marriage essay

Marriage Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on marriage.

In general, marriage can be described as a bond/commitment between a man and a woman. Also, this bond is strongly connected with love, tolerance, support, and harmony. Also, creating a family means to enter a new stage of social advancement. Marriages help in founding the new relationship between females and males. Also, this is thought to be the highest as well as the most important Institution in our society. The marriage essay is a guide to what constitutes a marriage in India. 

Whenever we think about marriage, the first thing that comes to our mind is the long-lasting relationship. Also, for everyone, marriage is one of the most important decisions in their life. Because you are choosing to live your whole life with that 1 person. Thus, when people decide to get married, they think of having a lovely family, dedicating their life together, and raising their children together. The circle of humankind is like that only. 

Read 500 Words Essay on Dowry System

As it is seen with other experiences as well, the experience of marriage can be successful or unsuccessful. If truth to be held, there is no secret to a successful marriage. It is all about finding the person and enjoying all the differences and imperfections, thereby making your life smooth. So, a good marriage is something that is supposed to be created by two loving people. Thus, it does not happen from time to time. Researchers believe that married people are less depressed and more happy as compared to unmarried people. 

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Concepts of Marriage

There is no theoretical concept of marriage. Because for everyone these concepts will keep on changing. But there are some basic concepts which are common in every marriage. These concepts are children, communication , problem-solving , and influences. Here, children may be the most considerable issue. Because many think that having a child is a stressful thing. While others do not believe it. But one thing is sure that having children will change the couple’s life. Now there is someone else besides them whose responsibilities and duties are to be done by the parents. 

Another concept in marriage is problem-solving where it is important to realize that you can live on your own every day. Thus, it is important to find solutions to some misunderstandings together. This is one of the essential parts of a marriage. Communication also plays a huge role in marriage. Thus, the couple should act friends, in fact, be,t friends. There should be no secret between the couple and no one should hide anything. So, both persons should do what they feel comfortable. It is not necessary to think that marriage is difficult and thus it makes you feel busy and unhappy all the time. 

Marriage is like a huge painting where you brush your movements and create your own love story. 

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Family — Marriage

Essays on Marriage

Marriage is a complex and multi-faceted topic that can be explored from various angles. As a result, there are numerous essay topics related to marriage that students can choose from. In this article, we will discuss the importance of the topic, provide advice on choosing a topic, and offer a detailed list of recommended essay topics, divided by category.

Marriage is a fundamental institution that has been a part of human society for centuries. It is a topic that is highly relevant and significant, as it impacts individuals, families, and communities. Discussing marriage in the context of an essay allows students to explore various social, cultural, psychological, and legal aspects of this institution. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for critical thinking and analysis of contemporary issues related to marriage, such as same-sex marriage, divorce, and the changing dynamics of traditional marital relationships.

When choosing a marriage essay topic, it is important to consider your interests, as well as the requirements of the assignment. It is also beneficial to select a topic that is relevant and timely, and that allows for in-depth research and analysis. Consider exploring both traditional and contemporary aspects of marriage, as well as the impact of marriage on different aspects of society, such as economics, culture, and psychology.

Recommended Marriage Essay Topics

Below is a detailed list of recommended marriage essay topics, divided by category:

Legal and Ethical Aspects

• The legal implications of marriage for same-sex couples
• The ethical considerations of arranged marriages
• The impact of prenuptial agreements on marital relationships
• Marriage and immigration laws

Social and Cultural Perspectives

• The role of marriage in different cultures and societies
• The impact of marriage on gender roles and expectations
• The influence of social media on modern marital relationships
• The portrayal of marriage in literature and popular culture

Psychological and Emotional Aspects

• The psychological implications of divorce on children
• The impact of communication on marital satisfaction
• The role of intimacy and trust in a successful marriage
• The psychological effects of infidelity on marital relationships

Economic and Financial Considerations

• The financial benefits and drawbacks of marriage
• The impact of marriage on career and professional aspirations
• Marriage and the division of household labor
• The economic consequences of divorce

Contemporary Issues

• The impact of technology on modern marital relationships
• The changing dynamics of marriage in the 21st century
• The role of marriage in addressing societal issues, such as poverty and inequality
• The portrayal of marriage in the media and popular culture

Marriage and Religion

• Marriage rituals and traditions in different religions
• The role of marriage in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.
• Marriage and spirituality: how faith impacts relationships
• Marriage and the concept of soulmates in various religions
• The influence of religious leaders on marriage
• Marriage and the concept of sin and forgiveness
• Marriage and the impact of religious beliefs on family life
• Marriage and the role of prayer and worship in relationships
• Marriage and the concept of marriage counseling in different religions
• Marriage and the role of community support in religious settings

When writing an essay on marriage, it's important to choose a topic that interests you and aligns with your area of expertise. Whether you're focusing on the societal, legal, or religious aspects of marriage, there are plenty of thought-provoking topics to explore. By choosing a compelling topic and conducting thorough research, you can create a well-crafted essay that contributes to the ongoing conversation about marriage and its impact on individuals and society.

Analyzing Katherine Phillipss a Married State

Arranged marriage advantages, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Process Philosophy of Marriage and Family

The true meaning of marriage, marriage is a big step: the choice of the time to marry, should i get married: the pros and cons, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Teenage Marriage: Positive and Negative Sides

How does marriage impact on society, women changing their names on marriage is unfair, comparison of being married to being single: who is more happy and well-adjusted in life, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

A Research on Intercultural Marriage: Pros and Cons

Relationships, marriage, and complexity in the namesake, marriage and sex in muslim countries, changes in the marriage institution for indian women, the 7 principles for making marriage work: a discussion, the bargaining power in marriage of chinese and western culture depicted in the movies, topic of oppression in marriage in kate chopin's the story of an hour, happy marriage is the work of two people, rational choice theory of decision making in marriage and divorce, the reasons why men/women refuse to get married, the reasons why modern generation delays in getting married, critical analysis of why americans are getting married later in life than they used to, wedding customs in ancient and medieval india, a research of arranged marriages in the modern world, a controversy over same-sex marriages in romania, what causes divorce: overview of the factors, a beautiful wedding in my life, research to compare cohabiting, being married, and being single, the benefits of having a pre-nuptial agreement, discussion of whether an arranged marriage is a positive tradition.

Marriage is a legally and socially sanctioned union, usually between a man and a woman, that is regulated by laws, rules, customs, beliefs, and attitudes that prescribe the rights and duties of the partners and accords status to their offspring (if any).

Monogamy, polygamy (polygyny, polyandry, plural marriage), child marriage, same-sex and third-gender marriages, temporary marriages, cohabitation.

People in happy marriages tend to be more productive at work. Research has revealed that couples that marry young face a greater risk of divorce. The highest levels of marital satisfaction are recorded in couples who were best friends before they married. 400 million women were married before the age of 18, meaning they entered a child marriage.

Relevant topics

• Parenting Styles
• Marriage and Family
• Family Values
• Foster Care

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Marriage and Domestic Partnership

Marriage, a prominent institution regulating sex, reproduction, and family life, is a route into classical philosophical issues such as the good and the scope of individual choice, as well as itself raising distinctive philosophical questions. Political philosophers have taken the organization of sex and reproduction to be essential to the health of the state, and moral philosophers have debated whether marriage has a special moral status and relation to the human good. Philosophers have also disputed the underlying moral and legal rationales for the structure of marriage, with implications for questions such as the content of its moral obligations and the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Feminist philosophers have seen marriage as playing a crucial role in women’s oppression and thus a central topic of justice. In this area philosophy courts public debate: in 1940, Bertrand Russell’s appointment to an academic post was withdrawn on the grounds that the liberal views expressed in Marriage and Morals made him morally unfit for such a post. Likewise, debate over same-sex marriage has been highly charged. Unlike some contemporary issues sparking such wide interest, there is a long tradition of philosophical thought on marriage.

Philosophical debate concerning marriage extends to what marriage, fundamentally, is; therefore, Section 1 examines its definition. Section 2 sets out the historical development of the philosophy of marriage, which shapes today’s debates. Many of the ethical positions on marriage can be understood as divided on the question of whether marriage should be defined contractually by the spouses or by its institutional purpose, and they further divide on whether that purpose necessarily includes procreation or may be limited to the marital love relationship. Section 3 taxonomizes ethical views of marriage accordingly. Section 4 will examine rival political understandings of marriage law and its rationale. Discussion of marriage has played a central role in feminist philosophy; Section 5 will outline the foremost critiques of the institution.

1. Defining Marriage

2. understanding marriage: historical orientation, 3.1 contractual views, 3.2 institutional views, 4.1 marriage and legal contract, 4.2 the rationale of marriage law, 4.3 same-sex marriage, 4.4 arguments for marriage reform, 5.1 feminist approaches, 5.2 the queer critique, contemporary works, historical works, other internet resources, related entries.

‘Marriage’ can refer to a legal contract and civil status, a religious rite, and a social practice, all of which vary by legal jurisdiction, religious doctrine, and culture. History shows considerable variation in marital practices: polygyny has been widely practiced, some societies have approved of extra-marital sex and, arguably, recognized same-sex marriages, and religious or civil officiation has not always been the norm (Boswell 1994; Mohr 2005, 62; Coontz 2006). More fundamentally, while the contemporary Western ideal of marriage involves a relationship of love, friendship, or companionship, marriage historically functioned primarily as an economic and political unit used to create kinship bonds, control inheritance, and share resources and labor. Indeed, some ancients and medievals discouraged ‘excessive’ love in marriage. The Western ‘love revolution’ in marriage dates popularly to the 18 th century (Coontz 2006, Part 3). The understanding of marriage as grounded in individual choice and romantic love reflects historically and culturally situated beliefs and practices. Most notably, the aspect of consent or voluntary entry - often taken to be crucial to marriage (Cott 2000) - is challenged where practices of forced or child marriage are prevalent (Narayan 1997; Bhandary 2018). Arranged marriage, which is compatible with the consent of the spouses, prioritizes caregiving and economic aspects of the institution over romantic love (Bhandary 2018).

The global variety of marriage practices and law is difficult to encapsulate: notable variations in law include recognition of same-sex marriage, polygamy, and ‘common-law’ marriage, restrictions on marriages between members of the same family or of different social castes, the existence of civil marriage, practices of arranged, forced, or child marriage, and women’s rights within marriage (see Moses 2018 for an entry into the literature on these differences), as well as cultural and religious practices of temporary marriage (Shrage 2013, Nolan 2016) or polyamorous marriage (Brake 2018). Religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions also shape ideals of marriage. For instance, Xiaorong Li writes that “Confucian ideals of family, society, and women’s role” influence expectations of marriage in China (Li 1995, 413). However, scholarship on such differences must be careful to avoid misrepresentation (see for example discussion of misleading Western accounts of ‘sati’ and dowry-murder in India in Narayan 1997).

Ethical and political questions regarding marriage are sometimes answered by appeal to the definition of marriage. But the historical and cultural variation in marital practices has prompted some philosophers to argue that marriage is a ‘family resemblance’ concept, with no essential purpose or structure (Wasserstrom 1974; see also the interesting discussion of whether the many different practices identified by anthropologists as marriage should be counted as marriages in Nolan, forthcoming). If marriage has no essential features, then one cannot appeal to definition to justify particular legal or moral obligations. For instance, if monogamy is not an essential feature of marriage, then one cannot appeal to the definition of marriage to justify a requirement that legal marriage be monogamous. To a certain extent, the point that actual legal or social definitions cannot settle the question of what features marriage should have is just. First, past applications of a term need not yield necessary and sufficient criteria for applying it: ‘marriage’ (like ‘citizen’) may be extended to new cases without thereby changing its meaning (Mercier 2001). Second, appeal to definition may be uninformative: for example, legal definitions are sometimes circular, defining marriage in terms of spouses and spouses in terms of marriage (Mohr 2005, 57). Third, appeal to an existing definition in the context of debate over what the law of marriage, or its moral obligations, should be risks begging the question: in debate over same-sex marriage, for example, appeal to the current legal definition begs the normative question of what the law should be. However, this point also tells against the argument for the family resemblance view of marriage, as the variation of marital forms in practice does not preclude the existence of a normatively ideal form. Thus, philosophers who defend an essentialist definition of marriage offer normative definitions, which appeal to fundamental ethical or political principles. Defining marriage must depend on, rather than precede, ethical and political inquiry.

Setting the agenda for contemporary debate, ancient and medieval philosophers raised recurring themes in the philosophy of marriage: the relation between marriage and the state, the role of sex and procreation in marriage, and the gendered nature of spousal roles. Their works reflect evolving, and overlapping, ideas of marriage as an economic or procreative unit, a religious sacrament, a contractual association, and a relationship of mutual support.

In his depiction of the ideal state, Plato (427–347 BCE) described a form of marriage contrasting greatly with actual marriage practices of his time. He argued that, just as male and female watchdogs perform the same duties, men and women should work together, and, among Guardians, ‘wives and children [should be held] in common’ ( The Republic , ca. 375–370 BCE, 423e–424a). To orchestrate eugenic breeding, temporary marriages would be made at festivals, where matches, apparently chosen by lot, would be secretly arranged by the Rulers. Resulting offspring would be taken from biological parents and reared anonymously in nurseries. Plato’s reason for this radical restructuring of marriage was to extend family sympathies from the nuclear family to the state itself: the abolition of the private family was intended to discourage private interests at odds with the common good and the strength of the state ( ibid ., 449a-466d; in Plato’s Laws , ca. 355–47 BCE, private marriage is retained but still designed for public benefit).

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) sharply criticized this proposal as unworkable. On his view, Plato errs in assuming that the natural love for one’s own family can be transferred to all fellow-citizens. The state arises from component parts, beginning with the natural procreative union of male and female. It is thus a state of families rather than a family state, and its dependence on the functioning of individual households makes marriage essential to political theory ( Politics , 1264b). The Aristotelian idea that the stability of society depends on the marital family influenced Hegel, Rawls, and Sandel, among others. Aristotle also disagreed with Plato on gender roles in marriage, and these views too would prove influential. Marriage, he argued, is properly structured by gender: the husband, “fitter for command,” rules. The sexes express their excellences differently: “the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying,” a complementarity which promotes the marital good ( Politics , ca. 330 BCE, 1253b, 1259b, 1260a; Nicomachean Ethics , ca. 325 BCE, 1160–62).

In contrast to the ancients, whose philosophical discussion of sex and sexual love was not confined to marriage, Christian philosophers introduced a new focus on marriage as the sole permissible context for sex, marking a shift from viewing marriage as primarily a political and economic unit. St. Augustine (354–430), following St. Paul, condemns sex outside marriage and lust within it. “[A]bstinence from all sexual union is better even than marital intercourse performed for the sake of procreating,” and the unmarried state is best of all ( The Excellence of Marriage , ca. 401, §6, 13/15). But marriage is justified by its goods: “children, fidelity [between spouses], and sacrament.” Although procreation is the purpose of marriage, marriage does not morally rehabilitate lust. Instead, the reason for the individual marital sexual act determines its permissibility. Sex for the sake of procreation is not sinful, and sex within marriage solely to satisfy lust is a pardonable (venial) sin. As marital sex is preferable to “fornication” (extra-marital sex), spouses owe the “marriage debt” (sex) to protect against temptation, thereby sustaining mutual fidelity ( Marriage and Desire , Book I, ca. 418–19, §7, 8, 17/19, 14/16).

St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) grounded concurring judgments about sexual morality in natural law, explicating marriage in terms of basic human goods, including procreation and fidelity between spouses (Finnis 1997). Monogamous marriage, as the arrangement fit for the rearing of children, “belong[s] to the natural law.” Monogamous marriage secures paternal guidance, which a child needs; fornication is thus a mortal sin because it “tends to injure the life of the offspring.” (Aquinas rejects polygamy on similar grounds while, like Augustine, arguing that it was once permitted to populate the earth.) Marital sex employs the body for its purpose of preserving the species, and pleasure may be a divinely ordained part of this. Even within marriage, sex is morally troubling because it involves “a loss of reason,” but this is compensated by the goods of marriage ( Summa Theologiae , unfinished at Aquinas’ death, II-II, 153, 2; 154, 2). Among these goods, Aquinas emphasizes the mutual fidelity of the spouses, including payment of the “marriage debt” and “partnership of a common life”—a step towards ideas of companionate marriage ( Summa Theologiae, Supp. 49, 1).

Indeed, we see indications of discontent with the economic model of marriage a century earlier in the letters of Héloïse (ca. 1100–1163) to Abelard (1079–1142). Héloïse attacks marriage, understood as an economic transaction, arguing that a woman marrying for money or position deserves “wages, not gratitude” and would “prostitute herself to a richer man, if she could.” In place of this economic relation she praises love, understood on a Ciceronian model of friendship: the “name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word friend ( amica ), or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore” (Abelard and Héloïse, Letters , ca. 1133–1138, 51–2). The relation between love and marriage will continue to preoccupy later philosophers. Do marital obligations and economic incentives threaten love, as Héloïse suggested? (Cave 2003, Card 1996) As Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) dramatically suggests in The Seducer’s Diary , are the obligations of marriage incompatible with romantic and erotic love? Or, instead, does marital commitment uniquely enable spousal love, as Aquinas suggested? (Finnis 1997; cf. Kierkegaard’s Judge William’s defense of marriage [ Either/Or , 1843, vol. 2].)

Questions of the relation between love and marriage emerge from changing understandings of the role of marriage; in the early modern era, further fault lines appear as new understandings of human society conflict with the traditional structure of marriage. For Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, marriage was unproblematically structured by sexual difference, and its distinctive features explained by nature or sacrament. But in the early modern era, as doctrines of equal rights and contract appeared, a new ideal of relationships between adults as free choices between equals appeared. In this light, the unequal and unchosen content of the marriage relationship raised philosophical problems. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) acknowledged that his arguments for rough equality among humans apply to women: “whereas some have attributed the dominion [over children] to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex; they misreckon in it. For there is not always that difference of strength, or prudence between the man and the woman, as that the right can be determined without war.” Nonetheless, Hobbes admits that men dominate in marriage, which he explains (inadequately) thus: “for the most part commonwealths have been erected by the fathers, not by the mothers of families” ( Leviathan , 1651, Ch. 20; Okin 1979, 198–199, Pateman 1988, 44–50).

Likewise, defending marital hierarchy posed a problem for John Locke (1632–1704). Locke ties his rejection of political patriarchy to a rejection of the patriarchal family, arguing that marriage, like the state, rests on consent, not natural hierarchy; marriage is a “voluntary compact.” But Locke fails to follow this reasoning consistently, for Lockean marriage remains hierarchical: in cases of conflict, “the rule … naturally falls to the man’s as the abler and stronger.” Ceding decision-making power to one party on the basis of a presumed natural hierarchy creates an internal tension in Locke’s views ( The Second Treatise of Government , 1690, §77, 81, 82; Okin 1979, 199–200). This inconsistency prompted Mary Astell’s (1666–1731) response: “If all Men are born free , how is it that all women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery ?” (“Reflections upon Marriage,” 1700, 18) Similar tensions arise for Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), whose treatise on education, Émile , describes the unequal status of Émile’s wife, Sophie. Her education, a template for all women’s, prepares her only to please and serve her husband and rear children. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1798) attacked Rousseau’s views on women’s nature, education, and marital inequality in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (see also Okin 1979, Chapter 6).

The contractual understanding of marriage prompts the question as to why marital obligations should be fixed other than by spousal agreement. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) combined a contractual account of marriage with an Augustinian preoccupation with sexual morality to argue that the distinctive content of the marriage contract was required to make sex permissible. In Kant’s view, sex involves morally problematic objectification, or treatment of oneself and other as a mere means. The marriage right, a “right to a person akin to a right to a thing,” gives spouses “lifelong possession of each other’s sexual attributes,” a transaction supposed to render sex compatible with respect for humanity: “while one person is acquired by the other as if it were a thing , the one who is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in this way each reclaims itself and restores its personality.” But while these rights, according to Kant, make sex compatible with justice, married sex is not clearly virtuous unless procreation is a possibility ( Metaphysics of Morals , 1797–98, Ak 6:277–79, 6:424–427). Kant’s account of sexual objectification has had wide influence—from feminists to new natural lawyers. More surprisingly, given his views on gender inequality and the wrongness of same-sex sexual activity, Kant’s account of marriage has been sympathetically reconstructed by feminists and defenders of same-sex marriage drawn by Kant’s focus on equality, reciprocity, and the moral rehabilitation of sex within marriage (Herman 1993, Altman 2010, Papadaki 2010). Kant interestingly suggests that morally problematic relationships can be reconstructed through equal juridical rights, but how such reconstruction occurs is puzzling (Herman 1993, Brake 2005). Among other things, it is difficult to see how Kant’s insistence on equal marriage rights can be reconciled with his views on gender inequality (Sticker 2020).

Characteristically, G. W. F. Hegel’s (1770–1831) account of marriage synthesizes the preceding themes. Hegel returns to Aristotle’s understanding of (nuclear) marriage as the foundation of a healthy state, while explicating its contribution in terms of spousal love. Hegel criticized Kant’s reduction of marriage to contract as “disgraceful” because spouses begin “from the point of view of contract—i.e. that of individual personality as a self-sufficient unit— in order to supersede it .” They “consent to constitute a single person and to give up their natural and individual personalities within this union.” The essence of marriage is ethical love, “the consciousness of this union as a substantial end, and hence in love, trust, and the sharing of the whole of individual existence.” Ethical love is not, like sexual love, contingent: “Marriage should not be disrupted by passion, for the latter is subordinate to it” ( Elements of the Philosophy of Right , 1821, §162–63, 163A).

Like his predecessors, Hegel must justify the distinctive features of marriage, and in particular, why, if it is the ethical love relationship which is ethically significant, formal marriage is necessary. Hegel’s contemporary Friedrich von Schlegel had argued that love can exist outside marriage—a point which Hegel denounced as the argument of a seducer! For Hegel, ethical love depends on publicly assuming spousal roles which define individuals as members in a larger unit. Such unselfish membership links marriage and the state. Marriage plays an important role in Hegel’s system of right, which culminates in ethical life, the customs and institutions of society: family, civil society, and the state. The role of marriage is to prepare men to relate to other citizens as sharers in a common enterprise. In taking family relationships as conditions for good citizenship, Hegel follows Aristotle and influences Rawls and Sandel; it is also notable that he takes marriage as a microcosm of the state.

Kant and Hegel attempted to show that the distinctive features of marriage could be explained and justified by foundational normative principles. In contrast, early feminists argued that marital hierarchy was simply an unjust remnant of a pre-modern era. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) argued that women’s subordination within marriage originated in physical force—an anomalous holdover of the ‘law of the strongest’. Like Wollstonecraft in her 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , Mill compared marriage and slavery: under coverture wives had no legal rights, little remedy for abuse, and, worse, were required to live in intimacy with their ‘masters’. This example of an inequality based on force had persisted so long, Mill argued, because all men had an interest in retaining it. Mill challenged the contractual view that entry into marriage was fully voluntary for women, pointing out that their options were so limited that marriage was “only Hobson’s choice, ‘that or none’” ( The Subjection of Women , 1869, 29). He also challenged the view that women’s nature justified marital inequality: in light of different socialization of girls and boys, there was no way to tell what woman’s nature really was. Like Wollstonecraft, Mill described the ideal marital relationship as one of equal friendship (Abbey and Den Uyl, 2001). Such marriages would be “schools of justice” for children, teaching them to treat others as equals. But marital inequality was a school of injustice, teaching boys unearned privilege and corrupting future citizens. The comparison of marriage with slavery has been taken up by more recent feminists (Cronan 1973), as has the argument that marital injustice creates unjust citizens (Okin 1994).

Marxists also saw marriage as originating in ancient exercises of force and as continuing to contribute to the exploitation of women. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) argued that monogamous marriage issued from a “ world historical defeat of the female sex ” (Engels 1884, 120). Exclusive monogamy “was not in any way the fruit of individual sex love, with which it had nothing whatever to do … [but was based on] economic conditions—on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property” ( ibid ., 128). Monogamy allowed men to control women and reproduction, thereby facilitating the intergenerational transfer of private property by producing undisputed heirs. Karl Marx (1818–83) argued that abolishing the private family would liberate women from male ownership, ending their status “as mere instruments of production” ( The Communist Manifesto , Marx 1848, 173). The Marxist linking of patriarchy and capitalism, in particular its understanding of marriage as an ownership relation ideologically underpinning the capitalist order, has been especially influential in feminist thought (Pateman 1988, cf. McMurtry 1972).

3. Marriage and Morals

The idea that marriage has a special moral status and entails fixed moral obligations is widespread—and philosophically controversial. Marriage is a legal contract, although an anomalous one (see 4.1); as the idea of it as a contract has taken hold, questions have arisen as to how far its obligations should be subject to individual choice. The contractual view of marriage implies that spouses can choose marital obligations to suit their interests. However, to some, the value of marriage consists precisely in the limitations it sets on individual choice in the service of a greater good: thus, Hegel commented that arranged marriage is the most ethical form of marriage because it subordinates personal choice to the institution. The institutional view holds that the purpose of the institution defines its obligations, taking precedence over spouses’ desires, either in the service of a procreative union or to protect spousal love, in the two most prominent forms of this view. These theories have implications for the moral status of extra-marital sex and divorce, as well as the purpose of marriage.

On the contractual view, the moral terms and obligations of marriage are understood as promises between spouses. Their content is supplied by surrounding social and legal practices, but their promissory nature implies that parties to the promise can negotiate the terms and release each other from marital obligations.

One rationale for treating marital obligations as such promises might be thought to be the voluntaristic account of obligation. On this view, all special obligations (as opposed to general duties) are the result of voluntary undertakings; promises are then the paradigm of special obligations (see entry on Special Obligations). Thus, whatever special obligations spouses have to one another must originate in voluntary agreement, best understood as promise. We will return to this below. A second rationale is the assumption that existing marriage practices are morally arbitrary, in the sense that there is no special moral reason for their structure. Further, there are diverse social understandings of marriage. If the choice between them is morally arbitrary, there is no moral reason for spouses to adopt one specific set of marital obligations; it is up to spouses to choose their terms. Thus, the contractual account depends upon the assumption that there is no decisive moral reason for a particular marital structure.

On the contractual account, not just any contracts count as marriages. The default content of marital promises is supplied by social and legal practice: sexual exclusivity, staying married, and so on. But it entails that spouses may release one another from these moral obligations. For example, extra-marital sex has often been construed as morally wrong by virtue of promise-breaking: if spouses promise sexual exclusivity, extra-marital sex breaks a promise and is thereby prima facie wrong. However, if marital obligations are simply promises between the spouses, then the parties can release one another, making consensual extra-marital sex permissible (Wasserstrom 1974). Marriage is also sometimes taken to involve a promise to stay married. This seems to make unilateral divorce morally problematic, as promisors cannot release themselves from promissory obligations (Morse 2006). But standard conditions for overriding promissory obligations, such as conflict with more stringent moral duties, inability to perform, or default by the other party to a reciprocal promise would permit at least some unilateral divorces (Houlgate 2005, Chapter 12). Some theorists of marriage have suggested that marital promises are conditional on enduring love or fulfilling sex (Marquis 2005, Moller 2003). But this assumption is at odds with the normal assumption that promissory conditions are to be stated explicitly.

Release from the marriage promise is not the only condition for permissible divorce on the contractual view. Spouses may not be obligated to one another to stay married—but they may have parental duties to do so: if divorce causes avoidable harm to children, it is prima facie wrong (Houlgate 2005, Chapter 12, Russell 1929, Chapter 16). However, in some cases divorce will benefit the child—as when it is the means to escape abuse. A vast empirical literature disputes the likely effects of divorce on children (Galston 1991, 283–288, Young 1995). What is notable here, philosophically, is that this moral reason against divorce is not conceived as a spousal, but a parental, duty.

Marriage is widely taken to have an amatory core, suggesting that a further marital promise is a promise to love, as expressed in wedding vows ‘to love and cherish’. But the possibility of such promises has met with skepticism. If one cannot control whether one loves, the maxim that ‘ought implies can’ entails that one cannot promise to love. One line of response has been to suggest that marriage involves a promise not to feel but to behave a certain way—to act in ways likely to sustain the relationship. But such reinterpretations of the marital promise face a problem: promises depend on what promisors intend to promise—and presumably most spouses do not intend to promise mere behavior (Martin 1993, Landau 2004, Wilson 1989, Mendus 1984, Brake 2012, Chapter 1; see also Kronqvist 2011). However, developing neuroenhancement technology promises to bring love under control through “love drugs” which would produce bonding hormones such as oxytocin. While the use of neuroenhancement to keep one’s vows raises questions about authenticity and the nature of love (as well as concerns regarding its use in abusive relationships), it is difficult to see how such technology morally differs from other love-sustaining devices such as romantic dinners—except that it is more likely to be effective (Savulescu and Sandberg 2008).

One objection to the contractual account is that, without appeal to the purpose of the institution, there is no reason why not just any set of promises count as marriage (Finnis 2008). The objection continues that the contractual account cannot explain the point of marriage. Some marriage contractualists accept this implication. According to the “bachelor’s argument,” marriage is irrational: chances of a strongly dis-preferred outcome (a loveless marriage) are too high (Moller 2003). Defenders of the rationality of marriage have replied that marital obligations are rational because they help agents to secure their long-term interests in the face of passing desires (Landau 2004). From the institutional perspective, evaluating the rationality of marriage thus, in terms of fulfilling subjective preferences, clashes with the tradition of viewing it as uniquely enabling certain objective human goods; however, a positive case must be made for the latter view.

Another objection to the contractual view concerns voluntarism. Critics of the voluntarist approach to the family deny that family morality is exhausted by voluntary obligations (Sommers 1989). Voluntarist conceptions of the family conflict with common-sense intuitions that there are unchosen special duties between family members, such as filial duties. However, even if voluntarism is false, this does not suffice to establish special spousal duties. On the other hand, voluntarism alone does not entail the contractual view, for it does not entail that spouses can negotiate the obligations of marriage or that the obligations be subject to release, only that spouses must agree to them. Voluntarism, in other words, need not extend to the choice of marital obligations and hence need not entail the contractual account. The contractual account depends on denying that there is decisive moral reason for marriage to incorporate certain fixed obligations. Let us turn to the case that there is such reason.

The main theoretical alternatives to the contractual view hold that marital obligations are defined by the purpose of the institution and that spouses cannot alter these institutional obligations (much like the professional moral obligations of a doctor; to become a doctor, one must voluntarily accept the role and its obligations, and one cannot negotiate the content of these obligations). The challenge for institutional views is to defend such a view of marriage, explaining why spouses may not jointly agree to alter obligations associated with marriage. Kant confronted this question, arguing that special marital rights were morally necessary for permissible sex. His account of sexual objectification has influenced a prominent contemporary rival to the contractual view—the new natural law view, which takes procreation as essential to marriage. A second widespread approach focuses solely on love as the defining purpose of marriage.

3.2.1 New Natural Law: Marriage as Procreative Union

Like Kant, the new natural law account of marriage focuses on the permissible exercise of sexual attributes; following Aquinas, it emphasizes the goods of marriage, which new natural lawyers, notably John Finnis (cf. George 2000, Grisez 1993, Lee 2008), identify as reproduction and fides —roughly, marital friendship (see entry on The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics). Marriage is here taken to be the institution uniquely apt for conceiving and rearing children by securing the participation of both parents in an ongoing union. The thought is that there is a distinctive marital good related to sexual capacities, consisting in procreation and fides , and realizable only in marriage. Within marriage, sex may be engaged in for the sake of the marital good. Marital sex need not result in conception to be permissible; it is enough that it is open towards procreation and expresses fides . The view does not entail that it is wrong to take pleasure in sex, for this can be part of the marital good.

However, sex outside marriage (as defined here) cannot be orientated toward the marital good. Furthermore, sexual activity not orientated toward this good—including same-sex activity, masturbation, contracepted sex, sex without marital commitment (even within legal marriage)—is valueless; it does not instantiate any basic good. Furthermore, such activity is impermissible because it violates the basic good of marriage. Marital sex is thought to instantiate the good of marriage. By contrast, non-marital sex is thought to treat sexual capacities instrumentally—using them merely for pleasure. (It is here that the account is influenced by Kant.) Non-marital sex violates the good of marriage by treating sexual capacities in a way contrary to that good. Furthermore, for an agent merely to condone non-marital sex damages his or her relation to the marital good, for even a hypothetical willingness to treat sex instrumentally precludes proper marital commitment (Finnis 1997, 120).

As Finnis emphasizes, one feature of the new natural law account of marriage is that the structure of marriage can be fully explained by its purpose. Marriage is between one man and one woman because this is the unit able to procreate without third-party assistance; permanence is required to give children a lifelong family. Finnis charges, as noted above, that accounts which do not ground marriage in this purpose have no theoretical reason to resist the extension of marriage to polygamy, incest, and bestiality (Finnis 1995). As all non-marital sex fails to instantiate basic goods, there is no way morally to distinguish these different relations.

A further point concerns law: to guide citizens’ judgments and choices towards the relationship in which they can uniquely achieve the marital good, the state should endorse marriage, as understood on this view, and not recognize same-sex relationships as marriages. However, it might be asked whether this is an effective way to guide choice, and whether state resources might be better spent promoting other basic human goods. Moreover, as the argument equally implies a state interest in discouraging contraception, divorce, and extra-marital sex, the focus on same-sex marriage appears arbitrary (Garrett 2008, Macedo 1995). This objection is a specific instance of a more general objection: this account treats sex and the marital good differently than it does the other basic human goods. Not only is less attention paid to promoting those goods legally (and discouraging behavior contrary to them), but the moral principle forbidding action contrary to basic human goods is not consistently applied elsewhere—for example, to eating unhealthily (Garrett 2008).

A second objection attacks the claim that non-marital sex cannot instantiate any basic human goods. This implausibly consigns all non-marital sex (including all contracepted sex) to the same value as anonymous sex, prostitution, or masturbation (Macedo 1995, 282). Plausibly, non-marital sex can instantiate goods such as “pleasure, communication, emotional growth, personal stability, long-term fulfillment” (Corvino 2005, 512), or other basic human goods identified by the new natural law account, such as knowledge, play, and friendship (Garrett 2008; see also Blankschaen 2020).

A third objection is related. The view seems to involve a double standard in permitting infertile opposite-sex couples to marry (Corvino 2005; Macedo 1995). The new natural lawyers have responded that penile-vaginal sex is reproductive in type, even if not in effect, while same-sex activity can never be reproductive in type (Finnis 1997, cf. George 2000, Lee 2008). Reproductive-type sex can be oriented towards procreation even if not procreative in effect. But it is unclear how individuals who know themselves to be infertile can have sex for the reason of procreation (Macedo 1995, Buccola 2005). Ultimately, to differentiate infertile heterosexual couples from same-sex couples, new natural lawyers invoke complementarity between men and women as partners and parents. Thus, the defense of this account of marriage turns on a controversial view of the nature and importance of sexual difference (Finnis 1997, Lee 2008).

A related, influential argument focuses on the definition of marriage. This argues that marriage is necessarily between one man and one woman because it involves a comprehensive union between spouses, a unity of lives, minds, and bodies. Organic bodily union requires being united for a biological purpose, in a procreative-type act (Girgis, et al., 2010). Like the new natural law arguments, this has raised questions as to why only, and all, different-sex couples, even infertile ones, can partake in procreative-type acts, and why bodily union has special significance (Arroyo 2018, Johnson 2013).

While much discussion of new natural law accounts of marriage oscillates between attacking and defending the basis in biological sex difference, some theorists sympathetic to new natural law attempt to avoid the Scylla of rigid biological restrictions and the Charybdis of liberal “plasticity” regarding marriage (Goldstein 2011). Goldstein, for one, offers an account of marriage as a project generated by the basic good of friendship; while this project includes procreation as a core feature, the institution of marriage has, on this account, a compensatory power, meaning that the institution itself can compensate for failures such as inability to procreate. Such an account grounds marriage in the new natural law account of flourishing, but it also allows the extension to same-sex marriage without, according to Goldstein, permitting other forms such as polygamy.

3.2.2 Marriage as Protecting Love

A second widespread (though less unified) institutional approach to marriage appeals to the ideal marital love relationship to define the structure of marriage. This approach, in the work of different philosophers, yields a variety of specific prescriptions, on, for example, whether marital love (or committed romantic love in general) requires sexual difference or sexual exclusivity (Scruton 1986, 305–311, Chapter 11, Halwani 2003, 226–242, Chartier 2016). Some, but not all, proponents explicitly argue that the marital love relationship is an objective good (Scruton 1986, Chapter 11, 356–361, Martin 1993). These views, however, all take the essential feature, and purpose, of marriage to be protecting a sexual love relationship. The thought is that marriage helps to maintain and support a relationship either in itself valuable, or at least valued by the parties to it.

On this approach, the structure of marriage derives from the behavior needed to maintain such a relationship. Thus marriage involves a commitment to act for the relationship as well as to exclude incompatible options—although there is controversy over what specific policies these general commitments entail. To take an uncontroversial example, marriage creates obligations to perform acts which sustain love, such as focusing on the beloved’s good qualities (Landau 2004). More controversially, some philosophers argue that sustaining a love relationship requires sexual exclusivity. The thought is that sexual activity generates intimacy and affection, and that objects of affection and intimacy will likely come into competition, threatening the marital relationship. Another version focuses on the emotional harm, and consequent damage to the relationship, caused by sexual jealousy. Thus, due to the psychological conditions required to maintain romantic love, marriage, as a love-protecting institution, generates obligations to sexual exclusivity (Martin 1993, Martin 1994, Scruton 1986, Chapter 11, 356–361, Steinbock 1986). However, philosophers dispute the psychological conditions needed to maintain romantic love. Some argue that casual extra-marital sex need not create competing relationships or trigger jealousy (Halwani 2003, 235; Wasserstrom 1974). Indeed, some have even argued that extra-marital sex, or greater social tolerance thereof, could strengthen otherwise difficult marriages (Russell 1929, Chapter 16), and some polyamorists (those who engage in multiple sex or love relationships) claim that polyamory allows greater honesty and openness than exclusivity (Emens 2004). Other philosophers have treated sexual fidelity as something of a red herring, shifting focus to other qualities of an ideal relationship such as attentiveness, warmth, and honesty, or a commitment to justice in the relationship (Martin 1993, Kleingeld 1998).

Views understanding marriage as protecting love generate diverse conclusions regarding its obligations. But such views share two crucial assumptions: that marriage has a role to play in creating a commitment to a love relationship, and that such commitments may be efficacious in protecting love (Cave 2003, Landau 2004, Martin 1993, Martin 1994, Mendus 1984, Scruton 1986, 356–361). However, both of these assumptions may be questioned. First, even if commitment can protect a love relationship, why must such a commitment be made through a formal marriage? If it is possible to maintain a long-term romantic relationship outside marriage, the question as to the point of marriage re-emerges: do we really need marriage for love? May not the legal and social supports of marriage, indeed, trap individuals in a loveless marriage or themselves corrode love by associating it with obligation? (Card 1996, Cave 2003; see also Gheaus 2016) Second, can commitment, within or without marriage, really protect romantic love? High divorce rates would seem to suggest not. Of course, even if, as discussed in 3.1, agents cannot control whether they love, they can make a commitment to act in ways protective of love (Landau 2004, Mendus 1984). But this returns us the difficulty, suggested by the preceding paragraph, of knowing how to protect love!

Reflecting the difficulty of generating specific rules to protect love, many such views have understood the ethical content of marriage in terms of virtues (Steinbock 1991, Scruton 1986, Chapter 11, 356–361). The virtue approach analyzes marriage in terms of the dispositions it cultivates, an approach which, by its reference to emotional states, promises to explain the relevance of marriage to love. However, such approaches must explain how marriage fosters virtues (Brake 2012). Some virtue accounts cite the effects of its social status: marriage triggers social reactions which secure spousal privacy and ward off the disruptive attention of outsiders (Scruton 1986, 356–361). Its legal obligations, too, can be understood as Ulysses contracts [ 1 ] : they protect relationships when spontaneous affection wavers, securing agents’ long-term commitments against passing desires. Whether or not such explanations ultimately show that marital status and obligations can play a role in protecting love, the general focus on ideal marital love relationships may be characterized as overly idealistic when contrasted with problems in actual marriages, such as spousal abuse (Card 1996). This last point suggests that moral analysis of marriage cannot be entirely separated from political and social inquiry.

4. The Politics of Marriage

In political philosophy, discussions of marriage law invoke diverse considerations, reflecting the theoretical orientations of contributors to the debate. This discussion will set out the main considerations invoked in arguments concerning the legal structure of marriage.

Marriage is a legal contract, but it has long been recognized to be an anomalous one. Until the 1970s in the U.S., marriage law restricted divorce and defined the terms of marriage on the basis of gender. Marking a shift towards greater alignment of marriage with contractual principles of individualization, marriage law no longer imposes gender-specific obligations, it allows pre-nuptial property agreements, and it permits easier exit through no-fault divorce. But marriage remains (at least in U.S. federal law) an anomalous contract: “there is no written document, each party gives up its right to self-protection, the terms of the contract cannot be re-negotiated, neither party need understand its terms, it must be between two and only two people, and [until 2015, when the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges established same-sex marriage in the US] these two people must be one man and one woman” (Kymlicka 1991, 88).

Proponents of the contractualization, or privatization, of marriage have argued that marriage should be brought further into line with the contractual paradigm. A default assumption for some liberals, as for libertarians, is that competent adults should be legally permitted to choose the terms of their interaction. In a society characterized by freedom of contract, restrictions on entry to or exit from marriage, or the content of its legal obligations, appear to be an illiberal anomaly. Full contractualization would imply that there should be no law of marriage at all—marriage officiation would be left to religions or private organizations, with the state enforcing whatever private contracts individuals make and otherwise not interfering (Vanderheiden 1999, Sunstein and Thaler 2008, Chartier 2016; for a critique of contractualization, see Chambers 2016). The many legal implications of marriage for benefit entitlements, inheritance, taxation, and so on, can also be seen as a form of state interference in private choice. By conferring these benefits, as well as merely recognizing marriage as a legal status, the state encourages the relationships thereby formalized (Waldron 1988–89, 1149–1152). [ 2 ]

Marriage is the basis for legal discrimination in a number of contexts; such discrimination requires justification, as does the resource allocation involved in providing marital benefits (Cave 2004, Vanderheiden 1999). In the absence of such justification, providing benefits through marriage may treat the unmarried unjustly, as their exclusion from such benefits would then be arbitrary (Card 1996). Thus, there is an onus to provide a rationale justifying such resource allocations and legal discrimination on the basis of marriage, as well as for restricting marriage in ways that other contracts are not restricted.

Before exploring some common rationales, it is worth noting that critics of the social contract model of the state and of freedom of contract have used the example of marriage against contractual principles. First, Marxists have argued that freedom of contract is compatible with exploitation and oppression—and Marxist feminists have taken marriage as a special example, arguing against contractualizing it on these grounds (Pateman 1988, 162–188). Such points, as we will see, suggest the need for rules governing property division on divorce. Second, communitarians have argued that contractual relations are inferior to those characterized by trust and affection—again, using marriage as a special example (Sandel 1982, 31–35, cf. Hegel 1821, §75, §161A). This objection applies not only to contractualizing marriage, but more generally, to treating it as a case for application of principles of justice: the concern is that a rights-based perspective will undermine the morally superior affection between family members, importing considerations of individual desert which alienate family members from their previous unselfish identification with the whole (Sandel 1982, 31–35). However, although marriages are not merely an exchange of rights, spousal rights protect spouses’ interests when affection fails; given the existence of abuse and economic inequality within marriage, these rights are especially important for protecting individuals within, and after, marriage (Kleingeld 1998, Shanley 2004, 3–30, Waldron 1988).

As noted, a rationale must be given for marriage law which explains the restrictions placed on entry and exit, the allocation of resources to marriage, and legal discrimination on the basis of it. The next section will examine gender restrictions on entry; this section will examine reasons for recognizing marriage in law at all, allocating resources to it, and constraining property division on divorce.

A first reason for recognizing marriage should be set aside. This is that the monogamous heterosexual family unit is a natural, pre-political structure which the state must respect in the form in which it finds it (Morse 2006; cf. new natural lawyers, Girgis et al. 2010). But, whatever the natural reproductive unit may be, marriage law, as legislation, is constrained by principles of justice constraining legislation. Within most contemporary political philosophy, the naturalness of a given practice is irrelevant; indeed, in no area other than the family is it proposed that law should follow nature (with the possible exception of laws regarding suicide). Finally, such objections must answer to feminist concerns that excluding the family unit from principles of justice, allowing natural affection to regulate it, has facilitated inequality and abuse within it (see section 5).

Let us then begin with the question of why marriage should be recognized in law at all. One answer is that legal recognition conveys the state’s endorsement, guiding individuals into a valuable form of life (George 2000). A second is that legal recognition is necessary to maintain and protect social support for the institution, a valuable form of life which would otherwise erode (Raz 1986, 162, 392–3; Scruton 1986, 356–361; see discussion in Waldron 1988–89). But this prompts the question as to why this form of life is valuable.

It is sometimes argued that traditions, having stood the test of time, have proved their value. Not only is marriage itself such a tradition, but through its child-rearing role it can pass on other traditions (Sommers 1989, Scruton 1986, 356–361, cf. Devlin 1965, Chapter 4). But many marital traditions—coverture, gender-structured legal duties, marital rape exemptions, inter-racial marriage bans—have been unjust. Tradition provides at best a prima facie reason for legislation which may be overridden by considerations of justice. Further, in a diverse society, there are many competing traditions, amongst which this rationale fails to choose (Garrett 2008).

An account of the value of a particular form of marriage itself (and not just qua tradition) is needed. One thought is that monogamous marriage encourages the sexual self-control needed for health and happiness; another is that it encourages the goods of love and intimacy found in committed relationships. State support for monogamous marriage, by providing incentives to enter marital commitments, thus helps people lead better lives (e.g. Macedo 1995, 286). However, this approach faces objections. First, the explanation in terms of emotional goods underdetermines the institution to be supported: other relationships, such as friendships, embody emotional goods. Second, claims about the value of sexual self-control are controversial; objectors might argue that polygamy, polyamory, or promiscuity are equally good options (see 5.2). There is a further problem with this justification, which speaks to a division within liberal thought. Some liberals embrace neutrality, the view that the state should not base law on controversial judgments about what constitutes valuable living. To such neutral liberals, this class of rationales, which appeal to controversial value judgments about sex and love, must be excluded (Rawls 1997, 779). Some theorists have sought to develop rationales consistent with political liberalism, arguing, for instance, that the intimate dyadic marital relationship protects autonomy (Bennett 2003), or that some form of marriage could be justified by its efficiency in providing benefits (Toop 2019) or its role in protecting diverse caring relationships (Brake 2012), fragile romantic love relationships (Cave 2017), or caregivers and children (Hartley and Watson 2012, Toop 2019; see also May 2016, Wedgwood 2016).

It is widely accepted that the state should protect children. If two-parent families benefit children, incentives to marry may be justified as promoting two-parent families and hence children’s welfare. One benefit of two-parent families is economic: there is a correlation between single motherhood and poverty. Another benefit is emotional: children appear to benefit from having two parents (Galston 1991, 283–288). (Moreover, some argue that gender complementarity in parenting benefits children; but empirical evidence does not seem to support this [Lee 2008, Nussbaum 1999, 205, Manning et al ., 2014].)

