Program 13: Lesson 11 - Sex and Marriage

Faces of Culture - "Sex and Marriage"

Narr: "Love makes the world go round," writes the poet and certainly romantic love drives many aspects of culture around the world.

Marriage, is another matter.

(Women singing.)

Narr: In the United States romantic love is considered to be central to marriage.

But in anthropological terms love is a private matter. Whereas marriage is intricately bound up in other social institutions. Marriage assigns sexual rights, but these are defined in the context of many important social relationships.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit..."

Narr: Marriage is a social contract and its customs reflect the economic needs of the group.

Among the Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in Zaire, Africa, marriage and family customs help to preserve the foraging way of life they have followed for thousands of years.

Marriage sets up economic obligations that extend far beyond the individuals being married. That's why in many societies marriages are arranged.

Among the Mbuti marriages are arranged while the bride and groom are still young. The parents of a 10 year old boy and an 8 and a half year old girl have decided the two will marry.

The Mbuti follow rules of "exogamy" which means they must marry outside the group or community.

Exogamy establishes alliances between groups that provide mutual access to foraging territories. The bride will live with her husband's family in his village.

Orthodox Jews, like most groups, are "exogamous" in the sense that people must marry outside their own family. However, they follow the rules of "endogamy" in marriage for the group as a whole.

Exogamy creates alliances. Endogamy underscores the unity of the group and helps conserve its traditions and wealth.

This young man and woman of Brooklyn, New York, were encouraged to choose a spouse from among their fellow Orthodox Jews. The practice of endogamy helps them insure the continuity of family and group customs.

Marriage also establishes economic contracts that support traditional ways of life.

The Turkana of Northern Kenya are pastoralists and prosperity in their economy depends upon having many animals. Keeping cattle, goats and camels requires a great deal of work, migrating from place to place, building temporary homes, finding water holes and feeding grounds, caring for the animals.

Women do much of the work. So if a man is to become wealthy and keep large numbers of animals, he must have more than one wife.

Among the Turkana "polygamy" allows a man to enhance his social status by controlling the labor and fertility of more than one wife.

Because a wife is an important part of the economy, the Turkana, like many other societies, require "bride price."

Paying bride price is a custom in which the groom gives valuable animals or other goods to the bride's family to compensate them for the loss of her labor and to prove that he is a man of social standing.

The bride price also compensates her family for loss of her fertility since her children will be members of her husband's family, not her own. In addition, the bride price helps to emphasize and reinforce the alliance between kin groups.

Kongu has decided to marry his friend, Lorang's daughter. However, his other wives had to agree to the marriage since it affects their wealth and welfare also. And because they will have to contribute animals to the bride price.

Negotiating the bride price is both an opportunity to demonstrate one's oratorical skills and to shape future relations between the two families. Members of both families want to make sure their rights are recognized.

Eventually the negotiations are settled and the marriage ceremony begins with the killing of the "wedding ox," and the blessing of the bride.

She's expected to show sadness because she is leaving her family and the carefree days of girlhood to take on the duties of a wife. One of her responsibilities is to bear children for her husband's kin group.

Marriage establishes the social identity of the children.

The Turkana are "patrilineal," a system of kinship in which descent is traced through the male line. The wife's family will have no claim to her children and her children will be members of her husband's kin group.

As the bride sets off with her new husband and his four other wives, her relatives advise her not to look back longingly on the family she has left behind.

The Asanti are "matrilineal" which means children belong to their mother's kin group.

Asanti women live in their husband's village. They also work hard in the marketplace, selling fruits and vegetables to support their children. Because co-wives may be competitors, Asanti women often resist their husband's desire to take a new wife.

Uba, the "plantain queen mother," explains that a woman's attitude to her co-wives depends on her feelings toward her husband.

All over the world marriage customs are changing.

The Mien are horticulturalists who once lived in the highlands of Laos. During the Vietnam War they were hired by the U.S. military to help fight a guerilla war.

After the war, these Mien and many other people of Laos were forced to flee their homes to avoid retaliation by the new Communist government. They lived in refugee camps in Thailand and eventually many came to North America.

Fay Phin is the first Mien bride in the United States to be married in a big traditional wedding. The ceremony lasts three days and nights.

"I didn't know they would really have a big wedding. I thought they were kidding. My cousin told me they have a big wedding for you. But I thought this country is really different from my country. It does not have the banana tree or the big house or the big stove. I didn't think they could do it. I think they are kidding."

Fay Phin's wedding requires a large financial investment by both families. The elaborate headdress worn by the bride reflects both the social position of the families and the importance of the bride.

