Marriage

Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and between them and their in-laws. It is nearly a cultural universal, but the definition of marriage varies between cultures and religions, and over time. Typically, it is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually sexual, are acknowledged or sanctioned. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing sexual activity, and sexual intercourse with others aside from one's spouse may be considered immoral or even illegal in some jurisdictions. A marriage ceremony is called a wedding, while a private marriage is sometimes called an elopement. Marriage takes many forms, depending on cultural and religious values of the people involved and the cultural expectations of the society in which they are living. Marriage may be recognized by a state, an organization, a religious authority, a tribal group, a local community, or peers. It is often viewed as a legal contract. Around the world, there has been a general trend towards ensuring equal rights for women in marriages with men, and greater tolerance towards interethnic, interracial, interfaith, interdenominational, interclass, intercommunity, transnational, and same-sex couples. Debates persist regarding the legal status of married women, leniency towards violence within marriage, customs such as dowry and bride price, marriageable age, and criminalization of premarital and extramarital sex.

Etymology The word marriage appeared around 1300 and is borrowed from Old French mariage (12th century), ultimately tracing to the Latin maritātus 'married', past participle of maritāre 'to marry'. The adjective marītus, -a, -um 'matrimonial, nuptial' could also be used, through nominalization, in the masculine form as a noun for 'husband' and in the feminine form for 'wife'. The related word matrimony is borrowed from the Old French word matremoine, which appears around 1300 CE and is in turn ultimately a learned borrowing from Latin mātrimōnium, which is derived from māter 'mother' with the suffix -mōnium for an action, state, or condition.

Definitions Anthropologists have proposed several competing definitions of marriage in an attempt to encompass the wide variety of marital practices observed across cultures. Even within Western culture, "definitions of marriage have careened from one extreme to another and everywhere in between" (as Evan Gerstmann has put it).

Relation recognized by custom or law In The History of Human Marriage (1891), Edvard Westermarck defined marriage as "a more or less durable connection between male and female lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring." In The Future of Marriage in Western Civilization (1936), he rejected his earlier definition, instead provisionally defining marriage as "a relation of one or more men to one or more women that is recognized by custom or law".

Legitimacy of offspring 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." In recognition of a practice by the Nuer people of Sudan allowing women to act as a husband in certain circumstances (the ghost marriage), Kathleen Gough suggested modifying this to "a woman and one or more other persons." In an analysis of marriage among the Nayar, a polyandrous society in India, Gough found that the conventional "husband" role was divided between a non-resident "social father" of the woman's children and her lovers. None of these men had legal rights to the woman's child. This forced Gough to disregard sexual access as a key element of marriage and to define it in terms of legitimacy of offspring alone. Economic anthropologist Duran Bell has criticized the legitimacy-based definition on the basis that some societies do not require marriage for legitimacy. He argued that a legitimacy-based definition of marriage is circular in societies where illegitimacy has no other legal or social implications for a child other than the mother being unmarried.

Collection of rights Edmund 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. In a 1955 article in Man, 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. Those rights, according to Leach, included:

"To establish a legal father of a woman's children. To establish a legal mother of a man's children. To give the husband a monopoly in the wife's sexuality. To give the wife a monopoly in the husband's sexuality. To give the husband partial or monopolistic rights to the wife's domestic and other labor services. To give the wife partial or monopolistic rights to the husband's domestic and other labor services. To give the husband partial or total control over property belonging or potentially accruing to the wife. To give the wife partial or total control over property belonging or potentially accruing to the husband. To establish a joint fund of property – a partnership – for the benefit of the children of the marriage. To establish a socially significant 'relationship of affinity' between the husband and his wife's brothers." The monopoly on sexuality generally does not include the right to sexual access, which in many countries is viewed as marital rape.

Types

Monogamy

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