Tammie Martin English Marriage What

Tammie Martin

English

Marriage

What is marriage and why do people get married? Technically speaking, marriage is any social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. Throughout most Western civilization, marriage has been mostly a matter of money, power and economic survival. However, today, individuals in most Western societies are free to marry whoever they like. Therefore, most Americans view the institution of marriage as an expression of eternal love and a commitment to a monogamous relationship. Yet, in reality, marriage is still highly tied to social class factors such income, education and race.

There is ample evidence regarding the role of income in assortative mating where individuals tend to select marriage partners with similar traits. Kearney (2006) has found that women tend to marry men whose position in the income distribution resembles their fathers' position. Thus, marriage facilitates the transmission of economic status from parents to daughters. Another study by Ermisch, et.al. (2006) finds that the individual earnings of both husbands and wives are highly correlated with the incomes of their parents-in-law as they are with the incomes of their own parents. Thus, economic intergenerational relationships influence the matching of marriage partners. Further, d'Addio (2007) shows that individuals marry people with similar characteristics because of the tendency for similar individuals to occupy the same social spaces.

Likewise, education plays a large role in who individuals choose to marry. The function of education in mate selection is increasing as show by research that the overall level of both absolute and relative rates of educational homogamy among young adults have increased in Canada and the United States ("Assortative Marriage and Inequality"). In Canada, 54% of married couples had the same level of education in 2001, up from 42% in 1971. In the United States, approximately 55% of marriages consisted of couples with the same level of education in 2000, up from 49% in 1970. According to this research, these trends are due to changes in the association of husbands' and wives' education rather than by changes in the relative supply of more- and less-educated partners.

In addition to income and education, individuals select marriage partners along racial lines (Fu, 2001). In fact, although racial homogamy has declined over time, it remains as the strongest pattern in assortative mating according to Fu. Further, many individuals remain particularly resistance to marriage between whites and blacks than they do between whites and other minorities. Fu (2001) also reveals that African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans who are in interracial marriages tend to have a higher socioeconomic status than others from these groups. Fu theorizes that this higher socioeconomic status helps to equalize their status with majority group partners.