This is not an unheard of dynamic in India either. Guy has new wife at home but continues to live his social life as if nothing has changed. This would be particularly true of those families that practice purdah. In areas of Asia that are predominantly Muslim, it can seem like society is all just single men, when a lot of those men actually might have a wife sequestered with in-laws.
Thank you for the link, that was a sweet, thoughtful article.
Yep.
This is a major reason why hazing in its various forms continues to be perpetuated.
My (Korean) parents had an arranged marriage (my mom was 19 at the time; my dad was 29). It wasn’t forced, and my mom could have said no, but she didn’t. My dad actually said no to the first choice (my mom’s sister) and asked for my mom instead (because my mom’s sister wasn’t religious).
Then my mom moved to the US to be with my dad (who already lived there). I can’t even imagine.
My mom was always very supportive of my sister and me choosing our own mates. Well, that is, until we actually started dating, at which point she would sometimes mutter things about how she would do a much better job than we were doing (in particular, she would pick more wealthy husbands from better families). No, I’m doing her a disservice; she left us totally alone, even when other women told her about their highly eligible sons and gave her the contact information. (She’d mention it, but I was usually dating someone at the time, and she knew that.)
I did make a couple of bad mistakes while I was dating, although the guy I ended up marrying is totally awesome, and I don’t want my parents’ marriage at all. My sister is the same (some terrible relationships, great husband; she considers her marriage much better than our parents’). And yet my parents sometimes talk about their friend who is on his fourth? fifth? marriage now – we’ve kind of lost count, there are so many – and sometimes they point out that, for all that Westerners sneer at arranged marriages, theirs has, after all, lasted almost forty years, as mom went through being uprooted from all friends and family and going halfway around the world, as they went as a couple through poverty, as they went through the death of a child – they lasted through a lot of things that many love marriages don’t withstand. And that which I have no idea if my marriage could withstand (although I really hope I don’t have to find out).
I’m going to slide this over to IMHO, since I think it would fit better there.
Nah, that’s just basic payback. “Those damned kids stole my youth and ruined my life - why shouldn’t they suffer as much as I have?”
I was asked over the weekend to post in this thread; but I rarely post on the weekends, so here’s what little I can add. Thanks for asking, btw.
I was heavily, heavily pressured to engage in an arranged marriage and I refused it completely. Part of the reason was I was waaay too young to get married. My parents started putting on the pressure when I was 17 and continued it just as heavy until I moved out at 22.
Another part of the reason was I never had any interest in Indian men. If I had been able to find someone like me, raised here, with American thinking and American ideals, then maybe I might have considered it. All of the Indian men I met through my parents wanted a very traditional marriage, living with his mom, having several children, etc.
I had an Indian boyfriend in college. He was Protestant and South Indian, and one day, he mentioned to me that when we “grew up”, we would be living with his mother. Now, his mother HATED me - she’d told me that I was the whore that had seduced her son. And I knew, at that moment, that with that level of disconnect, this would not be a happy relationship.
I’ve seen other people in arranged marriages. My parents were in one and didn’t get along, but when mom was sick with cancer, dad was completely devoted, as far as I can tell. Now that I am approaching 40 I am no longer as horrified by the thought of arranged marriage as I once was. If your parents love you, they will try to find a good mate for you - it’s as simple as that. If you have loving, honest, strong parents, you will probably end up getting a good match, from a good household.
As to arranged marriages lasting long…I don’t know. I have a bit of a problem with that. If you set up a culture where divorce is extremely taboo, then of course your marriages will last “long”. But that doesn’t mean you know what’s happening inside the marriage, or if they are putting up with each other or what. Or even if that’s better! Is it better to be married and not alone, even if there’s no passion or romance, but you still have a good and faithful companion? Or is it better to end the marriage and be alone?
I don’t have those answers. All I know is arranged marriage is not as horrible as the detractors make it out to be, and not as great as the proponents say it is. I know many love affairs that have ended with marriage - that is expected. Men and women both have quiet (usually non-sexual) love affairs which end with a whimper when the arranged marriage comes along.
All that being said, I still probably wouldn’t have an arranged marriage. I was raised here, even if not born here, and I have internalized a good deal of my mother’s fierce independence. But the number one reason would have to be that I just don’t want kids, ever, and I don’t know any Indian men who don’t want kids. It’s considered part of a Hindu woman’s duty, to bear the next generation. I guess - no, I know - I am a bad Hindu. 
