Editing Wife (section)

==Differences in cultures==
{{Hatnote|The various divisions of the following chapters share the previous terminology in [[English language]], notwithstanding religious and cultural, but also customary differences.}}

===Antiquity===
[[File:Seuso and his wife at Lake Balaton.jpg|thumb|Seuso and his wife]]
Many traditions like a dower, dowry and bride price have long traditions in antiquity. The exchange of any item or value goes back to the oldest sources, and the wedding ring likewise was always used as a symbol for keeping faith to a person.

===Western cultures===

====Historical status====

In ancient Rome, The Emperor [[Augustus]] introduced marriage legislation, the [[Lex Papia Poppaea]], which rewarded marriage and childbearing. The legislation also imposed penalties on young persons who failed to marry and on those who committed adultery. Therefore, marriage and childbearing was made law between the ages of twenty-five and sixty for men, and twenty and fifty for women.<ref>Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola, Noel Lenski, Richard J. A. Talbert, "A Brief History of The Romans" (Oxford University Press; 2 edition, 2013), p. 176.</ref> Women who were Vestal Virgins, were selected between the ages of 6 and 10 to serve as priestesses in the temple of goddess Vesta in the Roman Forum for 30 years after which time they could marry.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mark |first1=Joshua |title=Vestal Virgin |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/Vestal_Virgin/ |website=Ancient History}}</ref> Noble women were known to marry as young as 12 years of age,<ref name="Beryl Rawson 1999 p. 21">Beryl Rawson, "The Roman Family in Italy" (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 21.</ref> whereas women in the lower classes were more likely to marry slightly further into their teenage years.<ref>[[Judith P. Hallett]], Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton University Press, 1984), 142.</ref><ref name=":0">Lauren, Caldwell, "Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity" (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 3–4.</ref> Ancient Roman law required brides to be at least 12 years old, a standard adopted by Roman Catholic [[canon law]]. In ancient Roman law, first marriages to brides aged 12–25 required the consent of the bride and her father, but by the late antique period Roman law permitted women over 25 to marry without parental consent.<ref>Anti Arjava, ''Women and Law in Late Antiquity'' Oxford, 1996, pp. 29–37.</ref> The father had the right and duty to seek a good and useful match for his children, and might arrange a child's [[betrothal]] long before he or she came of age.<ref>Frier, ''A Casebook on Roman Family Law'', p. 66.</ref> To further the interests of their birth families, daughters of the elite would marry into respectable families.<ref name="Beryl Rawson 1986 p. 21">Beryl Rawson, "The Roman Family," in ''The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives'' (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 21 .</ref> If a daughter could prove the proposed husband to be of bad character, she could legitimately refuse the match.<ref name="Beryl Rawson 1986 p. 21"/> The age of lawful consent to a marriage was 12 for maidens and 14 for youths.<ref name="Beryl Rawson 1999 p. 21"/> In late antiquity, Most Roman women seem to have married in their late teens to early twenties, but [[nobiles|noble women]] married younger than those of the lower classes, and an aristocratic maiden was expected to be virgin until her first marriage.<ref>Judith P. Hallett, ''Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family'' (Princeton University Press, 1984), 142.</ref> In late antiquity, under Roman law, daughters inherited equally from their parents if no will was produced.<ref>Antti Arjava, ''Women and law in late antiquity'' Oxford, 1996, p. 63</ref> In addition, Roman law recognized wives' property as legally separate from husbands's property,<ref>A. Arjava, ''Women and law in late antiquity'' Oxford, 1996, 133-154.</ref> as did some legal systems in parts of Europe and colonial Latin America.

[[Christian culture]]s claim to be guided by the [[New Testament]] in regard to their view on the position of a wife in society as well as her marriage. The New Testament condemns divorce for both men and women (1 Cor 7:10–11) and assumes [[monogamy]] on the part of the husband: the wife is to have her "own" husband, and the husband is to have his "own" wife (1 Cor 7:2). In the medieval period, this was understood to mean that a wife should not share a husband with other wives. As a result, divorce was relatively uncommon in the pre-modern West, particularly in the medieval and [[early modern period]], and husbands in the Roman, later medieval and early modern period did not publicly take more than one wife.

