How Romance Wrecked Traditional Marriage

What is often called "traditional marriage" today is not so much traditional as it is a modern concept of people linking up in some ritual manner to make a family because they love each other. It may be a good idea, but it's not the way marriage was done before the last couple of hundred years. In some places, marriages are still arranged for convenience or some other reason besides love.  

For most of recorded human history, marriage was an arrangement designed to maximize financial stability. Elizabeth Abbott, the author of “A History of Marriage” explains that in ancient times, marriage was intended to unite various parts of a community, cementing beneficial economic relationships. “Because it was a financial arrangement, it was conceived of and operated as such. It was a contract between families. For example, let’s say I’m a printer and you make paper, we might want a marriage between our children because that will improve our businesses.” Even the honeymoon, often called the “bridal tour,” was a communal affair, with parents, siblings, and other close relatives traveling together to reinforce their new familial relationships.

Of course, there were other benefits to marriage. Women needed financial security. Men needed someone to keep house and raise the children. In consideration of those needs, love wasn't a requirement -but an exchange of money often was. Still, long past the age of universal arranged marriages, those factors in selecting a marriage partner lingered on. Then somewhere along the line we got this newfangled idea that "love" should be the main reason to marry a particular person. Read about the history of the institution of marriage at Collectors Weekly.  


That was an extremely shortsighted and poorly researched article. It focused on the upper classes and skilled trades/middle classes, completely ignoring the major section of the population that was poor. It also started in the Middle Ages, completely ignoring the several thousand years of recorded human history prior to that time.

I detest articles like this, as a they give a skewed view of history, and people believe them.
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