Essay - Family Law the Economics of Marriage, Today and Yesterday Marriage...

Family Law

The Economics of Marriage, Today and Yesterday

***** is a fund*****mental part of life - or so it has always been in Western Culture, and in virtually all other cultures around the world.

***** important is the inst*****ution, that we celebrate its beginning with elaborate ceremonies, enshrine ***** boundaries in law, and build our families on its foundati*****s. But today, things are not ***** as they have been in the past. Many people live together and do not get married. Marriage law has ***** changed dramatic*****y in regard to property rights ***** ease of divorce. Not only unmarried couples, but single mothers and father, and gay and lesbian couples, too, start families and ra*****e children. The old definition of family - a married man and woman, and their children, appears to be giving way to new ideas. More and more, contemporary women and men are choosing to organize their lives and homes in non-traditional ways; tailoring ***** life to suit their own *****styles. Numerous experts see these changes as reflections of present-day conditions. Marriage, they say, is essentially an economic institution. It developed over time as a means of guaranteeing the economic survival and *****ll-being of its members. These same experts point to *****'s different economic picture as the primary reason that marriage has changed so considerably. Economics, too, explain why many contemporary ***** and ***** choose not to get married. But, if the basis of marriage was, and is, economic, was it ***** has so changed ***** drastically as to alter, almost beyond recognition, traditional notions of marriage?

According to ***** economic hypothes***** ***** the origin of marriage, marriage began, among primitive peoples, as an arr*****gement to guarantee the provision of life's necessities, to care for children, and to support a basic division of labor. The man and woman entered in*****, what was in effect, a contract that required *****m to stay *************** and provide mutual support. For example, the husband would hunt, while his wife stayed in the camp to care for *****ir children. That ***** was not primarily a sexual institution, an ***** designed primarily to satisfy individual romantic wants and desires, was recognized even by the earliest anthropologists, and ***** by those whom we might refer to as "proto-anthropologists." Among *****se early students of human society and behavior, Lewis Henry Morgan observed that, ***** primitive *****,

Sexual generation is put in the service of- is subordinated to - agnatic succession and enduring control of *****. Jay (1992) [N. *****, (1992), "Throughout Y***** Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity." Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.] has recently made much the ***** *****s for Middle Eastern and African sacrificial ideologies. In Lee's underst*****ing of human society sex is merely of little moment, and what 'really' makes '*****tory' are the 'hard' ***** the enduring- facts of techno- economy.

For primitive human beings, as for the citizens ***** modern-day post-industrial states, marriage served a controlling ***** preserving economic assets. By entering into a *****m*****l contract between each other, a