In the eyes of the state, marriage is a secular matter governed by civil law. Religious ceremonies are permitted but must be preceded by a civil marriage. The minimum age for marriage without parental consent or special permission from the local authorities is eighteen for both men and women. The urban marriage rate in the 1960s was considerably higher than the rural one, reflecting the higher percentage of young people living in urban centers. Men generally marry between twenty and thirty years of age, and women, between fifteen and twenty-five. The law assigns equal rights and obligations to both partners in a marriage. Divorce is relatively easy to obtain and no longer carries the social stigma of former times; the divorce rate in the early 1970s was average for Eastern Europe.
Despite changing patterns of family life, most observers find that the cohesive force of the extended family continues to be a factor in contemporary society. In many cases the cohesiveness is perpetuated or even strengthened by modern phenomena, such as the chronic housing shortage and the need for grandparents or other relatives to care for the children of working mothers. The housing shortage has revived the traditional system of several generations of a family sharing the same roof. The pressures of change and the burdens of daily life hold families together, and the traditional sense of family loyalty also seems to survive. Members of such extended families assist each other in finding employment, in gaining admission to special schools, or in obtaining scarce items of food or clothing.
Before World War II Bulgaria had a basically egalitarian peasant society with a simple social structure. A rural-urban division was more significant than class distinctions, which were just beginning to emerge. The Bulgarian nobility of the Middle Ages had been destroyed under Turkish rule and was not restored with the return to monarchy; the small middle class of merchants, industrialists, bureaucrats, and professionals had come into existence since independence in 1878 and lacked tradition; an urban working class was just emerging. Few Bulgarians were more than one or two generations removed from their peasant ancestors, which gave most people a common background.