Define Marriage Essay - 1840 Words

Name: Chunxian Huang How might we usefully define marriage in universal cross cultural terms? Marriage, which is one of the most vital relationships of human beings, is a bewildering subject in people’s lives because it is hard to define, especially in the cross cultural terms. Cross cultural, according to the fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), is defined as â€Å"the interaction of differing cultures, or a comparison†. This means that people in cross cultural terms may need to find ways to respect other cultures. In such case, people have chances to understand the other civilization, to make acquaintances with people from multifarious†¦show more content†¦States Lucile (1977:64), â€Å"one very significant norm in our society holds that marriage is a permanent union with exclusive sex rights†. In other words, marriage enables people to have sex with their spouses stably rather than being blamed for having sex activities with others. Therefore, people have more stable and legal sexual relationship i n marriage than others. An example of this point is that usually sex is associated with marriage for the Nuer in Sudan and they play sexual games to imitate the daily life of marriage (Evans, 1990). This means that for the Nuer, stable sexual relationship is vital for their marriages. According to Opperheimer (1990), sexual relationships need stability and marriage provides the necessary stability. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the stability of sexual relationship is one of the vital factors for marriage thus people can define marriage from the perspective of stability. Moreover, the social factors of marriage are family responsibilities and relationship in a family or between families. In Lucile (1977)’s opinion, â€Å"parenthood is usually expected to follow marriage†. Some people get married because they need to undertake the duties of procreation for their clan. In China, as an old saying goes, â€Å"There are three ways to be unfilial, the worst is not to produce offspring† (Mencius, 372-289B.C). It shows that the stability of the reproduction of families was very important.Show MoreRelatedWhat Does It Truly Mean? Essay1151 Words   |  5 Pages What is marriage? What does it truly mean? For me personally, marriage is best defined as a legal act of love between two people who vow to be as one until death do them part. It is a special day of celebrating an everlasting union between two people and their families. It is a life long commitment. It is loyalty, security, trust, and respect. Marriage is forever. To help me better define the meaning of the word †marriage†, I looked it up in several dictionaries. To my surprise, not one includedRead MoreDefinition Essay Marriage838 Words   |  4 PagesWhat is the Definition of Marriage? What is the definition of marriage? 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