One objection to this line of argument is that marriage is an ineffective child anti-poverty plan. For one thing, this account assumes that incentives to marry will lead a significant number of parents who would not otherwise have married to marry. But marriage and child-rearing have increasingly diverged despite incentives to marry. Second, this approach does not address the many children outside marriages and in poor two-parent families. Child poverty could be addressed more efficiently through direct anti-child-poverty programs rather than the indirect strategy of marriage (Cave 2004; Vanderheiden 1999; Young 1995). Moreover, there is controversy over the psychological effects of single parenthood, particularly over the causality underlying certain correlations: for instance, are children of divorce unhappier due to divorce itself, or to the high-conflict marriage preceding it? (Young 1995) Indeed, some authors have recently argued that children might be better protected by legally separating marriage from parenting: freestanding parenting frameworks would be more durable than marriage (which can end in divorce), would protect children outside of marriages, and would accommodate new family forms such as three-parent families (Brennan and Cameron 2016, Shrage 2018; see also Chan and Cutas 2012).

A related, but distinct, line of thought invokes the alleged psychological effects of two-parent families to argue that marriage benefits society by promoting good citizenship and state stability (Galston 1991, 283–288). This depends on the empirical case (as we have seen, a contested one) that children of single parents face psychological and economic hurdles which threaten their capacity to acquire the virtues of citizenship. Moreover, if economic dependence produces power inequality within marriage, then Mill’s ‘school of injustice’ objection applies—an institution teaching injustice is likely to undermine the virtues of citizenship (Okin 1994, Young 1995).

Finally, a rationale for restricting the terms of exit from marriage (but not for supporting it as a form of life) is the protection of women and children following divorce. Women in gender-structured marriages, particularly if they have children, tend to become economically vulnerable. Statistically, married women are more likely than their husbands to work in less well-paid part-time work, or to give up paid work entirely, especially to meet the demands of child-rearing. Thus, following divorce, women are likely to have a reduced standard of living, even to enter poverty. Because these patterns of choice within marriages lead to inequalities between men and women, property division on divorce is a matter of equality or equal opportunity, and so a just law of divorce is essential to gender justice (Okin 1989, Chapters 7 and 8; Rawls 1997, 787–794; Shanley 2004, 3–30; Waldron 1988, and see 5.1). However, it can still be asked why a law recognizing marriage as such should be necessary, as opposed to default rules governing property distribution when such gender-structured relationships end (Sunstein and Thaler 2008, Chambers 2017). Indeed, placing these restrictions only on marriage, as opposed to enacting general default rules, may make marriage less attractive, especially to men, and hence be counter-productive, leaving women more vulnerable.

The preceding two rationales are both weakened by the diminished social role of marriage; changing legal and social norms undermine its effectiveness as a policy tool. In the 20 th century, marriage was beset by a “perfect storm”: the expectation that it should be emotionally fulfilling, women’s liberation, and effective contraception (Coontz 2006, Chapter 16). Legally, exit from marriage has become relatively easy since the ‘no-fault divorce revolution’ of the 1970’s. Moreover, cohabitation and child-rearing increasingly take place outside marriage. This reflects the end of laws against unmarried cohabitation and legal discrimination against children on grounds of ‘illegitimacy’, as well as diminishing social stigmas against such behavior. Given such significant changes, marriage is at best an indirect strategy for achieving goals such as protecting women or children (Cave 2004, Sunstein and Thaler 2008, Vanderheiden 1999).

Some theorists have argued, in the absence of a compelling rationale for marriage law, for abolishing marriage altogether, replacing it with civil unions or domestic partnerships. This line of thought will be taken up in 4.4, after an examination of the debate over same-sex marriage.

Many arguments for same-sex marriage invoke liberal principles of justice such as equal treatment, equal opportunity, and neutrality. Where same-sex marriage is not recognized in law, marriage provides benefits which are denied to same-sex couples on the basis of their orientation; if the function of marriage is the legal recognition of loving, or “voluntary intimate,” relationships, the exclusion of same-sex relationships appears arbitrary and unjustly discriminatory (Wellington 1995, 13). Same-sex relationships are relevantly similar to different-sex relationships recognized as marriages, yet the state denies gays and lesbians access to the benefits of marriage, hence treating them unequally (Mohr 2005, Rajczi 2008, Williams 2011). Further, arguments in support of such discrimination seem to depend on controversial moral claims regarding homosexuality of the sort excluded by neutrality (Wellington 1995, Schaff 2004, Wedgwood 1999, Arroyo 2018).

A political compromise (sometimes proposed in same-sex marriage debates) of restricting marriage to different-sex couples and offering civil unions or domestic partnerships to same-sex couples does not fully answer the arguments for same-sex marriage. To see why such a two-tier solution fails to address the arguments grounded in equal treatment, we must consider what benefits marriage provides. There are tangible benefits such as eligibility for health insurance and pensions, privacy rights, immigration eligibility, and hospital visiting rights (see Mohr 2005, Chapter 3), which could be provided through an alternate status. Crucially, however, there is also the important benefit of legal, and indirectly social, recognition of a relationship as marriage. The status of marriage itself confers legitimacy and invokes social support. A two-tier system would not provide equal treatment because it does not confer on same-sex relationships the status associated with marriage .

In addition, some philosophers have argued that excluding gays and lesbians from marriage is central to gay and lesbian oppression, making them ‘second-class citizens’ and underlying social discrimination against them. Marriage is central to concepts of good citizenship, and so exclusion from it displaces gays and lesbians from full and equal citizenship: “being fit for marriage is intimately bound up with our cultural conception of what it means to be a citizen … because marriage is culturally conceived as playing a uniquely foundational role in sustaining civil society” (Calhoun 2000, 108). From this perspective, the ‘separate-but-equal’ category of civil unions retains the harmful legal symbol of inferiority (Card 2007, Mohr 2005, 89, Calhoun 2000, Chapter 5; cf. Stivers and Valls 2007; for a comprehensive survey of these issues, see Macedo 2015).

However, if marriage is essentially different-sex, excluding same-sex couples is not unequal treatment; same-sex relationships simply do not qualify as marriages. One case that marriage is essentially different-sex invokes linguistic definition: marriage is by definition different-sex, just as a bachelor is by definition an unmarried man (Stainton, cited in Mercier 2001). But this confuses meaning and reference. Past applications of a term need not yield necessary and sufficient criteria for applying it: ‘marriage’, like ‘citizen’, may be extended to new cases without thereby changing its meaning (Mercier 2001). As noted above, appeal to past definition begs the question of what the legal definition should be (Stivers and Valls 2007).

A normative argument for that marriage is essentially different-sex appeals to its purpose: reproduction in a naturally procreative unit (see 3.2.a). But marriage does not require that spouses be able to procreate naturally, or that they intend to do so at all. Further, married couples adopt and reproduce using donated gametes, rather than procreating ‘naturally’. Nor do proponents of this objection to same-sex marriage generally suggest that entry to marriage should be restricted by excluding those unable to procreate without third-party assistance, or not intending to do so.

Indeed, as the existence of intentionally childless married couples suggests, marriage has purposes other than child-rearing—notably, fostering a committed relationship (Mohr 2005, Wellington 1995, Wedgwood 1999). This point suggests a second defense of same-sex marriage: exclusive marital commitments are goods which the state should promote amongst same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples (Macedo 1995). As noted above, such rationales come into tension with liberal neutrality; further controversy regarding them will be discussed below (5.2).

Some arguments against same-sex marriage invoke a precautionary principle urging that changes which might affect child welfare be made with extreme caution. But in light of the data available, Murphy argues that the precautionary principle has been met with regard to harm to children. On his view, parenting is a basic civil right, the restriction of which requires the threat of a certain amount of harm. But social science literature shows that children are neither typically nor seriously harmed by same-sex parenting (see Manning et al ., 2014). Even if two biological parents statistically provide the optimal parenting situation, optimality is too high a standard for permitting parenting. This can be seen if an optimality condition is imagined for other factors, such as education or wealth (Murphy 2011).

A third objection made to same-sex marriage is that its proponents have no principled reason to oppose legally recognizing polygamy (e.g. Finnis 1997; see Corvino 2005). One response differentiates the two by citing harmful effects and unequal status for women found in male-headed polygyny, but not in same-sex marriage (e.g. Wedgwood 1999, Crookston 2014, de Marneffe 2016, Macedo 2015). Another response is to bite the bullet: a liberal state should not choose amongst the various ways (compatible with justice) individuals wish to organize sex and intimacy. Thus, the state should recognize a diversity of marital relationships—including polygamy (Calhoun 2005, Mahoney 2008) or else privatize marriage, relegating it to private contract without special legal recognition or definition (Baltzly 2012).

Finally, some arguments against same-sex marriage rely on judgments that same-sex sexual activity is impermissible. As noted above, the soundness of these arguments aside, neutrality and political liberalism exclude appeal to such contested moral views in justifying law in important matters (Rawls 1997, 779, Schaff 2004, Wedgwood 1999, Arroyo 2018). However, some arguments against same-sex marriage have invoked neutrality, on the grounds that legalizing same-sex marriage would force some citizens to tolerate what they find morally abhorrent (Jordan 1995, and see Beckwith 2013). But this reasoning seems to imply, absurdly, that mixed-race marriage, where that is the subject of controversy, should not be legalized. A rights claim to equal treatment (if such a claim can support same-sex marriage) trumps offense caused to those who disagree; the state is not required to be neutral in matters of justice (Beyer 2002; Boonin 1999; Schaff 2004; see also Barry 2011, Walker 2015).

A number of theorists have argued for the abolition or restructuring of marriage. While same-sex marriage became legally recognized throughout the United States following the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v Hodges 576 U.S. _ (2015) , some philosophers contend that justice requires further reform. Some have proposed that temporary marriage contracts be made available (Nolan 2016, Shrage 2013) and that legal frameworks for marriage and parenting be separated (Brennan and Cameron 2016, Shrage 2018). A more sweeping view, to be discussed in Section 5, is that marriage is in itself oppressive and unjust, and hence ought to be abolished (Card 1996, Fineman 2004, Chambers 2013, 2017). A second argument for disestablishing or privatizing legal marriage holds that, in the absence of a pressing rationale for marriage law (as discussed in 4.2), the religious or ethical associations of marriage law give reason for abolishing marriage as a legal category. Marriage has religious associations in part responsible for public controversy over same-sex marriage. If marriage is essentially defined by a religious or ethical view of the good, then legal recognition of it arguably violates state neutrality or even religious freedom (Metz 2010, but see Macedo 2015, May 2016, Wedgwood 2016).

There are several reform proposals compatible with the ‘disestablishment’ of marriage. One proposal is full contractualization or privatization, leaving marriage to churches and private organizations. “Marital contractualism” (MC) would relegate spousal agreements to existing contract law, eradicating any special legal marital status or rights. Garrett has defended MC as the default position, arguing that state regulation of contracts between spouses and state expenditures on marriage administration and promotion need justification. On his view, efficiency, equality, diversity, and informed consent favor MC; there is no adequate justification for the costly redistribution of taxpayer funds to the married, or for sustaining social stigma against the unmarried through legal marriage (Garrett 2009, see also Chartier 2016).

But marriage confers rights not available through private contract and which arguably should not be eliminated due to their importance in protecting intimate relationships—such as evidentiary privilege or special eligibility for immigration. A second proposal would retain such rights while abolishing marriage; on this proposal, the state ought to replace civil marriage entirely with a secular status such as civil union or domestic partnership, which could serve the purpose of identifying significant others for benefit entitlements, visiting rights, and so on (March 2010, 2011). This would allow equal treatment of same-sex relationships while reducing controversy, avoiding non-neutrality, and respecting the autonomy of religious organizations by not compelling them to recognize same-sex marriage (Sunstein and Thaler 2008). However, neither solution resolves the conflict between religious autonomy and equality for same-sex relationships. Privatization does not solve this conflict so long as religious organizations are involved in civil society—for example, as employers or benefit providers. The question is whether religious autonomy would allow them, in such roles, to exclude same-sex civil unions from benefits. Such exclusion could be defended as a matter of religious autonomy; but it could also be objected to as unjust discrimination—as it would be if, for example, equal treatment were denied to inter-racial marriages.

Another issue raised by such a reform proposal is how to delimit the relationships entitled to such recognition. Recall the new natural law charge that liberalism entails an objectionable “plasticicty” regarding marriage (3.2.1). One question is whether recognition should be extended to polygamous or polyamorous relationships. Some defenders of same-sex marriage hold that their arguments do not entail recognizing polygamy, due to its oppressive effects on women (Wedgwood 1999). However, some monogamous marriages are also oppressive (March 2011), and egalitarian polygamous or polyamorous relationships, such as a group of three women or three men, exist (Emens 2004). Thus, oppressiveness does not cleanly distinguish monogamous from polygamous relationships. Brooks has sought to show that polygamy is distinctively structurally inegalitarian as one party (usually the husband) can determine who will join the marriage, whereas wives cannot (Brooks 2009). However, this overlooks various possible configurations—if a polygamous “sister wife,” for instance, has the legal right to marry outside the existing marriage, there is no structural inequality (Strauss 2012). Most fundamentally, some authors have urged that a politically liberal state should not prescribe the arrangements in which its competent adult members seek love, sex, and intimacy, so long as they are compatible with justice (Calhoun 2005, March 2011). Some philosophers have argued that polygamists and polyamorous people are unjustly excluded from the benefits of marriage, and that legal recognition of plural marriage - or small groups of friends – can preserve equality (Brake 2012, 2014, Den Otter 2015, Shrage 2016). Finally, the history of racialized stigmatization of polygamy gives reason to consider whether anti-polygamous intuitions rest on just foundations (Denike 2010).

Conservatives also charge that the liberal approach cannot rule out incestuous marriage. While this topic has sparked less debate than polygamy, one defender of the civil-unions-for-all proposal has pointed out that civil union status, as justified on politically liberal grounds, would not connote sexual or romantic involvement. Thus, eligibility of adult family members for this status would not convey state endorsement of incest; whether the state should prohibit or discourage incest is an independent question (March 2010).

A further problem arises with the proposal to replace marriage with civil unions on neutrality grounds. Civil unions, if they carry legal benefits similar to marriage, would still involve legal discrimination (between members of civil unions and those who were not members) requiring justification (for a specific example of this problem in the area of immigration law, see Ferracioli 2016). Depending on how restrictive the entry criteria for civil unions were (for example, whether more than two parties, blood relations, and those not romantically involved could enter) and how extensive the entitlements conferred by such unions were, the state would need to provide reason for this discrimination. In the absence of compelling neutral reasons for such differential treatment, liberty considerations suggest the state should cease providing any special benefits to members of civil unions (or intimate relationships) (Vanderheiden 1999, cf. Sunstein and Thaler 2008). As noted in 4.2, some political liberals have sought to provide rationales showing why a liberal state should support certain relationships; these rationales generate corresponding reform proposals. One approach focuses on protecting economically dependent caregivers; Metz proposes replacing civil marriage with “intimate care-giving unions” which would protect the rights of dependent caregivers (Metz 2010; cf. Hartley and Watson 2012). Another approach holds that caring relationships themselves - whether friendships or romantic relationships - should be recognized as valuable by the politically liberal state, and it should, accordingly, distribute rights supporting them equally; the corresponding reform proposal, “minimal marriage,” would provide rights directly supporting relationships, but not economic benefits, without restriction as to sex or number of parties or the nature of their caring relationship (Brake 2012). This would extend marriage not only to polyamorists, but to asexuals and aromantics, as well as those who choose to build their lives around friendships. A third approach proposes that marital rights and status be replaced by “piecemeal directives” which would regulate the various functional contexts to which marriage law now applies (such as cohabitation and co-parenting) (Chambers 2017); this proposal would avoid designating any relationship type as entitled to special treatment.

Many of the views discussed to this point imply that current marriage law is unjust because it arbitrarily excludes some groups from benefits; it follows, on such views, that marrying is to avail oneself of privileges unjustly extended. This seems to give reason for boycotting the institution, so long as some class of persons is unjustly excluded (Parsons 2008).

Before Obergefell , U.S. law was in patchwork regarding marriages involving at least one transgender person — “trans—marriage,” in Loren Cannon’s term. As a transgender person traveled from state to state, both their legal sex and marital status could change (Cannon 2009, 85). While some raised concerns that the political rationales given for recognizing such marriages (such as the possibility of penile-vaginal intercourse) reaffirmed heteronormative assumptions (Robson 2007), to other theorists, the possibility of trans-marriage itself suggests the instability or incoherence of legal gender categories and gendered restrictions on marriage (Cannon 2009, Almeida 2012).

5. Marriage and Oppression: Gender, Race, and Class

Marriage historically played a central role in women’s oppression, meaning economic and political disempowerment and limitation of opportunities. Until the late 19 th century, the doctrine of coverture (in English and U.S. law) suspended a wife’s legal personality on marriage, ‘covering’ it with that of her husband, removing her rights to own property, make a will, earn her own money, make contracts, or leave her husband, and giving her little recourse against physical abuse. Well into the 20 th century, legislatures continued to impose gendered legal roles within marriage (known as ‘head and master laws’), to exempt rape within marriage from criminal prosecution, and to allow—or impose—professional bars on married women (Coontz 2006, 238; Cronan 1973; Kleingeld 1998). John Stuart Mill compared wives’ condition under coverture to slavery (see section 1); while the late 20 th century U.S. saw gender-neutrality in legal marital responsibilities and an end to the marital rape exemption, criticisms of marriage as oppressive persist. Contemporary feminist attention to marriage is focused on spousal abuse—indeed, some U.S. states still exempt spouses from sexual battery charges (Posner and Silbaugh 1996)—, the gendered division of labor in marriage, and the effects of marriage on women’s economic opportunities and power.

While Mill and Engels saw the establishment of monogamous marriage as an ancient defeat of the female sex, Aquinas, Kant, and many others have seen monogamy as a victory for women, securing for them faithful partners, protection, and material support. So Kant writes that “skepticism on this topic [marriage] is bound to have bad consequences for the whole feminine sex, because this sex would be degraded to a mere means for satisfying the desire of the other sex, which, however, can easily result in boredom and unfaithfulness.—Woman becomes free by marriage; man loses his freedom by it” (Kant 1798, 210–211, [309]). However, as a historical thesis about the origin of marriage, the idea that monogamy provided women with needed material support has been debunked. In early hunting-gathering societies, female foraging likely provided more than male hunting, child-care was arranged communally, and, rather than a single male providing for his female partner, survival required a much larger group (Coontz 2006, 37–38). As a thesis about the protection of women by their male partners, the incidence of rape and violence by male partners themselves must be taken into account (e.g., in the contemporary U.S., Tjaden and Thoennes 2000). And as a thesis about sex difference, evolutionary ‘just-so’ stories purporting to show that women are naturally more monogamous have been challenged by feminist philosophers of biology (Tuana 2004).

Marriage law has also been a tool of racial oppression. The majority of American states at one time prohibited inter-racial marriage; the Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1967 (Wallenstein 2002, 253–254). Anti-miscegenation law did not prevent actual sex and procreation between races, but it excluded women of color and their children from the benefits of marriage. It was also a potent symbol of alleged racial difference. Furthermore, African-American marriage patterns were shaped by slavery. Enslaved persons could not legally marry, and slave couples and their children were frequently separated (Cott 2000). Contemporary philosophers of race argue that marriage is still implicated in systemic racism (Collins 1998). For example, historical conditions and structural racism have led to practices of shared child-rearing in some African-American communities. Some theories of marriage imply that such child-rearing practices are inferior to the marital family. Theorists of racial oppression argue that such practices should be recognized as a valuable alternative, and, moreover, that law which excludes such practices from benefits accorded to marriage may be racially unjust (Vanderheiden 1999; cf. Collins 1998, Card 1996). Immigration law has also made women who are dependent on marriage for their immigration status vulnerable to abuse, particularly those women who are also subject to racism or cultural marginalization (Narayan 1995).

Recent work has also highlighted the contemporary class-based marriage gap in the U.S.: wealthier people are more likely to marry (McClain 2013). This suggests a different link between marriage and oppression: one effect of socioeconomic inequality may be to deprive the worse-off of access to marriage (perhaps because poverty impedes the formation of stable relationships) and the further legal benefits marriage can bring. There is arguably a tension, among egalitarian approaches, between feminist criticisms of marriage as inherently oppressive and egalitarian criticisms of barriers to accessing it (Chambers 2013).

A major theme in feminist political philosophy has been the exclusion of the marital family from justice. Political philosophy has tended to relegate family life to natural hierarchy or affection (Okin 1979, 1989). Historically, this meant that the private sphere of marriage, to which women were confined, was also the zone of state non-interference, so that what happened to women there was not subject to norms of justice. Gradually, law and political philosophy have come to recognize that equal rights and liberties should be upheld within the private sphere as outside it, but many political philosophers still resist applying principles of justice directly within the private sphere. However, feminists argue that gender-structured marriage contributes to, or is even the mainstay of, women’s economic inequality and disempowerment, and that justice must therefore regulate its terms—even, perhaps, to the point of interfering with voluntary marital relations (Okin 1989, Ferguson 2016). At the same time, marriage has been a crucial site of socially valuable care work, which often falls disproportionately on women, and recent feminist work has focused on how the state can support that work more equitably (Metz 2010, Bhandary 2018).

As noted above, one persistent rationale for excluding the family from norms of justice is that its natural relations of affection and trust are superior to merely just relations and likely to be threatened by construing the family in terms of justice (Hegel 1821, §75, §161A; Sandel 1982, 31–35). But abuse within marriage and inequality on dissolution are significant problems, the gravity of which should, according to critics, outweigh these finer virtues; rights within marriage protect spouses when affection fails (Waldron 1988, Okin 1989). Moreover, it is not clear that affection and justice must conflict; a commitment to treating one’s spouse justly could be part of marital love (Kleingeld 1998). Finally, marriage is part of the basic structure of society, and thus, at least within Rawlsian liberalism, is subject to principles of justice. This does not determine, however, how principles of justice should constrain marriage; the default liberal presumption is that marriage, as a voluntary association, should be ordered as spouses choose—so long as these choices do not lead to injustice (Rawls 1997, 792). We will return to this below.

Marriage is a focus of feminist concern due to its effects on women’s life chances. Continuing disadvantage accruing to women in marriage has been widely documented, and in some feminist analyses, undergirds gender inequality (rival accounts place greater emphasis on sexual objectification or workplace discrimination). Wives, even those who work full-time outside the home, perform more housework than husbands—this ‘second shift’ affecting their workplace competitiveness. The social assignment of primary responsibility for childcare to women, combined with the difficulty of combining childcare with paid work, also undermine the workplace competitiveness of women with children (Okin 1989, Chapter 7). The gendered division of labor and the fact that ‘women’s work’ is less well-paid than men’s together make it more likely that married women, rather than their husbands, will downgrade their careers, choose part-time work, or stay home to facilitate child-rearing or when the spouses’ careers conflict. These choices make women “vulnerable by marriage”: economic dependence, and dependence on marriage for benefits such as health insurance, fosters power inequality and makes exit difficult, in turn facilitating abuse (Okin 1989, Chapter 7, Narayan 1995, Card 1996, Brake 2016, Ferguson 2016).

As discussed in 4.2, rationales of equality or equal opportunity are given for addressing economic inequalities arising within marriage through divorce law (Okin 1989, Chapters 7 and 8; Shanley 2004, 3–30, Rawls 1997, 787–794). However, divorce law does not address non-economic sources of power imbalances (such as gender role socialization) within on-going marriages, nor does it address the systemic way in which such inequalities arise. Equal opportunity seems to require changing social norms related to marriage in ways which divorce law does not. First, the gendered division of labor within ongoing marriages is costly for women (Kleingeld 1998). Second, power imbalances within marriage limit girls’ expectations and teach children to accept gendered inequality (Okin 1989, Chapter 7, Okin 1994). Third, anticipation of marriage affects women’s investment in their earning ability before marriage (Okin 1989, Chapter 7). (But for an argument that some hierarchy and inequality in marriage is just, see Landau 2012.)

Such social norms could be addressed through education or through media campaigns promoting the equitable division of housework. Legal measures such as requiring all marital income to be held equally could encourage power equality within marriage (Okin 1989, Chapter 8). However, state interference in on-going marriages arguably conflicts with spouses’ liberties (Rawls 1997, 787–794). This seems to raise a theoretical problem for liberal feminism. Recent liberal feminist approaches to marriage focus on how a just law of marriage can protect women’s interests as well as supporting a fairer distribution of care work, which often falls on women (Metz 2010, Brake 2012, Hartley and Watson 2012, Ferguson 2016, Bhandary 2018; see also reform proposals in 4.4 above).

While many feminists have focused on the reform of marriage, others have argued for its abolition as a legal status (Metz 2010, Chambers 2013, 2017). It is sometimes claimed that marriage is inherently structured by sexist social norms, precluding the possibility of feminist reform — and that marriage also reinforces stigma against the unmarried (Chambers 2017). On such views, abolishing marriage is necessary to reshape social expectations and change patterns of choice accompanying it. For example, legal marriage may encourage women’s economic dependence by enabling and providing incentives for it. Thus, the legal structure of marriage, in combination with social norms, is taken to encourage choices which disempower women relative to men. Moreover, legal recognition of marriage itself endorses an ideal of a central, exclusive love relationship which, on the views of some feminists, encourages women to make disadvantageous choices by inculcating an exaggerated valuation of such relationships—at the expense of women’s other aspirations. Thus, in The Second Sex , feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) identified the expectations surrounding marriage as one of the primary means by which women are socialized into a femininity which, in her view, was limiting: marriage “is the destiny traditionally offered to women by society” (de Beauvoir 1949 [1989], 425; see also Okin 1989), leading women to focus on their attractiveness as mates—and not on study, career, or other ambitions. For this reason, some feminists have rejected ideals of romantic, exclusive love relationships, arguing that women should choose non-monogamy or lesbian separatism (Firestone 1970; see also Card 1996). The idea that marriage is essentially tied to such an ideal of romantic love will require further examination in the next section.

Just as some feminists argue that marriage is inherently sexist, so some philosophers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender oppression argue that it is essentially heterosexist. (Some of these philosophers refer to themselves as queer theorists, reclaiming the word “queer” from its earlier, pejorative usage.) Queer theorists have sought to demonstrate that a wide range of social institutions display heteronormativity, that is, the assumption of heterosexuality and of the gender difference that defines it as a norm. Because queer theorists resist the normativity of gender as well as of heterosexuality, there is an overlap between their critiques of marriage and those of some feminists, especially lesbian feminists. For these critics of heteronormativity, same-sex marriage is undesirable because it would assimilate same-sex relationships to an essentially heterosexual marital ideal: “Queer theorists worry that pursuing marriage rights is assimilationist, because it rests on the view that it would be better for gay and lesbian relationships to be as much like traditional heterosexual intimate relationships as possible” (Calhoun 2000, 113). On this view, extending marriage to same-sex marriage will undermine, rather than achieve, gay and lesbian liberation - and, indeed, further marginalize asexuals, aromantics, polyamorists, and those who choose to build their lives around friendships.

Recall that some arguments for same-sex marriage claim that central, exclusive relationships are valuable, and that same-sex marriage would benefit gays and lesbians by encouraging them to enter such relationships (e.g. Macedo 2005; see 3.3). But critics of heteronormativity, drawing on gay and lesbian experience, have argued that the central, exclusive relationship ideal is a heterosexual paradigm. Such critics note that gays and lesbians often choose relationships which are less possessive and more flexible than monogamous marriage. Instead of recognizing the diverse relationships found in the gay and lesbian community, same-sex marriage would assimilate lesbian and gay relationships into the heterosexual model. While some advocates of same-sex marriage argue that marital status would confer legitimacy on same-sex relationships, these critics argue that the state should not confer legitimacy (and hence, implicitly, illegitimacy) on consensual adult relationships, any more than it should so discriminate between children born in or out of wedlock. Such conferrals of legitimacy are thought to discourage diversity. Moreover, same-sex marriage would expose gays and lesbians to the disadvantages, even evils, of marriage: economic incentives to stay in loveless marriages and reduced exit options which facilitate abuse and violence (Card 1996, 2007, Ettelbrick 1989).

Other philosophers of gay and lesbian oppression have responded in defense of same-sex marriage that it not only serves gay liberation, it is essential to it. Excluding gays and lesbians from marriage marks them as inferior, and so same-sex marriage would decrease stigmas against homosexuality. Further, the costs of same-sex marriage must be weighed with benefits such as healthcare, custody and inheritance rights, and tax and immigration status (Calhoun 2000, Chapter 5, Ferguson 2007, Mayo and Gunderson 2000). Finally, in response to worries about gay and lesbian assimilation, defenders of same-sex marriage have argued that marriage can incorporate diversity, rather than suppressing it. Marriage need not entail monogamy; indeed, it is argued that same-sex marriage could perform the liberatory function of teaching heterosexuals that neither gender roles nor monogamy are essential to love and marriage (Mohr 2005, 69–9, cf. Halwani 2003, Chapter 3; but see Brake 2018 for discussion of whether “subversive weddings” can transform social attitudes if they are not recognized as initiating marriages).

The feminist and queer critiques of marriage as essentially sexist, or essentially heterosexist, face the same objection as do other claims about the essence of marriage. Just because marriage has in the past possessed certain features does not entail that they are inherent to it. Thus, rather than reproducing sexist and heterosexist patterns, same-sex marriage could serve women’s and gay liberation by transforming marriage, even, perhaps, opening the door to recognition of a still wider variety of family forms (Ferguson 2007, Mayo and Gunderson 2000, Calhoun 2005, Brake 2012).

• Abbey, Ruth, and Den Uyl, Douglas, 2001, “The Chief Inducement? The Idea of Marriage As Friendship,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 18(1): 37–52.
• Almeida, Luís Duarte d’, 2012, “Legal Sex,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law (Volume 2), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 277–310.
• Altman, Matthew C., 2010, “Kant on Sex and Marriage: The Implications for the Same-Sex Marriage Debate,” Kant-Studien , 101(3): 309–330.
• Arneson, Richard, 2005, “The Meaning of Marriage: State Efforts to Facilitate Friendship, Love, and Childrearing,” San Diego Law Review , 42: 979–1001.
• Arroyo, Christopher, 2018, “Is the Same-sex Marriage Debate Really Just about Marriage?,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 35(1): 186–203.
• Baltzly, Vaughn Bryan, 2012, “Same-Sex Marriage, Polygamy, and Disestablishment,” Social Theory and Practice , 38(2): 333–362.
• Barry, Peter Brian, 2011, “Same-Sex Marriage and the Charge of Illiberality,” Social Theory and Practice , 37(2): 333–357.
• Beckwith, Francis J., 2013, “Justificatory Liberalism and Same-Sex Marriage,” Ratio Juris , 26(4): 487–509.
• Bennett, Christopher, 2003, “Liberalism, Autonomy, and Conjugal Love,” Res Publica , 9: 285–301.
• Beyer, Jason A., 2002, “Public Dilemmas and Gay Marriage: Contra Jordan,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 33(1): 9–16.
• Bhandary, Asha, 2018, “Arranged Marriage: Could It Contribute to Justice?,” Journal of Political Philosophy , 26(2): 193–215.
• Blankschaen, Kurt, 2020, “Rethinking Same-Sex Sex in Natural Law Theory,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 37(3): 428–445.
• Boonin, David, 1999, “Same-Sex Marriage and the Argument from Public Disagreement,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 30(2): 251–259.
• Boswell, John, 1994, The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe , London: HarperCollins.
• Brake, Elizabeth, 2005, “Justice and Virtue in Kant’s Account of Marriage,” Kantian Review , 9: 58–94.
• –––, 2012, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2014, “Recognizing Care: The Case for Friendship and Polyamory,” Syracuse Law and Civic Engagement Journal , 1, [ available online ].
• –––, 2016, “Equality and Non-Hierarchy in Marriage: What Do Feminists Really Want?,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 100–124.
• –––, 2018, “Do Subversive Weddings Challenge Amatonormativity? Polyamorous Weddings and Romantic Love Ideals,” Analize: Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies , 11, [ Brake 2018 available online ].
• Brennan, Samantha, and Bill Cameron, 2016, “Is Marriage Bad for Children? Rethinking the Connection between Having Children, Romantic Love, and Marriage,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 84–99.
• Brooks, Thom, 2009, “The Problem with Polygamy,” Philosophical Topics , 37(2): 109–22.
• Buccola, Nicholas, 2005, “Finding Room for Same-Sex Marriage: Toward a More Inclusive Understanding of a Cultural Institution,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 36(3): 331–343.
• Calhoun, Cheshire, 2000, Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2005, “Who’s Afraid of Polygamous Marriage? Lessons for Same-Sex Marriage Advocacy from the History of Polygamy,” San Diego Law Review , 42: 1023–1042.
• Cannon, Loren, 2009, “Trans-Marriage and the Unacceptability of Same-Sex Marriage Restrictions,” Social Philosophy Today , 25: 75–89.
• Card, Claudia, 1996, “Against Marriage and Motherhood,” Hypatia , 11(3): 1–23.
• –––, 2007, “Gay Divorce: Thoughts on the Legal Regulation of Marriage,” Hypatia , 22(1): 24–38.
• Cave, Eric M., 2003, “Marital Pluralism: Making Marriage Safer for Love,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 34(3): 331–347.
• –––, 2004, “Harm Prevention and the Benefits of Marriage,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 35(2): 233–243.
• –––, 2017, “Liberalism, Civil Marriage, and Amorous Caregiving Dyads,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 36(1): 50–72.
• Chambers, Clare, 2013, “The Marriage-Free State,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 113 (2): 123–143.
• –––, 2016, “The Limitations of Contract: Regulating Personal Relationships in a Marriage-Free State,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 51–83.
• –––, 2017, Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chan, Sarah, and Daniela Cutas (eds.), 2012, Families ––Beyond the Nucelar Ideal , New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Chartier, Gary, 2016, Public Practice, Private Law: An Essay on Love, Marriage, and the State , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Collins, Patricia Hill, 1998, “It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation,” Hypatia , 13(3): 62–82.
• Coontz, Stephanie, 2006, Marriage: a History , London: Penguin.
• Corvino, John, 2005, “Homosexuality and the PIB Argument,” Ethics , 115: 501–534.
• Cott, Nancy, 2000, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Cronan, Sheila, 1973, “Marriage,” in Radical Feminism , ed. Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, Anita Rapone, New York: Quadrangle, pp.213 –221.
• Crookston, Emily, 2014, “Love and Marriage?,” Journal of Moral Philosophy , 11(4): 267–289.
• De Marneffe, Peter, 2016, “Liberty and Polygamy,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 125–159.
• Den Otter, Ron, 2015, In Defense of Plural Marriage , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Denike, Margaret, 2010, “The Racialization of White Man’s Polygamy,” Hypatia , 25(4): 852–874.
• Devlin, Patrick, 1965, The Enforcement of Morals , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Emens, Elizabeth F., 2004, “Monogamy’s Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence,” New York University Review of Law and Social Change , 29: 277–376.
• Ettelbrick, Paula, “Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation?,” 1989, Out/look: National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly , 6(9): 14–17; reprinted in Andrew Sullivan (ed.), Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con , New York: Vintage, 2004, pp. 122–128.
• Ferguson, A., 2007, “Gay Marriage: An American and Feminist Dilemma,” Hypatia , 22(1): 39–57.
• Ferguson, Michaele L., 2016, “Vulnerability by Marriage: Okin’s Radical Feminist Critique of Structural Gender Inequality,” Hypatia (A Journal of Feminist Philosophy), 31(3): 687–703.
• Ferracioli, Luara, 2016, “Family Migration Schemes and Liberal Neutrality: A Dilemma,” Journal of Moral Philosophy , 13(5): 553–575.
• Fineman, Martha, 2004, The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency , New York: The New Press.
• Finnis, John, 1994, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation’,” Notre Dame Law Review , 69: 1049–1076.
• –––, 1997, “The Good of Marriage and the Morality of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical and Historical Observations,” American Journal of Jurisprudence , 42: 97–134.
• –––, 2008, “Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good,” The Monist , 91(3–4): 388–406.
• Firestone, Shulamith, 1970, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution , New York: William Morrow and Co.
• Galston, William, 1991, Liberal Purposes , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Garrett, Jeremy, 2008, “History, Tradition, and the Normative Foundations of Civil Marriage,” The Monist , 91(3–4): 446–474.
• –––, 2008, “Why the Old Sexual Morality of the New Natural Law Undermines Traditional Marriage,” Social Theory and Practice , 34(4): 591–622.
• –––, 2009, “A Prima Facie Case Against Civil Marriage,” Southwest Philosophy Review , 25(1): 41–53.
• George, Robert P., 2000, “‘Same-Sex Marriage’ and ‘Moral Neutrality’,” in Homosexuality and American Public Life , Christopher Wolfe (ed.), Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, pp. 141–153.
• Gheaus, Anca, 2016, “The (Dis)value of Commitment to One’s Spouse,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 204–224.
• Girgis, Sherif, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson, 2010, “What is Marriage?” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy , 34(1): 245–288.
• Goldstein, Joshua D., 2011, “New Natural Law Theory and the Grounds of Marriage,” Social Theory and Practice , 37 (3): 461–482.
• Grisez, Germain, 1993, The Way of the Lord Jesus , vol. 2 Living a Christian Life , Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press.
• Halwani, Raja, 2003, Virtuous Liaisons , Peru, IL: Open Court.
• Hartley, Christie, and Watson, Lori, 2012, “Political Liberalism, Marriage and the Family,” Law and Philosophy , 31(2): 185–212.
• Herman, Barbara, 1993, “Could it be worth thinking about Kant on sex and marriage?,” in A Mind of One’s Own , Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt (eds.), Oxford: Westview Press, pp. 49–67.
• Houlgate, Laurence, 2005, Children’s Rights, State Intervention, Custody and Divorce: Contradictions in Ethics and Family Law , Lewiston, NY: The Mellen Press.
• Johnson, Rebekah, 2013, “Marriage and the Metaphysics of Bodily Union,” Social Theory and Practice , 39(2): 288–312.
• Jordan, Jeff, 1995, “Is It Wrong to Discriminate on the Basis of Homosexuality?,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 26(1): 39–52.
• Kleingeld, Pauline, 1998, “Just Love? Marriage and the Question of Justice,” Social Theory and Practice , 24(2): 261–281.
• Kronqvist, Camilla, 2011, “The Promise That Love Will Last,” Inquiry , 54(6): 650–668.
• Kymlicka, Will, 1991,“Rethinking the Family,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 20(1): 77–97.
• Landau, Iddo, 2004, “An Argument for Marriage,” Philosophy , 79: 475–481.
• –––, 2012, “Should Marital Relations be Non-Hierarchical?,” Ratio , 25(1): 51–67.
• Lee, Patrick, 2008, “Marriage, Procreation, and Same-Sex Unions,” The Monist , 91(3–4): 422–438.
• Li, Xiaorong, 1995, “Gender Inequality in China and Cultural Relativism,” in Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities , Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glovers (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 407–425.
• Macedo, Stephen, 1995, “Homosexuality and the Conservative Mind,” Georgetown Law Review , 84: 261–300.
• –––, 2015, Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy & the Future of Marriage , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Mahoney, Jon, 2008, “Liberalism and the Polygamy Question,” Social Philosophy Today , 23: 161–174.
• Manning, W., Fettro, M., and Lamidi, E., 2014, “Child Well-Being in Same-Sex Parent Families: Review of Research Prepared for the American Sociological Association Amicus Brief,” Population Research & Policy Review , 33(4): 485–502.
• March, Andrew F., 2010, “What Lies Beyond Same-Sex Marriage? Marriage, Reproductive Freedom and Future Persons in Liberal Public Justification,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 27(1): 39–58.
• March, Andrew F., 2011, “Is There a Right to Polygamy? Marriage, Equality, and Subsidizing Families in Liberal Political Justification,” Journal of Moral Philosophy , 8: 246–272.
• Marquis, Don, 2005, “What’s Wrong with Adultery?,” in What’s Wrong? , Graham Oddie and David Boonin (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 231–238.
• Martin, Mike W., 1993, “Love’s Constancy,” Philosophy , 68(263): 63–77.
• –––, 1994, “Adultery and Fidelity,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 25(3): 76–91.
• May, Simon, 2016, “Liberal Neutrality and Civil Marriage,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 9–28.
• Mayo, David J. and Gunderson, Martin, 2000, “The Right to Same-Sex Marriage: A Critique of the Leftist Critique,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 31(3): 326–337.
• McClain, Linda C., 2013, “The Other Marriage Equality Problem,” Boston University Law Review , 93(3): 921–970.
• McMurtry, John, 1972, “Monogamy: A Critique,” The Monist , 56: 587–99.
• Mendus, Susan, 1984, “Marital Faithfulness,” Philosophy , 59: 243–252.
• Mercier, Adèle, 2001, Affidavit , Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Divisional Court), Between Halpern al. (Applicants) and Canada (Attorney General ) et al. (Respondents), Court file 30/2001, 30/2001, Nov. [ available online ]
• Metz, Tamara, 2010, Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for their Divorce , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Mohr, Richard D., 2005, The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, Equality, and Rights , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Moller, Dan, 2003, “An Argument Against Marriage,” Philosophy , 78(1): 79–91.
• Morse, Jennifer Roback, 2006, “Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society,” in The Meaning of Marriage , Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain (eds.), Dallas: Spence Publishing Co, pp. 74–99.
• Moses, Julia (ed.), 2018, Marriage, Law and Modernity: Global Histories , New York: Bloomsbury.
• Murphy, Timothy F., 2011, “Same-Sex Marriage: Not a Threat to Marriage or Children,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 42(3): 288–304.
• Narayan, Uma, 1995, “‘Male-Order’ Brides: Immigrant Women, Domestic Violence and Immigration Law,” Hypatia , 10(1): 104–119.
• –––, 1997, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism , Routledge: New York.
• Nolan, Daniel, 2016, “Temporary Marriage,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 180–203.
• –––, forthcoming, “Marriage and its Limits,” Inquiry .
• Nussbaum Martha, 1999, Sex and Social Justice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Okin, Susan Moller, 1979, Women in Western Political Thought , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 1989, Justice, Gender, and the Family , New York: Basic Books.
• –––, 1994, “Political Liberalism , Justice, and Gender ,” Ethics , 105(1): 23–43.
• Papadaki, Lina, 2010, “Kantian Marriage and Beyond: Why It Is Worth Thinking About Kant on Marriage,” Hypatia , 25 (2): 276–294.
• Parsons, Kate, 2008, “Subverting the Fellowship of the Wedding Ring,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 39(3): 393–410.
• Pateman, Carole, 1988, The Sexual Contract , Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Posner, Richard, and Silbaugh, Katharine, 1996, A Guide to America’s Sex Laws , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Rajczi, Alex, 2008, “A Populist Argument for Same-Sex Marriage,” The Monist , 91(3–4): 475–505.
• Rawls, John, 1997, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” The University of Chicago Law Review , 64(3): 765–807.
• Raz, Joseph, 1986, The Morality of Freedom , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Robson, Ruthann, 2007, “A Mere Switch or a Fundamental Change? Theorizing Transgender Marriage,” Hypatia , 22 (1): 58–70.
• Sandel, Michael, 1982, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Savulescu, Julian, and Sandberg, Anders, 2008, “Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals Between Us,” Neuroethics , 1: 31–44.
• Schaff, Kory, 2004, “Equal Protection and Same-Sex Marriage,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 35(1): 133–147.
• Scruton, Roger, 1986, Sexual Desire , London: The Free Press.
• Shanley, Mary Lyndon, et al ., 2004, Just Marriage , Oxford: Oxford University Press (includes title essay by Shanley and short replies by 13 others).
• Shrage, Laurie, 2013, “Reforming Marriage: A Comparative Approach,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 30(2): 107–121.
• –––, 2016, “Polygamy, Privacy, and Equality,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 160–179.
• –––, 2018, “Decoupling Marriage and Parenting,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 35(3): 496–512.
• Sommers, Christina Hoff, 1989, “Philosophers Against the Family,” in Person to Person , George Graham and Hugh LaFollete (eds.), Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 82–105.
• Steinbock, Bonnie, 1986, “Adultery,” QQ: Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy , 6(1): 12–14.
• Sticker, Martin, 2020, “The Case against Different-Sex Marriage in Kant,” Kantian Review , 25(3): 441–464.
• Stivers, Andrew, and Valls, Andrew, 2007, “Same-sex marriage and the regulation of language,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics , 6(2): 237–253.
• Strauss, Gregg, 2012, “Is Polygamy Inherently Unequal?,” Ethics , 122(3): 516–544.
• Sunstein, Cass, and Thaler, Richard, 2008, “Privatizing Marriage,” The Monist , 91(3–4): 377–387.
• Tjaden, Patricia, and Thoennes, Nancy, 2000, “Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women,” Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, published by the U. S. Department of Justice, NCJ 183781.
• Toop, Alison, 2019, “Is Marriage Incompatible with Political Liberalism,” Journal of Moral Philosophy , 16(3): 302–326.
• Tuana, Nancy, 2004, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance,” Hypatia , 19(1): 194–232.
• Vanderheiden, Steve, 1999, “Why the State Should Stay Out of the Wedding Chapel,” Public Affairs Quarterly , 13(2): 175–190.
• Waldron, Jeremy, 1988, “When Justice Replaces Affection: The Need for Rights,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy , 11(3): 625–647.
• –––, 1988–89, “Autonomy and Perfectionism in Raz’s Morality of Freedom ,” Southern California Law Review , 62: 1097–1152.
• Walker, Greg, 2015, “Public Reason Liberalism and Sex-Neutral Marriage A Response to Francis J. Beckwith,” Ratio Juris , 28(4): 486–503.
• Wallenstein, Peter, 2002, Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—An American History , New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wasserstrom, Richard, 1974, “Is Adultery Immoral?,” in Philosophical Forum , 5: 513–528.
• Wedgwood, Ralph, 1999, “The Fundamental Argument for Same-Sex Marriage,” The Journal of Political Philosophy , 7(3): 225–242.
• –––, 2016, “Is Civil Marriage Illiberal?,” in After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships , E. Brake (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 29–50.
• Weitzman, Lenore, 1981, The Marriage Contract , New York: Macmillan.
• Wellington, Adrian Alex, 1995, “Why Liberals Should Support Same Sex Marriage,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 26(3): 5–32.
• Williams, Reginald, 2011, “Same-Sex Marriage and Equality,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 14(5): 589–595.
• Wilson, John, 1989, “Can One Promise to Love Another?,” Philosophy , 64: 557–63.
• Young, Iris Marion, 1995, “Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values,” Ethics , 105: 535–556.

The following works were first published prior to 1950.

