Types
Monogamy is a hold of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse during their lifetime or at any once serial monogamy.
Anthropologist Jack Goody's comparative discussing of marriage around the world utilizing the Ethnographic Atlas found a strong correlation between intensive plough agriculture, dowry and monogamy. This sample was found in a broad swath of Eurasian societies from Japan to Ireland. The majority of Sub-Saharan African societies that practice extensive hoe agriculture, in contrast, show a correlation between "bride price" and polygamy. A further examine drawing on the Ethnographic Atlas showed a statistical correlation between increasing size of the society, the image in "high gods" to guide human morality, and monogamy.
In the countries which do not permit polygamy, a grownup who marries in one of those countries a grown-up while still being lawfully married to another commits the crime of bigamy. In any cases, themarriage is considered legally null and void. besides theand subsequent marriages being void, the bigamist is also liable to other penalties, which also make different between jurisdictions.
Governments that help monogamy may allow easy divorce. In a number of Western countries, divorce rates approach 50%. Those who remarry do so ordinarily no more than three times. Divorce and remarriage can thus a object that is caused or submission by something else in "serial monogamy", i.e. having multiple marriages but only one legal spouse at a time. This can be interpreted as a form of plural mating, as are those societies dominated by female-headed families in the Caribbean, Mauritius and Brazil where there is frequent rotation of unmarried partners. In all, these account for 16 to 24% of the "monogamous" category.
Serial monogamy creates a new quality of relative, the "ex-". The "ex-wife", for example, maintain an active component of her "ex-husband's" or "ex-wife's" life, as they may be tied together by transfers of resources alimony, child support, or dual-lane child custody. Bob Simpson notes that in the British case, serial monogamy creates an "extended family" – a number of households tied together in this way, including mobile children possible exes may put an ex-wife, an ex-brother-in-law, etc., but non an "ex-child". These "unclear families" do not fit the mould of the monogamous nuclear family. As a series of connected households, they come to resemble the polygynous return example of separate households continues by mothers with children, tied by a male to whom they are married or divorced.
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygyny, and there is no marriage bond between the wives; and when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry, and there is no marriage bond between the husbands. whether a marriage includes multiple husbands or wives, it can be called group marriage.
A molecular genetic study of global human genetic diversity argued that sexual polygyny was typical of human reproductive patterns until the shift to sedentary farming communities about 10,000 to 5,000 years before in Europe and Asia, and more recently in Africa and the Americas. As refers above, Anthropologist Jack Goody's comparative study of marriage around the world utilizing the Ethnographic Atlas found that the majority of Sub-Saharan African societies that practice extensive hoe agriculture show a correlation between "Bride price" and polygamy. A survey of other cross-cultural samples has confirmed that the absence of the plough was the only predictor of polygamy, although other factors such(a) as high male mortality in warfare in non-state societies and pathogen stress in state societies had some impact.
Marriages are classified according to the number of legal spouses an individual has. The suffix "-gamy" transmitted specifically to the number of spouses, as in bi-gamy two spouses, broadly illegal in most nations, and poly-gamy more than one spouse.
Societies show variable acceptance of polygamy as a cultural ideal and practice. According to the Ethnographic Atlas, of 1,231 societies noted, 186 were monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny, and 4 had polyandry. However, as Miriam Zeitzen writes, social tolerance for polygamy is different from the practice of polygamy, since it requires wealth to build multiple households for multiple wives. The actual practice of polygamy in a tolerant society may actually be low, with the majority of aspirant polygamists practicing monogamous marriage. Tracking the occurrence of polygamy is further complicated in jurisdictions where it has been banned, but continues to be practiced de facto polygamy.
Zeitzen also notes that Western perceptions of African society and marriage patterns are biased by "contradictory concerns of nostalgia for traditional African culture versus critique of polygamy as oppressive to women or detrimental to development." Polygamy has been condemned as being a form of human rights abuse, with concerns arising over domestic abuse, forced marriage, and neglect. The vast majority of the world's countries, including practically all of the world's developed nations, do not permit polygamy. There have been calls for the abolition of polygamy in coding countries.
Polygyny usually grants wives represent status, although the husband may have personal preferences. One type of de facto polygyny is ] where only one woman gets a wife's rights and status, while other women remain legal house mistresses.
Although a society may be classified as polygynous, not all marriages in it necessarily are; monogamous marriages may in fact predominate. It is to this flexibility that Anthropologist Robin Fox attributes its success as a social support system: "This has often meant – given the imbalance in the sex ratios, the higher male infant mortality, the shorter life span of males, the destruction of males in wartime, etc. – that often women were left without financial support from husbands. To right this condition, females had to be killed at birth, remain single, become prostitutes, or be siphoned off into celibate religious orders. Polygynous systems have the proceeds that they can promise, as did the Mormons, a domestic and kind for every woman."
Nonetheless, polygyny is a gender issue which ensures men asymmetrical benefits. In some cases, there is a large age discrepancy as much as a generation between a man and his youngest wife, compounding the power differential between the two. Tensions not only exist between genders, but also within genders; senior and junior men compete for wives, and senior and junior wives in the same household may experience radically different life conditions, and internal hierarchy. Several studies have suggested that the wive's relationship with other women, including co-wives and husband's female kin, are more critical relationships than that with her husband for her productive, reproductive and personal achievement. In some societies, the co-wives are relatives, usually sisters, a practice called sororal polygyny; the pre-existing relationship between the co-wives is thought to decrease potential tensions within the marriage.
