The Concept of
Marriage and Family
Socio Elec 1
Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Instructor
Monday & Wednesday 10:00 – 11:30 Rural Sociology DHVSU Main
CAS 203
Marriage
• The legally or formally recognized union of two people
as partners in a personal relationship (historically and
in some jurisdictions specifically a union between a
man and a woman) – Oxford Dictionary
Marriage
• A legally and socially sanctioned union, usually between a man and a woman,
that is regulated by laws, rules, customs, beliefs, and attitudes that prescribe
the rights and duties of the partners and accords status to their offspring (if
any).
• The universality of marriage within different societies and cultures is
attributed to the many basic social and personal functions for which it
provides structure, such as sexual gratification and regulation, division of
labour between the sexes, economic production and consumption, and
satisfaction of personal needs for affection, status, and companionship.
• Perhaps its strongest function concerns procreation, the care of children and
their education and socialization, and regulation of lines of descent. Through
the ages, marriages have taken a great number of forms.
Marriage
• Marriage involves choice of mates. Marriage allows the
social relationship in which sexual expression is expected to
take place for the major purpose of procreation. But if much
sexual expression within and outside marriage is for the
purpose of sexual urge gratification rather than procreation,
then sex plays an important role in self-fulfilment in both
rural and urban areas.
• Marriage is sanctioned by the society. It provides the social
systems within which social roles and statuses are
prescribed.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Marriage
• In societies in which the large, or extended, family remains the
basic unit, marriages are usually arranged by the family. The
assumption is that love between the partners comes after
marriage, and much thought is given to the socioeconomic
advantages accruing to the larger family from the match.
• By contrast, in societies in which the small, or nuclear, family
predominates, young adults usually choose their own mates. It
is assumed that love precedes (and determines) marriage, and
less thought is normally given to the socioeconomic aspects of
the match.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Marriage
• In societies with arranged marriages, the almost universal
custom is that someone acts as an intermediary,
or matchmaker. This person’s chief responsibility is to
arrange a marriage that will be satisfactory to the two
families represented. Some form of dowry or bridewealth is
almost always exchanged in societies that favour arranged
marriages.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Marriage
• In societies in which individuals choose their own
mates, dating is the most typical way for people to meet and
become acquainted with prospective partners. Successful
dating may result in courtship, which then usually leads to
marriage.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Rural Marriages: Forms, Rules and Aspects
of Rural Marriages
• Marriage is an institutionalized social structure that provides
an enduring framework for regulating sexual behaviour and
childbearing. It is relatively stable compared to other social
institutions. Edward Westermark defines marriage as “the
more or less durable connection between male and female,
lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth
of offsprings.”
Family
• The family is usually defined as a kinship group linked by
blood and marriage and occupying a common household. A
household is not the same thing as the family. It refers to all
persons occupying the same house. These include relatives
as well as lodgers.
• The family as a social group is made up of a man, his wife or
wives and children living under a common roof, interacting
and influencing the behaviours of each other in a more
intimate manner than with others who do not belong to it.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
• As a social institution the family entails the formalized,
regular and patterned way or process by which family life is
carried out. It involves:
• A set of common procedures such as betrothal or engagement,
courtship, honeymoon, wedding
• A common set of values and norms e.g incest taboo which forbids
sexual intercourse with blood relations thereby necessitating
marriage outside the immediate family (exogamy), love between
husband and wife in a way different from that which is expected
between brother and sister.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Features of the Rural Family
• The rural family is characterised by many features such as
familism, production and consumption of goods and
services, continuity, size, child bearing and rearing,
socialisation, participation in family decision making, marital
expectations and evaluation.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Features of the Rural Family
• Familism could be described as the degree to which
members of the family show solidarity in the process of
performing the multifarious role of the family institution. It
involves the following factors:
• The extent to which personal goals are made secondary to be
consistent with family goals.
• The extent to which control is exerted over individual members so
that family values are imposed on each member, who in turn
accepts the values.
• Personal security of individual members of a family which shows
familism is generated by members through their deep sense of
integration into the family.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Features of the Rural Family
• It embodies an intergenerational family group in which many
generations live under one roof near one another.
• Existence of family property such as land, house, shares in
companies, animals and farm crops. This practice discovers age’s
individualism among members.
• Continuity of the family ensures that members bring in their
children into the fold so that it does not discontinue when certain
members die.
• Mutual help exists among members who are assisted to set up
their own farms, pay education costs, dowries, burial and other
forms of expenses when the need arises.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Features of the Rural Family
• The advantages of familism include:
• Keeping the children in greater contact so as to deepen affection
for one another.
• Exercising control over members to protect the family integrity;
ethnic and rural standards; apprenticeship in the family early
occupation, which is frequently farming in the rural area.
• Assistance in financing early education, purchase of work
equipment and marriage expenses, feeding, clothing and other
personal expenses.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Features of the Rural Family
• The disadvantages of familism include:
• Self centeredness, which makes a family to always look for the
interest of its members, while it frequently closes its eyes to the
consideration of other families.
• Members tend to be narrow-minded and parochial; the
personalities of members are at about the same level.
• Families limit chances of allowing members in rural families to
take up other occupations.
• The system of seniority frequently adopted lowers the rate of self-
realisation of talented family members.
• Whenever a family member violates the norms, the family image
rather than that of the individual is considered as tarnished.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Functions of the Family
• The family performs many societal functions to ensure the
welfare and progress of its members. The functions include:
• Reproduction of the human species. That is grant life.
• Care and rearing of the young offspring particularly at infancy and
years of dependence.
• Education of the children.
