On Marriage & Family: Should We Change Our View?

Almost all known societies recognize marriage. Yes, almost. Different from what most people would know and believe, I learned that there is the Na people in Yunan, China where marriage is absent which thus generate no concept of husband nor father. Men are considered simply as the ‘waterer’ for the land (women) to ‘create’ children.  This simple fact alone indicates that marriage is almost a human universal.

Then, there is a term called family. Do people have to get married to form a family? Is the term ‘family’ necessarily refer to the married couple with its children? Of course not. There are way more intricate facts that constitute what family is or what families are. What about kinship? It turns out that despite the rapid industrialization in some parts of the world, kinship still play an important role in maintaining and securing what constitute a family. For example, where one resides after getting married has something to do or influence what kind of family he/she will have eventually.

Why most culture prohibit incest? Why certain cultures/societies consent poligamy or poliandry? Why certain countries have (until recently) legalized same-sex marriage? Why transnational or/and multicultural families have flourished? What about religion-based marriage? These used to be so incomprehensibly hard to grasp but now...things are changing. And other ‘whys’ that concocts our mind regarding ‘marriage’.

Based on those points of view, we really need to open up our mind to the diverse facts about ‘marriage’ and the consequences that entail its process.
For instance, the fact about postmarital residence is one of the determining factor about what kind of family a woman or a man will have after marriage. In Korea, as we know of, women are supposed to live with her husband’s family/kin after marriage (virilocal residence), but now—to what I know of—more and more married couple prefer to live separately from their parents and form a nuclear family, thus creating an independent household (neolocal residence). The reason is simple, i.e.modern couples’ reluctance to be regarded as inadequate/incapable of managing their new family.
Although less common, there is also a uxorilocal residence where the groom/husband has to move into his wife’s family. ( I was one of these examples).  Not that it is a common practice in Java, it is just that due to some circumstances, I was compelled to live with my wife’s family. Even when we have our own house, I must live with my parents-in-law  because my wife happens to be the only daughter living in the same house. Especially after my father-in-law died, the pressure of having to stay with my wife’s family could not have been greater. We must take care of our mother. And this is a common practice in Java. No matter how desperate we want to form a nuclear family, if you happen to marry the youngest daughter of a family, there are chances ( I said 'chances') that you may have to live with your wife’s family.

Now that some technological advancements have taken places in (at times) an  unprecedented manner, the way people think about their own kinship or family have also changed. Artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, adopted kids by same-sex couples (in some countries) turn out to be a challenging frontier in term of deciding as to whether ‘kinship’ or ‘families’ should be based on (pure) blood ties alone.