In pre-modern times, it was unusual to marry for love alone,<ref>William C. Horne, Making a heaven of hell: the problem of the companionate ideal in English marriage, poetry, 1650–1800 Athens (Georgia), 1993</ref> although it became an ideal in literature by the early modern period.<ref>Frances Burney, Evelina, Lowndes 1778, and Seeber, English Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, Weimar 1999</ref> In the 12th century, the Roman Catholic Church drastically changed legal standards for marital consent by allowing daughters over 12 and sons over 14 to marry without their parents' approval, even if their marriage was made clandestinely.<ref>John Noonan, "The Power to Choose" '' Viator'' 4 (1973) 419–34.</ref> Parish studies have confirmed that late medieval women did sometimes marry against their parents' approval.<ref>J. Sheehan, "The formation and stability of marriage in fourteenth century England" ''Medieval Studies'' 33 (1971) 228–63.</ref> The Roman Catholic Church's policy of considering clandestine marriages and marriages made without parental consent to be valid was controversial, and in the 16th century both the French monarchy and the Lutheran church sought to end these practices, with limited success.<ref>Beatrice Gottlieb, ''The family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age'' Oxford, 1993, pp. 55–56.</ref>

The New Testament made no pronouncements about wives' property rights, which in practice were influenced more by secular laws than religion. Most influential in the pre-modern West was the [[Civil law (legal system)|civil law]], except in English-speaking countries where English [[common law]] emerged in the High Middle Ages. In addition, local customary law influenced wives' property rights; as a result, wives' property rights in the pre-modern West varied widely from region to region. Because wives' property rights and daughters' inheritance rights varied widely from region to region due to differing legal systems, the amount of property a wife might own varied greatly. Under the English common law system, which dates to the later medieval period, daughters and younger sons were usually excluded from landed property if no will was produced. Under English common law, there was a system where a wife with a living husband ("feme couvert") could own little property in her own name.<ref>Elizabeth M. Craik, Marriage and property, Aberdeen 1984</ref> Unable to easily support herself, marriage was very important to most women's economic status. This problem has been dealt with extensively in literature, where the most important reason for women's limited power was the denial of equal education and equal property rights for females.<ref>In the 18th and 19th centuries, which contained much criticism of these facts, see also [[Mary Wollstonecraft]], [[A Vindication of the Rights of Women]], [[Boston]] 1792</ref> The situation was assessed by the English conservative moralist Sir [[William Blackstone]]: "The husband and wife are one, and the husband is the one."<ref>William Blackstone, Commentaries upon the Laws of England</ref> Married women's property rights in the English-speaking world improved with the [[Married Women's Property Act 1882]] and similar legal changes, which allowed wives with living husbands to own property in their own names. Until late in the 20th century, women could in some regions or times sue a man for [[wreath money]] when he took her [[virginity]] without taking her as his wife.<ref>Brockhaus 2004, ''Kranzgeld''.</ref>

If a woman did not want to marry, another option was entering a [[convent]] as a [[nun]].<ref>Though cloisters' practices were not bound by modern national borders, see sources [https://web.archive.org/web/20060301163747/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_3_33/ai_61372238 for Spain], [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v014/14.3mcgough.html for Italy], and [http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=family for Britain]</ref> to become a "[[bride of Christ]]",<ref name="Taking The White Veil">{{cite web|url=http://jesus-messiah.com/charlotte/html/white-veil.html|title=The White Veil|website=jesus-messiah.com|access-date=2 May 2017}}</ref> a state in which her chastity and economic survival would be protected.<ref name="Taking The White Veil"/><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04060a.htm|encyclopedia=The Catholic Encyclopedia|title=Cloister|publisher=newadvent.org}}</ref> Both a wife and a nun wore [[Christian headcovering]], which proclaimed their state of protection by the rights of marriage.<ref>Silvia Evangelisti, Wives, Widows, And Brides Of Christ: Marriage And The Convent In The Historiography Of Early Modern Italy, [http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=5618 Cambridge 2000]</ref> Much more significant than the option of becoming a nun, was the option of non-religious spinsterhood in the West. An unmarried woman, a [[feme sole]], had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name.  As first demonstrated quantitatively by John Hajnal, in the 19th and early 20th centuries the percentage of non-clerical Western women who never married was typically as high as 10–15%, a prevalence of female celibacy never yet documented for any other major traditional civilization.<ref>John Hajnal, "European marriage patterns in perspective" in D.E. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley eds. ''Population in History'' London, 1965.</ref> In addition, early modern Western women married at quite high ages (typically mid to late 20s) relative to other major traditional cultures. The high age at first marriage for Western women has been shown by many parish reconstruction studies to be a traditional Western marriage pattern that dates back at least as early as the mid-16th century.<ref>Michael Flynn, ''The European Demographic System, 1500-1820'' Johns Hopkins, 1981, pp. 124–127.</ref>

