages in Roman society. The traditional ("conventional") form called conventio in manum required a ceremony with witnesses and was also dissolved with a ceremony.^[25] In this type of marriage, a woman lost her family rights of inheritance of her old family and gained them with her new one. She now was subject to the authority of her husband.^[31] There was the free marriage known as sine manu. In this arrangement, the wife remained a member of her original family; she stayed under the authority of her father, kept her family rights of inheritance with her old family and did not gain any with the new family.^[31] A law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) issued in 342 CE prohibited same-sex marriage, but the exact intent of the law and its relation to social practice is unclear, as only a few documented examples of same-sex marriage in ancient Rome exist.^[32]

A woodcut of a medieval wedlock ceremony from Germany.

From the early Christian era (30 to 325 CE), marriage was thought of as primarily a private matter, with no religious or other ceremony being required. Marriage in sixth-century Europe has been characterized as political polygamy. The Germanic warlord Clothar, despite being a baptized Christian, eventually acquired four wives for strategic reasons, including his dead brother's wife, her sister and the daughter of a captured foreign king.^[24]

In the twelfth century, aristocrats believed love was incompatible with marriage and sought romance in adultery.^[24] Troubadors invented courtly love which involved secret but chaste trysts between a lover and a beloved.

In fourteenth-century Europe, ordinary people could no longer choose whom to marry. The lord of one Black Forest manor decreed in 1344 that all his unmarried tenants—including widows and widowers—marry spouses of his choosing. Elsewhere, peasants wishing to pick a partner had to pay a fee.^[24]

With few local exceptions, until 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties.^[33][34] The couple would promise verbally to each other that they would be married to each other; the presence of a priest or witnesses was not required.^[35] This promise was known as the "verbum." If freely given and made in the present tense (e.g., "I marry you"), it was unquestionably binding;^[33] if made in the future tense ("I will marry you"), it would constitute a betrothal. One of the functions of churches from the Middle Ages was to register marriages, which was not obligatory. There was no state involvement in marriage and personal status, with these issues being adjudicated in ecclesiastical courts.

The average age of marriage in the late 1200s into the 1500s was around 25 years of age.^[36] Beginning in the 1500s it was unlawful for a woman younger than 20 years of age to marry.^[34][37]

As part of the Counter-Reformation, in 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that a Roman Catholic marriage would be recognized only if the marriage ceremony was officiated by a priest with two witnesses. The Council also authorized a Catechism, issued in 1566, which defined marriage as, "The conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life."^[38]

In England, under the Anglican Church, marriage by consent and cohabitation was valid until the passage of Lord Hardwicke's Act in 1753. This act instituted certain requirements for marriage, including the performance of a religious ceremony observed by witnesses.^[39]

As part of the Reformation, the role of recording marriages and setting the rules for marriage passed to the state. By the 1600s many of the Protestant European countries had a state involvement in marriage. As of 2000, the average marriage age range was 25–44 years for men and 22–39 years for women.

Recognition by the state

In the early modern period, John Calvin and his Protestant colleagues reformulated Christian marriage by enacting the Marriage Ordinance of Geneva, which imposed "The dual requirements of state registration and church consecration to constitute marriage"^[38] for recognition.

In England and Wales, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage.^[40] These were clandestine or irregular marriages performed at Fleet Prison, and at hundreds of other places. From the 1690s until the Marriage Act of 1753 as many as 300,000 clandestine marriages were performed at Fleet Prison alone.^[41] The Act required a marriage ceremony to be officiated by an Anglican priest in the Anglican Church with two witnesses and registration. The Act did not apply to Jewish marriages or those of Quakers, whose marriages continued to be governed by their own customs.

In England and Wales, since 1837, civil marriages have been recognised as a legal alternative to church marriages under the Marriage Act of 1836. In Germany, civil marriages were recognised in 1875. This law permitted a declaration of the marriage before an official clerk of the civil administration, when both spouses affirm their will to marry, to constitute a legally recognised valid and effective marriage, and allowed an optional private clerical marriage ceremony.

Chinese marriage

Main article: Chinese marriage

The mythological origin of Chinese marriage is a story about Nüwa and Fu Xi who invented proper marriage procedures after becoming married.

In ancient Chinese society, people of the same surname were not supposed to marry and doing so was seen as incest. However, because marriage to one's maternal relatives was not thought of as incest, families sometimes intermarried from one generation to another. Over time, Chinese people became more geographically mobile. Individuals remained members of their biological families. When a couple died, the husband and the wife were buried separately in the respective clans’ graveyard. In a maternal marriage, a male would become a son-in-law who lived in the wife’s home.

Same-sex marriage

Main article: Same-sex marriage#History

Various types of same-sex marriages have existed,^[42] ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.^[43]

While it is a relatively new practice that same-sex couples are being granted the same form of legal marital recognition as commonly used by mixed-sexed couples, recent publicity and debate over the past decade gives an impression that civil marriage for lesbian and gay couples is novel and untested. There is a long history of recorded same-sex relationships around the world.^[44] It is believed that same-sex unions were celebrated in Ancient Greece and Rome,^[44] some regions of China, such as Fujian, and at certain times in ancient European history.^[45] A law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) issued in AD 342 prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome, but the exact intent of the law and its relation to social practice is unclear, as only a few examples of same-sex marriage in that culture exist.^[46]

Selection of a partner

Main articles: Arranged marriage and Forced marriage

An arranged marriage between Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Spain

The selection of a marriage partner may involve either the couple going through a selection process of courtship or the marriage may be arranged by the couple's parents or an outside party, a matchmaker.