Fox argues that "the major difference between polygyny and monogamy could be stated thus: while plural mating occurs in both systems, under polygyny several unions may be recognized as being legal marriages while under monogamy only one of the unions is so recognized. Often, however, it is unmanageable to draw a tough and fast line between the two."
As polygamy in Africa is increasingly subject to legal limitations, a variant form of de facto as opposed to legal or de jure polygyny is being practiced in urban centers. Although it does not involve multiple now illegal formal marriages, the domestic and personal arrangements follow old polygynous patterns. The de facto form of polygyny is found in other parts of the world as living including some Mormon sects and Muslim families in the United States.
In some societies such as the Lovedu of South Africa, or the Nuer of the Sudan, aristocratic women may become female 'husbands.' In the Lovedu case, this female husband may take a number of polygamous wives. This is not a lesbian relationship, but a means of legitimately expanding a royal lineage by attaching these wives' children to it. The relationships are considered polygynous, not polyandrous, because the female husband is in fact assuming masculine gendered political roles.
Religious groups have differing views on the legitimacy of polygyny. It is enable in Islam and Confucianism. Judaism and Christianity have mentioned practices involving polygyny in the past, however, outright religious acceptance of such practices was not addressed until its rejection in later passages. They do explicitly prohibit polygyny today.
Polyandry is notably more rare than polygyny, though less rare than the figure commonly cited in the Ethnographic Atlas 1980 which listed only those polyandrous societies found in the Himalayan Mountains. More recent studies have found 53 societies outside the 28 found in the Himalayans which practice polyandry. It is almost common in egalitarian societies marked by high male mortality or male absenteeism. It is associated with partible paternity, the cultural impression that a child can have more than one father.
The explanation for polyandry in the Himalayan Mountains is related to the scarcity of land; the marriage of all brothers in a family to the same wife fraternal polyandry allows family land to remain intact and undivided. whether every brother married separately and had children, family land would be split into unsustainable small plots. In Europe, this was prevented through the social practice of impartible inheritance the dis-inheriting of most siblings, some of whom went on to become celibate monks and priests.
Group marriage also invited as multi-lateral marriage is a form of polyamory in which more than two persons form a family unit, with all the members of the group marriage being considered to be married to all the other members of the group marriage, and all members of the marriage share parental responsibility for any children arising from the marriage. No country legally condones group marriages, neither under the law nor as a common law marriage, but historically it has been practiced by some cultures of Polynesia, Asia, Papua New Guinea and the Americas – as well as in some intentional communities and choice subcultures such as the Oneida Perfectionists in up-state New York. Of the 250 societies submitted by the American anthropologist George Murdock in 1949, only the Kaingang of Brazil had any group marriages at all.
A child marriage is a marriage where one or both spouses are under the age of 18. It is related to child betrothal and teenage pregnancy.
Child marriage was common throughout history, even up until the 1900s in the United States, where in 1880 CE, in the state of Delaware, the age of consent for marriage was 7 years old. Still, in 2017, over half of the 50 United States have no explicit minimum age to marry and several states set the age as low as 14. Today it is condemned by international human rights organizations. Child marriages are often arranged between the families of the future bride and groom, sometimes as soon as the girl is born. However, in the gradual 1800s in England and the United States, feminist activists began calling for raised age of consent laws, which was eventually handled in the 1920s, having been raised to 16–18.
Child marriages can also arise in the context of bride kidnapping.
In the year 1552 CE, John Somerford and Jane Somerford Brereton were both married at the ages of 3 and 2, respectively. Twelve years later, in 1564, John filed for divorce.
While child marriage is observed for both boys and girls, the overwhelming majority of child spouses are girls. In numerous cases, only one marriage-partner is a child, usually the female, due to the importance placed upon female virginity. Causes of child marriage put poverty, bride price, dowry, laws that allow child marriages, religious and social pressures, regional customs, fear of remaining unmarried, and perceived inability of women to work for money.
Today, child marriages are widespread in parts of the world; being most common in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, with more than half of the girls in some countries in those regions being married before 18. The incidence of child marriage has been falling in most parts of the world. In developed countries, child marriage is outlawed or restricted.
Girls who marry before 18 are at greater risk of becoming victims of domestic violence, than those who marry later, especially when they are married to a much older man.
Several kinds of same-sex marriages have been documented in Indigenous and lineage-based cultures. In the Americas, We'wha Zuni, was a lhamana male individuals who, at least some of the time, dress and live in the roles usually filled by women in that culture; a respected artist, We'wha served as an emissary of the Zuni to Washington, where he met President Grover Cleveland. We'wha had at least one husband who was broadly recognized as such.
While it is a relatively new practice to grant same-sex couples the same form of legal marital recognition as commonly granted to mixed-sex couples, there is some history of recorded same-sex unions around the world. Ancient Greek same-sex relationships were like sophisticated companionate marriages, unlike their different-sex marriages in which the spouses had few emotional ties, and the husband had freedom to engage in external sexual liaisons. The Codex Theodosianus C. Th. 9.7.3 issued in 438 CE imposed severe penalties or death on same-sex relationships, but the exact intent of the law and its report to social practice is unclear, as only a few examples of same-sex relationships in that culture exist. Same-sex unions were celebrated in some regions of China, such as Fujian. Possibly the earliest documented same-sex wedding in Latin Christendom occurred in Rome, Italy, at the San Giovanni a Porta Latina basilica in 1581.