Marriage and Courtship Patterns
Learning Outcomes
- Describe changes and trends in courtship, marriage and family patterns
Marriage Patterns
As discussed in the previous section, single parenting and cohabitation, which is when a couple shares a residence but not a marriage, are becoming more prevalent and socially acceptable. We also see declining rates of marriage and individuals marrying much later in life, with 30 years old as the median age for men and 28 years old for women in 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
One explanation for this trend may be that people are less motivated to get married than they have been in the past. Historically, marriage has served a variety of functions—financial, political, biological (i.e., sex), and social. The top reasons Americans cite for getting married today are love, lifelong commitment, and companionship; only 49% of survey respondents listed “children” as a reason to get married [1]
The institution of marriage is likely to continue, but some previous patterns of marriage will become outdated as new patterns emerge. In this context, cohabitation contributes to the phenomenon of people getting married for the first time at a later age than was typical in earlier generations (Glezer 1991). Furthermore, marriage will continue to be delayed as more people place education and career ahead of “settling down.”
One Partner or Many?
People in the United States typically equate marriage with monogamy, when someone is married to only one person at a time. In many countries and cultures around the world, however, having one spouse is not the only form of marriage.
A recent article by Thobejane and Flora (2014)[2] provides an updated view on polygamy, or being married to more than one person at a time. Polygamy is more common that one would think, with 83% of human societies permitting the practice, but it is most common in Africa as a reflection of tribal and religious customs and economic and social structures. Instances of polygamy almost exclusively take the form of polygyny. Polygyny refers to a man being married to more than one woman at the same time. The reverse, when a woman is married to more than one man at the same time, is called polyandry. It is far less common and only occurs in about 1 percent of the world’s cultures (Altman and Ginat 1996). The reasons for the overwhelming prevalence of polygamous societies are varied, but they often include factors such as population growth, religious ideologies, and social status.
While the majority of societies accept polygyny, the majority of people do not practice it. Often fewer than 10 percent (and no more than 25–35 percent) of men in polygamous cultures have more than one wife; these husbands are often older, wealthy, high-status men (Altman and Ginat 1996). The average plural marriage involves no more than three wives. Negev Bedouin men in Israel, for example, typically have two wives, although it is acceptable to have up to four (Griver 2008). As