Marriage: Meaning and Functions

The functions of marriage

This is the part an examiner asks for directly, and the answer should be organised, not a list.

Regulation of sexual behaviour

Every society channels sexual activity rather than leaving it unregulated, and marriage is the principal channel. This function explains why sexual conduct is so heavily normed everywhere and why breach of the norms carries such disproportionate reaction.

Reproduction and the legitimacy of children

Marriage identifies who a child's socially recognised parents are. Its importance is often missed by students: the biological facts of parenthood do not by themselves settle who is responsible for a child, who must maintain it, or from whom it inherits. Marriage is the institution that assigns those, which is why legitimacy has been so central a legal category and why so much family law concerns it.

Socialisation of children

Marriage produces the family, and the family is the primary agency of socialisation, as [Socialization] sets out.

Economic cooperation

Historically, and still in much of the world, the married pair is a unit of production and consumption with a division of labour between its members. In an agrarian economy the household is the enterprise. This is why marriage is so closely tied to property in every legal system.

Transmission of property and status

Marriage decides who inherits and who succeeds, and it transmits caste, class, religion and family name. This function explains why marriage is so tightly regulated by communities: an unapproved marriage is a threat to the orderly transmission of property and rank, which is the real content of most family opposition.

Emotional and psychological satisfaction

Companionship, affection, security and support. This function has grown enormously in importance and is now, in the urban middle class, the one most people would name first. That shift is itself a major finding, taken up in [Recent Trends in Marriage].

Social status and identity

In most societies an unmarried adult occupies an anomalous position, and marriage confers full adult standing.

Alliance between families

An often overlooked function and an important one in India. Marriage is not only the union of two people but a link between two kin groups, which is why the arrangement is so frequently made by families and why the transactions accompanying it, gifts, dowry, bride price, matter so much. Levi-Strauss built an entire theory on this, treating marriage as an exchange between groups.

A worked example

A couple in a village marry in the presence of the community, with a ritual everyone recognises. Nothing about their relationship is changed by the audience. What changes is everyone else's knowledge of it, and that is the point.

Because the union is publicly known, the wife can claim maintenance from a husband who leaves; the child can claim to be his; the two families can be held to what they promised; and neighbours can be witnesses to all of it if it is ever disputed. The ceremony is a device for creating evidence and for binding third parties, and that is a function no private arrangement can perform.

This is also why the state's insistence on registration is a genuine change rather than a formality. It transfers the evidentiary function from the community to a record, which matters most exactly where community knowledge has broken down, in a city where the neighbours are strangers. A student who sees that can explain the drive for compulsory registration in one sentence: the older machinery has stopped working because the community that operated it has dispersed.

What marriage is NOT

Not a natural fact. It is a social institution. What counts as a marriage, who may enter one and what follows from it are decided by societies and differ completely between them.

Not the same as the family. Marriage is the institution; the family is the group. A family can exist without a current marriage, and a marriage without children is still a marriage.

Not identical with its legal definition. A great many unions are treated as marriages by their communities without satisfying any statute, and the sociological subject is the practice, not the text.

Not only about sex or only about children. The functions listed above are simultaneous, and an answer that gives one is thin.

Not universal in form, only in existence. Every society has it; almost nothing about how it is done is common to all of them.

Quick revision

1. Marriage is the socially recognised union establishing rights and duties between spouses and towards children; universal in existence, various in form.
2. Westermarck: recognised by custom or law, involving rights and duties for the parties and for the children. Malinowski: a contract for the production and maintenance of children.
3. Characteristics: universality, social approval, rights and duties, relative permanence, regulation of who may marry whom, ritual and publicity, it creates a family.
4. Functions: regulating sexual behaviour; reproduction and legitimacy; socialisation; economic cooperation; transmission of property and status; emotional satisfaction; adult status; and alliance between families.
5. The ceremony's function is publicity: it creates evidence and binds third parties. Registration transfers that function to a record when the community disperses.
6. Marriage is the institution; the family is the group.

Test yourself

1. Define marriage sociologically and say how that differs from a legal definition. Marriage is a socially recognised and approved union establishing rights and obligations between the spouses and towards their children, and providing the accepted framework for sexual relations, procreation and the transmission of property and status. A legal definition asks whether a particular union is valid under a text; the sociological account asks what the institution does for the society, works from actual practice including unions no statute recognises, and is comparative across societies rather than tied to one country's law.

2. State six functions of marriage. Regulation of sexual behaviour; reproduction and the assignment of legitimate parenthood; socialisation of children through the family it creates; economic cooperation and the division of labour in the household; transmission of property, caste, class and family name; and the provision of companionship and emotional security. To these should be added the conferring of full adult status and the creation of an alliance between two kin groups.

3. Why is marriage said to be universal? Because every known society has an institution that publicly recognises a lasting union and assigns rights and duties flowing from it. What is universal is its existence and its core functions; almost nothing about its form is universal, since who may marry whom, how many spouses are permitted, who arranges it and how it may be ended differ completely between societies.

4. What is the function of the marriage ceremony? Publicity. The ritual does not alter the relationship between the parties; it alters everyone else's knowledge of it. Because the union is publicly known, maintenance can be claimed, a child's parentage asserted, promises between families enforced and witnesses found. The ceremony is therefore a device for creating evidence and for binding third parties.

5. Why has compulsory registration of marriage become important? Because the evidentiary function once performed by the community has weakened. In a village where everyone attended and remembered, community knowledge proved the marriage. In a city where neighbours are strangers and families are dispersed, that machinery fails, and registration transfers the function to an official record, which matters most for those, typically women and children, who must prove a marriage in order to claim anything from it.