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Marriage is a personal union of individuals. This union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding and the married status created is sometimes called wedlock.
Marriage is an institution in which interpersonal relationships (usually intimate and sexual) are acknowledged by the state or by religious authority. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution, 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.
People marry for many reasons, but usually one or more of the following: legal, social, and economic stability; the formation of a family unit; procreation and the education and nurturing of children; legitimizing sexual relations; public declaration of love; or to obtain citizenship.
Marriage may take many forms: for example, a union between one man and one woman as husband and wife is a monogamous heterosexual marriage; polygamy — in which a person takes more than one spouse — is common in many societies;.
Discussion
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Timeline
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1288 The Scots Parliament creates a law allowing women to propose marriage to men during leap years; men who refuse such proposals are required to pay a fine to the spurned bride-to-be.
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Quotations
A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.
Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy.
Marriage: A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Marrying is all about just obtaining a piece of paper. Divorcing is just obtaining another.
Some marriages give bachelors a master's degree.
A husband who can cook is not at all the same thing as a husband who can shop, prepare, and assemble ingredients, and clean up the mess after the great burst of creativity.
Encyclopedia
Marriage is a personal union of individuals. This union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding and the married status created is sometimes called wedlock.
Marriage is an institution in which interpersonal relationships (usually intimate and sexual) are acknowledged by the state or by religious authority. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution, 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.
People marry for many reasons, but usually one or more of the following: legal, social, and economic stability; the formation of a family unit; procreation and the education and nurturing of children; legitimizing sexual relations; public declaration of love; or to obtain citizenship.
Marriage may take many forms: for example, a union between one man and one woman as husband and wife is a monogamous heterosexual marriage; polygamy — in which a person takes more than one spouse — is common in many societies;. Recently, some jurisdictions and denominations have begun to recognize same-sex marriage, uniting people of the same sex.
A marriage is often formalized during a marriage ceremony, which may be performed either by a religious officiant, by a secular State authorised officiator, or (in weddings that have no church or state affiliation) by a trusted friend of the wedding participants. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved and, in many societies, their extended families.
Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses." The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam gives men and women the "right to marriage" regardless of their race, colour or nationality, but not religion.
Finding a partnerA marriage partner may be found by the person wishing to be married through the process of courtship. Alternatively, marriages may be arranged by an outside party. This is known as an arranged marriage.
Typically an arranged marriage will be finalized only if the candidates approve of the union. Parents sometimes enforce arranged marriages on their children because of cultural tradition or for some other special reason (e.g., dowry). Sometimes a person seeking marriage is comfortable with having his or her marriage arranged and, even disregarding parental preference, would freely choose an arranged marriage. Forced marriage is common in only a few communities and often attracts harsh criticism even from people who are generally in favor of arranged marriage.
Arranged marriage
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. Some of the most popular uses of arranged marriage are for dowry or immigration.
Though now a rarity in Western countries, arranged marriages in countries such as India are still prevalent today. In rural villages, the marriage of a child often has much to do with family property. Parents adopt the practice of child marriage and arrange the wedding, sometimes even before the child is born (though this practice was made illegal by the Child Marriage Restraint Act of the Indian Government). In urban India, people use thriving institutions known as Marriage Bureaus or Matrimonials Sites, where candidates register themselves for small fees.
A related form of pragmatic marriage, sometimes called a marriage of convenience, involves immigration laws. 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." 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.riage ceremony
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, a religious ceremony must be held separately from the civil ceremony. Some countries — such as Belgium, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Turkey 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 specially sanctioned by law (i.e., a church or registry office), and be open to the public. 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.
Despite a marriage ceremony being conducted by a religious or civil official, most religious traditions maintain that the marriage itself is the act of the individuals themselves through vows, with the guests acting as witnesses.
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 or religious beliefs concerning the origins of marriage.
European marriages
No specific civil ceremony was required for the creation of a marriage among the Greeks and Romans; only mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife accordingly. In Ancient Greece, men usually married when they were in their 30s. They expected their wives to be in their early teens. This age-structured relationship was also prevalent in same-sex relationships among the Ancient Greeks. Married Greek women had few rights in ancient Greek society and were expected to take care of the house and children. There was not as much emphasis on age disparity among the Romans in marriage. The husband was often older than the bride; he might be only two years older but sometimes could be as much as three times her age. Unlike Greek brides, Roman brides had many more rights, especially during the Roman Empire. There were two types of marriages in Roman society. The traditional form was called conventio in manum. 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.
Alternatively 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 didn't gain any with the new family. This marriage could simply be annulled by the separation of the couple.
The first recorded use of the word "marriage" for the union of same-sex couples also occurs during the Roman Empire. A number of marriages are recorded to have taken place during this period. In the year 342, the Christian emperors Constantius and Constans declared that same-sex marriage to be illegal. In the year 390, the Christian emperors Valentinian II, Theodoisus and Arcadius declared homosexual sex to be illegal and those who were guilty of it were condemned to be burned alive in front of the public.
