Marriage

Essay by MazubaUniversity, Bachelor'sA, July 2014

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Nearly all individuals in our society, regardless of their socioeconomic location or cultural background, place a high value on marriage, both as a personal relationship and as a social institution. It brings a man and woman from different families together usually with the aim of forming a family. Yet marriage also seems like a fragile institution; high divorce and non-marital childbearing rates are primary witnesses that testify to this vulnerability. The essay discusses the factors that influence marriage and divorce, the current statistics in Zambia and how they compare with those for the year 2000, the uses of those statistics and the possible implication of not using those statistics in planning.

Marriage is defined as a legal union of persons of opposite sex sanctioned by civil, religious or other means recognized by the laws of each country (United Nations, 1953). On the other hand divorce is just the opposite of marriage.

According to (ibid) divorce is defined as the final, legal dissolutions of marriage by a competent authority which confers on the parties the right to remarry under civil, customary or religious law.

According to the marriage framework as explained by Kingley (1990) there are two major factors affecting decisions to marry and divorce. The two major ones are the individual and societal attitudes toward marriage and divorce. The framework has many factors which can be categorized into the predetermined and the intermediate factors. Predetermined factors are social economical and they include: education, housing, employment, wealth, customs and norms. Intermediate factors include demographic factors such as fertility, mortality, migration, age and sex composition.

Firstly, will look at education, it is alleged that education facilitates marital success (Rasul, 2006). Education usually delays marriage for most individuals; people spend more years in school before they can think of marriage. For highly educated...