A wife is a female spouse, or participant in a marriage.
Wife seems to be a close term to bride, the latter is a female participant in a wedding ceremony, while a wife is a married woman after the wedding, during her marriage.
If male, was known as the bridegroom during the wedding, and within the marriage is called her husband. Upon marriage, she or her family may have brought her husband a dowry, or the husband or his family may have needed to pay a bride price to the family of his bride, or both were exchanged between the families the dowry not only supported the establishment of a household, but also served as a condition that if the husband committed grave offences upon his wife, the dowry had to be returned to the wife or her family.
A former wife whose spouse is deceased is a widow, and may be left with a dower to support her as dowager.
Wife refers especially to the form in relation to the spouse and offspring, a term that puts a woman into the context of her children. Also compare the similar sounding midwife, a person assisting in childbirth.
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 for the first time, wives became distinct legal entities, and were allowed their own property and allowed to sue.
Wife and husband were a single legal entity, but only the husband was allowed to exercise this right. 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 divorces the single parent family.
Today, a woman may wear a wedding ring in order to show her status as a wife.
In Western countries today, married women may have education, a profession and 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.
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 his or her wife a husband is also responsible for the wife child in states where he is automatically assumed to be the biological father.
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