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Arranged Marriages

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Parental choice; Parental mate choice

Definition

An arranged marriage occurs when the decision about whom to marry is made, entirely or in part, by people other than the spouses themselves. Generally, marriages are arranged by parents and/or other close kin (older siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents), though marriage arrangements may also be the purview of lineage heads, tribal elders, clan chiefs, or bureaucratic representatives of state authority.

Introduction

Arranged marriages come in a variety of forms, from those in which the spouses have no part in the decision to marry to those in which the spouses exercise full control; for the sake of clarity, this continuum can be broken into four types:

1. In the strongest form of arranged marriage, marriage decisions are controlled entirely by others, typically parents and/or other senior kin, and spouses have no say in the matter – their consent is neither requested nor needed for the legality or cultural legitimacy of the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Mary K. Shenk

Authors
  1. Mary K. Shenk
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Correspondence to Mary K. Shenk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK

    Gayle Brewer

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Shenk, M.K. (2017). Arranged Marriages. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_134-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_134-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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