Uses and customs of marriage through time
From the institution of both political and religious marriage we can say that it has changed a lot until reaching the current marriage.
The way in which marriage is developed is very varied according to the time and the place where we focus. For example, in ancient Egypt, the woman was considered "golden", she was in charge of administering the home and her property and even with the approval of the parents could choose who to marry. Or we can go to China where the family is the core of society, the man is in charge of the economic support of the family and the woman was strictly destined for domestic life. Marriage for women was an arrangement for convenience and could not have any opinion. It was considered an object rather than a person.
We can see that in each era and place the situations of marriage and family, along with the roles that are handled inside, are very different. But to be able to talk about a change from antiquity to today we would have to have a clearer comparison point of how marriage life has been changing. We should talk about the history of marriage focused on the same place.
Examining our environment in Mexico using two marriages at the beginning of the 60’s. I used my 4 grandparents as a reference and when asked what marriage was like in their time they mentioned that to start when one married it was a commitment to for life, the idea of divorce was not considered. The woman was normally destined to the house and the raising of the children and the man to work and provide the family. Marriages were open to life, families used to be numerous. The woman did not have much educational preparation and did not have much decision power. Free union was very bad and unusual. Machismo governed marriages.
Today’s contrast is quite remarkable in roles and communication. Homosexuality was seen as a sin and it was not something "normal" or "allowed" in society, so the union of these did not exist.
With respect to divorce we can notice the difference according to the statistics of the INEGI that in 1994 for every 100 marriages there were 5% divorces and in 2017 for every 100 marriages there were 28% divorces, so we can significantly see that the increasingly common and normalized divorce;54.2% live in free union or are married. With respect to marriage among the same sexes there is an increase of 1.9%. The birth rate indicates that 6.1 children in the 70’s decreased to 2.1 in 2015 according to the Ministry of the Interior.
With respect to gender roles in Mexico we remain a macho country that has gradually changed in a way that the woman is empowered. From 2000 to 2015, the percentage of female leadership increased by 200% in families.
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