====Contemporary status====
In the 20th century, the role of the wife in Western marriage changed in two major ways; the first was the breakthrough from an "institution to companionate marriage";<ref>"Companionship marriage" and "companionate marriage" are synonyms (the latter being the older one), although the term usually refers to a relationship based on equality, it might instead refer to a marriage with mutual interest in their children, {{cite web |url=http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=290368 |title=The Future of Children - Sub-Sections |access-date=2007-03-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070712030304/http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=290368 |archive-date=2007-07-12 }}</ref> for the first time since the Middle Ages, wives became distinct [[legal entities]], and were allowed their own property and allowed to sue. Until then, partners were a single legal entity, but only a husband was allowed to exercise this right, called [[coverture]]. The second change was the drastic alteration of middle and upper-class family life, when in the 1960s these wives began to work outside their home, and with the social acceptance of [[divorce]]s the single-parent family, and [[stepfamily]] or "blended family" as a more "individualized marriage".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=290368|title=Stepfamily as individualized marriage|access-date=2 May 2017|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070712030304/http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=290368|archive-date=12 July 2007}}</ref>

Today, some women may wear a [[wedding ring]] in order to show her status as a wife.<ref>Howard, Vicki. "A 'Real Man's Ring': Gender and the Invention of Tradition." ''Journal of Social History''. Summer 2003 pp. 837–856</ref>

In Western countries today<!--like the [[United Kingdom]] pro KEEP:source from that area, pro HIDE: Source underlines Western tradition exemplified by a uk, non-national source-->, married women usually have an [[education]], a [[profession]] and they (or their husbands) can take time off from their work in a legally procured system of [[ante-natal care]], statutory [[maternity leave]], and they may get [[maternity pay]] or a maternity [[allowance (money)|allowance]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkAndFamilies/DG_10026556|title=Pregnant employees' rights|work=direct.gov.uk}}</ref> The status of marriage, as opposed to unmarried pregnant women, allows the [[spouse]] to be responsible for the child, and to speak on behalf of their wife; a partner is also responsible for the wife's child in states where they are automatically assumed to be the biological legal parent.<ref>Cuckoo's egg in the nest, Spiegel 07, 2007</ref> Vice versa, a wife has more legal authority in some cases when she speaks on behalf of a spouse than she would have if they were not married, e.g. when her spouse is in a coma after an accident, a wife may have the right of advocacy.<ref>The restrictions of her abilities to do this vary immensely even within a legal system, see [http://www.seniorlaw.com/fishman.htm case NY vs. Fishman] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070220202903/http://www.seniorlaw.com/fishman.htm |date=2007-02-20 }}, 2000</ref> If they [[divorce]], she also might receive—or pay—[[alimony]] (see [[Law and divorce around the world]]).

==== Women's income affects the dynamics of heterosexual love relationships ====
{{Tone|date=January 2023}}
The effect of women's income on heterosexual relationships’ dynamics depends on several factors. If the couple has strong traditional values, the income of women will affect men's gender identity and affect their well-being.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=J, H |first1=Brown, Roberts |date=11 Apr 2014 |title=Gender role identity, breadwinner status and psychological well-being in the household. |url=https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/serps |journal=Department of Economics, University of Sheffield |issue=breadwinner status and psychological well-being in the household |access-date=9 May 2022}}</ref> If they have strong liberal values, the income of a woman will make the woman the provider of the house and put the man in a more domestic role. However, in most cases a couple will develop a mutually dependent relationship where the woman's income is needed, but at the same time the woman will do the majority of the housework.