A pragmatic (or 'arranged') marriage is made easier by formal procedures of family or group politics. A responsible authority sets up or encourages the marriage; they may, indeed, engage a professional matchmaker to find a suitable spouse for an unmarried person. The authority figure could be parents, family, a religious official, or a group consensus.

In some cases, the authority figure may choose a match for purposes other than marital harmony.

In rural Indian villages, child marriage is also practiced, with parents at times arranging the wedding, sometimes even before the child is born. This practice is now illegal under the Child Marriage Restraint Act.

In some societies ranging from Central Asia to the Caucasus to Africa, the custom of bride kidnapping still exists, in which a woman is captured by a man and his friends. Sometimes this covers an elopement, but sometimes it depends on sexual violence. In previous times, raptio was a larger-scale version of this, with groups of women captured by groups of men, sometimes in war; the most famous example is The Rape of the Sabine Women, which provided the first citizens of Rome with their wives.

Other marriage partners are more or less imposed on an individual. For example, widow inheritance provides a widow with another man from her late husband's brothers.

Marriage ceremony

Main article: Wedding

Couple married in a Shinto ceremony in Takayama, Gifu prefecture.

A marriage is usually formalised at a wedding or marriage ceremony. The ceremony may be officiated either by a religious official, by a government official or by a state approved celebrant. In many European and some Latin American countries, any religious ceremony must be held separately from the required civil ceremony. Some countries – such as Belgium, Bulgaria, France, the Netherlands, Romania and Turkey^[47] – require that a civil ceremony take place before any religious one. In some countries – notably the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Norway and Spain – both ceremonies can be held together; the officiant at the religious and civil ceremony also serving as agent of the state to perform the civil ceremony. To avoid any implication that the state is "recognizing" a religious marriage (which is prohibited in some countries) – the "civil" ceremony is said to be taking place at the same time as the religious ceremony. Often this involves simply signing a register during the religious ceremony. If the civil element of the religious ceremony is omitted, the marriage is not recognised by government under the law.

While some countries, such as Australia, permit marriages to be held in private and at any location, others, including England and Wales, require that the civil ceremony be conducted in a place open to the public and specially sanctioned by law. In England, the place of marriage need no longer be a church or register office, but could also be a hotel, historic building or other venue that has obtained the necessary licence. An exception can be made in the case of marriage by special emergency license, which is normally granted only when one of the parties is terminally ill. Rules about where and when persons can marry vary from place to place. Some regulations require that one of the parties reside in the locality of the registry office.

Within the parameters set by the law of the jurisdiction in which a marriage or wedding takes place, each religious authority has rules for the manner in which weddings are to be conducted by their officials and members.

Cohabitation

See also: Cohabitation

Marriage is an institution which can join together people's lives in a variety of emotional and economic ways. In many Western cultures, marriage usually leads to the formation of a new household comprising the married couple, with the married couple living together in the same home, often sharing the same bed, but in some other cultures this is not the tradition.^[48] Among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, residency after marriage is matrilocal, with the husband moving into the household of his wife's mother.^[49] Residency after marriage can also be patrilocal or avunculocal. Also, in southwestern China, walking marriages, in which the husband and wife do not live together, have been a traditional part of the Mosuo culture.^[50] Walking marriages have also been increasingly common in modern Beijing. Guo Jianmei, director of the center for women's studies at Beijing University, told a Newsday correspondent, "Walking marriages reflect sweeping changes in Chinese society."^[51] A similar arrangement in Saudi Arabia, called misyar marriage, also involves the husband and wife living separately but meeting regularly.^[52]

Conversely, marriage is not a prerequisite for cohabitation. In some cases couples living together do not wish to be recognised as married, such as when pension or alimony rights are adversely affected, or because of taxation consideration, or because of immigration issues, and for many other reasons. In modern western societies some couples cohabitate before marriage to test whether such an arrangement might work in the long term.

In some cases cohabitation may constitute a common-law marriage, and in some countries the laws recognise cohabitation in preference to the formality of marriage for taxation and social security benefits. This is the case, for example, in Australia.^[53]

Sex and procreation

Some married couples choose not to have children and so remain childfree. Others are unable to have children due to infertility or other factors preventing conception or the bearing of children. In some cultures, marriage imposes an obligation on women to bear children. In northern Ghana, for example, payment of bridewealth signifies a woman's requirement to bear children, and women using birth control face substantial threats of physical abuse and reprisals.^[54]

On the other hand, marriage is not a prerequisite for having children. In the United States, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that in 1992, 30.1 percent of births were to unmarried women.^[55][56] In 2006, that number had risen to 38.5 percent.^[57] Until recently, children born outside of marriage were known as illegitimate and suffered legal disadvantages and social stigma. In recent years the legal relevance of illegitimacy has declined and social acceptance has increased, especially in western countries. In the United States, the highest judicial body ruled in the case Griswold v. Connecticut that procreation within marriage could be abridged by artificial insemination.

