Millions of girls are forcibly married during the transitional period between puberty and adulthood. At a stage of vulnerability cultural practices, religious rights and social standards place her in a position where she is catapult into womanhood. An advocate against forced child marriage could argue that child rights, cultural rights, religious rights, right to marry, right to life, right to ...

The Lasting Effect of Sex Ratio Imbalance on Marriage and Family: Evidence from World War II in Russia* How does a shock to sex ratios affect marriage markets and fertility? I use the drastic change in sex ratios caused by World War II to identify the effects of unbalanced sex ratios on Russian women. Using unique data from the Soviet archives, the results indicate that male scarcity led to low...

This article examines the public debate over marriage law to investigate how arguments based on claims about what is natural privilege some relationships while stigmatizing others and justifying discriminatory policies toward sexual minorities. Articles about same-sex marriage appearing in major newspapers were content-coded according to absence or presence of four dimensions of naturalness: ch...

The purpose of the study was to analyze the changing pattern of marriage system of Adivasi Garo community. For the study, Modhupur upazila of Tangail district for Plain Garos and Haluaghat upazila of Mymensingh district for Hill Garos were chosen as the research areas. From these two upazila, six villages were selected randomly for collecting sample population. The sample consisted of 100, taki...

We propose that institutions such as the U.S. Supreme Court can lead individuals to update their perceptions of social norms, in contrast to the mixed evidence on whether institutions shape individuals' personal opinions. We studied reactions to the June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. In a controlled experimental setting, we found that a favorable ruling, when pre...

Marriage is central to understanding historical populations and the family. Not only is marriage the event in the human life cycle which precipitates family formation, but also marriage patterns are the primary surface on which fertility levels are inscribed. Age at marriage and proportion married determine females’ exposure to risk of pregnancy. Since Hajnal demonstrated the primacy of nuptial...

The United States has seen a dramatic shift in support for marriage equality for same-sex couples over the past decade, culminating in a recent gay rights victory in the U.S. Supreme Court.1 Also in the past year, several states have approved marriage rights for same-sex couples through the legislative or initiative process, reflecting the increasing cultural and political acceptance of marriag...