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From: wh@houxz.UUCP (W.HEINMILLER)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Historical Reasons for Marriage
Message-ID: <823@houxz.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 26-May-84 18:17:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: houxz.823
Posted: Sat May 26 18:17:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Jun-84 02:44:35 EDT
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 49

I have been following the discussion on	"why get married", and it is something
that I have wondered about for a long time.  I have not	been able to figure out
why marriage should be so important that it be sanctioned by law.  I have heard
anthropological	arguments for the development of marriage as an	institution.  I
am not sure I agree entirely with the reasoning, but I'll present it anyway.

     The earliest social group was the family.	(There's lots of current
     literature	on how humans evolved sexually so that males were bound	to
     females for longer	than the mating	period,	but I'm	picking	up after that.)
     Mates that	worked as teams	and protected their offspring were more
     'successful', in that their children were more likely to reach
     childbearing age and have their own children.  Whether such traits	as
     family loyalty are	genetic	or learned, parents would tend to pass them to
     their offspring.  So family units became the primary social units,	as
     opposed to	lone wanderers.	 Larger	groupings would	be even	more successful
     in	obtaining food and chasing off predators, so those groups who found
     successful	ways to	bind families into tribes replaced individual families
     as	the dominant social grouping.

     Marriage is hypothesized to be one	of the primary methods of binding
     families into a tribe.  In	its simplist form, it can be viewed as "taking
     hostages".	 Families that exchange	children in marriage have more reasons
     to	look out for members of	the other family.  Combined with the incest
     taboo, it forces individuals to interact with other families to satisfy a
     basic and very powerful urge.  The	ban on sex before marriage prevented
     individuals from satisfying their urges unless they participated in the
     "hostage taking".	The ban	on sex with other than your mate after marriage
     ensured the individual remained "hostage" to their	new family.  Trading
     for sex in	this fashion (marriage)	has been hypothesized to be the	binding
     glue between families in early societies.

I'm not	sure if	I feel that marriage is	really necessary in today's
industrial/post-industrial society.  The above hypothesis explains why marriage
was an intregal	part of	agrarian societies.  With the advent of	modern birth
control, and the elimination of	the tribe as a social unit in industrial
society, I am not able to see any function performed by	marriage that could not
be accomplished	by other institutions.	On the other hand, I don't see that
marriage causes	any harm, either.  So I	have no	objection to those who wish to
partake	of the institution, but	I do object to those who try to	impose it by
law or social pressure.	 Would I ever get married?  I can't say.  It would
depend on the situation	I suppose.  I can see a	need for a commitment between
partners for a long term relationship to be successful.	 (Explicit
understandings should help reduce the possibility of misunderstandings.) But
I'm not	convinced that marriage	(as its	defined	in the traditional sense;
exclusivity, joint ownership of	all property, and permanent) is	always the best
solution for every couple.

		Wayne Heinmiller	Bell Communications Research
		houxz!wh		Freehold, NJ