• Protection from enemies, danger and psychological isolation,
provision of love and affection to reduce tension and frustration.
• Care of the aged and disabled family members.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Features of the Rural Family
• Production and consumption of good and services.
• Moral and financial support to family members in time of joy and
trouble.
• Social, psychological and material support in time of
bereavement, disaster or other forms or adversities.
• Provide socialisation. That is, the family equips the individual with
the knowledge which he/she will need in order to play his/her
roles in the society.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Stages in the Family Life of a Rural
1. Farm apprenticeship: This stage commences as early as the child is
able to walk to the farm himself. It begins about the age of three or
four years and extends till the adolescent years when the young farmer
is looking for a wife at the age of 15 – 20. Initially, the young child is
taken to the farm and asked to watch the father as he operates the
farm so as to inculcate the habit of preparing for work. At the age of
five or six, the child is given farm implements with which to work. He is
apportioned a small piece of land to work upon. He learns how to
operate farm implements gradually. The apprentice turns to a skilled
farm operator who continues to assist the father on a family farm.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Stages in the Family Life of a Rural
2. Operation of a farm business on a limited scale: The young
farmer opens up his own farm on a large scale than when he
was serving the father, but on a limited scale when compared
with that of a full-fledged farmer. He still gets advice from the
father on how to operate his farm at his own discretion and as
a mark of recognition of the father’s experience and to
promote family solidarity.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Stages in the Family Life of a Rural
3. The third stage is that of the owner-operator of a farm
business on a large scale with his family. At this stage, the
farmer has now raised his children to maturity as he was
raised by his father. The children now assist him on the farm.
He thus opens up large areas of land using family labour. It is
the period when farmers become most prosperous in farming.
The farmer is primarily concerned with maintenance
operations, and opening up of some new farm projects. This
lasts up till the age of about 45 years to 50.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Stages in the Family Life of a Rural
4. Owner-operator of a farm business on a small scale without
the family: The farmer is now declining in energy. He depends
on hired labourers to carry out much of his farm operations if
he has a large farm. His returns from the farm start to decline
because of greater investments in running the farm which had
been previously supplied via family labour. Hardworking
farmers would have built houses in the village by the end of
the third stage. They actually would have started to build the
house in the town, which they would complete early in the
fourth stage of life.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Stages in the Family Life of a Rural
5. The fifth stage is that of retirement from active farming. The
farmer has attained the age of seventy and above. Those who
have succeeded in building their own houses in the town
spend much of the time in town. Those who have not built
their personal houses in the town spend much of the time in
their village houses and visit the town as occasions demand
(Jibowo 1992). This farm has now turned into a bush with
spots of tree crops growing here and there on the farm.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Rules of Marriage
• Endogamy, the practice of marrying someone from within one’s
own tribe or group, is the oldest social regulation of marriage. When
the forms of communication with outside groups are limited,
endogamous marriage is a natural consequence. Cultural pressures to
marry within one’s social, economic, and ethnic group are still very
strongly enforced in some societies.
• Exogamy, the practice of marrying outside the group, is found in
societies in which kinship relations are the most complex, thus
barring from marriage large groups who may trace their lineage to a
common ancestor.
Forms of Marriage
• Monogamy restricts the individual to one spouse at a time.
So far as monogamy is concerned, at any given time a man
can have only one wife and a woman can have only one
husband. It produces the highest type of affection and
sincere devotion.
• In this form of marriage, there is sex loyalty and the children
are properly looked after. Because of these advantages,
monogamy is considered as the standard form of marriage in
the rural setting.
Forms of Marriage
• Where one man and one woman are involved, the marriage
is described as monogamy. Where more than two people are
involved, it is called polygamy. Polygamy can assume three
forms. One is the case of one man married to two or more
women. This is called polygamy.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Forms of Marriage
• Polyandry - is one involving one woman and two or more
men. This is known as polyandry and has been identified
among very few tribes in the world. The Southern part of
India are known to accept fraternal polygamy in which one
woman is married to two or more brothers. The offspring of
a such union belong to the extended family directly rather
than to a particular father.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Forms of Marriage
• Group marriage involves several men and women in
marriage relationships with one another with no sense of
exclusive ownership. Murdock (2002) in his study of 250
societies found that only 43 (17%) practised monogamy as a
rule while the rest (8.3%) allowed different forms of
polygamy.
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
Other Forms of Marriage
• Sorrorate - The custom of marrying one’s wife’s younger sister after the death of
the wife. Sorrorate as a form of marriage is mostly observed by the lower caste
people. (This form of marriage is based on a reasoning that a wife is part of the
possessions of the husband which are passed down the extended family line on
his demise)
• Levirate - Levirate refers to a form of marriage in which a younger brother
marries the wife of his deceased brother. Such a form of marriage is practiced
among the backward classes, artisans etc.
• Hypergamy as a form of marriage permits an alliance between a higher caste
man and a lower caste woman. This practice is in vogue among the people
belonging to the lower castes in the rural set-up.
• Hypogamy refers to an alliance between a lower caste man and a higher caste
woman. This form of marriage is generally looked down upon in rural set-up.
Factors Associated With
Polygamous Marriage
• Economic Reasons
• Religious Beliefs
• The Need for Children
• Social or Cultural Obligations
• Gratification of Sexual Needs
Marriage and Family I Marvin Z. Sunga LPT, MAEd
References
• https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/marriage/rural-marriages-forms-
rules-and-aspects-of-rural-marriages/4851
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/marriage
• Mundi, N. E. Introduction to Rural Sociology. National Open University
of Nigeria. 2008.
