Comparing and Contrasting Different Models of Marriage

Part One: Single female ISO single male.
Creative, ambitious, fearless, and passionate professional female seeks a partner with similar values. Ethnicity/race/socioeconomic class is irrelevant. What matters is a dedication to making the world a better place. I do prefer no baggage and no children from a previous relationship. Although we both may have parents with traditional values, they understand that our lives may look different from theirs and they will not pressure us to get married or have children before we are ready. You are not constrained by religion but neither are you cynical. You are as independent and free-spirited as I am, yet interested in a monogamous relationship. Together we can do more than we ever could on our own, and we thrive in each other’s company. We travel together, but we also maintain a home base near to our friends and family. I do not own property but intend to one day after saving enough money of my own and establishing my career.
Part Two: Mosuo female ISO walking marriage
As our culture is threatened by the hegemony of the nuclear family model, we need to maintain our traditions. I am a Mosuo woman with two children who is currently seeking partnership in the form of a traditional walking marriage. I own a sizeable piece of property including fertile farmlands across many acres, as well as livestock. My maternal family has remained entrenched in our community. I take regular trips to Lijang, have several thriving businesses, and have no interest in a marriage relationship. You are a strong, physically fit, energetic, sexually active man of any age who is simply interested in enjoying our time together with no strings attached.
Part Three: Compare/Contrast
The Mosuo model of “walking marriage” is unlike any other, different not only from other Himalayan or Chinese societies but also other societies across the globe and throughout time. Yet the Mosuo “walking marriage” bears striking resemblance to the modern and sexually liberated concept of sexual relationships that do not take place within the confines of the established patriarchal norms. As Coontz (2005) points out, “as both a social institution and a personal experience, marriage has changed more in the past 30 years than the preceding 3,000 years,” (Coontz, 2005, p. 1). These changes have taken place predominantly in Western/technologically advanced societies. Many of these changes are starting to resemble the Mosuo model, which is similar to serial monogamy as the walking marriage is a temporary form of heterosexual union. For the Mosuo and other traditional societies that are only now beginning to change, models of marriage have remained largely intact because their economic and political systems have also changed very little.
Marriage is a social, economic, and political institution. This is true both for me and for the Mosuo, even though in our ads it seems we are looking mainly for a love marriage. Increasingly, though, marriage is becoming viewed less and less as a social and political institution and more and more as a personal choice. Marriage is often still an economic institution even when we are unwilling to admit it. I expect that my partner and I will share our household chores, just as the Mosuo woman expects that her male companion will share in their chores.
For the Mosuo wanted ad, as well as for my own, the primary objective is companionship. Partnership does entail mutual respect and responsibility, but does not necessarily mean a gendered division of labor. The Mosuo do often exhibit gendered division of labor, mainly with regards to childrearing duties but also due to the need of hard labor in the village. Yetif women can do the same work, they will. Likewise, I do not perceive a gendered division of labor as something that is strict but something that happens naturally as each person does what they can to contribute to the household or to their community.
The importance of childrearing may be the most significant difference between my ad and that of the Mosuo woman. A Mosuo woman does not necessarily have as much leeway or choice regarding her role as a mother. In my society, a woman does feel pressured to have children but can make the choice to not be a mother. As I indicated in the personal ad, I do not want to feel pressured by my partner, his family, or my own. I would like the choice to not have children, and to not feel constrained by an obligation to do so. At the same time, I would like to have children on my own terms and to raise children in a partnership situation similar to that exhibited in the walking marriage model.
Mosuo men will often serve as temporary or even permanent caregivers of children, even children that are not their own. Men are simply part of the community. Actually, the same is true for men in my own society. Many men become step fathers, rearing children that are not their own in exchange for the companionship and love they share with a woman. Even though raising children that are not their own can be challenging, the men will do so for the reward they receive in terms of psychological and social connections. Yet there may also be a financial incentive to partner with a person, as men and women who cohabit can share their costs of living. Therefore, the marriage models of the Mosuo and the most progressive and modernized societies actually do share many elements in common.
As Coontz (2005) points out, divorce rates are highest in the most conservative areas of modern society such as the Bible belt in the United States or Belgium in Europe. With the Mosuo model and my own, marriage is not the important factor. Rather, respect and partnership is. Stockard’s analysis reveals the diversity of marriage patterns throughout the world, showing that while there are always intimate, private, and personal elements to any marriage, the sociological issues often dominate. My two personal ads are somewhat subversive in that they emphasize the personal more than the sociological. Most marriages around the world remain patriarchal in nature. Even when they are egalitarian, the marriage is a social institution that also has legal implications for both partners. Because I am young, I have not fully considered the legal implications of a domestic partnership but if I were to accumulate capital or my partner were to do so, we would need to come up with some agreements as to how our finances would be divided if we ever split up. This is true whether or not we were married or simply together in common law. With the Mosuo walking marriage, on the other hand, neither the man nor the woman is legally bound.
Marriage is culturally constructed, as Stockard points out (p. 2). As a culture changes, so too will its concept of marriage. In The Kingdom of Women, we learn that the Mosuo concept of marriage is being threatened by modernization. Ironically, modernization seems to be less socially progressive than the “traditional” society in this case. Although the Mosuo woman is restricted to motherhood, she has a greater deal of power in the community and in her relationships with men than she would in the mainstream Chinese society. Women in my society are struggling to gain a position of power similar to that of the Mosuo, minus the obligation to be a mother. My personal ad shows that I would like forge my own career path and not be restricted in any way by my gender. When women have access to wealth including land, opportunities to perform meaningful and valued labor, and access to political power, they do not depend on the marriage institution for their physical or economic survival. Their identities are not inextricably tied up with their husbands, symbolized by their changing their names or being referred to as the wife of a man rather than as a person in her own right. My identity, like that of a Mosuo woman, is not dependent on having a husband but it is for many women around the world.
Considered in light of custom and family institutions, marriage also bonds together different families and in some areas, different tribes. The walking marriage model presumes some degree of endogamy because men from outside the community would be unfamiliar with the walking marriage model and perhaps unwilling to accept all it entails in terms of their different gender roles. My ad reveals a disregard for either endogamy or exogamy: I do not care if the person I love is a member of my own community or from somewhere halfway around the world. However, we would both need to accept that our families might have certain expectations of us, which could prove difficult if we want to forge our own paths and identities. If my family or his expected us to have a traditional marriage and family arrangement, we might face conflict in the community. The post marital residence practice, together with other social processes, will shape the meaning of marriage both for me and for the Mosuo woman who only wants a temporary situation anyway. For this reason, many people in modern societies end up severing ties with their families and communities of origin and locating new “tribe” or kinship in a community of like-minded and supportive individuals.
Finally, both the Mosuo woman and me seek what Stockard calls the love marriage but in our own respective ways. I respect the Mosuo walking marriage, and would likely see myself in this type of situation as a serial monogamist. If I decide to get married, it would not be out of a pre-arranged situation as it is for many people. My parents might try to set me up with people they like, but ultimately it will be my own choice. Likewise, a Mosuo woman has a relatively small group of men she chooses from as walking marriage partners. All we seek is the opportunity to have mutually respectful, enjoyable companionship and intimacy without being restricted to gender norms and roles.






References

Coontz, S. (2005). The evolution of matrimony.
Kingdom of Women: The Matriarchal Mosuo of China
Stockard, J. E. Marriage in Culture