Wilson 1

Cecil Wilson
Dr. Teander
Soc 213.4136c
March 12 2014
Marriage is one of the oldest institutions in our history, known to date back to at least
3000 years ago. There is a general consensus among historians that marriage began as a
subjective contract between monogamous men and women with the purpose of making childrearing more efficient. Marriage may have been primarily instrumental in its origin, during
which time the mortality rate of infants plummeted among those who participated in this
newfound institution. During this time, agriculture was experiencing a revolution via the
invention of the plough. As agriculture expanded, child-rearing followed respectively. With the
additional procreation and growth of household chores, marriage became essentially vital to
society. Today, we see that marriage is no longer necessary for these reasons; however, it is
obviously still a very dominant institution in every society around the world. Max Weber and
George Herbert Mead, well-known sociologists of the late 19th century, seem to have played off
of one another as the idea of the self emerged into the realm of sociology. Webers verstehen
studies the motivations of individuals as to why they make particular choices. Although marriage
is prevalent across all societies around the world, the most common reasons are very different. In
America, we glorify the Affective decision to marry. Meads symbolic interaction theory can
help explain this phenomenon. Symbolic interaction theory argues that people ascribe meanings
to situations and actions based upon their micro-interaction with their surrounding society.
Everywhere I look I see the billion dollar marriage industry promoting love as the precursor to
marriage, but its quite rare to hear marriage marketed as an institution of instrumental purposes.

Wilson 2
Both Weber and Mead placed heavy emphasis on the self as a critical element of social action.
Each individual has an image of their desired future engraved in their head and although it may
change, it constantly guides our decision making processes. Each action that we do (or do not do)
has been weighed, consciously or unconsciously, and deemed productive or counterproductive
towards our goals. By this process we see Webers value-rational action emerge. The idea of a
woman getting her Mrs. Degree during her time at college is an example of a value-rational
phenomenon. Although college is primarily an institution of education, I have heard of many
ladies being pressured by their mothers to find a smart, hardworking man while they are in
college. Personally, I believe that the value-rational decision is a subset of the traditional
decision, because individuals generally derive their goals and values from their upbringing. At
the macro level marriage originated as an instrumental institution and has been passed down
through tradition via value-rational decisions at the micro level. As marriage became the social
norm it became critical that it was a pleasant institution and thus the affective analysis became
very important, especially in societies of higher standard of living where the instrumental
analysis is not as critical. In retrospect, it appears that social exchange is the mother of marriage.