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Romantic Love and Family Organization: A Case for Romantic Love as a Biosocial Universal
The authors propose that romantic love is a biosocial phenomenon that may well be a universal and that its cultural aspects are a
product of social conditions. This position is unique because romantic love is promoted as a cultural rather than social
universal. We argue that culture, social, and psychological phenomena are too frequently conflated and their core definitional
features underdefined by researchers. Culture refers to learned practices that have collectively shared meanings to the
members of a society. Under social conditions in which romantic love does not confer reproductive and health advantages to a
mother and child, it will often be suppressed, undeveloped, and rejected as a cultural component. Through a cross-cultural
study, we show that female status and family organization are important features that help in regulating the sociocultural
importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage.