The Purpose of Marriage

Much has been made of the "fact" that the purpose of marriage is to raise children.

Yet we were able to raise children without marriage for millennia; it is a relatively recent social construct.

Pre-agricultural nomads typically rear children as a group - it takes a village (er, I mean, nomadic hunter-gather group) to raise a child.

As agriculture allowed a sedentary lifestyle, we began to acquire more and more material wealth. We began to have specialized occupations and developed complicated social hierarchies.

Many anthropologists argue that the development of marriage was a response to the necessity of codifying property rights and status. This interpretation is supported by the anthropological record, which records many instances of marriage between same-sex individuals for the purpose of status or acquiring property (including the involuntary labor of the spouse). Extensive anthropological research has been conducted on the Cheyenne, Nuer (Sudanese), Igbo, and Azande tribes. (Truth in advertising: I have only read summaries. Robin Wright's "Moral Animal" is a good place to start)

The comparison of monogamous and polygamous cultures reinforces the property/status theory and introduces the idea of monogamous marriage as a masculine social bargain. More on that to come - right now I have to go put on my flame-retardant suit.