Marriage and Family: Elective Outcome

Marriage to me is a funny thing. Growing up in our culture, a little girl is brought up thinking about falling in love, that man one day surprising you and getting down on one knee and giving you a diamond ring. Then you get married in a church, wearing a big white gown. Then after you get married you have babies, and live in a house with a dog and your husband and kids, and everyone wears gap, and everyone is happy! As you get older the realisation of what marriage is and how it creates and changes families. As you get older, your friends in class experience divorce, and get mad at one parent or another, you look at your own family and wonder, its not always the happy picture of perfection we are socialized to want and what we all want to create. I think to myself, that creates a gap in our ideas of marriage and the realities of marriage, and does this create the high divorce rate in our country? We are given an unrealistic and idealistic idea of what marriage and the idea of family should be. 

 

My good friend, she is 25, and she studied abroad in Denmark, and there she met her current boyfriend, they fell in love and have been dating for 5 years. She is American and he is Danish. She wants to get married and move there to be with him, because that is one of the only ways she can get a visa to stay there and live, but he is completely apprehensive. He explained to her, that in his country, the way relationships unfold is different than here ( this is not an excuse on his side, but she has seen it for herself, with her other friends in Denmark). A couple meets, date, live together for years, maybe have children and create a family. Then if they feel like they can make it, they get married. This shows that there is a level of realism in their ideas of marriage. That marriage is an important step to take, not something to run into, especially because it is for life. The realize that relationships might not last, so the put it to the test, by living together and experiencing their mate in all situations. Instead of viewing living together and the sexual relationship as negative. They view it as an important part of a relationship. In our society for a long time, and still now, it is seen as negative to live together before marriage, and having sexual relations before marriage. to a lot of people it is about religion, but it is an important part of relationships that need to be tested and experienced before you pledge your life to someone else. Many cultures have different ideas of marriage and families. Like in France, it is normal for a man to take a mistress, but here in America a president can get impeached for having an extra marital affair! 

 

Culture can affect how a relationship can form, and the expectations one has out of a relationship. Family in many cultures includes extended family, and not just the nuclear family of mother, father and children. Families in an anthropological sense, is important to be productive and survive. Many cultures rely on extended families to help raise children. Families and the relationships within the family system, help define who we are. The people in our family impart culture on to us. The family structure can tell a great deal about where emphasis and importance lies in a culture. Also the family structure tells a great deal about how the society is built. The family also influences greatly the culture of the children.

  

Many cultures are patriarchal, meaning the importance lies on the man in the family. The man is the bread winner, and the family depends a great deal on them. This can be seen in Western cultures, especially in the 1900's. In the 1950's there were lower divorce rates then now, because women were solely dependant upon the man in the family for food and shelter, women were less likely to be able to get jobs of their own, so women could not support themselves outside of the family structure, even if the relationships were abusive. Many people now say that our society's morals are being corrupted, but in essence, divorce rates have risen, because women have become financially independent that they can leave marriages and support themselves and their children. They have been given more options, in their relationships and family structures. And a lot of the times the family structures women create outside of marriage are more emotionally stable for children, than abusive or messy marriages. That change in society in turn had an affect on the structure of families and marriages, and reinforces that connection between the two.

 

To me, marriage is an important thing, that should not be taken lightly. I do not agree with the 48 hour marriage. Or marrying someone on a whim. I think that relationships need work and to be grown before deciding to build a family upon it. To have a strong family it needs a strong foundation, of equality and love and endurance. But to each his own.