At the beginning of the 1970s the traditional dynamic was that women performed domestic labor and that men worked for income due to the economic pressures in place.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Schwarts, Ganalons Pons |first1=Christian, Pilar |date=2016 |title=Trends in Relative Earnings and Marital Dissolution: Are Wives Who Outearn Their Husbands Still More Likely to Divorce? |url=https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2016.2.4.08 |journal=The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences |volume=2 |issue=Woman equality |pages=218–236 |doi=10.7758/rsf.2016.2.4.08 |pmc=5021537 |pmid=27635418 |s2cid=27543879}}</ref> Eventually, [[Second-wave feminism|second wave feminism]] challenged this dynamic. Starting in the 1980s, correlations between higher income of women and higher rates of divorce began decreasing.<ref name=":1" /> 

The economic independence theory<ref name=":1">{{cite journal |last1=S |first1=Rogers |title=Dollars, Dependency, and Divorce: Four Perspectives on the Role of Wives' Income. |journal=Journal of Marriage and Family |date=2004 |volume=66(1) |issue=Woman equality |pages=59–74 |doi=10.1111/j.1741-3737.2004.00005.x |jstor=3599866 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3599866 |access-date=9 May 2022}}</ref> establishes that if one side of the couple provides more than 60% of the total income of the couple, there is a dependence effect. Therefore, in recent decades women have had a major increase in their economic independence. At the same time, women have had to wrestle with other economic decisions, such as the postponement of [[Mother|motherhood]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Romeu Gordo |first1=Laura |date=2009 |title=Why Are Women Delaying Motherhood in Germany? |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545700903153955 |journal=Feminist Economics |volume=15:4 |issue=Woman equality |pages=57–75 |doi=10.1080/13545700903153955 |access-date=9 May 2022 |s2cid=216643854}}</ref>

===Asia cultures===

====Hinduism====
[[File:Taikō gosai rakutō yūkan no zu.jpg|thumb|16th-century [[Samurai]] [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]] sitting with his wives and concubines.]]
In [[Indo-Aryan languages]], a wife is known as ''Patni'', which means a woman who shares everything in this world with her husband and he does the same, including their identity. Decisions are ideally made in mutual consent. A wife usually takes care of anything inside her household, including the family's health, the children's education, a parent's needs.

The majority of Hindu marriages in rural and traditional India are arranged marriages. Once they find a suitable family (family of same caste, culture and financial status), the boy and the girl see and talk to each other to decide the outcome. In recent times however the western culture has had significant influence and the new generations are more open to the idea of marrying for love.

Indian law has recognized rape, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse of a woman by her husband as crimes. 
In [[Hinduism]], a wife is known as a ''Patni'' or ''Ardhangini'' (similar to "the better half") meaning a part of the husband or his family. In Hinduism, a woman or man can get married, but only have one husband or wife respectively.

In India, women may wear vermilion powder on their foreheads, an ornament called Mangalsutra ({{langx|hi|मंगलसूत्र}}) which is a form of necklace, or rings on their toes (which are not worn by single women) to show their status as married women.

====Buddhism and Chinese folk religions====
[[China]]'s family laws were changed by the [[Communist]] revolution; and in 1950, the [[People's Republic of China]] enacted a comprehensive marriage law including provisions giving the spouses equal rights with regard to ownership and management of marital property.<ref>Britannica 2004, ''Legal limitations on marriage (from family law)''</ref>

====Japan====
In [[Japan]], before enactment of the [[Meiji Constitution|Meiji]] Civil Code of 1898, all of the woman's property such as land or money passed to her husband except for personal clothing and a mirror stand.<ref name="ReferenceA">Britannica, ''Legal limitations on marriage (from family law)''</ref> See [[Women in Japan]], [[Law of Japan]]