Define marriage and explain the social significance of marriage.
1. Harry M. Johnson has defined marriage as a stable relationship in which a man and a woman are socially permitted, without loss of standing in the community, to have children.
2. The sex relationship in human society is highly constrained. Who, when and with whom will have this relationship is determined by society has designed and evolved the institution of Marriage.
3. According to Collins Dictionary of Sociology, marriage is a socially acknowledged and sometimes legally ratified union between an adult male and an adult female. This kind of union is based on two objectives. These are :
(a) Sexual gratification and procreation with socially sanctioned sex-relationship.
(b) Economic cooperation is also the aim of marriage.
4. Marriage grants legitimacy to the offsprings born out of legal sex relationship of two particular individuals.
5. Marriage is an universal institution of human society. Every society from primitive to modern time has had the institution of marriage but its form and nature has been different from time to time; from society to society.
6. Marriage is the basic institution of human society. With the marriage of two persons of opposite sex, the nucleus of the family formed by husband and wife comes into existence.
7. Through marriage, two families enter into kinship bond which expands with the expansion
of family and thus, grows into a complex web or network.
8. Marriage also serves an important economic function since it defines proprietary rights and rights of inheritance which may vary more or less from one ethnic or religious community to another.
