Marriage

Marriage is a legal, social, and religious relationship between individuals which has formed the foundation of the family for most societies. Historically, marriage has been a social contract between a man (husband) and a woman (wife). Polygamy has been a common variation in some cultures, usually in the form of polygyny (a man taking several wives) but occasionally in the form of polyandry (a woman taking several husbands). In some western societies today, same-sex marriage is recognized as a variant.

Rights and obligations

Typically, marriage is the institution through which people join together their lives in emotional and economic ways through forming a household. It often confers rights and obligations with respect to raising children, holding property, sexual behavior, kinship ties, tribal membership, relationship to society, inheritance, emotional intimacy, and love.

Related Topics:
Emotion - Economic - Sexual behavior - Inheritance - Intimacy - Love

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Marriage sometimes: establishes the legal father of a woman's child; establishes the legal mother of a man's child; gives the husband or his family control over the wife's sexual services, labor, and/or property; gives the wife or her family control over the husband's sexual services, labor, and/or property; establishes a joint fund of property for the benefit of children; establishes a relationship between the families of the husband and wife. No society does all of these; no one of these is universal (see Edmund Leach's article in "Marriage, Family, and Residence," edited by Paul Bohannan and John Middleton).

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Marriage has traditionally been a prerequisite for starting a family, which usually serves as the building block of a community and society. Thus, marriage not only serves the interests of the two individuals, but also the interests of their children and the society of which they are a part.

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In the Jewish, Muslim or Christian world, marriage is traditionally a prerequisite for sexual intercourse: unmarried people are not supposed to have sex, which is then called fornication and is socially discouraged or even criminalized. In practice, most of these societies have tacitly accepted sex between unmarried people if they marry as soon as pregnancy occurs (see shotgun wedding). Sex with a married person other than one's spouse, called adultery, is even less acceptable and has also often been criminalized, especially in the case of a person who is a representative of the government (e.g. president, prime minister, political representative, public-school teacher, military officer).

Related Topics:
Jew - Muslim - Christian - Sexual intercourse - Fornication - Pregnancy - Shotgun wedding - Adultery

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