marriage, a legally and socially sanctioned union, usually between a man and a woman, that is regulated by laws, rules, customs, beliefs, and attitudes that prescribe the rights and duties of the partners and accords status to their offspring. The universality of marriage within different societies and cultures is attributed to the many basic social and personal functions for which it provides structure, such as sexual gratification and regulation, division of labour between the sexes, economic production and consumption, and satisfaction of personal needs for affection, status, and companionship. Perhaps its strongest function concerns procreation, the care of children and their education and socialization, and regulation of lines of descent. Through the ages, marriages have taken a great number of forms.
By the 21st century the nature of marriage in Western countries—particularly with regard to the significance of procreation and the ease of divorce—had begun to change. In 2000 the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriages; the law came into force on April 1, 2001. Belgium passed a similar law in 2003, except that it limited marriageable partners to those whose national laws allowed such marriages. Court decisions in some Canadian provinces made same-sex marriages legal there in 2002–04. Some Scandinavian countries extended benefits and obligations to same-sex couples by means of a registered domestic partnership or civil union, both of which terms meant different things in different contexts. This type of union was also recognized by some U.S. states.
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