Many of the world's major religions look with disfavor on sexual relations outside of marriage.^[58] Many nonsecular states, mostly with Muslim majorities, sanction criminal penalties for sexual intercourse before marriage. Sexual relations by a married person with someone other than his/her spouse is known as adultery and is also frequently disapproved by the major world religions (some calling it a sin). Adultery is considered in many jurisdictions to be a crime and grounds for divorce. (See adultery.)

Marriage law

Main article: Marriage law

Marriage is an institution that is historically filled with restrictions. From age, to race, to sexual orientation, to gender, to social status, restrictions are placed on marriage by society for reasons of benefiting the children, passing on healthy genes, to keep property concentrated, or because of prejudice and fear. Almost all cultures that recognize marriage also recognize adultery as a violation of the terms of marriage.^[4]

The United States has had a history of marriage restriction laws. Many states enacted miscegenation laws which were first introduced in the late seventeenth century in the slave-holding colonies of Virginia (1691) and Maryland (1692) and lasted until 1967 (until it was overturned via Loving v. Virginia). Many of these states restricted several minorities from marrying whites. For example, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma banned Blacks in particular. States such as Mississippi and Missouri banned Blacks and Asians. States such as North Carolina and South Carolina banned Blacks and Native Americans, and some states such as Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia banned all non-whites. Current federal law specifies marriage to be a union of one man and one woman. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) allows states to ignore same-sex unions from other states and bars the federal government from granting marriage benefits to couples in such unions.^[59] Opposition to the recognition of Deseret as a State by the Federal government was founded on opposition to the once-practised Polygamous marriages of Mormons.

Forty-one US states currently have statutory Defense of Marriage Acts. Three of those states have statutory language that pre-dates DOMA (enacted before 1996) defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Thirty states have defined marriage in their constitutions. Arizona is the only state that has ever defeated a constitutional amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman (2006), but subsequently passed one in 2008.^[60]

Societies have often placed restrictions on marriage to relatives, though the degree of prohibited relationship varies widely. In many societies, marriage between brothers and sisters has been forbidden. Roman law, for example, enforced marriage as a "union of man and woman and the inseparable association of their lives."^[5] Some mainstream religions prohibit some marriages on the basis of the consanguinity (lineal descent) and affinity (kinship by marriage) of the prospective marriage partners, though the standards have varied and changed over time.

Common-law marriage

See also: Common-law marriage

In some jurisdictions but not all, marriage relationships may be created by the operation of the law alone, as in common-law marriage, sometimes called "marriage by habit and repute (cohabitation)." A de facto common-law marriage without a license or ceremony is legally binding in some jurisdictions but has no legal consequence in others.^[61]

Rights and obligations

A Ketubah in Hebrew, a Jewish marriage-contract outlining the duties of each partner

See also: Rights and responsibilities of marriages in the United States

A marriage bestows rights and obligations on the married parties, and sometimes on relatives as well, being the sole mechanism for the creation of affinal ties (in-laws). These may include:

• Giving a husband/wife or his/her family control over a spouse’s sexual services, labor, and property.
• Giving a husband/wife responsibility for a spouse’s debts.
• Giving a husband/wife visitation rights when his/her spouse is incarcerated or hospitalized.
• Giving a husband/wife control over his/her spouse’s affairs when the spouse is incapacitated.
• Establishing the second legal guardian of a parent’s child.
• Establishing a joint fund of property for the benefit of children.
• Establishing a relationship between the families of the spouses.

These rights and obligations vary considerably between societies, and between groups within society.^[62]

Marriage restrictions

Main article: Marriage law#Marriage restrictions

Marriage is an institution that is historically filled with restrictions. From age, to gender, to social status, restrictions are placed on marriage by society for reasons of benefiting the children, passing on healthy genes, to keep property concentrated, or because of prejudice and fear.

Some legal, social, or religious restrictions apply in some countries on the genders of the couple. In response to changing social and political attitudes, some jurisdictions and religious denominations now recognize marriages between people of the same sex. In some jurisdictions these are sometimes called civil unions or domestic partnerships, while some others explicitly prohibit same-sex marriages.

Societies have often placed restrictions on marriage to relatives, though the degree of prohibited relationship varies widely. In most societies, marriage between brothers and sisters has been forbidden. All mainstream religions prohibit some marriages on the basis of the consanguinity (lineal descent) and affinity (kinship by marriage) of the prospective marriage partners, though the standards vary.

Even though in some places marital relationships did not have to be officially registered, there have been countless restrictions placed on marriage by different societies throughout human history. Restrictions against polygamy and marrying within a particular group or race have been common. Many societies, even some with a cultural tradition of polygamy, recognize monogamy as the only valid form of marriage. Many societies have also adopted other restrictions on whom one can marry, such as prohibitions of marrying persons with the same surname, or persons with the same sacred animal. Societies have also at times required marriage from within a certain group. Anthropologists refer to these restrictions as endogamy. An example of such restrictions would be a requirement to marry someone from the same tribe.

State recognition

Main article: Marriage law#State recognition

In many jurisdictions, a civil marriage may take place as part of the religious marriage ceremony, although they are theoretically distinct. Some jurisdictions allow civil marriages in circumstances which are notably not allowed by particular religions, such as same-sex marriages or civil unions.

