5 Chapter 5: Marriage
What does Santa Claus have to do with marriage? Saint Nicholas was a Greek bishop who lived in the 4th century. In those times, and in many places today, dowry was needed to marry a daughter to a suitor. Dowry is paid by the bride’s family to the groom’s family. A story goes that a man with three daughters could not afford a dowry for them, and they were likely to be forced into prostitution. Santa Claus decided to do something. In order not to shame the family he came at night and threw a bag of gold through the window for the first daughter’s dowry. The next night, he threw another bag of gold through the window for the second daughter. The father wanted to know who was helping them and so stayed up all night at the window. On the third night, Santa threw the bag of gold down the chimney to avoid being noticed. It is said that in this way, Saint Nick became the patron saint of prostitutes (although he is admittedly the patron saint of a lot of professions). Saint Nicholas is often portrayed with three golden balls representing the bags of gold. So if you celebrate Christmas, this year, remember Saint Nick and his acts of kindness.
What is marriage?
Marriage consists of a publicly, socially, or legally recognized relationship between partners. What makes marriage different than other formally recognized relationships is that it organizes sex, child care, inheritance, economic tasks, and social ties. The marriage ritual—the wedding— is typically marked by exchange of goods and services between families. Like language, ritual, and kinship, marriage is a cultural universal—virtually all cultures have some kind of marriage. However, the form that marriage takes differs markedly from culture to culture.
There are several general kinds of marriage, though these don’t cover the full range of possibilities that exist. Monogamy refers to having a single mate for life (and sometimes even beyond life), while serial monogamy means having one mate at a time. Serial monogamy is a pattern of marriage and divorce that many Westerners are familiar with. Polygamy is a general term meaning having more than one spouse at a time. Anthropologists usually refer to two varieties of polygamy called polygyny and polyandry. Polygyny occurs when males have more than one female spouse (gyno is the root for woman). Polyandry (andro means man) occurs when females have more than one male spouse. A particular form of polyandry is called fraternal polyandry, in which brothers share a wife.
The majority of traditional non-Western human societies permit polygyny, where men have multiple wives. This can be misleading, however, in that the majority of marriages in the world are monogamous, even where polygyny is socially and legally permitted. Polygynous marriage requires wealth to support multiple wives and their children, and not all men are wealthy enough to be able to support multiple wives and children.
As we will see, marriage can take many unexpected for