• Abelard and Heloise, 2003, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise , Betty Radice (trans.), M. T. Clanchy (rev.), London: Penguin, revised edition.
• Aquinas, Thomas, 1981, Summa Theologiae , English Dominicans (trans.), New York: Christian Classics (reprint of London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne 1912–36).
• Aristotle, 1984, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation , Jonathan Barnes (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Astell, Mary, 1700, “Reflections upon Marriage,” in Political Writings , Patricia Springborg (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 1–80.
• Augustine, 1999, Marriage and Virginity: The Excellence of Marriage, Holy Virginity, The Excellence of Widowhood, Adulterous Marriages, Continence , vol. I/9, Ray Kearney (trans), David Hunter (ed.), John E. Rotelle (series ed.), Hyde Park, New York: New City Press.
• Augustine, 1998, Answer to the Pelagians, II: Marriage and Desire, Answer to the Two Letters of the Pelagians, Answer to Julian , vol. I/24, Roland J. Teske (trans.), John E. Rotelle (series ed.), Hyde Park, New York: New City Press.
• de Beauvoir, Simone, 1949, Le Deuxième sexe , Paris: Gallimard. Translated as The Second Sex , H. M. Parshley (trans.), New York: Vintage, 1972. [Page references to 1989 edition.]
• Engels, Friedrich, 1884 [1972], The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State , Eleanor Burke Leacock (ed.), New York: International.
• Hegel, G. W. F., 1995, Elements of the Philosophy of Right , Allen W. Wood (ed.), H. B. Nisbet (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hobbes, Thomas, 1962, Leviathan , Michael Oakeshott (ed.), New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Kant, Immanuel, 1785 [1991], The Metaphysics of Morals , Mary Gregor (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1798 [2006], Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , Robert B. Louden (trans., ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kierkegaard, Søren, 1987, Either/Or , 2 vols., Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (trans.), Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Locke, John, 1988, Two Treatises of Government , Peter Laslett (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mill, John Stuart, 1988, The Subjection of Women , Susan Moller Okin (ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
• Marx, Karl, 1848, The Communist Manifesto , in Selected Writings , Lawrence Simon (ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994, pp. 157–186.
• Plato, 1997, Complete Works , John Cooper (ed.), D. S. Hutchinson (assoc. ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1762 [1993], Émile , Barbara Foxley (trans.), P. D. Jimack (intro.), London: J. M. Dent.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1929, Marriage and Morals , New York: Horace Liveright.
• Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1792 [1997], The Vindications: The Rights of Men, The Rights of Woman , D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (eds.), Peterborough, ON.: Broadview.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Alternatives to Marriage Project
• 1997 General Accounting Office Report on marriage in U.S. Federal Law

love | Aquinas, Thomas: moral, political, and legal philosophy | Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | Augustine of Hippo | Beauvoir, Simone de | civil rights | ethics: natural law tradition | feminist philosophy, interventions: liberal feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: philosophy of biology | feminist philosophy, interventions: philosophy of law | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on reproduction and the family | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on trans issues | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: social and political philosophy | homosexuality | Kant, Immanuel: social and political philosophy | Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy | obligations: special | parenthood and procreation | personal relationship goods | Plato: ethics and politics in The Republic | Russell, Bertrand: moral philosophy | sex and sexuality | social institutions | Wollstonecraft, Mary

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Eric Cave, Laurence Houlgate, Ann Levey, Mark Migotti, and Nicole Wyatt for their very helpful comments on drafts of this entry. Thanks also to Tina Strasbourg and Patricia Thornton for research assistance.

Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth Brake < elizabeth . brake @ rice . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Life

Essay Samples on Marriage

Should couples live together before marriage.

The choice of whether couples should live together before marriage is a subject that sparks lively discussions about commitment, compatibility, and the dynamics of modern relationships. While some view cohabitation as a practical step toward understanding a partner better, others uphold traditional values and believe...

The Question Of Whether Age Matters In A Relationship

The issue of age factor in a relationship is a serious one. I believe you might have thought about it either once or twice. I can’t date him, I am older than him. He was born a week after I was born and all of...

• Relationship

The Past And The Present Of Arranged Marriage In Ancient Rome

Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, the god of war. Left to drown in a basket on the Tiber by a king of nearby Alba Longa and rescued by a she-wolf, the twins lived to defeat that...

• Ancient Rome
• Arranged Marriage

Forced Marriage: The Issues Of Being In An Arranged Marriage

Imagine waking up to a stranger for the rest of your life. Marriage. Such a small word, yet is “supposed” to be one of the biggest days of ones life. However, imagine marriage being one of the scariest days of ones life. A day that...

• Marriage and Family

The Causes Of Divorce: The Reason Marriage Fails

Divorce among married couples is more popular than ever in today's day and age. Webster's specified divorce is the formal breakup of a relationship. Statistics show that the major causes of divorces are: infidelity, lack of communication, lack of commitment, and financial problems. A lack...

Stressed out with your paper?

Consider using writing assistance:

• 100% unique papers
• 3 hrs deadline option

The Influence Of Family On The Choice Between Family And Career

A lot of different things can impact a person’s life in such a way that becomes a lifelong experience. I believe my family has had a huge impact in my life. Family is the foundation of societal values; ethics and the family members are the...

Woman's Role And Choice Between Marriage Vs. Career

There is a story in the Bible which claims that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam’s body. Thus, woman was part of man from the very outset. She was not an independent person, nor did she have an independent personality. She...

Main Reasons For Divorce In The United States And How It Impacts Family

Approximately 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in separation or divorce. As many understand, this disunion brings about change, oftentimes negative. The majority of households witness increased conflicts among family members, distance, and health-related issues. The increase in division among so many...

• Divorce Rate

Common Social Problems Encountered In Family Life And How They Affect The Marriage

In this paper I will be addressing some common social problems a family faces. A social problem is an issue that influences a large number of individuals within a society. The social problems I will be discussing in this paper are divorce, violence, financial problems,...

• Infertility

History of Social Care in the 20th Century Ireland

In this essay I will discuss the marriage bar in Ireland and how it influenced Ireland around the twentieth century and what it meant and how it managed to happen and what knock on affects of it. The Marriage bar is to carry out and...

• Social Care

Comparison of Cohabitation and Marriage: Advantages and Disadvantages

In our modern world, there are so many couples that are adapting to the idea of living together with their partners as an alternative to marriage or just to get a taste of how marriage is. Cohabitation and marriage are quite different in various ways...

• Cohabitation

Theme of Marriage and Symbolism in Short Story Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe and Novel Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ligeia, by Edgar Allen Poe, has an interesting start to the story. It is common for most love stories to explain how two people met, or even their past. This backstory usually sets the setting and allows the reader to watch the characters grow and...

• Edgar Allan Poe
• Young Goodman Brown Symbolism

Beatrice's Character Analysis in "Much Ado About Nothing"

Everyone in this world wants to be loved and to feel like they are wanted but unfortunately love also comes with consequences. In Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, the main characters demonstrate that love leads to hardship. Beatrice and Benedick are perfect evidence...

• Much Ado About Nothing

The View on Love and Marriage in Kate Chopin's A Pair of Silk Stockings and The Storm

Kate Chopin had a very sophisticated and mature view of race, gender, love, and marriage that defies an easy explanation. Those topics often overlap and accompany one another. Write an essay, using only those stories we've read in class (you needn't use all of them)...

• A Pair of Silk Stockings

The Psychological and Political Factors of Infidelity and Adultery

It is often said that, in the case of infidelity, once a cheater, always a cheater. Infidelity is a moral dilemma for people involved in extradyadic relations because it undermines the foundation of trust and love established between partners, as well as violates the social...

The Importance of Male Chastity in Marriage

Throughout history, society has placed a significant emphasis on the importance of female chastity within the confines of marriage. However, the importance of male chastity has often been overlooked. In recent years, however, there has been an increased focus on the importance of male chastity...

European Marriages of the New World Order

As Europe began to institute colonization, colonial leaders had to consider various methods and means for permanency. For example, colonial leaders decided to recruit European women to migrate to the colonies in hopes of laying a religious foundation through marriage and linage. The reason for...

• New World Order

The Homemaker: Chastity as the Foundation of Marriage

Marriage was seen as utmost important in the life of an individual in the early nineteenth century in India, to be skipped by none, and is seen of high cultural value in the eyes of the society which is essentially patriarchal. In 'The Homemaker (Gharwali),...

The Long-Standing Marriage of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

The president of any country is considered as being the number one citizen in the country, which means that virtually every aspect of his or her life is subject to public scrutiny. This public scrutiny begins with the declaration to run for public office, the...

• Jimmy Carter

Criterias to Achieve a Happy Marriage

Have you ever planned your life 10 or 20 years ahead? We bet you do. As a teenager, you planned to finish high school, get to college or university, obtain a diploma and start your professional career. Apart from that, you thought of leading your...

• Happy Marriage

Secrets for a Happy and Long-Lasting Marriage

Divorce is a word that every couple freaks out when mentioned by the person they promised to love and cherish. It drains one emotionally and often leaving them feeling wasted and dims their dreams crumbled and wiped away. That may be the case, but there...

Hardships and Struggles of Inter-Class Marriage and Relationships

The class of people we become is shaped by the money and material things we used to have growing up. We can be either working-class, middle-class, or upper-class. Most of us begin dating and have relationships with others with similar backgrounds, income level, educational level,...

• Middle Class
• Social Class

The Comparison of Marriage Versus Cohabitation

Love makes the world go round. It’s not money, neither is it corruption. It is Love. Love can be seen as having strong intense affection for something or someone. Love’s role is very vital in this argument. I will start with marriage first. According to...

The Central Theme of Love and Marriage in Jane Austen's Persuasion

Throughout her novels, Jane Austen portrays love and marriage to be centered between the hero and heroine. By making the theme of love and marriage central and continuous, Austen displays a change in the dynamic of love taking place at the time in the surrounding...

• Jane Austen

Marriage as a Dubious Goal in Mansfield Park

Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park begins and ends with the topic of marriage. In this regard it seems to fit into the genre of the courtship novel, a form popular in the eighteenth century in which the plot is driven by the heroine’s difficulties...

The Themes of Christina Rossetti's Discussed Poem Goblin Market

The goblin market by Christina Rossetti has sparked debates among many critics in discussing what the main themes she, as an author, wanted to address. Composed in 1862, Rossetti’s Goblin Market was the setting stone of women poets in a time where women were not...

• Christina Rossetti

To What Extent Christina Rossetti Uses Materialism and Status to Cloud the Oppression Women Face Within Marriage

As H.Berten would put it, “for better or for worse, everything seems somehow related to everything else. With regard to the social position of women, and therefore also with regard to the field of female writing. ” Various text published by christina Rossetti such as...

• Materialism

Forms of Union of Marriage in Roman Law

Marriage was an integral part of traditional ancient roman way of life, thus it is no surprise that laws pertaining to the subject were constantly changing and progressing, particularly from the classical era to that of late antiquity. Most scholarly sources available to us today...

Complexities of Marriage in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies

Marriage is an institution that has been around for centuries, and throughout its existence, it has faced a multitude of challenges. In the short story collection 'Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, the theme of marriage is explored through various characters and their relationships. Lahiri's...

• Interpreter of Maladies

Polygamy: Features and Disadvantages of this Marriage Strategy

Polygamy is a mating strategy or marriage structure which involves a male having multiple female partners. Polygamy is the prevalent mating strategy of 95-97% of mammalian species, within these species males provide little to no investment in their offspring and seek as many mates as...

• Human Sexuality

Polygamy: Common Practice in Many Countries

Introduction Polygamy is basically a practice or custom which gives a man a right to have more than one wives.This is a common practice in many countries. In ayub khan era, an ordinance was passed on 2nd march 1961 and it is known as Family...

• Human Sexual Behavior

Pros and Cons of Polygamy Life in Marriage

Problems of Polygamy Polygamy is a social phenomenon that has existed for thousands of years in cultures around the world. It was born of 'necessity' or a show of wealth. It made sense for one man to mate with many women in order to have...

Marriage and Forms Of Marriage

Marriage provides benefits which are denied to same-sex couples on the basis of their orientation; if the function of marriage is the legal recognition of loving, or “voluntary intimate,” relationships, the exclusion of same-sex relationships appears arbitrary and unjustly discriminatory (Wellington 1995, 13).Same-sex relationships are...

Concepts of Equal Marriage in De Gouges and Wollstonecraft's Work

The statement "by hunting sincerity out of our society" made by Mary Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the Right of Woman indicates the aim of all revolutionary feminists during the Enlightenment. Feminists such as Olympe de Gouges, who famously and boldly wrote the Déclaration des...

• Mary Wollstonecraft

Understanding Child Rights and Expression

Childhood is a stage in which all humans’ beings go through, at this stage they are vulnerable because a child is not fully developed mentally, physically or cognitively. A child is any human being below the age of eighteen (18) years old. Children rights range...

• Social Problems

Motives and Causes of Cheating on Significant Others

Women tend to have a higher rate of cheating when they are young but as men move on to an older age group they have higher rates of cheating (Wang). There are different types of cheating a different way people around the globe would define...

Parallel Between Romeo & Juliet & The Marriage Of Shakespeare & Hathaway

Romeo and Juliet is a classic known the world over. It has been translated hundreds of times throughout hundreds of years because the universal themes of love and loss resonate with everybody. Because love is such a personal thing one cannot help but look to...

Understanding The Meaning Of A Married Life In The Film "Why Did I Get Married?"

Why Did I Get Married? Why did I get married was released into theaters on October 12, 2007, from Lionsgate Studio. The Director of this movie was Tyler Perry, and it was rated PG-13. The shots of this film were great along with angles caught...

• Film Analysis

A Guide to Building and Sustaining Marriage with the Perfect Mate

This book will talk about the ways and theories of how to stay married one you are married. It will cover stuff like communication, similarity, physical attractiveness, similarity, balance and equity theory, and proximity. Communication is important in relationships. I will cover the aspects of...

Examining the Influence of Religion on General Society

A frightened teenager approaches his parents. "Can we talk?" he asks tentatively, and sits down. He has both of his parent's attention, all eyes on him. "Mom, dad," he says fidgeting with his coat zipper, "I think I'm gay." His parents take a second to...

• Christian Marriage

A Subjective Assessment on the Institution of Christian Marriage

Marriage Asylum It is my belief that the institution of marriage is a sham, designed by pious Christain fanatics in order to subjugate, control, and furthermore oppress a woman's personal liberties, intellectual freedoms and artistic development. It is also my belief that much in the...

Assessing the Procedures of a Christian Marriage Ceremony

Marriage project What happens in a Christian marriage service? What is the importance of the ceremony? The day before the ceremony the bride will probably have a hen night and groom will have a stag night. These 'nights' are a celebration, they tend to be...

The Hospitality And Inter-Ethnic Marriages Of Nigerian

Nigerian hospitality is premised on the fact that no one man is an island on himself or herself. Rather, each and every member is an important part of the whole community. This important aspect of our culture, which dates back to the days of old,...

Literature Review Of The Issue Of Coming Out In A Family

Coming out during adolescence: Perceived parents’ reactions and internalized sexual stigma. Journal of Health Psychology The main argument of this paper was that informing your parents of your sexual orientation is an extremely daunting and often life-changing task for lesbian and gay adolescents. The goal...

• Literature Review

Best topics on Marriage

1. Should Couples Live Together Before Marriage

2. The Question Of Whether Age Matters In A Relationship

3. The Past And The Present Of Arranged Marriage In Ancient Rome

4. Forced Marriage: The Issues Of Being In An Arranged Marriage

5. The Causes Of Divorce: The Reason Marriage Fails

6. The Influence Of Family On The Choice Between Family And Career

7. Woman’s Role And Choice Between Marriage Vs. Career

8. Main Reasons For Divorce In The United States And How It Impacts Family

9. Common Social Problems Encountered In Family Life And How They Affect The Marriage

10. History of Social Care in the 20th Century Ireland

11. Comparison of Cohabitation and Marriage: Advantages and Disadvantages

12. Theme of Marriage and Symbolism in Short Story Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe and Novel Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

13. Beatrice’s Character Analysis in “Much Ado About Nothing”

14. The View on Love and Marriage in Kate Chopin’s A Pair of Silk Stockings and The Storm

15. The Psychological and Political Factors of Infidelity and Adultery

• Perseverance
• Personal Experience
• Career Goals
• Grandmother

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

The story of marriage equality is more complicated — and costly — than you remember

Danielle Kurtzleben

Same-sex marriage supporters wear "Just married" shirts while celebrating the U.S Supreme Court ruling regarding same-sex marriage on June 26, 2015 in San Francisco. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Same-sex marriage supporters wear "Just married" shirts while celebrating the U.S Supreme Court ruling regarding same-sex marriage on June 26, 2015 in San Francisco.

Americans' views on same-sex marriage have undergone a revolution in a few short decades.

Public opinion on the issue swung so swiftly and decisively — and so little uproar resulted once it was legal nationwide — that one might easily assume the march toward marriage equality was a neat, steady progression.

But it was in fact a decades-long project that moved in fits and starts. As with pretty much any other political movement, there was disorganization and internal squabbling — many in the LGBTQ+ community didn't even see marriage equality as a priority (or even a worthy goal at all) a couple of decades ago.

And, as with other political movements, copious amounts of money provided a lot of the momentum.

All of that is recounted in The Engagement , journalist Sasha Issenberg's exhaustive, engrossing account of the decades-long fight for marriage equality. The NPR Politics Podcast 's Danielle Kurtzleben spoke with him for the show's regular book club feature. Their conversation is transcribed below and is edited for length and clarity.

Danielle Kurtzleben: Let's start with a very basic question: Why was this book important to write for you? Was the goal just to lay out the history of same-sex marriage, or was it something bigger?

Sasha Issenberg: I came to realize as I was working on it, that this was a kind of history of the American culture wars over the last generation — basically over my lifetime.

You know, I'm 41 years old. I started work on this 10 years ago, and it was the point when we were starting to talk about this as the defining civil rights movement of my generation, and I realized I'd been alive for the whole life of this as an issue. And I did not understand how it had emerged, and in many ways eclipsed not only other concerns to the LGBT community, but lots of other points of conflict or tension within our politics. It came in many ways to dominate American social policy debates for much of my adult life.

More same-sex couples eligible for Social Security survivors benefits

DK: This book also gets at how many of the people fighting for marriage equality were in the same boat, but rowing in different directions, is maybe a way of putting it. What are some good examples of how strategy got so messy?

SI: One thing that I think we as political journalists do terribly, and are often unaware of how terribly we do it, is write about conflicts within movements. You'll read or hear stories that say, 'the labor movement is doing X' or 'evangelicals are doing Y,' and anybody who has spent any time talking to labor leaders or evangelical clergy will realize that they spend much more time often bickering among themselves than they do necessarily thinking about how to work in a unified way.

As I dug into this history, that really became clear. What we would call the "gay rights movement" or the "LGBT community," that's a very big coalition, and there are a whole lot of different constituencies: gay men and lesbians who are invested in marriage, [as well as] bisexual and transgender people who often could marry the people that they love, regardless of what state law was about marriage.

And within the LGBT community, there are a lot of different policy concerns. You go back to the 1990s when this debate emerged, and there were people whose top priority was desegregating military and government service so openly gay people could serve, or who wanted just basic nondiscrimination protections, [like] writing sexual orientation into hate crimes laws.

And one of the sort of remarkable parts of the story is not just how ultimately gay marriage campaigners triumphed over opponents of same-sex marriage, but how within their own LGBT community and political movement, they raised the issue of marriage so that it went higher and higher on the list of priorities.

More Republican leaders try to ban books on race, LGBTQ issues

Frankly, a lot of that was driven by money. I told the story of a circle of very wealthy donors led by Tim Gill, who had been a software pioneer. And [he] decides that a lot of his philanthropy is going to be about gay rights. And marriage is the issue that resonates most with him.

Tim Gill attends a charity event to support LGBTQ youth in New York City on June 1, 2015. Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for GLSEN hide caption

And he ends up bringing together a circle of like-minded donors, almost all of whom are men who have either made their money through founding companies or through inheritance, who are very concerned about marriage — I think in part because very wealthy people spend a lot of time worrying about estate planning.

They build an infrastructure that is focused on marriage above — and maybe at the expense of — some of these other priorities and help bring together some of the leading lawyers and strategists in the movement.

I write about a meeting that they had in the spring of 2005, when a lot of gay rights activists saw this cause at a low point, and they set out a path to get a winning case before the Supreme Court within 20 years.

That forced other, established gay rights groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to adjust their priorities, because they realized that the major money within their community cared about marriage. And if they weren't doing marriage work, they were going to lose out on some of that funding.

The U.S. Navy has christened a ship named after slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk

DK: Let's talk about the Supreme Court, which of course is a huge part of this book. You really get at the complex relationship between the Supreme Court and public opinion, and this is the thing that I'm always curious about: is it something justices pay attention to, and how does it affect them?

SI: We have a tough time figuring out what justices pay attention to because they're often not in real time public about their thoughts. But all the folks who are working on this issue operated from the assumption that the justices were not operating in some sort of vacuum — purposeful or inadvertent — in which they were oblivious to what was going on in the world around them.

And so in that 2005 strategy meeting I mentioned, they map out a 20-year path to a successful Supreme Court decision. What is seen as wildly optimistic at that point is getting before the Supreme Court in 2025. What they assumed was that the court would be willing to take bold stands for civil rights, as it has in its history, but that they did not want to be seen as working from a minority position — that the court wanted to be in a position where they were happy sort of reining in outlier states, as they did when they struck down school segregation, for example.

Plaintiff Jim Obergefell holds a photo of his late husband John Arthur as he speaks to members of the media after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in favor of same-sex marriage rights on June 26, 2015 outside the court in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

Plaintiff Jim Obergefell holds a photo of his late husband John Arthur as he speaks to members of the media after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in favor of same-sex marriage rights on June 26, 2015 outside the court in Washington, D.C.

DK: But why would the court be worried about public opinion if they're ruling on constitutionality?

As people have said, the court gets its legitimacy from the other branches of government, from state and local governments, and thus from the public. And so, whatever the joke was that the Supreme Court doesn't have any army — they have no ability to enforce their decisions with anything other than both the public and governments that will go along and accept them.

One of the things I certainly expected after the Supreme Court ruled in 2015, that there would be more examples of local resistance in conservative states, mostly in the South and the rural West, where I thought there would be county clerks, county executives, governors, state attorneys general who said, "We will not enforce this order." And ultimately almost all of them dropped their opposition pretty quickly. I think that is a sign of a legitimacy that the court has earned over years by not taking decisions that public opinion and local politicians would not be willing to sustain. I think that's the big deal that we've had since the founding of the republic that gives court decisions their force.

DK: Another big question that I think a lot of us have continually had is, how exactly did opinion on same-sex marriage change? It has swung so decisively towards marriage equality during our lifetimes.

SI: Yeah, this is one of the things that drew me into this mystery 10 years ago. I was having a lot of conversations with pollsters who would tell me they had not seen opinion on a single issue move as quickly as it moved on marriage. And at that point, attitudes were moving 4 or 5 percentage points a year, only in one direction.

People now, in part, I think because of pop culture or general cultural acceptance, feel more comfortable coming out than they did a generation ago. People are realizing that they know people who are gay. Social scientists call this "contact theory" — the idea that we become more sympathetic or friendly due to the concerns of people once we've had personal contact with them. And it becomes a lot easier to be open, I think, to the arguments for same-sex marriage and more resistant to the arguments that were made against it when you know somebody in your life who is gay or lesbian and see the fundamental humanity of them, and in a certain way, the fundamental modesty of the demand for them to share their life with somebody they love.

Latin America

Chile's congress approves same-sex marriage by an overwhelming majority.

DK: There's one question that we got from various listeners, including Vidya Ravella. She asked, "What's the action plan for all the legal challenges that are expected? If there's a concerted effort to overturn this right, as is expected, this is the next fight, particularly if Roe is overturned this summer."

So before we even get to this question, maybe let's back up and ask how likely do you think it is that Obergefell could be overturned?

I do not think that there is any serious likelihood that the core holding of Obergefell , that the fundamental right to marry should extend to same-sex couples, is in doubt. And I think a large part of that is that it is politically unappealing. There's not a political demand for it the way there is a political demand for a change in abortion laws around the country.

I certainly understand why the fear is there for folks. But I think it's worth looking at the intersection of law and politics. Since the Obergefell decision, there were three Supreme Court justices appointed by a Republican president. Many people wanted to know their positions on Roe v. Wade . Nobody cared [about] their positions on Obergefell . Groups are focused on other issues now. Once you get to a point where these justices see 70% of the country looking the other way, regardless of what their sort of personal preferences might be, I think that that becomes a really significant impediment to them taking up this cause.

DK: Does that make marriage equality a unique issue, in that it's much harder to make the case that a same-sex marriage infringes upon your personal rights if you are in a heterosexual marriage? It's harder to make that case than, for example, to make the case that abortion opponents do, that an abortion hurts someone, or as another example, that affirmative action takes something away from someone. Is marriage equality just in its own class?

SI: You can look back at the history of social movements in the United States as on one hand, as these sort of contests over public values, over justice, liberty, freedom, privacy, fairness. You can also often read them very clearly as competitions for scarce resources.

So when women demanded property rights, husbands and fathers saw that as a challenge to their wealth. When women and African Americans demanded the vote, white men saw it as a threat to their political power, and the effort to expand rights or opportunities for immigrants has been seen by native-born people as a threat to their jobs and public benefits. Desegregation of schools set up this rivalry for places in neighborhood institutions on which people saw their property values implicated.

As you say, affirmative action, maybe in the purest sense, sets up a rivalry for jobs or places in academic institutions. Even the Americans with Disabilities Act may force landlords or developers to shift some of their budgets to paying for things that they might not have wanted to pay for. In every case, the majority had to give something up, something tangible to the demands of justice by a minority, right? And I think that that is a really important difference here, and I think made it very difficult to sustain opposition to this, because there weren't really stakeholders on the other side.

Why I Love My Open Marriage

B ack in 2016, on one of the bleached-out days that fuse winter with early spring, my husband Stewart and I sat on an oversized couch in front of Evelyn, our couple’s therapist. Therapy had been my idea—or more accurately, my ultimatum. We were several years into our open marriage journey, and what had initially felt like a short-term experiment was evolving into something else, a graft that was becoming part of our marital flesh. What’s more, rules we had initially established to protect ourselves from the inherent uncertainty of non-monogamy were proving increasingly difficult to follow. (Our cardinal rule—"no falling in love"—became particularly sticky.) If we planned to commit to non-monogamy long term, I insisted, we would need help. Stewart had balked at “paying someone to pretend to care about our problems,” as he put it. So I threw down the gauntlet: agree to therapy, or we would close the marriage.

At our third session, Stewart surprised me by speaking before I’d had a chance to present my own agenda for the hour. The issue in short was this: When I’d laid my phone on the counter before it faded to black, Stewart had seen my text to the man I was dating at the time. The message read something like this: “I wish I could escape and come over right now.”

Seeing the hurt in Stewart’s eyes, I was steeped in shame. My voice faltered, coming out in a whisper: “I didn’t mean I wanted to escape from you . It’s more like wanting to escape from my role. As a wife. As a mother.”

The language of marriage and the language of captivity have a long history of overlap, but that language has often been reserved for men. Referring to a wife as “the old ball and chain” is part of the lexicon. Bachelor parties are held in the spirit of giving a groom “one last night of freedom.” When I was growing up, however, little girls were supposed to dream of their weddings as the climax of their lives. Marriage was the assumed goal, and motherhood was viewed as the fruition of a woman’s success. How could I want to free myself from a life I was lucky to have? It was the first time I’d ever voiced this yearning, which felt so taboo. I loved my husband and my children. I didn’t want to leave them behind. But clearly some part of me did.

In those days, I was doing quite a bit of therapy. I moved from individual to couple’s therapy and back again, desperately trying to figure myself out. It was my “solo” therapist, Mitchell, who helped me understand the connection between opening my marriage and my yearning to escape. What I was really looking for was a way to find a self that existed outside the constructs of “wife” and “mother”—escaping the restriction of my roles, yes, but also seeking something more. Seeking sexual exploration and the excitement that goes with it. Seeking the experience of desiring and feeling desirable again.

More From TIME

Seeking  my own version of “freedom.”

Over time, I came to realize the central fallacy of my original approach to finding freedom through sex. What I needed to do was to set myself free. For years, I marched from one “relationship” to the next, thinking that a variety of partners was the point, my ticket to the freedom I desired. But it turns out, they were simply distracting me from the core that was being fortified within myself. Every time I became intimate with someone new, I saw myself with fresh eyes. Every time a relationship ended, I spent time nurturing the innermost me that had been hurt. And so, over the years, my sense of self blossomed because of the space that open marriage had created.

Read More: The Surprising Political Evolution of American Polyamory

The idea that people need space—space to breathe, space to move, space to grow—makes sense to most of us in the abstract. We are like all living things in this way. We know that for a houseplant to flourish, it requires a pot large enough to give its roots room to develop. We might feel outrage at the practice of wild animals held captive in zoos. And yet, the phrase “I need space” is synonymous with break-ups, with endings rather than beginnings. How would we react if our beloved partner were to utter those three words? Why can’t we see the need for spaciousness in love as well?

In his Letters to a Young Poet , a work that is oft quoted at wedding ceremonies and then too-quickly forgotten, Rainer Maria Rilke describes this connection between freedom and love so aptly. “The point of marriage is not to…[tear] down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude,” Rilke explains. “A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development.”

Was opening our marriage the only way Stewart and I could guard one another’s solitude, the only way I could find the space I needed for self-discovery? Of course not. Let me be clear on this: Non-monogamy is certainly not everyone’s path. But it was my path. It’s a path I’ve stayed on for 15 years and counting. And my experience confirms the words of Audre Lorde: “The erotic is the nurturer… of all our deepest knowledge.”

At the end of that couple’s therapy session, Evelyn told us the following: “In some ways, open marriage is a joint adventure. But at the same time, your outside relationships are individual explorations. And there are risks. You don’t want to head off into the wilderness without knowing how to find your way home.”

Evelyn turned out to be right, but not in the way I believed at the time. What I didn’t know then is that the terrain I explored was not sex, per se, but myself. The risk was not that either my husband or I would find passion—or love—with someone else, but that by giving up the freedom to explore, I’d condemn myself to a life of stagnation and resentment. I would be suffocated by my own sense of safety. I would wake up one morning and find myself tucked inside the Tupperware with the leftover chicken and carrot sticks I packed for everyone else’s lunch, and there would be no way out, no entry point for air.

And the wilderness I had wandered into was different than what I expected, too. Far from being a frightening place, an inhospitable wasteland filled with danger—threats to my marriage, to my family, my security—I now see the landscape of my adventures in non-monogamy as a place of great beauty, splendid in its lack of societal constructs, a place that is purely my own. I carry this wilderness and a solid sense of home—my own True North—within me. There is plenty of space for both. And if I remember this, I will never be lost.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Coco Gauff Is Playing for Herself Now
• Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
• 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
• If You're Dating Right Now , You're Brave: Column
• The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet
• Fallout Is a Brilliant Model for the Future of Video Game Adaptations
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Women

Marriage Essay Examples

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Women , Marriage , Love , Life , Family , Children , Social Issues , Relationships

Published: 04/05/2021

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Marriage is a term that signifies an agreed union or vow between two consenting adults who signified intentions of living together within the conditions stipulated in their religious, civic, or cultural affinities. As could be deduced, since people come from diverse cultural, ethnic, racial and religious orientations, the beliefs and value systems incorporated within the matrimonial vow or ceremony differs accordingly. For one’s personal understanding and perspective, marriage is conceptualized as one of the sacraments of the Catholic Church that unites man and woman from the time of the matrimony until their demise – or the famous words: until death which is the only rational and justified reason for the dissolution of this sacrament.

This was therefore accurately corroborated in the following definition as shown in the Vatican Archives, the sacrament of matrimony was described as “the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament” (Vatican: The Holy See, n.d., par. 1). Therefore, it is confirmed from the definition, that the essential ingredients for marriage include union between a man and a woman, the whole life time frame, for the purpose of the betterment of the spouses, for the procreation of children, as wel as for raising and educating children. Likewise, it was clearly stipulated that the union should be between two baptized persons.

In this regard, to be married means being able to withstand the challenges and trials encountered by the spouses. This includes staying by the side of a spouse in times of health and in times of illness; in good times, as well as in bad times; in times of poverty or in times of good wealth; and most especially in enduring the ups and downs of raising children, in the process. Being married during bad times mean finding solutions to problems together. The real challenge to the marriage comes in trials and difficulties when partners’ abilities to withstand adversities are aptly tested. Usually, problems in marriage, such as financial, emotional, social (third-parties), family or relatives, and even work, need to be resolved together. If one partner assumes sole responsibility and accountability for looking solutions to these dilemmas, there are tendencies for greater pressures and anxieties for the spouse who is burdened with the insurmountable tasks.

Likewise, to be married means acknowledging that there are roles and responsibilities to be undertaken, as spouses; and eventually, as parents. In decision making processes, there must be consensus of both partner, as well as those of the children, when needed, to resolve matters and issues pertaining to them.

Also, to be married means accepting the person who one loved and who one agreed to love for the rest of their lives – despite shortcomings, mistakes and errors that were committed within the union. However, part of the role and responsibilities of each spouse is to provide constructive criticisms to each partner and provide ways for correcting mistakes and for improvement. To emphasize, being married does not necessarily mean that one or both of the spouses would become subservient to the other, to the extent that personal and professional growth would be stunted and sacrificed. Ways and means should be offered and provided to make needed changes and transformations that would make the union better.

The secret of being happily married, therefore, is retaining the respect, love, and admiration for each other and allowing each spouse to growth in ways which would benefit their union and that of the well-being of their children.

Reference List

Vatican: The Holy See, n.d.. Part Two: The Celebration of the Chrisian Mystery. [Online] Available at: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm[Accessed 6 May 2013].

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 1857

This paper is created by writer with

ID 251326339

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Meter research papers, john deere case studies, vietnam war course work, iraq course work, starbucks course work, parenting course work, industrialization course work, sculpture course work, award course work, athletes course work, telephone no literature review examples, racism in us essay sample, htc corporation report examples, individual cultural diversity issue and its relevance to workplace dynamics essay sample, kant case study example, koppen climate classification system essay examples, free book review about steve jobs, chief characteristics of postmodernism as described by lyotard and jameson essay samples, essay on following are the influences on business buyers, example of research paper on consumer models and and understanding of the manager 039 s problems, good example of research paper on effect of communication on interpersonal relations, good research paper on leadership interview project, berkleys position essay, good essay about decision analysis, good example of healthcare ethics essay, creative writing on social justice leader, marketing essays examples, laminar and turbulent pipe flow report, article review on chinese art and literature, quot essays, almon essays, scholars essays, air quality essays, proposals essays, new kind essays, third world countries essays, tourism sector essays, hacking essays, higher learning essays, institutions of higher learning essays, pertaining essays, headaches essays, rights movement essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Memoir coach and author Marion Roach

Welcome to The Memoir Project, the portal to your writing life.

How to Write About Marriage? Learn How to Write the Personal Essay

I TEACH ONLINE MEMOIR CLASSES and work as a memoir coach and memoir editor, and in those roles I get a lot of requests for teaching how to write the personal essay. The essay is my favorite medium and most of the essays I have written and published take on simple, domestic issues stemming from marriage and family. The key to writing from home is to stay small. You are most likely to succeed in delivering a feeling to the reader if you attempt to do so without telling us what that feeling is. Navigating this space of showing, not telling, is critical to the success of a good, domestic essay.

What do I mean by that? Just this: Let the reader do some of the work. Let them do the math. Let them read it and gather together the details without you having to say something like: Hey, look at how someone loves me . Just show us. How? Here’s an example.

Read this essay and leave in the comments what you notice about what does and does not get said, and what you feel at the end.

I HAVE THREE FREEZERS. There, I admit it. I do. A born and raised New Yorker, maybe I have nothing more or less than a shtetl mentality, some genetic holdover from a time when there was never plenty. But probably not, since the closest I’ve come to Anatevka was fourth row center seats for “Fiddler on the Roof” when I was twelve.

And so it remains one of the greater mysteries of my marriage – to my husband, that is – that I buy chickens and freeze them, make stock and freeze it, make pesto and freeze it, and that every once in a while in the blur that I am as I whirl between the three freezers, I put something into one of them that, well, simply doesn’t belong.

It’s good he doesn’t take it personally, though that is probably because I have assured him that this started long before our marriage, and that I once located a sumptuous pair of alligator loafers in the fridge after thinking for months that I had lost them. They were in a brown paper bag, exactly the size of a pizza slice, so it seems obvious to me what my mind did when I got home from the shoe repair. Into the fridge, I thought, and that, as they say, was that. So glad was I when I found them that there were no recriminations. Plus, at the time I lived alone, so I had no one with whom the share the joy of finding them. Cold, though they were, I merely slipped them on and instantly regained my sense of balance.

These days, I have an audience, as well as several mouths to feed. Along with providing food for the adults in my home, I also cook for our dog. He has allergies. Seven years we’ve been at it. The cost of this is 14 sweet potatoes and 14 chicken thighs each week, and so an enormous canvas bag of sweet potatoes sits on top of the chest freezer in the garage (did I forget to mention that of the three freezers, one is the chest variety?) It’s the kind of bag that ship riggers use. Strong handled and sturdy, we need it for when the price is low – a recent 99 cents/pound, for instance – and we buy in bulk. It’s hard to lose.

Or so you might think.

Saturday was a cooking day for me, and so I am writing in real time here, reporting from the front. The last of the parsnips, all of the frozen vegetable scrapings, cilantro stems and other tidbits from the freezer went into the cauldron-sized stock pot. Back and forth from the freezers I went, finding tempting stashes of things to add.

“Oh look,” I said to the dog, “Chives!” The dog gave me the look he always gives me. It’s lovely to be adored no matter what you do.

My chives are now up in my kitchen garden, so clearly the frozen ones had to go into the soup. And in they went. And more things came to mind, and apparently I was wearing one of my many pair of glasses and carrying a mug of tea while I triangulated my way between my freezers. And then the washing machine sang its little song it sings when the load is done and the triangulation became a parallelogram and I added an upstairs trip.

The soup was creating that kind of happy haze it does when the aroma has taken over the house, and everything seemed right with the world. Out to the freezer I went again when I noticed the mega bag of potatoes was gone. Missing. Thinking it might help if I could see better, I patted myself down for my eyeglasses. Gone too. And what about that tea? Wasn’t I drinking something just moments ago?

Opening the stand freezer I was delighted to find the full bag of potatoes quietly cooling inside. Not that alarming, really. Many remarkable things have been unearthed there, including a portable phone and a book. It happens. And being a good wife, I called to my husband.

“Look, honey!” He came in from the kitchen, and that look on his face was the dividend check, the little extra I get from years of investing in this life.

The glasses? They were in the laundry hamper. Obviously. But it was my husband who found the tea mug, hours later, in that grand sweep I now realize he quietly does every day and last thing on most nights, simply putting everything back in its place so we can get on with our lives.

Tips for How to Write The Personal Essay:

Most of my essays come from domestic moments. Before I set out to write from my idea of home, I read extensively. Specifically, when learning how to write about marriage, domesticity or cooking, I can credit the great Laurie Colwin, Russell Baker and Nora Ephron for some great provocation. I read and I learned how to write the personal essay.

Have you seen my list of books to read to write memoir ? Have a look.

Want more? Join me in an upcoming online memoir class where tips like these are plentiful.

And if you have not done so already, listen in to QWERTY, my podcast by, for and about writers. 

Photo by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash

Share this:.

Related posts:

• How To Get A Personal Essay Published? Write it Like This
• Marriage Memoir: Going to the Dogs
• Marriage Memoir: The Questions One Should Never Ask

GET THE QWERTY PODCAST

Subscribe free to the podcast

Reader interactions.

Betsy Marro says

April 20, 2015 at 2:27 pm

Marion – I laughed out loud as I read this. In our house, we take turns finding what the other has lost as we wander through our home and our lives. I still recall the day that my cell phone rang just as I pulled into work. It was my love, speaking in that confused, amazed, indignant, frustrated tone that signals the loss of something crucial. In this case it was his glasses, his last pair. He couldn’t drive without them. He was late for work. He could no longer think clearly about where to look. “Would you like me to come home?” I asked. “Would you?” he said. And twenty minutes later there we were, retracing his steps. “Did you check the laundry closet?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have put them there!” he said. Which of course spoke volumes. I went in, opened the washing machine and there they were at the bottom of the drum, the lenses staring up at me. I didn’t crow or chortle or get too mad. By then I’d learned what we both know all too well, that it is only a matter of time before I’ve lost my keys, again, in my purse.

marion says

April 21, 2015 at 6:22 pm

Oh, that’s lovely, Betsy. Thank you for being in the club, and willingly admitting to it. Please come back soon for more. I sometimes forget what rich fodder is there is marriage. The everyday is the best place to go for material, isn’t it?

diane Cameron says

April 20, 2015 at 5:53 pm

Now I was waiting to hear that at least one of those freezers had a stock of Creme de la Mer–just in case, or your favorite red lipstick–also just in case. That I would understand, or for storing cashmere crew necks, which I understand store best in freezing cold storage. Chickens? Chives? Lordy–the things I learn about you.

Not even a small freezer bag of lipsticks?

April 21, 2015 at 6:21 pm

Small bag. The good stuff. The stuff I did not buy at the drugstore. How did you know?

Julia Pomeroy says

April 21, 2015 at 10:56 am

So funny, Marion, and so true. I love your home, your husband, your dog. Thank you for inviting me in.

April 21, 2015 at 6:20 pm

Thank you, Julia. I am delighted by the affection and friendship.

Jan Hogle says

April 21, 2015 at 12:16 pm

Damn… I’ve lost my expensive prescription glasses with the detachable sunglasses. Can you help me find them??

Great post!

April 21, 2015 at 6:19 pm

Found ’em. In the freezer.

Robin Botie says

April 21, 2015 at 6:11 pm

Oh THAT’s what husbands are for. Been so many years I forgot how great they can be around the house. I’ve been losing things left and right all this time. Cheers!

Ha ha ha. Yes, they can be great around the house. Thanks for coming by for a laugh.

Melinda says

April 22, 2015 at 11:11 am

I have a clear childhood memory of my mother standing in front of the freezer, dumbstruck, as she pulled out her purse. When I laughed she said, “I’m not worried about the purse. Now I just need to find the damn ice cream.”

Now that I am of that certain age, I completely understand.

April 22, 2015 at 12:18 pm

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Laughing so damn hard right now. What a kind gift this is you offer. Thank you. And what a fabulous thing for you to write about. Go on.

Sherrey Meyer says

April 25, 2015 at 2:34 pm

Marion, I’m guessing you can hear my laughing all the way from Portland, OR to the east coast! Such a funny story you’ve shared, and one which many of us can relate to in one way or another. I don’t have a chest freezer, and I only have one freezer other than the one with the fridge. But I do manage to lose things in that tall freezer residing in a garage that is really my husband’s workshop and not a garage at all. I’m wondering now if that’s where he’s lost all those books of blank checks he was looking for and perhaps it’s where I might find the springtime blouse I can’t find now that it’s spring. I’ll go look!

Kathleen Pooler says

May 6, 2015 at 10:52 am

Oh my gosh, Marion, you had me laughing out loud as I recalled my own stories of “losing “my eyeglasses which were sitting on my head or finding the box of Triscuits in the refrigerator and wondering who could have possibly done that?? I’m so happy I’m not alone in this. Thank you for sharing!

Amanda says

April 5, 2020 at 9:57 am

The cilantro stem, the dividend check (just beautiful – a ROI), something about the sturdy bag reminded me of my grandmother’s cool damp cellar. I had to read the essay twice to know why the last sentence struck me – the grand sweep, but it was your words “that I now realize” he does…I do the grand sweep of our night stands every morning. It is part of my morning rhythm after he leaves for work. And moreso, I pick up clues – an empty ice cream bowl tells me he stayed up later than me and will have a story to tell about an episode or a news piece, business cards tell me he’s mowing today, the gold PO Box key – he’ll be calling for it any minute. As I do the sweep each morning, I think of him and wonder if he knows how it happens. I suppose I’m waiting for that ROI!

Julia Grant says

April 5, 2020 at 10:14 am

It is lovely how you provided a portrait of a loving marriage through your articulation of your meanderings in the kitchen, the items you lose, and those that are found by your husband. Thank you for the lesson!

Wendy Komancheck says

April 5, 2020 at 1:46 pm

Hiya Marion: I’m glad I’m not the only one leaving things in odd places. Your husband should start a support group for men whose wives are forgetful! :) It’s the artist/creative inside us! My older son also has had to suffer with my absent-mindedness–but he thinks I lost my mind. I always reply, “I wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t until I had kids.) Said in jest, of course.:) Thank you for sharing!

Colleen Golafshan says

April 9, 2020 at 1:57 am

Oh, I relate to misplacing items – sometimes not finding them for years. This morning I happily found, from a pile I’d pulled out behind my desk, a hard copy of your recommended memoir books, which I wanted as I research my first memoir essay (after working on book-length projects). It’s about my years as a homeschooling stay-at-home mum, my failings and asking forgiveness of my two beautiful children, now rewarded with their amazing love in hard times.

Here’s what I heard in your essay: You’re a born and raised New Yorker, genetically but distantly Jewish. You love to keep food frozen and at the ready in your three freezers, which include a chest freezer on which you keep a canvas bag of sweet potatoes for the dog.

On Saturday, while whirling around creating a cauldron-sized soup–with parsnips, vegetable scraps, cilantro stems, chives and other tidbits–and carrying a mug of tea, you had to attend to your clothes washing.

Once the soup was on, creating a happy haze of aroma through the house, you noticed the sweet potatoes were missing, as well as the glasses you’d been wearing and your tea. You found the sweet potatoes in a standing freezer. Showing this to your husband, he rewarded you with a look, a paycheck for all the years you’ve invested in his life. The glasses turned up in the laundry hamper but your tea mug wasn’t found for hours, and then by your husband.

What you did not say in the essay: Apart from your preamble about the art of memoir which should show rather than say, Hey Look at how someone loves me, you don’t actually say your husband loves you or that you love him and the home you’ve created. But these facts well up through the peace you describe at home, despite the chaos sometimes caused by misplacing items. There you have an audience of an adoring dog and a husband who not only shares your joy of finding things in unusual places but who balances your tendency to leave such things out of place with his quiet nightly routine.

When you lived alone, it took longer to regain your sense of balance after misplacing your loafers than these days when your husband quietly ‘sweeps’ through the house at night to find misplaced items.

How I feel after this review is grateful for the peace you feel and share when New York is in chaos with so many affected by coronavirus. However, this was not a clear feeling on my first read.

As an Australian, I often feel at a loss to fully translate others’ communicated lifestyles into exactly what is meant, as I did when I first read this essay. Using maps and looking up word definitions helps (eg. shtelt). For example, I love listening to your inspiring podcasts, yet I often feel I lose a lot of rich context, especially when interviewed authors are from your area and you have shared history, far from my western Sydney townhouse. I’ve not been to New York, though I’ve stayed with friends and family living in Minnesota and California. These days I travel in books and online as I learn to live with low-grade lymphoma that limits even local travel.

SITEWIDE SEARCH

Join me on instagram, mroachsmith.

The Modern Love Issue

Can a Sexless Marriage Be a Happy One?

Experts and couples are challenging the conventional wisdom that sex is essential to relationships.

Credit... Tonje Thilesen for The New York Times

Supported by

• Share full article

By Amanda Montei

• Published April 17, 2024 Updated April 18, 2024

Will and Rose met online 10 years ago. His screen name was professorparsley, and he looked the part — tall and thin, with glasses, features that Rose found attractive. On their first date, Rose learned that Will was a college student living with his mother, and his handle came from a nickname given to him by a child at an art camp where he worked. They laugh about it now, as they do with most things. Will thought Rose was exciting and direct. He grew up in suburban Ontario, and she was from Southern California, which was like another world to him. Right away, what they loved about each other were their differences.

Listen to this article, read by Julia Whelan

Rose was drawn to how stable Will seemed — so unlike the other men she had dated, who dreaded commitment. Their relationship survived multiple moves, about a year of long-distance dating and the challenges of finding time to be together while living with parents and roommates. Now, seven years into their marriage, they have their own place: a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, where Rose sees Pilates clients. Will is gone during the day, teaching, and at night they cuddle in bed and watch television. “It’s my favorite part of the day,” Rose says. (Rose and Will are middle names. All subjects asked to be referred to by their first names, middle names or a nickname, out of concerns for their privacy.)

