One of my major takeaways from this project has been that the word marriage is as subjective as the word love: the meaning of marriage is fluid and holds different significance for each and every individual. Over the course of my interviews with friends, family, and strangers, I realized that each person defines marriage in their own way, for marriage is a concept of multitudes. Even within a couple, individuals can define marriage very differently. As we gathered a large pool of responses from our personal circles – including married individuals, divorced individuals, and single adults – I think we were constantly surprised by the range and depth of responses we received to the simple question: What does marriage mean to you?  Upon first thought, marriage seems like an easy thing to define, but when you really think about it, marriage is vastly complex, complicated, and at times confusing; yet, marriage can also be seen as this beautiful thing humanity has created and maintained.  I was also struck by a quote from our interview with Professor Dominy: although human longevity is longer and senescence is delayed, marriage remains because it is a case where culture and society actually overpowers the innate biology of our body.

I texted my group chat of closest friends one day asking them to send me 1-2 sentences about what marriage means to them, and I was shocked by how quickly I received messages from all my best friends. I was so impressed by the depth of meaning in their responses, especially because most of us are pessimistically single and marriage is not a conversation we commonly have. Yet I found myself also left with the question: Why do we continue to hold marriage up to the highest of standards, idealize it, and romanticize it, even with a near 60% divorce rate in current American society? Maybe it is because marriage is an innate tendency: the desire to wed a loved one exists in all of us, as proof that we are intrinsically good. I believe that the idea that we should want to devote ourselves to an individual for the rest of our lives – care for them, love them, raise children with them – is at its core a reflection of the deepest motivations and desires of humankind. Marriage is indeed a reflection of what can be right in society. Yet marriage has become something society says needs or should occur, even when it is not right.

I talked to my cousin who just got married this past October, and she told me she has a lot of friends who recently got married because of societal pressure and because they felt like it was the logical next step in their relationship. However, a lot of these friends then got divorced just a few months after their wedding.  It became clear through this conversation how difficult it is for people in contemporary American society to step outside social norms and challenge the institution that is marriage, especially when society offers so many benefits to married couples that they do not offer to single individuals. Another really interesting conversation I had occurred at the Book Arts Workshop while we were creating out book. We met a couple there creating their wedding invitations and thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to gain yet another perspective on marriage (obviously expecting a positive one). However, the couple replied to our question that, “Marriage is a pain in the ass. It’s a death wish. Well, actually, wedding as a verb is a pain in the ass. Marriage will be fine.” At first, I was shocked by this response, but it then began to make sense: this couple was stressed out over planning a wedding to formalize a relationship and commitment just because society tells them that is what they should do.  It is clear that the pressure society and culture puts on marriage has detrimental effects and is a major driving force of the high divorce rate in American society.

One really interesting article I read (as recommended by Professor Dominy) was on the idea of emerging adulthood as a new way of coming of age. The article introduced the idea of emerging adulthood as the developmental period between adolescence and young adulthood; it is marked by identity exploration, the age of feeling in-between, and the age of possibilities where optimism is high and people have unparalleled opportunity to transform their lives. This idea of emerging adulthood really resonated with the stage of life I feel I am currently in: I have noticed a marked difference in the way I have approached these aspects of life in the last two years, and I believe these changes will persist for another few years. For example, one component of emerging adulthood is that individuals become more considerate of other’s people’s feelings and are better at understanding others’ point of view. This quality comes out especially in their relationships with their parents: I have personally noticed a shift in viewing my parents as persons, not merely parents. Another aspect of emerging adulthood is a sense of self-focus, one which drives you to figure out who you are and your place in the world. The reason the concept of emerging adulthood is so important is because the median age at which most individuals surveyed felt like adults was remarkably also the median age of marriage: 26. This supports the idea that individuals feel as though they should be complete, whole persons before they enter into marriage. Because marriage has so much to do with your capacity to relate to individuals, care for them, and demonstrate empathy, in a lot of ways it is difficult to transition straight from adolescence to marriage and adulthood (Arnett 2006).

In terms of the link between anthropology and biology, I think marriage is a really interesting example of how anthropology and biology can adapt and change in relation to each other.  There are clear biological origins to marriage, and there are biological and health consequences to marriage.  However, these biological factors have changed as the institution of marriage has changed and adapted to a constantly evolving culture.  I find it fascinating that from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, marriage perhaps doesn’t make that much sense because the high reproductive costs of childrearing end once a child reaches an age of independence.  However, I don’t foresee the pressure to get married ever going away, and because of that, is it actually ingrained in our brains?  Is it a larger part of our biology and evolutionary history than we can even see or understand?

Overall, I have truly enjoyed exploring the rite of passage that is marriage for this project.  It has challenged me to view the institution of marriage in a multitude of new ways.  Prior to completing this project, I viewed marriage as an inevitable: someday I would meet a person I would want to spend the rest of my life with, and we would formalize that commitment through marriage.  For me, marriage is largely defined in the realm of the sacred, and so I hope to one day get married in a church.  However, now that I’ve completed this project, my view of marriage has become far more skeptical than the previous idealism I possessed; I am far more realistic and aware of what marriage has come to mean to many in the 21st century, and I have developed a better understanding of the role of society, culture, and biology in marriage.  I’m very happy we chose to pursue marriage for this project; because of its ubiquitous nature, I was able to reach out to my parents, my cousins, my friends, my professors, my brother, and strangers in the library, and asking about marriage provided a window into their own sense of humanity.  I’ve learned that people and relationships contain multitudes, and as a result, marriage is a complex, complicated, multifaceted rite of passage that is impacted by nearly every aspect of the lives we lead.