Lecture C: Marriage

Marriage is one practice that our own culture highly ritualized and elaborated. While some couples may simple go to the court house an get a licence, a wedding ceremony might include thousands of friends and relatives and may be very costly for bride’s family. I have attended weddings where the bride’s gown cost 5 figures! For all this expenditure, the wedding ceremony and celebration generally lasts only part of a day.

Other cultures may also spend lots of resources on a wedding, but the ceremony may last several days, as it does in India. On the other extreme, we have the Yanomamo, whose brides, when they have their first menses, merely move in with their arranged husbands.

Most human cultures acknowledge only MONOGAMY. Relative to other primates, humans are considered to be SERIAL MONOGAMISTS. Monogamous marriages are legally sanctioned by many modern societies. In some societies these marriages can be dissolved and a second marriage can be made.

But cross-culturally we find quite a bit of variation when it comes to forming households and families. Many cultures, like the Yanomamo, are POLYGYNOUS. This is a marriage custom where one man marries more than one female. Usually this leaves a surplus of males. But since the Yanomamo have high male mortality due to warfare, there is not a drastic overabundance of bachelors.

The Mormons living in the Southwest US were traditionally polygynous. This practice worked well for them as there was an lack of men to go around. The US government forbade these marriages and made husbands choose one of their wives to stay with. This left a lot of single mothers to fend for themselves. Mormons today are officially monogamous. However, polygyny is still practiced by some Mormons. Very often a man with two wives will introduce the second wife as his wife’s sister. This allows the traditional practice to go on while avoiding trouble with the law.

POLYANDRY, a marriage system where one woman marries several males, is extremely rare among humans and other primates. One example is marriage in Tibet. A group of brothers will marry one woman. The eldest brother will choose a wife. The youngest brothers may be quite young and not even sexually active yet. As the brothers gain wealth and land, and as the younger brothers come of age, they will take on more wives. Eventually they will marry enough wives to become a set of monogamous couples.

For many cultures marriages are not romantic. In many cultures, couples to not choose each other for marriage. Marriages are arranged by older relatives. In India marriages are arranged by the parents of the bride and groom.

Amish men and women are free to choose whom to marry, but the celebration is not extravagant. Couples simply are wed, wearing their regular clothing, at someone’s house. They do not live together until the following Spring.

Berber bride (Morocco)

LOUNGE DISCUSSION:
Discuss our current issue of gay marriage. What are the factors in this issue? What is the importance of changing or maintaining how we legally define marriage?