6 - Marriage and the Family

Summary

THE FAMILY AND MARRIAGE

Writing more than 50 years ago, Murdock (1949) claimed that the nuclear family represents a basic unit of society across the world, with no society having yet found a suitable substitute for this form. Certainly, family and marriage have been central to the lives of individuals for centuries in most populations (Thornton & Young-Demarco, 2001). Also clear is that there is considerable emotional and political significance to the concept of the family. Indeed, the family is not only a core component of traditional and collectively oriented societies, but is also a key topic for debate in most world societies (Inglehart & Baker, 2000).

The association between the family and broader State affairs was recognised by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He saw the family unit not only as a self-sustaining social organisation, but also as the basis of the village and the State. For thousands of years, marriage has been functional, serving myriad political, social, and economic functions (Coontz, 2004). This means that individual needs and desires were subservient to wider societal goals and the desires of the broader family members (ibid.). For the rich, marriage was a way of keeping and consolidating wealth. For the poor, marriage provided a means of acquiring new resources and skills. As I noted in Chapter 3, love was generally seen as a rather poor reason for partner choice. Instead, marriage was most often for economic and political reasons (Hird & Abshoff, 2000).