[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Marriage Systems
Many people today are dissatisfied with the institution of marriage as they find it and therefore wonder how they might give it a "new", more agreeable form. Thus, we can now read numerous books and articles which discuss the "crisis of marriage" and which try to offer solutions. For example, some writers propose a "contractual marriage" (i.e., marriage based on an easily terminated private contract), a "permissive marriage" (i.e., marriage permitting extramarital relationships), a "communal marriage" (i.e., group marriage in a commune), or a "quaternary marriage" (i.e., two married couples and their children living together). These and similar arrangements are often felt to be more realistic and durable than our traditional marriage, which is assumed to have "broken down".
However, radical as some of these proposals may seem to some people, they do not really contain anything new. In fact, virtually all "future" forms of marriage that are being advocated today have already existed somewhere at some time in the past (Carolyn, 2004). Yet, they have not prevailed. A relatively exclusive monogamy has either long since replaced them or seems in the process of doing so. This means that our present form of marriage is probably based on more solid ground than simple unquestioned tradition. There seems to be something uniquely attractive and appropriate in just two spouses building a life together and, if they are fertile, caring for their own children. Moreover, this seems to be the only marital arrangement in which the partners can be truly equal.
Polyandrous Marriage
We all know what monogamy is, the legal form of marriage in our culture. Most of us are also familiar with "polygyny," a practice in which a man has several wives. However, only a few of us realize that there is another marriage system-known as "polyandry" when a single woman is married to two or more husbands: not marrying one person after another; it is the simultaneous marriage of two or more men to a woman at the same time in the same house.......