Marriage and religion

All mainstream religions have strong views relating to marriage. Most religions perform a wedding ceremony to solemnize the beginning of a marriage. It may be regarded as a sacrament, a contract, a sacred institution, or a covenant.

Christianity

Christian wedding in Kyoto, Japan.

Main article: Christian views of marriage

Christians believe that marriage is a gift from God, one that should not be taken for granted.^[63] From the very beginning of the Christian Church, marriage law and theology have been a major matter.^[64] The foundation of the Western tradition of Christian marriages have been the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul.^[38]

Christians often marry for religious reasons ranging from following the biblical injunction for a "man to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one,"^{[Gen. 2:24] [65]} to obeying Canon Law stating marriage between baptized persons is a sacrament.^[66]

Divorce is not encouraged. Most Protestant churches allow people to marry again after a divorce. In the Roman Catholic Church, marriage can only be ended by an annulment where the Church for special reasons regards it as never having taken place.^[67]

"'...So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

– Jesus^[TNIV]

Liturgical Christianity

Anglicans, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox consider marriage termed holy matrimony to be an expression of divine grace, termed a sacrament or mystery. Roman Catholics consider marriage between baptized persons a sacrament.^[66] In Western ritual, the ministers of the sacrament are the husband and wife themselves, with a bishop, priest, or deacon merely witnessing the union on behalf of the church, and adding a blessing. In Eastern ritual churches, the bishop or priest functions as the actual minister of the Sacred Mystery (Eastern Orthodox deacons may not perform marriages). Western Christians commonly refer to marriage as a vocation, while Eastern Christians consider it an ordination and a martyrdom, though the theological emphases indicated by the various names are not excluded by the teachings of either tradition. Marriage is commonly celebrated in the context of a Eucharistic service (a nuptial Mass or Divine Liturgy). The sacrament of marriage is indicative of the relationship between Christ and the Church.^{[Eph. 5:29-32]}

The Roman Catholic tradition of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries defined marriage as a sacrament.^[38] Marriage is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. According to the Church's Catechism,^[68] "the spouses as ministers of Christ's grace mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church." In Catholicism, a principle objective of marriage is procreation: "[e]ntering marriage with the intention of never having children is a grave wrong and more than likely grounds for an annulment."^[69] According to current Catholic legislation governing marriage, "The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility; in Christian marriage they acquire a distinctive firmness by reason of the sacrament.^[70]

Protestantism

Protestant denominations see the primary purpose of marriage to be to glorify^[71] God by demonstrating his love to the world.^{[citation needed]} Other purposes of marriage include intimate companionship, rearing children and mutual support for both husband and wife to fulfill their life callings. Protestants generally approve of birth control^{[citation needed]} and consider marital sexual pleasure to be a gift of God.

Most Reformed Christians would deny the elevation of marriage to the status of a sacrament, nevertheless it is considered a covenant between spouses before God.^{cf.[Ephesians 5:31-33]}

Historically, five competing models of marriage in Christianity have shaped Western marriage and legal tradition:

• The Protestant Reformationists replaced the Roman Catholic sacramental model.
• Martin Luther saw it as a social "estate of the earthly kingdom…subject to the prince, not the Pope."
• John Calvin taught that marriage was a covenant of grace that required the coercive power of the state to preserve its integrity. Anglicans regarded it as a domestic commonwealth within England and the church.
• By the seventeenth century, Anglican theologians had begun to develop a theology of marriage to replace the sacramental model of marriage. These "regarded the interlocking commonwealths of state, church, and family as something of an earthly form of heavenly government."
• The secularism of the Enlightenment emphasized marriage as a contract "to be formed, maintained, and dissolved as the couple sees fit."^[38]

John Witte, Professor of Law and director of the Law and Religion Program at Emory University, warns that contemporary liberal attitudes toward marriage ultimately will produce a family that is "haphazardly bound together in the common pursuit of selfish ends."^[38]

Latter-day Saints

A couple following their marriage in the Manti Utah Temple

Main article: Celestial marriage

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) believe that "marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children." The LDS belief is that marriage between a man and a woman can last beyond death and into eternity.^[72]

Judaism

A Jewish wedding, painting by Jozef Israëls, 1903.

Main article: Jewish views of marriage

In Judaism, marriage is viewed as a contractual bond commanded by God in which a man and a woman come together to create a relationship in which God is directly involved.^{[Deut. 24:1]} Though procreation is not the sole purpose, a Jewish marriage is also expected to fulfill the commandment to have children.^[Gen. 1:28] The main focus centers around the relationship between the husband and wife. Kabbalistically, marriage is understood to mean that the husband and wife are merging together into a single soul. This is why a man is considered "incomplete" if he is not married, as his soul is only one part of a larger whole that remains to be unified.^[73]

Islam

Main article: Islamic marital jurisprudence

A Muslim bride of Pakistan origin signing the nikkah nama or marriage certificate.

A Muslim couple being wed alongside the Tungabhadra River at Hampi, India

Islam also commends marriage, with the age of marriage being whenever the individuals feel ready, financially and emotionally.

In Islam, polygamy is allowed for men, with the specific limitation that they can only have up to four wives at any one time, given the religious requirement that they are able to and willing to partition their time and wealth equally among the respective wives.

