Marriage
gregladen | August 4, 2012It seems like everybody in the Old Testament is either married, about to get married, or was recently married but something went terribly wrong. This may be becasue the bible is about marriage. The Old Testament is a history, it is a set of laws, and it is an enthnography, and the themes themes that hold the whole thing together are warfare, resorces, marriage, and a heavy dose of odd cultish rule-making about food and blood. Marriage is a central theme of cultural life, so of course it plays an important role in a culture's own history and ethnography. But is the bible, as one example of…
gregladen | July 17, 2012We've been talking about marriage (here, here, and here). We've established that marriage has a history, it has variability, and that it is hard to pin down a narrowly defined set of functions for it. However, I also suggested that when we strip away a lot of variants that have special explanations (even if those variants are MOST of the variants of marriage) there is a thing we can call marriage that has a limited and understandable set of functions, or at least, there is a thing we can understand in a very basic evolutionary and social way. And we'll get to that. But first, I want to take…
gregladen | July 4, 2012Most people in a position to read this blog post probably think of marriage as a contract between two people that serves a few different purposes. Initially it may be an extension of the a tacit contract governing sexual access or fidelity that likely preceded marriage. Later on it may be an arrangement that facilitates the decision a couple makes to have one or more children. Along with this a marriage may be a framework for any subset of a longish list of social relations people tend to engage in such as friendship and mutual aid, financial cooperation and joint ownership of things, or…
gregladen | June 27, 2012A young woman, "of age" but unmarried, appeared out of the forest near the base of the hill, a few of her relatives and friends staying in the woods while she headed alone up the well worn path. Before she had taken a dozen steps, six or seven women, of her age or a bit older, spotted her and ran down the hill to greet her. They had never met before, but as soon as the women got close they touched her, hugged her, held her hand, fondled some of her jewelry and patted her hair, and all the while they shouted the worst invectives and insults they could think of at her, laughing cruelly while…
gregladen | June 25, 2012I am going to write a bunch of blog posts about marriage.
You should regard my opinion about marriage to be valuable; I've had several of them. And in this way, I may be more like a hunter-gatherer than a "modern" Westerner, as the practice among the former is to treat marriage as very important and each partner in the marriage as a critical and similarly empowered member of the contract, while the practice among the latter has been to see women as the man's property and to form economic, social, and sexual alliances as needed outside the marriage. Who is in on the deal and how they work…
sastyk | May 19, 2010Sometimes you read a study and say "duh!" That was pretty much my reaction to a British Study just released that suggests that when men help with the childcare and housework, couples are less likely to get divorced. Gee, that's a shock. You mean women don't love soloing on the toilet cleaning?
Meanwhile the divorce rate in the US and Canada has fallen, due to the recession. Tough times simultaneously put a lot of pressure on a marriage and also create economic incentives to stay together. This can be both good and bad - no one wants to see people in violent, abusive or destructive…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2009tags: marriage, love, relationships, sex, commitment, Chris Brickler, How Will We Love?, Chris Brickler, streaming video
Chris Brickler made a documentary about love and marriage. In this video, How Will We Love?, he starts by interviewing his grandparents who have been married for 68 years and builds on that interview and finds that more than 50% of marriages end in divorce even though many of us still cling to the hope of a happily-ever-after, life-long romance.
Brickler also interviews experts in the field of marriage, relationships, sexuality, and communication, as well as sharing…
gregladen | June 30, 2009This post was originally titled "Mail Order Brides and Hypergyny." I was prompted to revisit the post because it received a a rather astonishing comment that I chose not to allow, but I did post it on my Facebook page where any attention it would receive would be from the thoughtful people that make up my Facebook community rather than just anybody out there on the Internet. Also, I recently received a complaint from a reader that Scienceblogs.com has been showing a lot of ads for "mail order brides," and this post was originally partly a response to that.
I should also mention that in the…
sciencewoman | June 12, 2009The following email appeared in my inbox yesterday, and I thought some of you might have some more thoughts to share.
Dear ScienceWoman,
I recently discovered your blog, and have a question regarding academic publishing. I am just now entering a PhD. program, and plan to get married in about 2 years. Given the nature of my particular field, it is expected I will have at least co-authored one paper before the wedding. After marriage, I plan to take his name, for a number of reasons, including the commonality of my last name compared to his name. My question is this: should I start…
razib | June 1, 2009Family axes wedding plans, Egyptian cuts off organ:
A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.
This kind of reminds me of self-castration for religious reasons. It is a reality that in many parts of the world children are property a very tangible way. Their marriages are arranged for the benefit of the lineage, as determined by the pater familias. Honor killings in fact show a face of this reality which comports with the most grisly functions of the classical Roman…
razib | April 26, 2009Since the post on anti-miscegenation laws got a lot of attention, I was curious about analogs in the World Values Survey. There are two such questions of interest:
Important for succesful marriage: Same ethnic background(D042)
and
Important for succesful marriage: Religious beliefs(D031)
These data are skewed toward European nations. Below the fold are data are % who assert that same ethnic background is NOT very important, or that same religious beliefs are NOT very important. I will admit that the international pattern is surprising to me.
Same Religion Not Very Important Same…