From the early Christian era marriage was thought of as primarily a private matter, with no religious or other ceremony being required. Prior to 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties. 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. This promise was known as the "verbum". If made in the present tense (e.g., "I marry you"), it was unquestionably binding; if made in the future tense ("I will marry you"), it would constitute a betrothal, but if the couple proceeded to have sexual relations, the union was a marriage. 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.
In the 1200s in England it was unlawful for a woman younger than 24 years to marry, but this changed, beginning in the 1500s, to 20 years of age. With the average age of marriage in the late thirteenth into the fifteenth century being around 25 years of age.
It was only after the Council of Trent in 1545, as part of the Counter-Reformation, 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."
This change did not extend to the regions affected by the Protestant Reformation, where marriage by consent continued to be the norm. 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.
In the United Kingdom, the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 was a statute passed by Parliament that removed the prohibition forbidding a man to marry the sister of his deceased wife.
State recognitionIn 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" for recognition. That was the first state involvement in marriage.
In England and Wales, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage. 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. 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 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.
In many jurisdictions, a civil marriage may take place as part of the religious marriage ceremony, although they are theoretically distinct. In most American states, a wedding may be officiated by a priest, minister, rabbi or other religious authority, and in such a case the religious authority also acts as an agent of the state. In some countries, such as France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Argentina, Japan and Russia, it is necessary to be married by government authority separately from (usually before) any religious ceremony, with the state ceremony being the legally binding one. Some jurisdictions allow civil marriages in circumstances which are notably not allowed by particular religions, such as same-sex marriages or civil unions.
Marriage relationships may also be created by the operation of the law alone, as in common-law marriage, sometimes called "marriage by habit and repute." This is a judicial recognition that two people who have been living as domestic partners are subject to the rights and obligations of a legal marriage, even without formally marrying. However, in the UK at least, common-law marriage has been abolished and there are no rights available unless a couple marries or enters into a civil partnership.
Lack of recognitionThe status in the eyes of one authority may not be the same as for another, e.g., a marriage may be recognised civilly, but not by a church, and vice versa. Normally a marriage entered into in one country will be recognised in other countries. Sometimes, however, a religious ceremony or a marriage entered into in one country is not recognized by another. (See Marriage (conflict).)
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.
Rights and obligations
A marriage, by definition, 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.
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. Among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, residency after marriage is matrilocal, with the husband moving into the household of his wife's mother. 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. 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." A similar arrangement in Saudi Arabia, called misyar marriage, also involves the husband and wife living separately but meeting regularly.
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 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.
Sex and procreation
Marriage typically requires consummation by sexual intercourse, and non-consummation (that is, failure or refusal to engage in sex) may be grounds for an annulment.
There are some married couples who remain childless either by choice or due to infertility or other factors preventing conception or 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.
On the other hand, marriage is not a prerequisite for having children, and having children outside of marriage is today not as uncommon as it used to be. In the United States, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that in 1992, 30.1 percent of births were to unmarried women. In 2006, that number had risen to 38.5 percent. Until recently, children born outside of marriage were termed illegitimate and suffered legal disadvantages and social stigma. In recent years the legal relevance of illegitimacy has declined and social acceptance increased, especially in western countries.
Many of the world's major religions look with disfavor on sexual relations outside of marriage. Some teach that sexual relations without marriage are fornication, which is sometimes also socially discouraged or even criminalized. Sexual relations by a married person with someone other than his/her spouse is normally called adultery, and is also frequently disapproved by the major world religions (some calling it a sin), and has often been - in some jurisdictions continues to be - a crime and grounds for divorce. (See adultery.)
Polygamy
Polygamous marriage, in which a person is married to more than one spouse at one time, is accepted by many societies, though it is far less common than monogamy.
Africa has the highest rate of polygamy in the world.ures that allow polygamy still sometimes place restrictions on it. For instance, in Islam a man is allowed to marry up to 4 women at the same time, but only in cases where (1) his first wife is infertile, (2) the local population is unbalanced with women strongly outnumbering men, or (3) he claims a strong love and sexual attraction for the potential wife which he says makes him fear of adultery. In each of these situations, all current wives are freed to leave the marriage if they so desire.
Polygyny is the typical form of multiple-marriage polygamy, while polyandry is rare.
Anthropologists distinguish between multiple-marriage polygamy and group marriage, in which multiple spouses all become married to one another. Group marriage is also rare.
In the United States, the historic Oneida Colony provides a prominent 19th-century example of a group marriage, though it was not recognised by any civil or separate religious authority.
Marriage restrictions
Marriage ageThe minimum age at which a person is able to lawfully marry, and if parental or other consents are required, vary from country to country.
Gender restrictionsSome legal, social, or religious restrictions apply in some countries on the payment of dowry and 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. Same-sex marriages have also been recorded in the history of pre-modern Europe.
