Marriage Across Different Cultures. Research Paper

Marriage Across Different Cultures
Author’s Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Date:
Marriage Across Different Cultures
According to Robert Pollak (2007), matrimony refers to a legal union between two people that has no limit to any one specific location. On the other hand, a family is a basic unit of social connection that comprises of parents and children. Divorce is a process that entails dissolving marriage through competent bodies such as a court of law. Marriage form the fundamental basis of most families’ foundations throughout the history of humanity. Nonetheless, different cultures around the world, such as the US and Hispanic, hold on to different traditions surrounding choosing a marriage partner, marriage ceremonies, as well as the rights and obligations of the parties in the marriage (Browning & Chiappori, 1998). The US and Hispanic cultures are used in this study because they depict a sharp contrast in their lifestyles. This paper examines the element of divorce in Hispanic and American cultures. The article will also provide a particular focus on these relationships through the spectrum of the economic theory of bargaining in marriages, marriage contracts, and property issues and division in marriages as contracts economic models.
The study uses the Gale-Shapley model to describe the distribution and sharing of resources between couples in the economic theory of bargaining and marriage. The model is the most preferred approach for examining the marriage market equilibrium whenever the BIM model determines resource redistribution within the family. The Gale-Shapley matching model assumes that potential couples enter into a Binding Agreement in the Marriage Market, which plays a pivotal role in determining the allocation of resources in their prospective families.
The ancient culture of the United States had laws that gave husbands the legal responsibilities to manage and to ownership of their wives and personal property. However, in the Hispanic traditions, the community allowed women to own and manage assets. In the Hispanic culture, a married woman could control and manage both her property as well as that of her husband (Harris & Gedicks, 2003). Moreover, the society gave exclusive rights to women to will and inherited wealth. The latter tradition helped families to stick together because husbands did not solely own the property; hence, there were few rates of divorce. On the contrary, lack of ownership and management rights for women in the United States’ culture gave met the leeway to divorce their wives. Hence, this affected the economic growth due to instability in marriages and time wastage during and after divorce.
Procreation, per se, comes with a lot more responsibilities than the act itself. Such duties include but are not limited to caring for children, providing them with proper education and sound social functions as well as regulating their lines of descent. However, marriages have undergone a significant change over time, taking on a high number of forms. By the late 20th century, the tradition of marriages in the Hispanic culture, and particularly about the ease of divorce and significance of procreation, had begun showing notable changes. At the onset of the 21st century, countries like the Netherlands started to legalize divorce (Harris & Gedicks, 2003). The country went ahead and enforced the law as early as on April 1st, 2001. Subsequently, many western countries emulated the Netherlands with Canada, France, and the United States following that route in that order. Additionally, these countries extended obligations and benefits to women through registration civil unions and partnerships, which were defined differently by these countries.
The Bible maintains that the central function of marriage is ensuring that partners adhere to the rights of the union. Also, the law provides that couples should ensure that they uphold the standard definition and freedoms of the relationship with their children in society. Marriage has a historical tendency to confer legal status to offspring, which, in effect, entitle them to a wide array of privileges established by the traditions of the community in question (Browning & Chiappori, 1998). The most prevalent opportunity set down by traditional marriages for children includes the right to inherit their parents’ property. Inheriting property to children helped to reduce husbands’ dominance over ownership of family property. In effect, this helped to lower rates of divorce in the United States. On the contrary, it marked the begging of the end of women’s rights to manage and own property in Hispanic culture and the onset of divorce.
In many societies, marriage was not always a matter of the couples’ free choice, not until the late 20th century. Before then, parents did not only decide for their offspring who to marry but also decided when to marry. For instance, the Hispanic culture attributes love between spouses to marriage. However, even in Western societies, matrimony was not primarily founded on romantic love in most eras since most parents meticulously chose marriage partners for their children (Browning & Chiappori, 1998). Profound Catholic culture formed the core roots of the Hispanic cultures and the strength of their families and marriages. Therefore, this makes Hispanic marriages to withstand even the hardstand most challenging situations. However, the success rate depicted by Hispanic cultures do not come on a silver plate (Cooter & Ulen, 2016). These families and marriages face and withstand the direct impacts resulting from forced evictions from their foreign and native countries, which, in effect, leave entire families and spouses divided by borders.
Primarily, every person in the Hispanic culture is free to choose their preferred mates. However, elderly family members have a traditional responsibility to keep a close watch to ensure that the said persons make an appropriate choice. Hence, this helps to cement couples and reduce the likelihood of divorce. The average age of marriage among Latinos has increased in the recent past, but it is still relatively lower than the overall median age compared to Americans. Different Latino groups have distinct marital customs and cultural beliefs which defy the infamous American innovations (Browning & Chiappori, 1998). Such cultural practices that are limited to Hispanics include relatively more significant, well-attended, and celebrated weddings whose affairs are catered and hosted by the family of the bride. These traditions include teachings that impede divorce and encourage faithfulness according to Biblical teachings. Research indicates that the present-day Hispanic couples try to uphold teachings from their ancient tradition; the more reasons why there are few rates of divorce.
