Marriage is a universal social institution through which an adult male and an adult female usually involves in marriage relationship and may perpetuate it to meet their reciprocal sexual, emotional, and material needs across the marital life cycle. Relevant literatures reviewed suggested that most of the studies on marriage relationship between Muslim and Santal communities in Bangladesh were culture-specific. In order to fulfill the knowledge gap purpose of the study was to explore and compare marriage relationship, including marital bond development, sexual behavior, and role relationship between Muslim and Santal communities in rural Bangladesh. For this research purpose 100 couples (70 couples for the Muslim and 30 couples for the Santal) out of 380 couples were randomly selected by cluster sampling procedure from the Kalna village situated in the Tanore Upazila of Rajshahi district, Bangladesh. In so doing in-depth interview method with semi-structural questionnaire: Open and close-ended questions was applied for necessary data collection. The collected data were analyzed by Independent Sample T-test to compare marriage relationship, especially marital bond development, marital sexual behavior and marital role relationship between the communities’ couples. The results of the Independent Sample t test showed that there were significant differences in age at marriage for women, sexual frequency, and role relationships among the couples selected between the communities in rural Bangladesh. This study recommends that further cross-cultural research should be done on marital power relationship and marital adjustment across the couples’ life cycle between the two ethnic communities in Bangladesh.

Every family adapts from one generation to another to specific environment in which they live and meet their human needs. In so doing, the couples of the family desire and plan ideal family size and composition and reproduce accordingly. They continue their reproductive behavior until they acquire planned family size. This paper, based on primary data collected from March to October, 2005 including 100 couples chosen by Cluster random sample (70 couples from Muslim community and 30 couples from Santal community), is an attempt to compare and explain family size and composition: ideal, actual, expected and adoption practice between Muslim and Santal communities in rural Bangladesh. Average current age of the study participants was 37.89 for husband and 29.89 for wife of the Muslim sample and 38.39 for husband and 29.04 for wife of the Santal sample. The analyses of independent sample t-tests revealed that there are significant differences in ideal, and expected family size and composition as well as adoption practice, but significant similarities in actual and usual family size and composition between the two communities selected.