The Future of Marriage

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The Future of Marriage

• David Blankenhorn

2
Acknowledgment

• David Blankenhorn. The Future of Marriage. New
  York Encounter Books, 2007.

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Table Of Contents

• 1. What Is Marriage? 1 2. Prehistory 11 3. The
  River Valley 23 4. The Trobriand Islands 41 5.
  What Marriage Is 69 6. Deinstitutionalize
  Marriage? 127 7. Goods in Conflict 171 8.
  Determining Marriage's fate 213 Appendix Topics
  in the Anthropology of Kinship 247
  Acknowledgements 263 Notes 265 Index 317

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Concern of book

• Author is concerned with issue of same-sex
  marriage.
• He says first thing to do is to get clear on the
  nature of marriage itself.

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Aim of book

• Goal to capture the essence of marriage as a
  human institution. What is it? When and how did
  it emerge? What are its basic purposes? Why do
  all societies have it? What are its primary
  institutional features? What are its core public
  meanings?
• Uses history anthropology. 10

6
Definition elusive

• As an institution, marriage is universal, but
  there is no universally accepted definition of
  marriage. Thats because (a) marriage evolves
  and (b) many of its features vary across groups
  and cultures. 11

7
Confusion today

• Many definitions proposed in the US today treat
  marriage as nothing more than a private close
  relationship between two people. 14
• Is there a compelling state interest in
  regulating expressions of love? Of course not. 15

8
Marriage as institution

• Marriage is a social institution a socially
  structured way of living, intended largely to
  meet social needs. Childrearing may be the most
  important of these, but it isnt the only one. 15

9
Before marriage?

• No one knows precisely how people behaved
  sexually before marriage emerged, but the
  origins of marriage appear to coincide with the
  origins of civilization. 23

10
An anthropological view

• Claude Levi-Strauss said the family is a
  socially-approved union of opposite-sex
  individuals who form a household. The family
  based on marriage is, he said, a social
  institution with a biological foundation. 29

11
Primates and motherhood

• Among primates parenting mostly means mothering.
  Fatherhood as a social role is rare. 30

12
Change over time

• But several million years ago, hominoid primates
  apparently began to demonstrate an unusual social
  behavior Females and males began to become
  attached to one another and to stay together.
• The new arrangement bridged the male-female
  divide, the primary one in our species 30

13
A new way to live

• The primary relationship in our species is
  between mother and child. The new way of living
  created . . . the second and third most
  fundamental relationships the bond between the
  spouses and, deriving from it, the bond between
  father and child. 30

14
Pair-bondinga social achievement

• For humans, monogamous pair-bonding is
  primarily a social fact and achievement. It is
  far from innate or instinctual. . . . However
  this behavior does have biological roots. 31

15
Sex

• The dynamics of sex tend to keep the two sexes of
  most primates apart most of the time. But the
  dynamics of sex among humans tend to bring the
  opposite sexes together much of the time. 31

16
What sex accomplishes

• Human sexiness is not mainly about reproduction.
  The key is creating the couple that will raise
  the child.
• Among humans, pair-bonding . . . Transformed the
  male from an inseminator into a father. 33