Relevancy of Marital Vows

Marital Vows

Relevance of Marital Vows in the Twenty-First Century

The Mexican government is currently considering legislation that would make every marriage performed a temporary one: Unless both parties agreed to renew it every two years, the marriage would no longer be valid. In a country with a strong Catholic tradition this is a dramatic development indeed, and one that is directly relevant to the way in which marriage is conceived of and practiced today. For while, of course, such a law would have effect only in Mexico, it bespeaks of the kinds of dramatic changes that have overtaken the concept of marriage in the past several decades. The bill has been proposed in acknowledgement of the fact that most marriages do not last for very long:

Lizbeth Rosas, a Mexican congresswoman, proposed a bill to the legislative assembly of the Mexican capital so that the marriages can have a validity period of two years, with optional renewal.

The purpose of this bill is to reduce the divorce process. The congresswoman made the proposal last Tuesday were she stated that civil unions usually last 24 months. This bill could allow couples to separate without hurtful separation trials. (A two-year marriage bill was proposed by Mexican politician)

This is a radical revision of the nature of marriage, about as far from "till death do us part" as one can get and still be working within the concept of marriage.

Even as marriage as a whole has changed (and continues to change rapidly), all aspects of how marriage is defined have also changed. This includes everything from the role that religion plays in religion to the vows that people make as a part of the marriage ceremony. Given the rapid way in which marriage is being redefined, it might seem that the most traditional parts of it would no longer be relevant. After all, in a world in which marriage is legally dictated to be temporary, how important can it be whether a bride wears a white dress or the groom promises fidelity until "death do us part"?

The answer, as Benokraitis describes throughout our textbook, is that vows are often deeply relevant. And this is the case not only for traditional marriages, but also the most untraditional marriages as well. The reason that marital vows retain relevance and importance arises from a broader reason, which is that rituals and ceremonies have been highly significant to human cultures since their very beginning. Indeed, the practice of marking significant moments in life with ceremonial actions may well precede modern humans: There is well-established archaeological evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead with elaborate ceremonies.

The purpose of ritual and ceremony is to mark a change in a person's status. Marriage ceremonies indicate that two or more people have come together to create a family. That they do so through the public declaration of a wedding rather than simply living together (for example) means that there are public aspects of the relationship that is defined at least in part by the wedding vows. This is why vows remain relevant, because they remind both those who are marrying as well as the members of the wider communities in which they live that they are (usually literally) signing up for a particular type of relationship (Bell, 1997).

For example, the marital vows associated with many of the world's established religions emphasize the importance of creating a family for the purpose of producing children. Some marriage vows remind the couple that their religion admonishes that women be subordinate. Other traditional marriage vows touch on the importance of fidelity or honor. By incorporating these concepts into the marriage vows, the community (from whose history the marriage vows will have originally derived and been modified over time) is making its expectations clear with each new marriage.

The above description of marriage vows should make it clear why they should remain relevant in our modern age, especially within the context of traditional marriages. But it is also the case that marital vows remain highly relevant for those in untraditional marriages. The following is a portion of a wedding between two women: