CHAPTER 10
Prelude to Family: Marriage
In an individual’s life cycle, there are four important milestones, with several rites associated with each of them. They are generally referred to as rites des passage (rites of passage). These milestones are birth, initiation, marriage, and death. We have highlighted the importance of birth for a society as the principal source of recruitment and replacement of its members. The phenomenon of birth is the product of sexual union between persons of opposite sexes. Through marriage, the sexual union is socially recognized, in the sense that parenthood of children born out of this union is acknowledged. Marriage lays the foundation for the nuclear family.
Marriage is a social institution comprising a mating ...
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