In 1989, Denmark became the first country in the modern era to extend the rights and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples under the name of registered partnership. Since 2001, five countries have come to recognise same-sex marriages for civil purposes, namely the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, and South Africa, and Norway is on track to become the sixth in 2009. To avoid the use of the term "marriage", some governments provide civil unions, which are open to couples of the same sex, and in some jurisdictions also to those of opposite sexes who do not want to marry, to confer all or a portion of the benefits of married status. Civil unions (and registered/domestic partnerships) are currently recognized and accepted in approximately 30 out of 193 countries worldwide and in some U.S. states. However, in countries where it has been adopted, applications for marriage licenses have far exceeded governmental estimates of demand. Some jurisdictions, such as the nations of Israel, Aruba, and the Netherlands Antilles, as well as the U.S. States of New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island, recognize same-sex marriages lawfully entered into in other countries, while not (yet) permitting them to be performed locally.
In addition to civil authorities, some religious denominations ceremonially perform civil unions and same-sex marriages, and recognize them as essentially equivalent to other marriages. For example, Lutheran churches in Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and some Lutheran churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany allow blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples, as do Unitarian Universalist churches.
In the United States, Massachusetts and California are the only states to recognize same-sex marriage under the name marriage. (In Iowa, a district court that struck down the state's Defense of Marriage Act issued a stay on the ruling the next day, only one same sex couple has been married under Iowa law, and the ruling is currently under consideration by the highest court in Iowa.) In other states, civil unions or domestic partnerships are available to couples of the same sex, often carrying the same entailments as marriage, under a different name. However, these apply only to benefits under state law, and are not recognized by the U.S. federal government or other states (with a few exceptions).
In Australia, de facto relationships are legally recognized in many, but not all, ways, with some states having registers of de facto relationships, although the federal government has amended existing legislation to specify that only marriages between a man and a woman will be recognized as 'marriages'. . As a result, the Australian Capital Territory's 2006 Bill to give civil unions identical status and processes as registered marriages, was repealed by the federal government before it came into effect.
These developments have created a political and religious reaction in some countries, including in England, where the Church of England, after long debate, officially banned blessings of gay couples by Church of England clergy, and in the United States. In contrast to the three above-mentioned U.S. states where the state constitutions have been found by courts to require equivalent marriage for same-sex couples, several states have specifically defined marriage as between a man and a woman, often after popular referenda, including the state of Mississippi which passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with 86% of the vote supporting that proposition.
Kinship restrictionsSocieties 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, with Ancient Egyptian, Hawaiian, and Inca royalty being prominent exceptions. In many societies, marriage between some first cousins is preferred, while at the other extreme, the medieval Catholic church prohibited marriage even between distant cousins. The present day Catholic Church still maintains a standard of required distance (in both consanguinity and affinity) for marriage.
Social restrictionsMany societies, even some with a cultural tradition of polygamy, recognize monogamy as the only valid form of marriage. For example, People's Republic of China shifted from allowing polygamy to supporting only monogamy in the Marriage Act of 1953 after the Communist revolution. Polygamy is practiced illegally by some groups in the United States and Canada, primarily by certain Mormon fundamentalist sects that separated from the mainstream Latter Day Saints movement after the practice was renounced in 1890. Many African and Islamic societies still allow polygamy.
In the Indian Hindu community, especially in the Brahmin caste, marrying a person of the same gotra was prohibited, since persons belonging to the same gotra are said to have identical patrilineal descent. In ancient India, when gurukuls existed, the shishyas (pupils) were advised against marrying any of guru's children, as shishyas were also considered the guru's children and it would be considered marriage among siblings. However, there were exceptions, including Arjuna's son Abhimanyu's marriage to Uttra, the dance student of Arjuna in Mahabharata. The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 brought reforms in the area of same-gotra marriages, which were banned prior to the act's passage. Now the Indian constitution allows any consenting adult heterosexual couple (women 18 or older and men 21 or older) from any race, religion, caste, or creed to marry.
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. Anthropologists refer to these sorts of restrictions as exogamy. One example is South Korea's general taboo against a man marrying a woman with the same family name. The most common surname in South Korea is Kim (almost 20%); however, there are several branches (or clans) in the Kim surname. (Korean family names are divided into one or more clans.) Only intra-clan marriages are prohibited, as they are considered one type of exogamy. Thus, many "Kim-Kim" couples can be found.
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. Racist laws adopted by some societies in the past—such as Nazi-era Germany, apartheid-era South Africa and most of the United States in the nineteenth and the first half of the 20th century—which prohibited marriage between persons of different races could also be considered examples of endogamy. In the U.S., many laws banning interracial marriage, which were state laws, were gradually repealed between 1948 and 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court declared all such laws unconstitutional in the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
Marriage and religion
Many religions have broad teachings regarding marriage. Most religions have some sort of wedding ceremony recognizing of the beginning of a marriage. Some regard marriage as simply a contract, some regard it as a sacred institution.
Most Christian churches bless the couple being married; the wedding ceremony sometimes involves a pledge by the community to support the couple's relationship. Liturgical Christian communions - notably Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy - consider marriage (sometimes termed holy matrimony) to be an expression of divine grace, termed a sacrament or mystery. 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 a vocation, while Eastern Christians consider it an ordination |
