Marriage is the union of 2 people whom we call spouses. According to customs, it is a promise of mutual faithfulness until death, but from experience, marriage has not live up to this expectation. Whence question of it being valid or not: legal validity or custom validity or religion or practical validity. According to social customs, marriage is valid to perpetuate human race while showing respect to the religious customs of the time. A decline in religious values has brought about a drop in the importance of marriage. Long ago, there was arranged marriages but slowly diverged to love marriages. Love marriage took a while to be accepted by the orthodox but eventually was approved. Nowadays, youngsters are more into live-in relationships. They prefer to create a live-in relationship without even considering the civil or religious aspect of marriage. Hence, due to this, marriage has lost its primary value.
Moreover, in the past, divorce was a taboo. No married woman could ever contemplate the possibility of divorce. Marriage has become so problematic that governments have come to expeditious legal procedures to accelerate the process of divorce. Divorce is due to problems such as domestic violence, unfaithfulness, and many more. So much of our marriage is at risk. This ease in divorce has certainly taken the edge off marriage. People marry and divorce within short period of time. So we understand that marriage has lost its former validity. Another social issue is sexual promiscuity, as our customs have relaxed in women taking jobs in practically all departments and tendency to stray from the right sexual path. By forming new amorous relations, they drive away their sexual frustration. However youngsters are being victims of this image. South Africa passed laws to curb a sexual pregnancy. About 25,000 students are either pregnant or are mothers. So to limit the damage, new laws are being applied.