As much as Will grounds her, Rose feels that the familiar calm of their relationship also shuts her down sexually. They go months without sex, but they don’t lack intimacy. They have a policy of never refusing a hug, something they instituted to resolve the minor disagreements that inevitably crop up in any relationship. They have also talked candidly about how, for her, the safe predictability of their marriage — the quality she loves about their lives together — dulls her sex drive. She knows that can be confusing, even frustrating, for Will, but she doesn’t like the idea of forcing herself to have sex. Rose’s mother, now divorced, felt obligated to have sex with Rose’s father once a week. That’s not the kind of relationship Rose wants.

To get into a sexual mood, Rose relies on a set of rituals to help build anticipation — doing her hair and makeup, shaving her legs, having a glass of wine over dinner or, when their schedules allow, going on vacation to break out of their routines. Will doesn’t need to do anything to feel ready for sex, and Rose sees this as another way in which they’re different. Over the years, they have accepted that this is what their sex life looks like, and will look like, if they want to be together, which they do.

During the pandemic, the couple went more than a year without having sex, but they savored their extra time together. Rose used to spend hours driving in traffic to different workout studios, coming home late, not seeing her husband much. Stuck at home, they took walks around their neighborhood. They talked constantly. They started taking online yoga classes together, a hobby that stuck. Will appreciates these smaller opportunities to connect. Rose thinks she’s not the nurturing type, but Will disagrees. “She’s not stingy in spirit or time,” he says.

Sometimes they shower together and hold each other naked, without any expectation of sex. Though Will remains hopeful that these moments will lead to something else, he doesn’t push it.

Cultural attitudes about the role sex plays in a marriage have evolved significantly over time. Where once marital sex was primarily a means for bearing children, in recent decades, the conventional wisdom was that frequent sex was integral to a happy union. During the 1990s, a new wave of sex positivity coincided with the ascendancy of different forms of therapy, including couples counseling. Experts coached couples on how to strengthen their marriages, often relying on the belief that healthy relationships included consistent sex with partners. By the 2010s, appointment sex had become one popular method for maintaining intimacy and, somewhat implicitly, safeguarding against separation.

In more recent years, however, both relationship experts and couples themselves have been gradually dismantling some of these commonly held views, working to destigmatize the unconventional approaches that some take to stay together. Online groups have sprung up for couples who challenge basic assumptions that spouses should share a bedroom or even a home. Sharon Hyman, who runs a Facebook group called Apartners for couples who have chosen to live separately, told me that many of the members in her community find their sex lives improve when they don’t spend every minute together. “My goal is to show that there are healthy options for relationships,” Hyman says. “No one size fits all.”

One effect of the ever-changing sexual climate is that many couples today are simply less willing to tolerate what the psychotherapist Esther Perel calls “boredom” in the bedroom. Perel has made a career of articulating how domestic overexposure saps eroticism, which requires some intrigue, mystery and unfamiliarity. That’s not to suggest that long-term love and desire are impossible, but according to Perel, keeping sexual interest alive requires getting creative. In her podcast, “Where Should We Begin?” Perel helps couples explore and articulate their fantasies, honor each other as individuals and experiment with new approaches to fulfilling their desires together.

For Perel, as for many other relationship experts, that sometimes means re-examining investment in another foundational premise of marriage: monogamy. The advice columnist Dan Savage, too, has argued that monogamy isn’t entirely plausible, or pleasurable, for everyone, and is critical of Americans’ obsession with moralizing infidelity. He encourages married people to be honest with each other about how hard it is to carry the responsibility of fulfilling their partner’s sexual and emotional needs for decades on end.

While some are questioning the standard of monogamous sex in marriage by exploring polyamorous and open relationships, others are pushing back against the pressure to have sex at all. In fact, Americans on the whole are having less sex than they used to — across race, gender, region, educational level and work status. One study found that American adults born in the 1990s are having less sex than older generations; they are in fewer steady partnerships, and those who are partnered are also having less sex. The 2021 General Social Survey found that about 50 percent of all adults polled had sex once a month or less , with half of those people reporting they hadn’t had sex for a year. Researchers have speculated about the reasons for this 30-year sexual low, from isolation caused by technology to cultural conversations about consent.

Many younger women, for instance, shaped in part by the #MeToo movement, are engaging in intentional abstinence. There are trends on TikTok about going “boysober,” a word coined by the comedian Hope Woodard, who says that taking a break from sex can be empowering for women who previously altered their desires to accommodate men. The digital feminist 4B movement, which originated in South Korea but has spread globally through social media, advocates a rejection of childbearing, as well as heterosexual dating, marriage and sex. “Platonic life partners,” meanwhile — friends who commit to owning a home and even raising children together — insist that sex and romance are not necessary to lifelong unions.

The sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski is resistant to the idea that frequent sex should be a chief component of every committed relationship. Nagoski — who has been open about her own hiatus from marital sex — doesn’t endorse obligatory sex, nor does she encourage aiming for any sexual base line in terms of regularity or behavior. Drawing on the work of the Canadian sexologist Peggy Kleinplatz, Nagoski believes that low desire can sometimes be evidence of good judgment. “It’s not dysfunctional not to want sex you don’t like,” Nagoski says.

In her new book, “Come Together,” Nagoski urges couples who want to explore their sexualities and deepen their sexual bond to begin by figuring out what each person wants when they want sex. For many, sex represents freedom from the ordinary, but what it takes to get there will look different for every couple and is likely to change over time. After all, desires don’t always align, or they evolve in unexpected ways.

Michelle and John met in 2005 at a party, and in the early years of their relationship, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Four years ago, however, after experiencing what she calls a “traumatic” childbirth, Michelle began to worry that intercourse would cause her pain.

She and John did not have sex for a year after they became parents. Now they can go months without it. Friends of theirs, too, seem to be experiencing new chapters in their own sex lives and opening up their marriages, which has sparked conversations between Michelle and John about the possibilities for reinvigorating their sex life. But they don’t always agree on what they want, or what they’re comfortable with.

John knows, however, that having sex outside the marriage is a red line for Michelle. She witnessed infidelity tear apart her parents’ relationship. “I think there’s a big fear about ‘I have an urge that may be resolved in a minute or two,’ but the sense of what could be broken is not worth the risk,” John says.

Love, for both, is about much more than fulfilling those momentary desires. After almost two decades together, they consider themselves best friends and “soul mates.” When they first began dating, Michelle was reeling from the loss of her brother, who died in a car accident. She talked with John about the experience on an early date, and they were inseparable after that. John thought she was beautiful and wanted to spend as much time with her as he could. Michelle thought he was a welcome distraction, someone who could lift her out of her grief. They went to concerts. He made her mixtapes. But there were also times when she broke down crying, and he was there for her.

John used to try to comfort Michelle by saying he understood how she felt, but when he lost his own brother in 2012, he realized how wrong he had been. As he mourned, Michelle “just knew what to do in the unspoken moments — whether it was knowing when to give me space, or knowing when I needed a hug, or I just needed her to be next to me,” John says. Today, Michelle remains the “central piece” of his happiness.

Michelle and John share a one-bedroom with their daughter, and while they get some privacy during the day, they’re busy working from home. Now, most days, Michelle masturbates in the morning, while John takes their daughter to preschool. He masturbates at night in the bathroom, while watching porn on his phone. For John, it’s merely a physical release, but for Michelle, pleasuring herself serves a different purpose: She is trying to figure out what makes her feel good. Exploring her changed body alone eliminates the guilt she has when she can’t climax with her husband. She doesn’t want him to think it has anything to do with him. “I want to get there, but it’s not getting there,” she says.

Of the more than 30 married people I interviewed, many, like Michelle, told me that becoming parents irrevocably changed their sex lives. Camille, who lives in California, felt her marriage was the most solid and caring relationship she had ever experienced, but becoming a mother distanced her from her desire. “It feels like something I can’t quite touch, like in another room, or another part of me that I don’t know how to access,” she says.

Other mothers started to see sex as one more chore, another line item on their list of responsibilities. Keti, a mother of a neurodivergent child who craved being held, found that sex with her husband had become “robotic” as she began to see it as “one more demand.” Her husband was doing everything he could to support her, but she felt an obligation to get back to their old sex life, even though she wanted “desperately to go into a forest and just lie down and not hear anyone or anything.”

Lilien, who has two kids, says becoming a mother was a turning point for her. She had to leave her previous career and didn’t know who she was or what she wanted. “My identity was totally eviscerated,” she says. “I was really confused about what my worth was.” Her history of sexual assault also resurfaced in profound ways. She thought she needed to be “permeable” to nurture her children. She didn’t have the capacity to extend that physical openness to her husband. She couldn’t stand soft caresses from him, which felt like the tickling of her child’s hands.

Lilien’s husband, Philip, never pressured her to be intimate, for which she is grateful. “The most important thing for me was to maintain a place where the sex you have is very positive, very consensual, very understood and mutually enjoyed,” he says. Five years later, Philip knows she is still coming to terms with everything motherhood has brought into her life. Recently they started having more sex, about once every other month. Lilien loves her husband’s firm back rubs, which he’s happy to give.

Other couples, much like Rose and Will, confessed to feeling sexually misaligned with their partners as their desires shifted in different directions. Jean, a 38-year-old mother living in Virginia, told me that her husband’s interest in sex has dropped off gradually over the course of their 13-year marriage. She, on the other hand, experienced what she called “a secondary puberty” as her kids grew older and became less dependent on her. She felt “so sexually charged” that she visited her gynecologist to confirm she wasn’t having a hormonal issue. She’s now trying to figure out how to navigate her husband’s low desire. “I feel like I’m living in the upside-down a lot of the time,” she says. “My friends complain about their husbands grabbing their butt while they wash dishes, and I think, Wow, I would love to feel wanted like that.”

Another mother, Emily, says that sex gradually became less important over the course of her 34-year marriage. When her kids were little, intimacy with her husband stalled briefly, but as their children grew older, they had a “revival of a good sex life,” Emily says. Now she is 59 and has had several operations resulting from a battle with cancer, including a hysterectomy and mastectomy. As a result, her desire lessened, and sex began to feel like “vacuuming the house” — something she did to make her husband happy. And he noticed. “If you are used to somebody responding to you in a certain way, you can tell when they are acting,” she says. “I wasn’t the same person.”

One night in bed, about 10 years after she went on a hormone treatment for her cancer that put her into early menopause, they had a frank conversation about their sex life. “We discussed my lack of desire, and he said that if I’m not turned on, then he’s not either,” Emily says. He admitted that his sex drive had dipped, too. So they decided not to force it. She feels there’s some cultural pressure for older people to keep up their sex lives into their 80s. She’s read, with skepticism, articles claiming that maintaining sex later in life is healthy. “Is it?” she said. “I don’t know.”

Emily feels their marriage has progressed naturally: They experienced decades of passion, and while they remain affectionate outside of the bedroom, their relationship now transcends sex in many ways. It’s about the life they’ve built together. “We’ve been in a sexless relationship for years now,” Emily says. “We get along great, but we’re more like best buds than lovers.”

Despite their insistence that sex isn’t essential in their marriages, most of the couples I spoke with still keep track of how often they have sex. They also appear haunted by how far they deviate from perceived norms. John, for instance, hopes he and his wife can work back up to having sex two or three times a week, but admits he has no idea where that figure came from.

Numbers, Nagoski believes, can be a counterproductive metric. It’s impossible to hear such statistics and not judge one’s relationship against them. Numbers also don’t account for whether participants are enjoying the sex they are having. “You’re comparing yourself — you’re judging yourself as OK or inadequate — compared to a whole bunch of people you’re not having sex with, who are not having sex with you,” Nagoski says.

For couples measuring themselves against what Nagoski calls the “fictions” of sex, or for those worried that their relationship is on the line whenever they enter the bedroom or don’t meet some monthly number, there may be too much pressure for sex to be enjoyable. It’s more important that couples establish what kind of sex is worth having.

‘There are people who tell you all the sex they’re having. I feel like it’s a lot more common that a lot of people are not.’

Rose admits to feeling the weight of societal expectations. Recently she decided that since she and Will were rarely having sex, she would have her birth-control implant removed from her arm. During the procedure, the nurse intimated there was something wrong with Rose’s marriage. Rose felt shamed and angry. The idea that she should be living in a constant state of arousal with her husband after a decade together is, to her, ridiculous, but also part of a facade she thinks many married couples maintain.

“There are people who tell you all the sex they’re having,” she says. “I feel like it’s a lot more common that a lot of people are not.” With the help of her therapist, Rose is exploring whether her A.D.H.D. may play a role in her need to seek new stimuli — not because she sees it as a problem but because she is interested in understanding her desire more fully. “Apparently the partner fatigue I experience is not so uncommon because our ‘special’ brains are always seeking out what’s new,” she says.

Will sometimes turns to Buddhist writings on restraint to explore his sexuality. He jokes there may be some confirmation bias at work, but he thinks his wife’s self-awareness — and her unwillingness to force herself into sex that she doesn’t want to have — has matured him. For Will, intimacy is less about completion and more about connection. “I’ve learned, even just about the act of sex itself, the ending is not always the best part,” Will says. “There’s pleasure throughout the spectrum.”

In March, for Rose’s 40th birthday, they took a trip to Hawaii. She switched off her phone for hours as they sprawled out by the ocean. Will remembers turning toward his wife and staring at her, watching her relaxing, her body loose. In that moment, he wasn’t thinking about sex or how beautiful Rose looked under the sun. He was thinking about how similar they actually are. More than anything, they want to enjoy themselves in their own way, to savor the small moments when they can let the rest of the world fade away.

Amanda Montei is the author of “Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent and Control.” She is based in California.

Read by Julia Whelan

Narration produced by Anna Diamond and Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Joel Thibodeau

Advertisement

Your Article Library

Essay on marriage: meaning, functions and forms.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Here is your essay on marriage, it’s meaning, functions and forms! 

Introduction :

Marriage and family sociologically signifies the stage of greater social advancement. It is indicative of man’s entry into the world of emotion and feeling, harmony and culture. Long before the institution of marriage developed, man and woman may have lived together, procreated children and died unwept and unsung. Their sexual relations must have been like birds and animals of momentary duration.

Image Courtesy : 2.bp.blogspot.com/–Zyo4IJENYk/TtuIdHcjm-I/AAAAAAAACwQ/Rg89UBiMU0A/s1600/lklk.jpg

Marriage as an institution developed over the time. It may have been accepted as a measure of social discipline and as an expedient to eliminate social stress due to the sex rivalry. The growing sense and sensibility may have necessitated the acceptance of norms for formalising the union between man and woman.

Meaning of Marriage :

Marriage is the most important institution of human society. It is a universal phenomenon. It has been the backbone of human civilisation. Human beings have certain urges like hungers, thirst and sex. Society works out certain rules and regulation for satisfaction of these urges.

The rules and regulations, which deal with regulation of sex life of human beings, are dealt in the marriage institution. We can say that the Marriage is as old as the institution of family. Both these institutions are vital for the society. Family depends upon the Marriage. Marriage regulates sex life of human beings.

Marriage creates new social relationships and reciprocal rights between the spouses. It establishes the rights and the status of the children when they are born. Each society recognises certain procedures for creating such relationship and rights. The society prescribes rules for prohibitions, preferences and prescriptions in deciding marriage. It is this institution through which a man sustains the continuity of his race and attains satisfaction in a socially recognised manner.

Sociologists and anthropologists have given definitions of marriage. Some of the important definitions are given below. Edward Westermark. “Marriage is a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognised by custom or law and involves certain rights and duties both in the case of the parties entering the union and in the case of the children born of it.

As B. Malinowski defines, “Marriage is a contract for the production and maintenance of children”.

According H.M. Johnson, “Marriage is a stable relationship in which a man and a woman are socially permitted without loss of standing in community, to have children”.

Ira L. Reiss writes, “Marriage is a socially accepted union of individuals in husband and wife roles, with the key function of legitimating of parenthood”.

William Stephens, the anthropologist, says that marriage is:

(1) A socially legitimate sexual union begun with

(2) A public announcement, undertaken with

(3) Some idea of performance and assumed with a more or less explicit

(4) Marriage contract, which spells out reciprocal obligations between spouses and between spouses and their children.

William J. Goode, the famous family sociologist has tried to combine the two objectives of marriage i.e. to regulate sex life and to recognize the newborn. It was perhaps for this reason that American sociologists came out with the statement that no child should be born without a father.

Although different thinkers have tried to provide definition of marriage, but there is no universally acceptable definition of marriage. There seems to be, however, a consensus that marriage involves several criteria that are found to exist cross-culturally and throughout time. For example, Hindu marriage has three main objectives such as Dharma, Progeny and Sexual Pleasure.

Individual happiness has been given the least importance. It is considered to be sacrament, a spiritual union between a man and a woman in the social status of husband and wife.

In Western countries, marriage is a contract. Personal happiness is given the utmost importance. People enter into matrimonial alliances for the sake of seeking personal happiness. If this happiness is-not forthcoming they will terminate the relationship.

Marriage is thus cultural specific. The rules and regulations differ from one culture to another. We can, however, identify certain basic features of this institution.

(1) A heterosexual union, including at least one male and one female.

(2) The legitimizing or granting of approval to the sexual relationship and the bearing of children without any loss of standing in the community or society.

(3) A public affair rather than a private, personal matter.

(4) A highly institutionalized and patterned mating arrangement.

(5) Rules which determine who can marry whom.

(6) New statuses to man and woman in the shape of husband and wife and father and mother.

(7) Development of personal intimate and affectionate relationships between the spouses and parent and children.

(8) A binding relationship that assumes some performance.

The above discussion helps us to conclude that the boundaries of marriage are not always precise and clearly defined. It is, however, very important institution for the society as it helps in replacement of old and dying population.

Functions of Marriage :

Marriage is an institutionalized relationship within the family system. It fulfills many functions attributed to the family in general. Family functions include basic personality formation, status ascriptions, socialization, tension management, and replacement of members, economic cooperation, reproduction, stabilization of adults, and the like.

Many of these functions, while not requiring marriage for their fulfillment, are enhanced by the marital system”. In fact, evidence suggests marriage to be of great significance for the well-being of the individual. Researchers have shown that compared to the unmarried, married persons are generally happier, healthier, less depressed and disturbed and less prone to premature deaths. Marriage, rather than becoming less important or unimportant, may be increasingly indispensable.

The functions of marriage differ as the structure of marriage differs. ‘For example, where marriage is specially an extension of the kin and extended family system, then procreation, passing on the family name and continuation of property become a basic function. Thus, to not have a child or more specifically, to not have a male child, is sufficient reason to replace the present wife or add a new wife.

Where marriage is based on “free choice,” i.e. parents and kinsmen play no role in selecting the partner, individualistic forces are accorded greater significance. Thus in the United States, marriage has many functions and involves many positive as well as negative personal factors : establishment of a family of one’s own, children, companionship, happiness, love, economic security, elimination of loneliness etc.

The greater the extent to which the perceived needs of marriage are met, and the fewer the alternatives in the replacement of the unmet needs, the greater the likelihood of marriage and the continuation of that marriage. At a personal level, any perceived reason may explain marriage, but at a social level, all societies sanction certain reasons and renounce others.

Forms of Marriage :

Societies evolved mannerism and method for selection of the spouses, according to their peculiar socio-economic and political conditions, and in accordance with their levels of cultural advancement. This explains on the one hand the origin of the various forms, of marriage and on the other the differences in the attitude of societies towards the institution of marriage.

Some have accepted it as purely a contractual arrangement between weds, while others hold it as the sacred union between man, and woman. Forms of marriage vary from society to society. Marriage can be broadly divided into two types, (1) monogamy and (2) polygamy.

1. Monogamy :

Monogamy is that form of marriage in which at a given period of time one man has marital relations with one woman. On the death of the spouse or one of the partners seek divorce then they can establish such relationship with other persons but at a given period of time, one cannot have two or more wives or two or more husbands.

This one to one relationship is the most modern civilized way of living. In most of the societies it is this form, which is found and recognized. It should be noted that on a societal basis, only about 20 per cent of the societies are designated as strictly monogamous, that is, monogamy is the required form.

When monogamy does not achieve stability, certain married persons end their relationship and remarry. Thus, the second spouse, although not existing simultaneously with the first, is sometimes referred to as fitting into a pattern of sequential monogamy, serial monogamy or remarriage.

Advantages:

Keeping in view the advantages of monogamy the world has granted recognition to monogamous form of marriage. The following are its advantages:

1. Better Adjustment:

In this form of marriage men and women have to adjust with one partner only. In this way there is better adjustment between them.

2. Greater Intimacy:

If the number of people in the family will be limited there will be more love and affection in the family. Because of which they will have friendly and deep relations.

3. Better Socialization of Children:

In the monogamy the children are looked after with earnest attention of parents. The development of modes of children will be done nicely. There will be no jealously between the parents for looking after their children.

4. Happy Family:

Family happiness is maintained under monogamy which is completely destroyed in other forms of marriage because of jealousy and other reasons. Thus, in this form of marriage, family is defined as happy family.

5. Equal Status to Woman:

In this form of marriage the status of woman in family is equal. If husband works she looks after the house or both of them work for strengthening the economic condition of the family.

6. Equalitarian way of Living:

It is only under monogamous way of living that husband and wife can have equalitarian way of life. Under this system husband and wife not only share the familial role and obligations but also have joint decisions. The decision making process becomes a joint venture.

7. Population Control:

Some sociologists have the view that monogamy controls the population. Because of one wife children in the family will be limited.

8. Better Standard of Living:

It also affects the standard of living within limited resources. One can manage easily to live a better life. It helps in the development of independent personality without much constraint and pressure.

9. Respect to old Parents:

Old parents receive favouring care by their children but under polygamy their days are full of bitterness.

10. Law is in favour:

Monogamy is legally sanctioned form of marriage while some are legally prohibited.

11. More Cooperation:

In such a family there is close union between the couple and the chances of conflict are reduced and there is cooperation between husband and wife.

12. Stability:

It is more stable form of marriage. There is better division of property after the death of parents.

Disadvantages :

1. Adjustment:

Monogamy is a marriage between one husband and one wife. So if the partner is not of choice then life loses its charm. They have to adjust between themselves but now-a-days divorce is the answer to their problem.

2. Monopoly:

According to Sumner and Keller, “Monogamy is monopoly.” Wherever there is monopoly, there is bound to be both ‘ins and outs’.

3. Childlessness:

Some inpatients can’t have kids or some barren cannot have kids. If one of the partners has some problem couples cannot have children. They have to suffer from childlessness.

4. Economic Factors:

Marriage in monogamy does not play part of income. They have to depend upon their own occupation for living. If they are poor they will remain poor. So monogamy effects the economic condition of man and woman.

5. Better status to Women:

Monogamy provides better status to women in the society. They are counted equal to men. Some people do not like this form of marriage.

6. Adultery:

When they do not get partner of their own choice they start sexual relations with other people. This also leads to the problem of prostitution.

2. Polygamy :

Distinguished from monogamy is polygamy. Polygamy refer to the marriage of several or many. Polygamy is the form of marriage in which one man marries two or more women or one woman marries two or more men or a number of men many a number of women. According to F.N. Balasara, “The forms of marriage in which there is plurality of partners is called polygamy”.

Polygamy, like other forms of marriage is highly regulated and normatively controlled. It is likely to be supported by the attitudes and values of both the sexes. Polygamy itself has many forms and variations. Polygamy is of three types: (i) Polygyny, (ii) Polyandry and (iii) Group marriage.

Let us now discuss forms of polygamy in details,

(i) Polygyny:

Polygyny is a form of marriage in which a man has more than one .wife at a time. In other words it is a form of marriage in which one man marries more than one woman at a given time. It is the prevalent form of marriage among the tribes, Polygyny also appears to be the privilege of the wealthy, in many African societies the rich usually have more than one wife.

This type of marriage is found in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. In India, polygyny persisted from the Vedic times until Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. Now polygyny is visible among many tribes of India.