Americanization and modernization have significantly shaped and influenced the changes in Latino households. However, the sense of responsibility and obligation, especially regarding where an individual owes to their parents and elders, remains unchanged. Hence, this takes on different forms but underscores showing unwavering care and respect for parents and the elderly until death. Manliness and machismo are among the features and traits which are characterized by patriarchy comprehensive, and male to female relationships (Harris & Gedicks, 2003). The relations are further conditioned by the public emphasis on male dominance and control, especially regarding the notable duties of providing protection and care for their families and homes. However, in the Hispanic culture, some of these qualities are somewhat tempered by the ideologies of Marian Catholic, which places women, especially wives and mothers, in a slightly elevated position.
Economic Theory of Bargaining in Marriages
Popular studies on family policies such as the United Kingdom argue that child benefit usually concentrates their presumed focus on the economic and distributions between married couples about the well-being of children, wives, and husbands (Pollak, 2017). Economists who only depend on traditional theories of the family to inform their thinking, would more often than not, learn that their viewpoints are naпve. The prerequisite standard of the occupation of the empirical and theoretical analysis has been until recently, been a prevailing preference theory of the family. The model claims that members of a family act as if they are maximizing on a standard utility function.
Further research on family matters stresses that the collective preference of the ordering of a family may be the result of the dominance of only one family member or the consensus among all the members of the family. However, all these philosophies point to the single fact that the expenditures in any given family are independent of the members of the family that control the resources or receive income (Lundberg & Pollak, 1996). According to the collective preference model, all revenue is drawn to a shared pool and then distributed to maximize a common goal or function, such that the demand behavior of the family is dependent on the family’s total income as opposed to the particular income of each member.
However, opposed to the collective preference model, bargaining in marriage claims that marriages or families determine the allocation of resources and the income of family members by negotiation. According to this model, potential couples foresee the prospective outcome of Bargaining in Marriage when they meet in the market to look for a suiter (Lundberg & Pollak, 1996). The decision of who to settle down with emerges from ranking potential spouses along with foreseeing the utilities resulting from the Bargaining in Marriage. Under this model, the marriage market is the first stage that sets the platform of a multi-faceted game using backward induction (Pollak, 2017). The marriage markets, like the primary role of elders in Hispanic cultures, do not only determine who gets married but also identify, among the married couples, who is married to whom. Subsequently, bargaining determines the allocation of land and property within each marriage. The Gale-Shapley matching model is the most preferred approach for examining the marriage market equilibrium whenever the BIM model determines resource redistribution within the family.
The Gale-Shapley matching model further assumes that potential couples enter into a Binding Agreement in the Marriage Market, which plays a pivotal role in determining the allocation of resources in their prospective families. When bargaining in the marriage model determines the market equilibrium, it assumes that potential spouses predict the likely result in their future negotiation when they meet in the marriage market (Combs, 2006). Hence, every man usually enlists all women from the lowest to the highest ranks. Similarly, each woman also has a ranking for each man. Based on this assumption, the marriage market is the foundation of a multi-phased game determines and solved by backward induction.
Additionally, when Bargaining in Market is the primary approach used to determine allocation within marriage, a modified form of Shapley and Gale matching philosophy is the convention model to examine marriage market equilibrium. This version of the Gale and Shapley framework also proposes that all men have a ranking of women and vice versa. However, the study shows that these rankings are, per se, primitives of the framework (Combs, 2006). However, the prospective outcomes that the spouses predict from BIM replace the notion that the ratings were primitive. Based on these changes, the Gale-Shapley and BIM matching models form incredible alternative options to the standard marriage framework, according to the Koopmans-Beckmann-Shapley-Shubik and BAMM assignment theories.
Moreover, bargaining in marriage and the modified Gale and Shapley matching frameworks are consistent with both non-cooperative and cooperative bargaining theories that exceptionally determine the utilities of potential couples in every prospective union. The initial version of the Gale-Shapley matching model by Chiappori assumes that the distribution factor which mirrors a marriage’s bargaining power exceptionally determines the utilities of a couple and that allocation within every union is Pareto efficient. According to Browning et al., the Gale-Shapley matching model “is particularly attractive in the context of the household since the 'players' have a long-term relationship and are in an environment that does not change much from period to period” (1998, p.1072). Subsequent studies by Chiappori, Lyigun, and Weiss further note that allocation within marriages are often determined by Pareto efficient treaty that potential couples make while still in the marriage market (Browning & Chiappori, 1998). Nonetheless, the Pareto efficiency model is not as attractive as an assumption without the rationale of Browning et al., which claims that allocations in families are outcomes of repeated games.


Figure 1: showing the 1st round of the Gale-Shapley Matching model


Figure 2: showing the 2nd round of the Gale-Shapley Matching model


Figure 3: showing the 3rd round of the ...