Marriage Partner Selection

Selecting a marriage partner is very much a culturally defined process.  The rules governing selection vary widely from society to society and are often complex.  How would you go about selecting a long-term mate?  Where would you begin?  What criteria would you use?  Would you take the views and wishes of your relatives and friends into consideration?

	Padaung woman (Thailand)

When we look around the world to see how other societies deal with these questions, it is clear that love and sexual compatibility are not always the basis for selecting a spouse.  However, when romantic love is an important criterion, physical beauty is frequently a key factor.  Age, health, body shape, and especially facial appearance are usually the focus.  What is considered to be attractive varies considerably from culture to culture.  For instance, if you grew up in the Padaung tribal culture of Thailand, you probably would consider the woman shown on the right with heavy neck rings to be unusually desirable.

It is clear that concepts of beauty are not universal. Some traditional societies of Africa and the South Pacific define large, plump bodies as being attractive, especially for women.  Europeans and North Americans today usually define such a body shape as being unhealthy and even ugly.  However, ideals of beauty change over time.  The slender people shown in the photo on the left below may be an ideal today, but in 18th and19th century Europe, they generally would not have been considered plump enough to be pretty.  Renoir's sketch of a woman shown below on the right reflects this preference for plumper bodies.

Common North American and European Cultural ideal of beauty		19th century European preference for heavier female bodies (sketch by Auguste Renoir)

In China, round "moon-shaped" faces, like the one shown below on the left, have been considered exceptionally beautiful.  In contrast, angular Northern European faces, like the one on the right below, have been viewed as being undesirable.  Similarly, long-legged Europeans have often been stereotyped as being unattractively stork-like.  The Chinese also have traditionally thought that large female feet are ugly.  Prior to 1949, rich families sometimes bound the feet of their daughters tightly with cloth wrappings so as to stunt their growth.  This of course resulted in severe foot deformities that prevented them from walking normally.  However, it made it much easier for them to marry a rich man since they were now more attractive.  Over the last two decades, mainland China has rapidly industrialized and developed modern high-rise cities.  They have also begun to emulate the life-styles of North America and Europe.  This has resulted in a change in middle class concepts of beauty.  Taller Chinese men and women are increasingly viewed as being more attractive and successful.  Subsequently, there is a thriving business in surgery to increase leg length.  It is also becoming popular for women to use makeup and even plastic surgery to acquire more European-like faces.

Comparison of traditional Chinese and European concepts of beauty

The Chinese are no more prejudiced about appearance than are people from other parts of the world.  Ethnocentric values universally play an important part in our perceptions of beauty.  However, some psychologists have suggested that in all societies the essence of beauty is a symmetrical face and body.  For instance, having the same shape eyes equidistant from the center line of the face and at the same elevation on the head would be universally considered attractive.  Individual cultural differences come into play in favoring particular shapes, sizes, and colors of eyes.  It has been suggested that body asymmetry can indicate other hidden genetic abnormalities.  If that is the case, preference for symmetry could have evolutionary advantages.

An arranged marriage in contemporary India

Personality, education, wealth, and other individual characteristics also are important mate selection criteria in many societies.  In fact, they may be far more important than physical beauty.  In India, the parents of young middle class urban women seeking a husband commonly place an add in newspapers.  These adds prominently mention the potential bride's college degrees, caste , and implied potential for paying a large dowry .

	Passionate kissing in public (a Western image of romantic love that makes many people in the Middle East and East Asia very uncomfortable)

Television, cinema, and other largely Western dominated mass media have been responsible for spreading the notion of romantic love around the world.  In previously more isolated nations, such as Nepal, the increasing stress on romantic love has been disruptive of traditional marriage practices in which two brothers marry the same women.  The Western version of romantic love fosters the desire for exclusive emotional attachments which undermines marriages in which a spouse must be shared.

Arranged marriages have been common throughout the world.  This is due to two principal considerations.  First, a marriage unites two families, not just two people.  All of a family's members become obligated by the marriage of one of its members.  In addition, marriages can be valuable tools in creating alliances and, therefore, must be considered carefully and even negotiated.  Secondly, mate selection is seen as being too important a decision to be left up to inexperienced young people, especially if they have had little contact with members of the opposite gender.  Parents are presumed to have the experience needed to help their children find a mate who is appropriate for them.

In some nations, the legal system encourages arranged marriages.  In Pakistan, for instance, the law prohibits women from marrying without parental consent.  This is based on Islamic teachings in the Koran that require fathers to protect their daughters.  This obligation has been interpreted as advocating arranged marriages.  Specifically, it is seen as a father's duty to find suitable husbands for his daughters, however, he should not force them into unwanted marriages.

It is common for people today in the Western World to strongly reject the idea of arranged marriages and to consider them to be barbaric infringements on the "universal human rights" of young adults and especially of women.  However, it is useful to suspend our own ethnocentric views on this matter in order to understand why arranged marriages continue to be popular in some societies.  In addition to being integral parts of their cultural traditions, arranged marriages are usually seen as being better for the young people getting married and for the community in general because they are thought to result in lasting marriages, and they bring families together.  In contrast, basing marriage selection on romantic love alone is often a socially isolating process.  The intense romantic focus on one other individual can separate people from their families and friends.  It is common for newly married couples in the Western World to set up their own independent household which may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from family members.  This life apart is an appalling prospect for people in traditional societies that practice arranged marriages.  It is also an ethnocentric projection to see arranged marriages as being inevitably loveless.  In societies that have them, married couples often become loving life-partners.  Their marriages set them on a path of discovery to love.  In the West, marriage is usually at the end of this path.  In both cases, the destination is the same.   

Source: http://anthro.palomar.edu/marriage/marriage_1.htm