Viewing polygyny cross-culturally, poiygynous families evidence specific organisational features:

1. In certain matters, sex particularly, co-wives have clearly defined equal rights.

2. Each wife is set up in a separate establishment.

3. The senior wife is given special powers and privileges.

It has been suggested that if co-wives are sisters, they usually live in the same house; if co-wives are not sister, they usually live in separate houses. It is believed that sibling can better tolerate, suppress and live with a situation of sexual rivalry than can non-siblings.

Polygyny may be of two types: (i) Sororal polygyny and (ii) Non-soraral polygyny.

Sororal polygyny is one in which all the wives are sisters. Non-sororal polygyny means the marriage of one man with many women who are not sisters.

Causes of Polygyny :

1. Disproportion of sexes in the Population:

When in any tribe or society male members are less in number and females are more, then this type of marriage takes place.

2. Out-migration of male Population:

To earn the livelihood male members migrate from one society to another. This way there is a decrease in the number of males than females and polygyny takes place.

3. Hypergamy:

Hypergamy also gives rise to polygyny. Under this system the parents of lower castes or classes want to improve their social status by marrying their daughters in the higher caste or classes.

4. Desire for male Child:

Among the primitive people importance was given to make children than females. Thus man was free to have as many marriages as he liked on the ground to get male children.

5. Social Status:

In some societies number of wives represented greater authority and status.

Particularly the leaders of primitive society increased number of wives in order to prove their superiority. A single marriage was considered a sign of poverty. So where marriage is taken as sign of prestige and prosperity the custom of polygyny is natural.

6. Economic Reason:

Where the people of the poor families were unable to find suitable husbands for their daughters they started marrying their daughters to rich married males.

7. Variety of Sex Relation:

The desire for variety of sex relations is another cause of polygyny. The sexual instincts become dull by more familiarity. It is stimulated by novelty.

8. Enforced Celibacy:

In uncivilized tribes men did not approach the women during the period of pregnancy and while she was feeding the child. Thus long period of enforced celibacy gave birth to second marriage.

9. More Children:

In uncivilized society more children were needed for agriculture, war and status recognition. Moreover, in some tribes the birth rate was low and death rate was high. In such tribes polygyny was followed to obtain more children.

10. Absence of children:

According to Manu, if wife is unable to have children, man is permitted to have more marriages. He further says if a wife takes her husband then he should live with her one year and take another wife.

11. Religious Reasons:

Polygyny was permitted in the past if wife was incapable of forming religious duties in her periodic sickness because religion was given significant place in social life.

12. Patriarchal Society:

Polygyny is found only in the patriarchal society where more importance is given to males and male member is the head of the family.

Advantages :

(1) Better status of children:

In polygyny children enjoy better status. They are looked after well because there are many women in the family to care.

(2) Rapid growth of Population:

In those societies where population is very less and birth rate is almost zero, for those societies polygyny is best suited, as it increases the population at faster rate.

(3) Importance of Males:

In polygyny males occupy higher status. More importance is given to husband by several wives.

(4) Division of Work:

In polygyny there are several wives. Therefore, there is a proper division of work at home.

(5) Variety of Sex Relations:

Instead of going for extra marital relations husband stays at home because his desire for variety of sex relations is fulfilled within polygyny.

(6) Continuity of Family:

Polygyny came into existence mainly because of inability of a wife to produce children. Polygyny provides continuity to the family tree. In absence of one wife other women in the family produce children.

Disadvantage :

1. Lower status of Women:

In this form of marriage women have very low status; they are regarded as an object of pleasure for their husbands. They generally do not have a right to take decisions about their welfare; they have to depend upon their husband for fulfillment of their basic needs.

2. Jealousy as stated by Shakespeare:

“Woman thy name is jealousy”. When several wives have to share one husband, there is bound to be jealousy among co-wives. Jealousy leads to inefficiency in their work. They are not able to socialize their children in a proper manner in such atmosphere.

3. Low Economic Status:

Polygyny increases economic burden on the family because in many cases only husband is the bread winner and whole of the family is dependent on him.

4. Population Growth:

This type of marriage is harmful for developing society and poor nations because they have limited resources Further increase in population deteriorates progress and development of that society.

5. Fragmentation of Property:

In polygyny all the children born from different wives have share in father’s property. Jealousy among mothers leads to property conflicts among children as a result property is divided and income per capita decreases.

6. Uncongenial Atmosphere:

Polygyny does not promise congenial atmosphere for the proper growth and development of children. There is lack of affection among the members. As such families have large number of members. They fail to provide proper attention to all of them. This gives rise to many immoral practices in the society.

(ii) Polyandry :

It is a form of marriage in which one woman has more than one husband at a given time. According to K.M. Kapadia, Polyandry is a form of union in which a woman has more than one husband at a time or in which brothers share a wife or wives in common. This type marriage is prevalent in few places such as tribes of Malaya and some tribes of India like Toda, Khasi and Kota etc. Polyandry is of two types:

(i) Fraternal Polyandry and

(ii) Non-Fratemai Polyandry.

(i) Fraternal Polyandry:

In this form of polyandry one wife is regarded as the wife of all brothers. All the brothers in a family share the same woman as their wife. The children are treated as the offspring of the eldest brother, it is found in some Indian tribes like Toda and Khasis. This type of marriage was popular in Ceylon (Srilanka at present).

(ii) Non-Fraternal Polyandry:

In this type of polyandry one woman has more than one husband who is not brothers. They belong to different families. The wife cohabits with husbands in turn. In case of Fraternal Polyandry, the wife lives in the family of her husbands, while in case of non-fraternal polyandry, the wife continues to stay in the family of her mother. This type of polyandry is found among Nayars of Kerala.

Causes of Polyandry :

1. Lesser number of Women:

According to Westermark, when the number of women is lesser than the number of males in a society, polyandry is found. For example, among Todas of Nilgiri. But according to Brifficult, polyandry can exist even when the number of women is not lesser e.g. in Tibet, Sikkim and Laddakh polyandry is found even though there is not much disparity in the number of men and women.

2. Infanticide:

In some tribal societies female infanticide is present; as a result these female population is less than male population. Further males do not enjoy good status. Therefore, one female is married to a group of brothers and polyandry exists.

3. Matrilineal System:

Just in contrast to above noted point, it has also been argued that polyandry exists in matrilineal system where one woman can have relationship with more than one man and the children instead of getting the name of father are known by mother’s name.

4. Poverty:

Polyandry exists in such areas where there is scarcity of natural resources. It is for this reason many men support one woman and her children.

5. Bride Price:

In societies where there is bridge price, polyandry exists. Brothers pay for one bride who becomes wife of all of them.

6. Division of Property:

To check the division of ancestral property polyandry is favoured. When all the brothers have one wife then the question of division of property does not arise.

7. Production and labour:

Polyandry not only avoids division of property but it also increases production in agriculture. All the brothers work together because they have to support only one family. Thus production and income increases, further there is no expenditure with regard to labour because all the husbands contribute their share of work.

8. Social Custom:

Polyandry exists in some societies mainly because of customs and traditions of that particular society. Generally, polyandry is found in such areas which are situated far away from modern developed areas.

(1) Checks Population Growth:

It checks population growth because all the male members of the family share one wife. As a result population does not increase at that rapid rate, the way in which it occurs in polygyny Therefore, it limits the size of the family.

(2) Economic Standard:

Polyandry helps to unhold the economic standard of the family. It strengthens the economic position of the family because all the members work for the improvement of the family.

(3) Greater Security:

With large number of males working after the family affairs, other members of the family especially women and children feel quite secure. Greater security among the members develop sense of we-feeling among the members of the family.

(4) Property is kept Intact:

In polyandry family does not get divided. The property of the family is held jointly and thus it is kept intact.

(5) Status of Women:

In polyandry one woman is wife of large number of husbands. As a result she gets attention of all the members and thus enjoys a good status in the family. She feels quite secure because in the absence of one husband other males are there to fulfill her basic needs.

Disadvantages:

(1) Jealousy:

When all the men have to share one woman, family quarrels and tensions are ought to be there. Husbands feel jealous of one another which adversely effect congenial atmosphere of the family.

(2) Lack of Model:

When children have large number of fathers they fail to select appropriate model for themselves. This adversely effects their personality configuration.

(3) Health of the Woman:

It adversely effects health of a woman because she has to satisfy several husbands. It not only has negative effect on the physical health but also on mental health of the woman.

(4) Sterility:

According to biologists if the same woman cohabits with several men, it may lead to sterility, further lack of sex gratification give rise to extra-marital relationship of husbands.

(5) Status of Men:

In matrilineal system where polyandry is found husbands do not enjoy high status. They do not give their name to the children.

(6) Lack of Attachment:

In many tribes where polyandry exists husbands do not live permanently with their families. They are visiting husband who visit the family for a specific period. They do not get love and affection of their children because children feel unattached to their fathers.

(7) Less Population:

This form of marriage decreases population growth. In some tribal societies where polyandry continues to exist may get extinct after a gap of few years.

(8) Loose Morality:

This is another outcome of this practice.

(iii) Group Marriage :

Group marriage is that type of marriage in which a group of men marry a group of women. Each man of male group is considered to be the husband of every woman of female group. Similarly, every woman is the wife of every man of male group. Pair bonded or Multilateral marriage are the substitute term for group marriages.

This form of marriage is found among some tribes of New Guinea and Africa. In India group marriage is practised by the Toda Tribe of Nilgiri Hills. Except on an experimental basis it is an extremely rare occurrence and may never have existed as a viable form of marriage for any society in the world.

The Oneida community of New York State has been frequently cited as an example of group marriage experiment. It involved economic and sexual sharing based on spiritual and religious principles. Like most group marriage on record, its time span was limited. Rarely do they endure beyond one or two generations.

Levirate and Sororate:

(i) Levirate:

In levirate the wife marries the brother of the dead husband. If a man dies, his wife marries the brother of her dead husband. Marriage of the widow with the dead husband’s elder brother is called Senior Levirate. But when she marries to the younger brother of the dead husband, it is called Junior Levirate.

(ii) Sororate:

In Sororate the husband marries the sister of his wife. Sororate is again divided into two types namely restricted Sororate and simultaneous Sororate. In restricted sororate, after the death of one’s wife, the man marries the sister of his wife. In simultaneous sororate, the sister of one’s wife automatically becomes his wife.

Concubinage:

Concubinage is a state of living together as husband and wife without being married. It is .cohabitation with one or more women who are distinct from wife or wives. Concubinage is sometimes recognised by various societies as an accepted institution. A concubine has a lower social status than that of a wife. The children of a concubine enjoy a lower status in the society.

Related Articles:

• Forms of Marriage: Polyandry, Polygyny and Monogamy
• Hindu Marriage: Aims, Ideals and Types

No comments yet.

Leave a reply click here to cancel reply..

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Entertainment

Sophia Bush Recalls Moment She Was 'Close to Calling Off' Grant Hughes Wedding — and When the Marriage Was 'Over'

Bush filed for divorce from Hughes in August 2023, 13 months after they got married in Oklahoma

Brendan Le is an Editorial Intern at PEOPLE with three years of experience working as an editor and writer.

Sophia Bush almost had cold feet at the altar.

Penning an essay as Glamour ’s April 2024 cover star, the One Tree Hill star, 41, revealed that she nearly opted not to go through with her wedding to entrepreneur Grant Hughes two months before they held a lavish ceremony in Oklahoma in June 2022.

“In April of 2022 I was close to calling off my wedding. Instead of running away, I doubled down on being a model wife,” she wrote.

On their first anniversary, after her husband posted a tribute to their marriage on Instagram, Bush felt “mounting pressure from strangers online” to return the sentiment. She recalled choosing a picture of the couple running away from the camera and captioning it with “a really nice story” about the photo’s subjects.

Leigh Vogel/Getty

“Except it was just that: a story. I typed something about how incredibly happy I was and tried to drown out the familiar voice in my head. Make it look easy. Make it look perfect. If your smile is shiny enough, maybe no one will notice that up close all of your teeth are broken . But sometimes broken is just broken,” the Chicago P.D. actress continued. After hitting post, she threw up in the bathroom.

As she underwent six months of fertility examinations , Bush speculated that she “knew deep down” that she “absolutely had made a mistake.”

It wasn’t until she threw herself into work on the West End’s 2:22 A Ghost Story that she realized the toll the stress had taken on her body. When half the company fell ill, everyone recovered quickly except her. She remembered spending multiple nights in the hospital and receiving “endless amounts of fluids.”

“It was clear that my body was screaming and I had to listen,” Bush wrote. “It was hard for me to accept. I was part of a team. But I needed to go home, where my doctors (and, truthfully, my health insurance) could get a better handle on my symptoms. My time in London was over. So was my marriage. It all came crashing down at once.”

Lauren Dukoff/Glamour

PEOPLE revealed in August 2023 that Bush had filed for divorce from Hughes, two weeks after departing the London play . 

“Sophia and Grant were friends for 10 years and bonded during COVID through their love of community service,” a source close to the couple told PEOPLE at the time. “They continue to run their nonprofit together and remain good friends.”

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Bush is now dating former American soccer player  Ashlyn Harris , who had also  filed for divorce  from then-wife and fellow soccer pro  Ali Krieger  in September 2023. A bulk of the actress' Glamour essay centered around her coming out story, noting that she identifies as "queer."

"I finally feel like I can breathe. I don't think I can explain how profound that is. I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until I finally just put it down," she wrote. "This might sound crazy—but I think other people in trauma recovery will get it—I am taking deep breaths again. I can feel my legs and feet. I can feel my feet in my shoes right now. It makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time."

Related Articles

Watch CBS News

Sophia Bush comes out as queer, confirms relationship with Ashlyn Harris

By Lucia Suarez Sang

April 26, 2024 / 1:11 PM EDT / CBS News

"One Tree Hill" star Sophia Bush addressed her recent divorce and rumors of infidelity in a candid personal essay for Glamour magazine . In the cover story for the fashion magazine, Bush also came out as queer and confirmed that she is dating retired U.S. Women's National Team soccer player Ashlyn Harris.

In the essay, she described the cold feet she experienced before tying the knot with Hughes in July 2022.

"In April of 2022 I was close to calling off my wedding. Instead of running away, I doubled down on being a model wife," she wrote.

Bush said she kept trying to tell herself that "relationships are hard" and that "marriage takes compromise" but that the "heartbreak of the fertility process" led her to reassess her marriage.

"Six months into that journey, I think I knew deep down that I absolutely had made a mistake. It would take my head and heart a while longer to understand what my bones already knew," she wrote.

Bush filed for divorce from entrepreneur Grant Hughes in August 2023 after a year of marriage. A month later, Harris filed for divorce from her former teammate Ali Krieger . Shortly after both divorces became public, it was reported Bush and Harris were dating.

In her essay, Bush said the decision to file for divorce took time – and came after many conversations with "groups of women in my life [who] started opening up about issues they were going through in their own homes." Harris, she said, was one of those women. They had met in 2019.

"She's been such a kind ear for those of us who opened up about our problems during a shared weekend of speaking engagements at a fancy conference in Cannes, and soon it became clear that she needed our ears too."

Bush said she didn't expect to find love in this support system and felt her feelings for Harris developed slowly and simultaneously overnight.

"And I think it's very easy not to see something that's been in front of your face for a long time when you'd never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option," she wrote in the essay.

Elsewhere, social media viewed their love as an affair.

"The online rumor mill began to spit in the ugliest ways. There were blatant lies. Violent threats. There were accusations of being a home-wrecker," she wrote in the essay. "The ones who said I'd left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women — my partners have known what I'm into for as long as I have."

She added: "The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous — that, to be crystal-clear, never happened — rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? Rather than realizing I had to be the most vulnerable I've ever been, on a public stage, despite being terrified to my core? It feels brutal."

Elsewhere in the essay, Bush said that while she sort of hates the notion of having to come out in 2024, she is acutely aware that "we are having this conversation in a year when we're seeing the most aggressive attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community in modern history."

"There were more than 500 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills proposed in state legislatures in 2023, so for that reason I want to give the act of coming out the respect and honor it deserves. I've experienced so much safety, respect, and love in the queer community, as an ally all of my life, that, as I came into myself, I already felt it was my home."

As for a label, Bush said her sexuality exists on a spectrum and believes the word that best defines her at the moment is "queer."

"I can't say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great," she wrote.

• Entertainment

Lucia Suarez Sang is an associate managing editor at cbsnews.com. Previously, Lucia was the director of digital content at FOX61 News in Connecticut and has previously written for outlets including FoxNews.com, Fox News Latino and the Rutland Herald.

More from CBS News

Reggie Bush calls for accountability after reclaiming Heisman Trophy

Karate practitioner fends off charging bear in Japan

This week on "Sunday Morning" (April 28)

Transcript: Hanna Siegel on "Face the Nation," April 28, 2024

The Future of Marriage Essay

Marriage is an important stage in the personal life which is discussed in many cultures as a kind of the rite of passage. From this point, persons become ready to create a family when they are mature enough to take responsibility for their family and build strong relations with their partner.

Several decades ago, the family was discussed as the main social institution because society traditionally consisted of many families. Thus, marriage can be presented as the most traditional way to create a family and take a definite position within society. Nevertheless, the future of marriage and its significance for modern people is a debatable issue.

Although today marriage is still a significant stage in the personal life and family is discussed as the fundamental factor for the social development, the role of marriage declines, the rate of divorces increases, and the marriage is often perceived as an insignificant factor to live a vivid and full life.

To understand the future of marriage, it is important to refer to the main reasons for getting married. Americans are inclined to concentrate on the role of tradition, love, definite social and material benefits, and satisfaction of psychological and sexual needs as the major reasons to marry. However, to achieve the mentioned goals and satisfy needs, it is unnecessary to be married.

The position is actively discussed in modern society where the popularity of marriages decreases because of the people’s concentration on their own life and personal and professional development. Today, the family cannot be discussed as the persons’ primary goal.

Emphasizing the fact that marriage is not important for people today and that the tendency can develop, researchers, refer to statistics and divorce rates. Thus, the percentage of adults who are currently divorced, “which was only 1.8 percent for males and 2.6 percent for females in 1960, quadrupled by the year 2000”, moreover, “the percentage of divorce is higher for females than for males primarily because divorced men are more likely to remarry than divorced women” 1 .

From this point, it is possible to speak about the tendency to choose the independent life without the responsibilities of a husband or wife. Moreover, “the national divorce rate is close to 50% of all marriages” 2 . However, it is important to focus on the problem and discuss it from the other perspective. Thus, “for many people, the actual chances of divorce are far below 50/50” 3 .

In spite of the fact the general rate of marriages declines, it is still high in comparison with the rate of divorces. That is why it is impossible to state that the low rate of marriages and the high rate of divorces can affect the Americans and their visions of marriage’s role significantly. Modern people can reject the importance of marriage, but it is rather problematic to change the public’s vision of the traditional family based on marriage in some years because it is a long and challenging process.

People continue to find a kind of security in the traditional form of relations which has deep historic roots. However, it is important to note that the correlation of reasons for getting married changes with references to the development of the persons’ social needs and different global cultural tendencies. According to the latest statistical data, modern young Americans are inclined to choose the partner about his or her social and economic status 4 .

The factor of finances is important today, especially while paying attention to the modern contracts used to regulate marriages. Thus, many people choose marriage because of definite economic benefits. People can marry to improve their social state or gain a higher social status with the help of a spouse. It is possible to consider that future marriages will be more similar to business than to romance.

Marriage lost its legal and social status because those couples who seek for the successful partnership and psychological comfort are inclined to choose relations free from any contracts and duties. From this point, to choose marriage is to choose social security and the public’s approval. However, following the progressive and popular trends, young people choose their private independence 5 .

Modern women are often financially independent and do not discuss marriage as a way to improve their financial and social state. Men choose to marry when they seek for stability and understanding typical for the family relations. The decision-making process which is usual for business operations is performed by many young people today when they choose to marriage or not.

They assess all the possible advantages and disadvantages of marriages. Today, the idea of marriage often depends more on the economic benefits and less on the romantic aspects. Modern representatives of American society choose to get married because they assess all the psychological, emotional, sexual, and social benefits of the process. That is why the future of marriage as a significant stage in personal life is not clear.

Works Cited

Barnet, Sylvan, and Hugo Bedau. Current Issues and Enduring Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking and Argument with Readings . USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. Print.

Medved, Diane. Case against Divorce . USA: Random House Publishing Group, 1990. Print.

Popenoe, David and Barbara Whitehead. “The State of Our Unions”. Research and Composition in the Disciplines . Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard Rosen. USA: Pearson, 2011. 390-402. Print.

1 David Popenoe and Barbara Whitehead, “The State of Our Unions”, Research and Composition in the Disciplines , Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard Rosen (USA: Pearson, 2011), 397.

2 David Popenoe and Barbara Whitehead, “The State of Our Unions,” 398.

3 Ibid., 398.

4 Diane Medved, Case against Divorce (USA: Random House Publishing Group, 1990), 180.

5 Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau, Current Issues and Enduring Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking and Argument with Readings (USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010).

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, March 11). The Future of Marriage. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-marriage/

"The Future of Marriage." IvyPanda , 11 Mar. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-marriage/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'The Future of Marriage'. 11 March.

IvyPanda . 2020. "The Future of Marriage." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-marriage/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Future of Marriage." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-marriage/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Future of Marriage." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-marriage/.

• Divorces in United States Issues Analysis
• Divorce and its Economic Impact to the Society
• Divorce Rate in the United States
• Divorce Prevalence in England and Wales
• Women and Divorce in China
• Impact of Divorced Grandparents on Grandchildren
• I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced
• The Divorce's Effects on Children
• Marriage and Divorce: Problems of Couples
• Divorce Made Easy: Legal System Support
• The Future of Family Planning and Fertility in Iran
• Determinants of birth rate on a global scale
• The emergence of a discourse of class disgust and neoliberal citizenship
• Community Development in Theory and Practice
• Social Rules in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”

Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban's Teenage Daughters Make Red Carpet Debut With Mom & Her Niece Sybella!

'The Traitors' Season 3 - 1 Star Rumored to Join Cast!

Rihanna Reveals If She's Attending Met Gala 2024, Explains Why New Music is Taking So Long

Actors Who Almost Said 'No' to Iconic Roles & Why They Changed Their Minds (1 of Them Won an Oscar for the Part!)

Sophia Bush Responds to Accusations She's a Homewrecker, Reveals How Ashlyn Harris Relationship Started & Why Grant Hughes Marriage Ended

Continue Here »

Sophia Bush wrote a lengthy essay where she is speaking out about her life over the past year.

If you don’t know, last year, Sophia and her husband of one year, Grant Hughes , broke up. Shortly after, it was discovered she was dating soccer player Ashlyn Harris , who was also going through a divorce from her wife, Ali Krieger . There were lots of rumors around this time period, and now, Sophia is clearing everything up in an essay for Glamour .

We’ve gathered the highlights here for you to see.

Keep reading to see what Sophia Bush shared…

JJ: Latest Posts

• 15+ Celebrities' Names You're Likely...
• Doja Cat Brings Glass of Wine &...
• Anne Hathaway Wears Leather Suit for...
• Joe Russo Shares Update On Chris...
• Jimmie Allen Talks Welcoming Twins...
• Colin Farrell, Kirby & Amy Ryan...
• 'Survivor' Host Jeff Probst Reveals...
• Millie Gibson Will Be In 'Doctor Who'...
• Jax Taylor & Brittany Cartwright...
• Adele, Leonardo DiCaprio & More...
• 'RHOSLC' Alum Monica Garcia Reveals...
• The Wealthiest Latin Artists of All...
• Nicholas Galitzine Opens Up About His...
• Taylor Swift Reacts to 'The Tortured...

Just Jared Jr.

• China Anne McClain & Kylie...
• Milo Manheim & Meg Donnelly Show...
• 'Pretty Little Liars: Summer School'...
• 'Kickin' It' Cast Reunite In New Photo...
• Paramount+ Renews New 'Dora'...
• Milo Manheim Talks Getting His Start...
• Iain Armitage Reflects On First Day of...
• © 2005-2024 Just Jared, Inc. ||
• Accessibility
• Privacy Policy
• Manage Cookies
• Return to Mobile