Marriage types

Abstract

If we take a cross-cultural view of human societies, there are few institutions or systems which can be argued to be ‘universal’. Marriage may be the exception. It is found in virtually all societies, and likely has a deep evolutionary history (Shenk, 2024). However, this universality only holds if we define marriage extremely loosely, as the socially recognised union between two or more individuals (Fortunato, 2015). Beyond this, we see significant variation. Given that a key function of marriage is the legalisation and regulation of sex and reproduction, it is easy to see marriage as the cultural analogy of mating systems (chapter 20). Certainly, marriage type often is used as a proxy for mating success. But sex and reproduction occurs outside of marriage and marriage is about much more than just reproduction. It is interwoven with concepts of family and kinship: influencing and being influenced by kin obligations, how descent and inheritance is traced and economic and subsistence systems (Shenk, 2024). We need to understand a lot more about human kinship, inheritance and cultural systems to understand marriage from an evolutionary perspective. In this chapter, we will focus on evolutionary perspective to marriage types in terms of spousal number, reflecting on the diverse forms regularised human partnerships take.