Final answer:
Marriage is considered universal due to its role in providing a structured environment for the production and nurturing of offspring, reducing mate competition, and creating stable socioeconomic households. It also serves to form political and economic alliances. Rules such as endogamy and exogamy govern marriage within cultures, underlining its adaptive nature across societies.
Step-by-step explanation:
One approach that explains why marriage is universal revolves around its role as a structured environment for addressing common familial challenges such as raising and nurturing offspring, decreasing mate competition, and creating stable socio-economic units. These established unions serve not only for procreation but also for forming alliances and even providing economic or political advantages. Societal norms dictate the rules of who individuals should marry (endogamy) and who is considered inappropriate for marriage (exogamy),
In American and European cultures, serial monogamy—a cycle of marriage-divorce-remarriage—is common, while other cultures practice polygamy, often based on the society's foundational structure, like the agricultural benefits of having multiple children to aid in farming. Furthermore, the practice and form of marriage continue to evolve, as seen in Iceland's embrace of unmarried, committed partnerships, and the worldwide legal recognition of same-sex marriage, affirming that the marriage institution is not static but adaptive.
Anthropologists identify monogamy and polygamy as the primary marriage forms, with the former being especially suitable for societies where small family units are more beneficial. Questions around whether marriage should continue to be valued in the same way by society are present in current discourse, highlighting its changing relevance within different cultures and generations.