الزواج في العراق : أنماطه و أشكاله و سياقاته الثقافية و التاريخية

Abstract EN

Marriage is a global phenomenon that forms the basic building block of all formations that are based on blood bonding, such as the nuclear family and the extended family, the kinship units, the lineage strains, etc.

Marriage establishes a legal and social relationship between a man and a woman, or more in some societies, and this relationship includes the right of children born with the legitimate affiliation to the father’s family mostly or to the father and mother’s family in some societies.

Marriage involves an exchange between two families: a woman leaves her family to join her husband's family, and an amount of money, dowry, is transferred from the husband’s family to the woman’s family Marriage, like other social structures, is affected by economic, social and cultural transformations.

As the prevailing pattern of marriage may change, the age of marriage between the sexes may increase as a result of the spread of education and / or the high cost of living and marriage, and the rate of underage marriage may increase as a result of migration and displacement and the resulting impoverishment and disintegration of the family.

In the Iraq of the forties and the end of Iraq in the nineties of the century, development projects and the acceleration of the process of urbanization and the spread of education among all groups of the people helped the spread of external marriage at the expense of internal marriage, and the change of personal status laws at the end of the fifties of the last century, which stipulated the prevention of underage marriage An end to prejudicial patterns of marriage for a woman .

However, the pace of these changes began to decline during the past five decades.

As a result of wars in general and the blockade in particular, structural changes occurred, which were manifested by the disintegration of social structures, the disruption of the social and family fabric, and the dissolution of the group, sect or clan, and identification with it.

These changes were accompanied by the domination of sectarian rhetoric and sectarian violence, especially after the American occupation of Iraq, and by sectarian screening in urban neighbourhoods after the 2006 sectarian strife.

These changes resulted in a decrease in the external marriage and some ending in divorce, a huge increase in the number of widows and divorced women, and the prevalence of underage marriage and marriage outside the court.