For a Muslim wedding to take place, the bride and her guardian must both agree on the marriage. Should either the guardian or the girl disagree on the marriage, it may not legally take place. In essence, while the guardian/father of the girl has no right to force her to marry, he has the right to stop a marriage from taking place, given that his reasons are valid. The professed purpose of this practice is to ensure that a woman finds a suitable partner whom she has chosen not out of sheer emotion.

From an Islamic (Shari'Ah) law perspective, the minimum requirements and responsibilities in a Muslim marriage are that the groom provide living expenses (housing, clothing, food, maintenance) to the bride, and in return, the bride must be a partner to the husband. All other rights and responsibilities are to be decided between the husband and wife, and may even be included as stipulations in the marriage contract before the marriage actually takes place, so long as they do not go against the minimum requirements of the marriage. In Shia Islam marriage must take place in the presence of at least two reliable witnesses, with the consent of the guardian of the bride and the consent of both spouses (including the girl). Following the marriage, the couple is immediately allowed to consummate the marriage. To create a religious contract between them, it is sufficient that a man and a woman indicate an intention to marry each other and recite the requisite words in front of a Muslim priest The wedding party can be held days, or months later, whenever the couple and their families want to announce the marriage in public..^{[74][75][76][77]}

In Sunni Islam, marriage must take place in the presence of witnesses, with the consent of the bride and the consent of both spouses (including the girl). Following the marriage they may consummate their marriage.

Bahá'í

In the Bahá'í Faith marriage is encouraged and viewed as a mutually strengthening bond, but is not obligatory. A Bahá'í marriage requires the couple to choose each other, and then the consent of all living parents.^[78]

Hinduism

Hindu marriage ceremony from a Rajput wedding.

Main article: Marriage in Hinduism

Hinduism sees marriage as a sacred duty that entails both religious and social obligations. Old Hindu literature in Sanskrit gives many different types of marriages and their categorization ranging from "Gandharva Vivaha" (instant marriage by mutual consent of participants only, without any need for even a single third person as witness) to normal (present day) marriages, to "Rakshasa Vivaha" ("demoniac" marriage, performed by abduction of one participant by the other participant, usually, but not always, with the help of other persons). Hindu widows cannot remarry.^[79]

Sikhism

In a Sikh marriage, the couple make rounds around the holy book called Guru Granth Sahib four times and the holy man speaks some words from the Guru Granth Sahib in the form of kirtan. The ceremony is known as 'Anand Karaj' and represents the holy union of between two souls that are united as one.

Same-sex marriage

A same-sex couple exchanging wedding vows in an Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.

Main article: Religious arguments about same-sex marriage

For the most part, religious traditions in the world reserve marriage to heterosexual unions, but there are exceptions including Unitarian Universalist, Metropolitan Community Church, Quaker, United Church of Canada, United Church of Christ and Reform Jewish congregations, and some Anglican dioceses.^[80][81] This model is currently recognized by various jurisdictions^[82] and religious denominations.^[83][84][85]

Financial considerations

The financial aspects of marriage vary between cultures and have changed over time.

In some cultures, dowries and bride prices continue to be required today. In both cases, the financial arrangements are usually made between the groom (or his family) and the bride's family; with the bride in many cases not being involved in the arrangement, and often not having a choice in whether to participate in the marriage.

In Early Modern Britain, the social status of the couple was supposed to be equal. After the marriage, all the property (called "fortune") and expected inheritances of the wife belonged to the husband.

Dowry

Main article: Dowry

A dowry was not an unconditional gift, but was usually a part of a wider marriage settlement. For example, if the groom had other children, they could not inherit the dowry, which had to go to the bride's children. In the event of her childlessness, the dowry had to be returned to her family, but sometimes not until the groom's death or remarriage.

In some cultures, dowries continue to be required today (for example, in Sudan), while some countries impose restrictions on the payment of dowry. In India, nearly 7,000 women are killed annually in disputes over dowries,^[86] and activists believe that figures represent only a third of the actual number of such murders.^[87]

Bride price and dower

In other cultures, the groom or his family were expected to pay a bride price to the bride's family for the right to marry the daughter, or dower, which was payable to the bride. This required the groom to work for the bride's family for a set period of time.

In the Jewish tradition, the rabbis in ancient times insisted on the marriage couple entering into a marriage contact, called a ketubah. Besides other things, the ketubah provided for an amount to be paid by the husband in the event of a divorce or his estate in the event of his death. This amount was a replacement of the biblical dower or bride price, which was payable at the time of the marriage by the groom to the bride or her parents.^{[citation needed] [Exodus 22:15-16]} This innovation was put in place because the biblical bride price created a major social problem: many young prospective husbands could not raise the bride price at the time when they would normally be expected to marry. So, to enable these young men to marry, the rabbis, in effect, delayed the time that the amount would be payable, when they would be more likely to have the sum. It may also be noted that both the dower and the ketubah amounts served the same purpose: the protection for the wife should her support cease, either by death or divorce. The only difference between the two systems was the timing of the payment. It is the predecessor to the wife's present-day entitlement to maintenance in the event of the breakup of marriage, and family maintenance in the event of the husband not providing adequately for the wife in his will. Another function performed by the ketubah amount was to provide a disincentive for the husband contemplating divorcing his wife: he would need to have the amount to be able to pay to the wife.