"In Laos a woman would be very proud to wear the headdress. She knows this will only happen once in her life, and it will make her famous. People will say she is so good, that they had the big ceremony for her. Now young women are getting lazy, and they have lost their endurance for putting up with the heavy turban. That's why Fay Phin is feeling unhappy at the moment. In my day, I didn't suffer at all. I was used to it.

After they put the headdress on my head I couldn't sleep. I just tried to get comfortable in the chair, but I couldn't lie down. In three days I slept maybe one hour."

Narr: But Fay Phin has other reasons to feel sad about her marriage. She dreads leaving her family.

"My mom is very old, and someday she will die. If my mother dies, nobody will take care of me. I want to stay with my family, but I don't think that they can take care of me for my whole life."

"It is really sad for the Mien woman. Whenever the boy's parents engage you, that's when you start worrying that soon you will have to belong to this other family."

"She cannot tell whether the boy is going to be kind or mean. She does not know. That was probably what Fay Phin was facing that morning."

Narr: Traditionally Mien marriages are arranged by the parents.

"She cannot change her mind later. There's no divorce for Mien women. So it's sort of sad, and she cries a lot, thinking she's going to miss her family, and she has to say goodbye to them."

Narr: Marriage is important not only for the bride and groom, but for their families as well. Marriage is an economic contract and it produces children that add to the strength of the kin group.

(Priest reading prayer.)

Narr: Mien men are equally bound by the decisions of their parents, a tradition that can be frustrating to young immigrants.

Ai Choi consoled himself for the grief of leaving his homeland by thoughts of the new freedom he would have in the United States. On his arrival, he was shocked to discover he was engaged to marry Fong Yun, a bride chosen for him by his parents.

"When I got to the airport a friend of mine told me that my parents had engaged a girl for me. I did not believe, and I was not very happy, you know."

"Our country peoples, everybody's short, like, it's not that tall. When I see him, he's really tall. I feel really strange. I said, 'I don't want to marry him,' you know I just kind of get so mad. I said, 'Oh, you just want to sell me and try to make some money, didn't you father?'

My father said, 'No, I want you to get a good husband, that guy's really smart, you know, he has a good education, you should marry him.'"

"I was expecting somebody more mature, you know. But, when I first met her and she was, you know, just like a kid to me. For me, I would like somebody's more well educated people who can go to parties and, you know, go meeting friends, so I don't have to be shamed."

"He finally let them engage me and I was really sad, you know, I, I tell everybody I don't want to get married. I wish someplace I can run away."

"I don't want to disappoint my parents. For my parents happiness I went ahead and get married."

Narr: Because of the economic importance of marriage and the necessity of producing children to continue a kin group, young people in many societies have little say about whom they will marry.

In other cultures, marriage customs acknowledge the social obligations the union implies while allowing the marriage partners some freedom in choosing a spouse.

(Girls singing.)

Narr: The Berber of Morocco are traditionally pastoralists. At Imitchel women find a husband by displaying themselves at a "bride market."

When a man and woman's eyes meet, if she is interested, she drops her veil. A man signals his interest by taking a woman's hand. If she is not interested, she pulls her hand away. The marriage may take place on the same day.

Although physical attraction is the first indication of interest, participants in the "bride market" are well aware that marriage involves more than sexuality.

The reluctance of women to assume the responsibilities of married life is reflected in the practice of "bride capture," still enacted in ritual form in many parts of the world.

Here, a young woman in a village of Nepal expresses ambivalence toward her groom even though she has chosen him herself. She alternately fights and allows herself to be led to his father's house. The marriage is formalized by knocking the heads of bride and groom together.

The importance of the new alliance for village life is symbolized in the gifts presented to the newly married couple. Family members and others present scarves to honor and bless the union. People give in order and amounts that reflect their kinship relation to the bride and groom, as well as the giver's status within the village.

In all parts of the world including North America, family members are intensely interested in whom their children will marry. And although North Americans emphasize romance and avoid talking about the economics of marriage, traditional wedding customs reflect the same issues expressed more directly in some other cultures.

The bride walks down the aisle on her father's arm. He removes her hand from his arm and places it on the arm of the groom. This reflects the "patrilineal" bias of the North American kinship and symbolizes transferring the bride's labor and fertility from her father's kin group to that of the husband.

The bride wears white. In this culture, a symbol of virginity. Virginity is important in the patrilineal system because it helps to insure that a woman's children will be her husband's biological children as well.

The bride's family pays for the wedding, a form of "dowry." In a "dowry system," the bride receives her share of her family's wealth at the time of her wedding.

Weddings may look very different in various parts of the world. But marriage everywhere has the same basic characteristics.

It establishes a "social and economic contract." It assigns "sexual rights." It defines the "social identity" of children, and it sets up an "alliance" between kin groups.

Though love may make the world go round, it is marriage that makes the social world possible.

(People singing.)