It's a deceptively simple question, with answers as varied as a wedding bouquet.
Economics. Politics. Religion.
Revenge. Heirs.
Survival. And, love. Of course, love. But not until recently, historically speaking.
About the only constant with marriage, it seems, is that it's never been constant at all.
While the Senate recently rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, the issue is unlikely to go away.
And what sometimes gets lost in this stirred-up emotional climate is that the institution of marriage -- its purpose and who can participate -- has always been hotly debated.
"For thousands of years, people have been proclaiming a crisis in marriage and pointing backward to better days," said Stephanie Coontz, director of research and public education at the Chicago-based Council on Contemporary Families, and author of Marriage, a History (Penguin 2006).
But hand-wringing over morals, divorce rates, premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births and blended families dates back to at least the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Same-sex unions, though extremely rare, were sanctioned in some cultures under certain conditions, according to research done by Coontz and others.
What has changed, Coontz said, is that marriage is becoming "more optional and more fragile."
As the news media and interest groups focus on gay couples trying to opt in, a sea of change is quietly occurring among other groups opting out: heterosexuals in their 20s and 30s, cohabiters, midlife professionals who don't feel the need to marry, and low-income couples who feel they can't afford to.
Today, married couples make up about half of all households nationwide; married couples with children represent just 25 percent of all households.
The reasons for forming unions have changed vastly over time, historians say.
In the earliest hunting-and-gathering societies, these unions were a way of uniting tribes and keeping peace.
Ancient Greeks viewed wives as baby-making vessels (they relied on courtesans for pleasure).
When polygamy was common, the Romans promoted monogamy and set the minimum age of grooms at 14 and brides at 12.
Young, yes -- but the average life span then was 25.
Gay and lesbian couplings existed, albeit rarely, and didn't stir up much furor, Coontz said. That's because the concept of "gay" and "lesbian" didn't exist.
An affluent woman in Africa, for example, could choose to play the role of a man to accumulate property. She might become a "female husband" and marry wives who would produce children.
Similarly, a man in an American Indian society who didn't want to be a warrior, preferring spiritual work, could partner with another man.
Around the 12th century, when women's labor was deemed less valuable, dowries were offered to the groom's family.
Dowries and arranged marriages are still common in many cultures, as is the phenomenon of women offering themselves as "mail-order brides" -- a practice that is under increased scrutiny as some brides find themselves in abusive relationships.
Love existed, of course. It just wasn't reason enough to marry.
Remarriage and the blending of families were common, too.
Lives plagued by disease and hard labor led to early death, and it was common for children to be raised by people other than their biological parents.
Annette Atkins, a professor of history at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict near St. Cloud, Minn., points to another eye-opener during the Colonial period: About 40 percent of Puritan brides were pregnant at their weddings.
"In fact, the incidence of unwed motherhood is lower now than then," said Atkins, author of We Grew Up Together (University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Around the late 18th century, a surprising element was connected with marriage: love.
Men drove that notion; women still were motivated primarily by economic survival. Not until the early 20th century did women embrace love and its naughty sister, the sexual revolution.
Things quieted down quite a bit by the 1950s, considered the most marriage-focused decade of all in the United States. But the institution soon began to undergo dramatic change, which continues today.
Interracial marriage wasn't decriminalized in all states until 1967.
In the 1970s, most states no longer designated a husband as "head and master" with control of all property.
Cohabiting became legal.
Gay rights causes picked up steam in the 1980s and '90s. And in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued a ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
Serial monogamy (one marriage after another) is becoming more common, this time because of longer life spans and high divorce rates.
And blended families, also called stepfamilies, are the most common form of American family today; about 65 percent of families nationwide.
So, what do we make of all this?
Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute of Marriage and Public Policy, a Virginia organization that opposes gay marriage, predicts that the debate over who can marry will continue, but that traditional marriage, ultimately, will endure.
Coontz, too, says she believes that marriage will survive and thrive.
"But it is no longer the only game in town. It will have to coexist with cohabitation, remarriage and lifelong singlehood, and gay and lesbian relationships, which are not going back into the closet."
For Coontz, the right question isn't, "What kind of family do you wish everyone lived in?" but, rather, "How do we help every family minimize its weaknesses and build on its strengths?"
It's a question for the ages.
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