In most cultures throughout the world. there is an expectation that when a person reaches adulthood, marriage should soon follow. In the United States alone, each month upwards of 168 000 couples wed, 1 to love, honor, and respect their chosen life mates until death parts them. The expectation is deep-rooted.

    However, the social functions, purposes, and relevance of marriage are rapidly changing in   2  society, making them less clear-cut than they have teen throughout history. For instance, in a Pew Research Center random polling of over 2 000    3    , fewer than half of all of the adults polled indicated that if a man and a woman plan to spend the rest of their lives together as a couple, it was important that they   4    marry.

    Those of us who choose to marry have    5    reasons why we decide to marry the person we do. There is a   6    , however, in our Western, individualistic culture: We tend to marry for reasons that

benefit ourselves, rather than for reasons that benefit the society at large, such as found in collectivist cultures. Research in Western cultures has found, for example, that the number-one   7    people cite for marrying is to signify a lifelong commitment to someone they love. However, this reason is not the only   8     to why people wed-today, people get married for reasons of commitment, security, and

personal belief systems. The Pew Research Center's recent findings suggest that the main reasons people get married are for    9    happiness and commitment, and bearing and raising children. As the data from this survey show us, there are racial, age, and religious differences in what people   10 to be the main purposes of getting married.

A) vowing

B) mutual

C) individuals

D) consider

E) tendency

F) contemporary

G) response

H) specific

I) legally

J) reason

K) visual

L) pretending

M) substitute

N) equally

0) suggesting