Marriage is one of the most powerful institutions in our society. it is the foundation to start a family. For years, irrespective of class, caste, religion, race, or country, the ritual of marriage has been taking place in our society and of course, the form of marriage was heterosexual. Although many countries have accepted the homosexual form of marriage. But in modern times the institution of marriage is crumbling.

For centuries, the marriage did much of the work that markets and governments do today. It organized the production and distribution of goods and people. It set up political, economic, and military alliances. It coordinated the division of labor by gender and age. So, initially, it took place for the sake of political and economic gain and not for love. Then, in marriages love is not a prerequisite.

The question has been rising for centuries, which gender was rewarded most from this institution? For whom it was/is vital to conduct this ceremony. For centuries we have been told the story that marriage is invented for the protection of women. According to an Anglo -American anthropological theory,

“The man hunted wild animals and feasted on their meat. Their brains became very large because they had to cooperate with each other in the hunt. They stood upright, made tools, built fires, and invented language. Their cave art was very fine, but the women were very poor. They were tied down by childbearing, and they did not get food for themselves or their babies. They did not know how to protect themselves from predators. They did not know, too, how to make tools to produce art and build lodges or campfires to keep themselves warm.”

But since the 1970s other researchers have poked holes in the protective theory of marriage. Some denied that male dominance and female dependence came to us from our primate ancestors. Among chimpanzees, most food-sharing occurs between mothers and their offspring, not between male and female sexual partners. Adult female chimps give food to other females just as often as males give food to females and female chimps are more protective of other females than males are. They pointed out that among Baboons, a female who pairs up with a male does not get more access to food than females outside such a relationship.

Studies of actual human hunting and gathering societies also threw doubt on the male provider theory. In such societies, women’s foraging, not men’s hunting, usually contributes the bulk of the group’s food. Nor are women in foraging societies tied down by child-rearing. One anthropologist, working with an African hunter-gatherer society during the 1960s calculated that an adult woman typically walked about 12 miles a day gathering food and bought home anywhere from fifteen to three pounds. A woman with a child under two covered the same amount of ground and bought back the same amount of food while she carried her child in a sling allowing the child to nurse add the woman did her foraging. in many societies women also participate in hunting.

Ancient folk tales also support the argument. According to the interesting folktale of Blackfoot Indians,

“the men and women of the ancient Piegans did not live about together in the beginning. The women made buffalo corrals. Their lodges were fine. They tanned the buffalo hides, those were their robs. They would cut the meat into slices. In summer they picked berries. They used those in winter. Their lodges all were fine inside. And their things were just fine…… NOW the man were very poor. They had no lodges. They were raw hides. They did not know how they should make lodges. They did not know how they should tan the buffalo- hides. They did not know, too, how they should cut the dried meat, how they should sew their clothes. Hungary and cold, the man followed the women and found out where they lived. then they gathered on a nearby hill and waited patiently until the woman decided to choose husbands and allow them into their lodges. the female chief selected their mate first, and the rest of the women followed suit.”

In the Blackfoot legend, it was the man, not the woman, who needed marriage. Many 20th-century researchers have found the same that women did not need marriage and marriage was not invented for the protection of women.

NOTE:- if you want to read more about marriage then you can read writer Stephanie Coontz book " Marrriage, a History"