Morning gifts, which might also be arranged by the bride's father rather than the bride, are given to the bride herself; the name derives from the Germanic tribal custom of giving them the morning after the wedding night. She might have control of this morning gift during the lifetime of her husband, but is entitled to it when widowed. If the amount of her inheritance is settled by law rather than agreement, it may be called dower. Depending on legal systems and the exact arrangement, she may not be entitled to dispose of it after her death, and may lose the property if she remarries. Morning gifts were preserved for many centuries in morganatic marriage, a union where the wife's inferior social status was held to prohibit her children from inheriting a noble's titles or estates. In this case, the morning gift would support the wife and children. Another legal provision for widowhood was jointure, in which property, often land, would be held in joint tenancy, so that it would automatically go to the widow on her husband's death.

Islamic tradition has similar practices. A 'mahr', either immediate or deferred, is the woman's portion of the groom's wealth (divorce) or estate (death). These amounts are usually set based on the groom's own and family wealth and incomes, but in some parts these are set very high so as to provide a disincentive for the groom exercising the divorce, or the husband's family 'inheriting' a large portion of the estate, especially if there are no male offspring from the marriage. In some countries, including Iran, the mahr or alimony can amount to more than a man can ever hope to earn, sometimes up to US$1,000,000 (4000 official Iranian gold coins). If the husband cannot pay the mahr, either in case of a divorce or on demand, according to the current laws in Iran, he will have to pay it by installments. Failure to pay the mahr might even lead to imprisonment.^[88]

Modern customs

In many countries today, each marriage partner has the choice of keeping his or her property separate or combining properties. In the latter case, called community property, when the marriage ends by divorce each owns half. In many legal jurisdictions, laws related to property and inheritance provide by default for property to pass upon the death of one party in a marriage firstly to the spouse and secondly to the children. Wills and trusts can make alternative provisions for property succession.

In some legal systems, the partners in a marriage are "jointly liable" for the debts of the marriage. This has a basis in a traditional legal notion called the "Doctrine of Necessities" whereby a husband was responsible to provide necessary things for his wife. Where this is the case, one partner may be sued to collect a debt for which they did not expressly contract. Critics of this practice note that debt collection agencies can abuse this by claiming an unreasonably wide range of debts to be expenses of the marriage. The cost of defence and the burden of proof is then placed on the non-contracting party to prove that the expense is not a debt of the family. The respective maintenance obligations, both during and eventually after a marriage, are regulated in most jurisdictions; alimony is one such method.

Some have attempted to analyse the institution of marriage using economic theory; for example, anarcho-capitalist economist David Friedman has written a lengthy and controversial study of marriage as a market transaction (the market for husbands and wives).^[89]

Taxation

In some countries, spouses are allowed to average their incomes; this is advantageous to a married couple with disparate incomes. To compensate for this somewhat, many countries provide a higher tax bracket for the averaged income of a married couple. While income averaging might still benefit a married couple with a stay-at-home spouse, such averaging would cause a married couple with roughly equal personal incomes to pay more total tax than they would as two single persons. This is commonly called the marriage penalty.

Moreover, when the rates applied by the tax code are not based on averaging the incomes, but rather on the sum of individuals' incomes, higher rates will definitely apply to each individual in a two-earner households in progressive tax systems. This is most often the case with high-income taxpayers and is another situation where some consider there to be a marriage penalty.

Conversely, when progressive tax is levied on the individual with no consideration for the partnership, dual-income couples fare much better than single-income couples with similar household incomes. The effect can be increased when the welfare system treats the same income as a shared income thereby denying welfare access to the non-earning spouse. Such systems apply in Australia and Canada, for example.

Other considerations

Sometimes people marry for purely pragmatic reasons, sometimes called a marriage of convenience or sham marriage. For example, according to one publisher of information about "green card" marriages, "Every year over 450,000 United States citizens marry foreign-born individuals and petition for them to obtain a permanent residency (Green Card) in the United States."^[90] While this is likely an over-estimate, in 2003 alone 184,741 immigrants were admitted to the U.S. as spouses of U.S. citizens.^[91]

Some people want to marry a person with higher or lower status than them. Others want to marry people who have similar status. Hypergyny refers to the act of seeking out those who are of slightly higher social status. In most cases, hypergyny refers to women wanting men of higher status. Isogyny refers to the act of seeking out those who are of similar status.

Termination

In most societies, the death of one of the partners terminates the marriage, and in monogamous societies this allows the other partner to remarry, though sometimes after a waiting or mourning period.

Many societies also provide for the termination of marriage through divorce. Marriages can also be annulled in some societies, where an authority declares that a marriage never happened. In either event the people concerned are free to remarry (or marry). After divorce, one spouse may have to pay alimony.

Several cultures have practiced temporary and conditional marriages. Examples include the Celtic practice of handfasting and fixed-term marriages in the Muslim community. Pre-Islamic Arabs practiced a form of temporary marriage that carries on today in the practice of Nikah Mut'ah, a fixed-term marriage contract. Muslim controversies related to Nikah Mut'ah have resulted in the practice being confined mostly to Shi'ite communities.

