Love and Marriage.

I believe marrying for love is more important than marrying for any other reason.  I do see, however, how marriage can be financially, and in many others ways, very stabilizing.  Marriage was invented by someone for a good reason and I think that if it wasn't an important part of every society, it wouldn't be incorporated somehow into almost every culture throughout the entire world.  Although I believe love should be the core of marriage, I see how in some cultures marrying for the legal aspect or for help around the house can be very beneficial.  In many agricultural societies, for example, marriage is a way to ensure that the farmer always has plenty of help running the farm.  Similarly, in polygamist marriages there are many reasons significant to that culture for a man to have multiple wives.  For example, he is much more likely to have a male heir and/or to have more help from his children and wives, etc.  Whatever the reason, it is beneficial in that society.

It makes sense that marriage is important in any society for the financial and legal steadiness.  It is apparent that, in most cases, being married with children is much easier on the parents and the children than a couple being unmarried with children.  It is easier for a married couple to raise and fulfill the needs of their children financially than it is for a single parent.  However, being married without love seems to me to be almost regressive because if a child is raised in a home where the parents do not love each other, that child more often than not grows up understanding a warped sense of what love is.  And it is important for a couple to care for one another while they go through all of the hard times they will have to endure as parents and as human beings in general.