Marriage for love or survival?

In response to the question about childbirth outside of marriage in our society I feel that we are the odd man out in a world full of stronger “people based” communities. Western society no longer has what we view as “traditionally family values”. We fight as individuals instead of as a group. It is not out of the norm to have a child outside of marriage because people can support a child alone as a single parent with our types of lifestyles. In a culture where survival was depending on the members of your family would need to establish that family before reproducing. In the book there are different functions explained for certain family members in other cultures that we do not have in our own. The benefit of me having a husband if I lived in a different place may be for monetary reasons or I could get married for the perk of receiving three gifts a year. This would be in contrast of my American dream of a husband who takes me on long walks on the beach. It made me wonder how much those walks are worth when we don’t really take other supports into consideration. The way some of these arrangements were presented to me seemed sterile and more like a business arrangement than an arranged marriage. It was very un-anthropologist of me to give a chuckle when reading about the different forms of bride-compensation. “I will trade you your worker (daughter and now my wife) for this sum of money or goods and she will now become my worker.” I think that in reality I should be laughing at my own culture when I analyze how lousy our “marry out of emotion” program is working out for us. Look at our divorce rates, as we are doomed to a fifty/fifty chance. I think would be indeed risky to marry for “love” if we lived in a society where marriage helped your survival. As I mentioned before I don’t feel that marriage is necessary for survival in the American culture and until it becomes necessary I assume people will continue to marry thoughtlessly.