Statistics

In the United States, 90% of children born in 1970, were to married parents. In 2008, the rate was 60%. For people aged 20 to 54, 78.6% were married in 1970. In 2008, this was 57.2%. First marriages that remained intact was 77.4% in 1970. This was 61.2% in 2008. A researcher believes that increases in divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth have contributed most to the decline in marriage in the past half-century.^[92]

Societal considerations

A researcher claims that children who grow up in homes where parents are married to one another are less likely to be impoverished, to have emotional or behavioral problems, to engage in premature sexual relations, to use drugs, or to commit suicide.^[92]

Post-marital residence

Early theories explaining the determinants of postmarital residence (e.g., Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Tylor, or George Peter Murdock) connected it with the sexual division of labor. However, to date, cross-cultural tests of this hypothesis using worldwide samples have failed to find any significant relationship between these two variables. However, Korotayev's tests show that the female contribution to subsistence does correlate significantly with matrilocal residence in general; however, this correlation is masked by a general polygyny factor. Although an increase in the female contribution to subsistence tends to lead to matrilocal residence, it also tends simultaneously to lead to general non-sororal polygyny which effectively destroys matrilocality. If this polygyny factor is controlled (e.g., through a multiple regression model), division of labor turns out to be a significant predictor of postmarital residence. Thus, Murdock's hypotheses regarding the relationships between the sexual division of labor and postmarital residence were basically correct, though, as has been shown by Korotayev, the actual relationships between those two groups of variables are more complicated than he expected.^[93][94]

In modern societies we observe a trend toward the neolocal residence.^[95]

Contemporary views on marriage

Criticisms

Main article: Criticism of marriage

Many people have proposed arguments against marriage for various reasons. These include political and religious criticisms, pragmatic reference to the divorce rate, as well as celibacy for religious or philosophical reasons.

Controversial views

See also: Anti-miscegenation laws

Some views about marriage are controversial. Advocates of same-sex rights criticize the exclusion of homosexual relationships from legal and social recognition and the rights and obligations it provides. At the same time social conservatives oppose any attempt to define marriage to include anything other than the union of one man and one woman, claiming that to do so would "deprive the term of its fundamental and defining meaning."^[96]

Currently 37 U.S. states have passed laws which define marriage as limited to a union between one man and one woman: 33 state legislatures have passed statutes to that effect, and 4 states (Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska and Nevada) have, by popular vote, passed Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMAs) as constitutional amendments; the Ohio state legislature is currently debating a Defense of Marriage Act. Thirteen states, therefore, do not currently have laws on their books which limit marriage to a union between one man and one woman.^[97]

The state of Massachusetts has sued the U.S. federal government over its definition of marriage. The lawsuit, brought by the first state to legalize gay marriage, said the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) infringed on a state's sovereign right to define marital status. The lawsuit alleges that DOMA infringed on a state's sovereign right to define marital status and is unconstitutional.^[98]

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marriage

• Age at first marriage
• Age disparity in sexual relationships
• Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages (UN treaty)
• Feminism
• List of people with longest marriages
• Marriage privatization
• Men's rights
• Misandry
• Radical feminism
• Same-sex marriage
• Sexual conflict
• Types of marriages
• Marriage tree
• Visual markers of marital status

Related concepts

• Adultery - Sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse.
• Alimony - obligation of support.
• Annulment - legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void.
• Aufruf - A ceremony in which Jews pelt the couple to be married with candy on the shabbat before the wedding.
• Betrothal - formal state of engagement to be married.
• Bride Price - The amount of money or property or wealth paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom
• Bride Service
• Child marriage
• Christian views of marriage - views of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, and others
• Civil marriage - marriages which are constituted by a government official and not a religious congregation.
• Divorce - ending of a marriage.
• Dowry - the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings to her husband in marriage
• Engagement
• Family therapy/Relationship counseling
• Free love - a social movement opposed to marriage
• Head and Master laws
• Husband/Wife
• Human sexuality
• Human-animal marriage - ceremonial ritual practice in some cultures, with no legal standing
• Human sexual behaviour
• Hypergamy
• Inheritance
• Islamic marital jurisprudence
• Living apart together
• Mail-order bride
• Marriage (conflict)
• Marriage gap
• Marriage law
• Marriageable age
• Monogamy/Polygamy
• Nikah urfi
• Separation - a step in the ending of a marriage.
• Social unit
• Wedding

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85. ^ "Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations BLGT Community guide". http://www.uua.org/visitors/justicediversity/6252.shtml. Retrieved 2008-10-16. 
86. ^ "India's dowry deaths". BBC News. July 16, 2003.
87. ^ "Women: killed by greed and oppression". TIME Magazine. September 11, 1995 Volume 146, No. 11
88. ^ A translation of some parts of the Civil Code of Iran
89. ^ The Economics of Love and Marriage
90. ^ United States Immigration Support.org - Green Card Through Marriage
91. ^ Immigration to the United States: Fiscal years 1820-2003PDF (2.03 MB)
92. ^ ^{a b} Ellen McCarthy (2009-10-23). "For better or worse:Report says marriage's best days have gone by" (in English). Washington Post. Washington Post. pp. 10E. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/25/AR2009102300119.html. 
93. ^ Korotayev A. Form of marriage, sexual division of labor, and postmarital residence in cross-cultural perspective: A reconsideration. Journal of anthropological research ISSN 0091-7710. 2003, Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 69-89
94. ^ Korotayev A. Division of Labor by Gender and Postmarital Residence in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Reconsideration. Cross-Cultural Research. 2003, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp.335-372 DOI: 10.1177/1069397103253685)
95. ^ Marriage, Family, and Kinship: Comparative Studies of Social Organization, by Melvin Ember and Carol R. Ember. New Haven: HRAF Press, 1983)
96. ^ Rabbinical Council of America (2004-03-30). "Same-Sex Marriage". Press release. http://www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=100556. 
97. ^ "Legal Definitions of Marriage in the United States." August 1, 2009. http://www.clgs.org/marriage/state-definitions.
98. ^ Shishkin, Philip. "Massachusetts Sues U.S. Over Definition of Marriage." Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition;7/9/2009, Vol. 254 Issue 7, pA3, 0p, 1 bw

External links

Look up marriage in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marriage

• The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University
• African Marriage Rituals
• For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present John Gillis. 1985. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019503614X
• 'Forever and a Day' or 'Just One Night'? On Adaptive Functions of Long-Term and Short-Term Romantic Relationships
• "Legal Regulation of Marital Relations: An Historical and Comparative Approach – Gautier 19 (1): 47 – International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family". http://lawfam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/1/47. 
• "Marriage – its various forms and the role of the State" on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time featuring Janet Soskice, Frederik Pedersen and Christina Hardyment
• Radical principles and the legal institution of marriage: domestic relations law and social democracy in Sweden  – Bradley 4 (2): 154 – International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family
• Recordings & Photos from a College Historical Society debate on the role of marriage in modern life, featuring Senator David Norris and Senator Ronan Mullen.

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Common misspelling(s) of marriage

• marrage
• marraige

Dansk (Danish)
n. - ægteskab, vielse, bryllup, giftermål

idioms:

• give in marriage    give til ægte, bortgifte
• marriage broker    Kirsten Giftekniv
• marriage lines    vielsesattest
• marriage settlement    ægtepagt, aftale om båndlæggelse af kapital
• shotgun marriage    hastebryllup

Nederlands (Dutch)
huwelijk, huwelijks-

Français (French)
n. - mariage, noces, (fig) mariage, alliance, mariage (aux cartes)

idioms:

• give in marriage    donner en mariage
• marriage broker    entremetteur
• marriage lines    extrait d'acte de mariage
• marriage settlement    contrat de mariage
• shotgun marriage    mariage forcé

Deutsch (German)
n. - Ehe, Verbindung, Heirat, Hochzeit

idioms:

• give in marriage    jdn. verheiraten, dem Bräutigam zuführen
• marriage broker    Ehevermittler
• marriage lines    Trauschein, Heiratsurkunde
• marriage settlement    Ehevertrag
• shotgun marriage    Mußheirat

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γάμος, παντρειά

idioms:

• give in marriage    παντρεύω
• marriage broker    προξενητής, προξενήτρα
• marriage lines    (Βρετ.) πιστοποιητικό γάμου (κν. στεφανοχάρτι)
• marriage settlement    συμφωνητικό γάμου
• shotgun marriage    γάμος με το στανιό

Italiano (Italian)
matrimonio, nuziale

idioms:

• give in marriage    dare in moglie
• marriage lines    certificato di matrimonio
• marriage settlement    contratto matrimoniale
• shotgun marriage    matrimonio di necessità

Português (Portuguese)
n. - casamento (m)

idioms:

• give in marriage    casar-se
• marriage lines    certidão de casamento (f)
• marriage settlement    contrato de casamento (m)
• shotgun marriage    casamento às pressas, por causa de gravidez

Русский (Russian)
брак, брачная церемония, тесное единение

idioms:

• give in marriage    выдавать замуж или женить кого-л.
• marriage lines    свидетельство о браке
• marriage settlement    брачный контракт, касающийся имущества
• shotgun marriage    вынужденный брак

Español (Spanish)
n. - matrimonio, unión conyugal, bodas, casamiento, matrimonial, de boda, de la boda, nupcial

idioms:

• give in marriage    dar en matrimonio
• marriage broker    agente de matrimonios, casamentero
• marriage lines    partida de matrimonio
• marriage settlement    contrato matrimonial, acuerdo prematrimonial en el que se estipula la cuantía de la dote
• shotgun marriage    casamiento a la fuerza, casamiento de penalti

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - äktenskap, (nära) förening, vigsel

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
结婚, 婚姻生活, 婚姻

idioms:

• give in marriage    把某人嫁出
• marriage broker    婚姻介绍人
• marriage lines    结婚证, 结婚证书
• marriage settlement    婚姻财产契约
• shotgun marriage    由于怀孕而被迫结婚, 强迫结合, 勉强地妥协

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 結婚, 婚姻生活, 婚姻

idioms:

• give in marriage    把某人嫁出
• marriage broker    婚姻介紹人
• marriage lines    結婚證, 結婚證書
• marriage settlement    婚姻財產契約
• shotgun marriage    由於懷孕而被迫結婚, 強迫結合, 勉強地妥協

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 결혼[식], 밀접한 관계

idioms:

• give in marriage    ~을 며느리로 삼다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 結婚, 婚姻, 結婚生活, 結婚式, 婚礼, 密接な結合, 結合

idioms:

• marriage broker    結婚仲介人
• marriage lines    結婚証明書
• marriage settlement    婚姻継承的不動産処分, 夫婦財産契約

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) زواج‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮נישואים‬

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