Marriage stage

Marriage is frequently regarded as the most important event in a person's life. It is also a significant event in the family cycle, both for the families of the bride and groom and for the new family formed by the union itself. For young people, marriage often marks a break with the authority of their parents (who, together with brothers and sisters, are known as the “ family of orientation”), and it is simultaneously a key step in the formation of a new family (the “ family of procreation ”). The couple must learn to live together and work out their own changing social roles within the context of the marital unit. Thus, though marriage often represents a break with parental authority, it also involves a sacrifice ofindependence. Husbands and wives must compromise with each other and learn to make decisions, not alone, as they had done when single, but together. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who marry for the first time relatively late in life often retain more individualism than those who marry early. Such people may maintain a greater degree of social independence and at the same time develop successful marital and family relationships .

In the early period of marriage, husbands and wives tend to spend a great deal of time with each other. It is traditional in some societies for a husband or wife to have a “night out,” perhaps once a week, with other people of the same sex and without the company of the spouse. The rest of the week, except for working hours, they generally spend together. This time together, especially if begun at a relatively early age, leads to unconscious learning andacceptance of each other's habits and idiosyncracies.

Marriage is usually marked by a sharp increase in sexual activity. Sexual access is obviously easier for a married couple living together than for most single people, who tend to live apart from their partners. For many people, for reasons of religion or morality, sexual intercourse is permissible only after marriage. For others, marriage simply makes sexual activity more convenient.

Marriage also marks a change in social relationswith others. Whereas before marriage people interact in most social spheres as individuals, after marriage there is a tendency for the married couple to be the primary unitin social activities. Invitations to parties, for example, are made to a couple, not to one partner only (though this may also be true of engaged or courting couples). The couple may come to be seen as an inseparable unit, thus marking the marital unit as a “corporate” entity. Recognition of this status also paves the way for the recognition of the role of the marital unit in its ultimate capacity as a family of procreation.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16