This is more of a N sub continent thing, Punjab and Bengal. The eldest son was the heir and he would eventually inherit the lands and would administer them, but could not dispose of them without consent of other family members. He was also expected to use them for the maintenance of his unmarried or divorced or widowed female relatives as well as parents.
The younger sons would move out and earn their own way, although the brother was expected to at least assist them. Moreover, it was usual for the eldest son to so settle down only after he had married and made a name for himself in a career, often the army or the like.
[QUOTE=Acsenray]
This is not an unheard of dynamic in India either. Guy has new wife at home but continues to live his social life as if nothing has changed. This would be particularly true of those families that practice purdah. In areas of Asia that are predominantly Muslim, it can seem like society is all just single men, when a lot of those men actually might have a wife sequestered with in-laws.
[/QUOTE]
Got to disagree with that assessment.
:: standing ovation ::
Thanks for posting Anaamika 
I’ve noticed this too and was wondering when someone would bring it up. If women were arranged by their parents with strong societal pressure to make the marriage work, it goes on to reason that divorce isn’t going to be simply based on “irreconcilable differences” or end in 55 hours like some pop star’s Vegas wedding.
One thing I was wondering was what even sven said about unattached daughters posing a risk. Are women generally able to find decent jobs in India? If we detach the ability to make a living for yourself from marriage, I wonder how much the rate of arranged or forced marriages would decrease. It seems one way to combat this kind of coercion is to make sure women don’t need to marry; that way there is less pressure for them to be in a marriage in the first place and daughters could be left alone to grow up single if they want.
Has your mom ever told you why she was so hostile to you being more independent? If you can work and support yourself without being married, does that make her see that you don’t need marriage as much as someone who is stuck in a situation that either they marry or starve? In the vein of this thread, have you asked her if ever thought, at the time, that her marriage was wrong and why she would try to force it on you?
Note that I was mostly speaking from a rural West Africa context, where its not arranged marriage as much as forced marriage, often involving young teens. Many families would prefer the girls stay in school, but moving from primary to middle/high school often means they have to stay, often unsupervised, in a larger town. The risk they will get knocked up and have a tough time marrying is just too great. At least a crappy husband still has to feed you and your kids.
You worked in rural West Africa right? Do women who are not virgins just not get married? Its a bit of a barrier everywhere I guess, but is it especially prohibitive there?
Al Jazeera is showcasing a good documentary and accompanying article about forced marriages (child marriage). So far (I’m watching the documentary), it is very interesting.
I am not sure if it is available in the US considering some recent changes, but for those who are not affected or can get around it, it is a good article to read (and so far to watch).
Yes, I worked in rural northern Cameroon. My particular area was a bit unusual about sex. Extra-marital sex was nearly synonymous with prostitution, which was common and subject to very little stigma. It was really one of the few paths available to most women to support themselves, and so it was the norm for unmarried young women. For the most part, one could engage in sex work and otherwise be a respected member of the community.
While some time as a prostitute wouldn’t automatically make you unmarriagable, it didn’t really help things. You could easily end up with a lot of kids with few support structures. I think there was also a lot of worries about young girls getting sexually involved with whatever random guys. Nobody wanted to see their girl exploited by a gross old man or falling for a handsome young road bandit. If they are going to end up having sex one way or the other, it’d be considered better for it to be with someone who the family has vetted and who is obligated to provide steady, reliable support to her and her kids. In a resource-poor area, a marriage proposal from a decent guy is akin to a job offer with a strong contract and a great pension.
Can’t view it from here - one of these days I should see if their Roku channel still works in the U.S. I’ll be kind of bummed if not, but I’m not about to pay for cable TV just for that.
The documentary is on-line, I’m not sure if their TV programming would include it.
But the article is nice, and there is another link to an article written by the teenage reporter.
I finished the video. It was interesting. It is not talking about doing away with arranged marriage completely, but delaying it.
The “well, it worked for me” argument has been one that my own mother has been very keen not to perpetuate. My parents’ marriage was more “arranged meeting” than arranged marriage, and it was my mother’s decision to marry my father, but growing up, my mother was very firm that she would not interfere in my dating life, that mistakes in my relationships (choosing the wrong guy, etc) were mine alone to make, and that I would never ever be pressured into an arranged marriage/meeting*. To the point that when community matchmakers would bring eligible matches to her for me, she would turn them down completely.
Of course, now that I am getting married (and to a non-Indian, no less :eek: 
), it has been made very very clear to me that divorce is still not an option – a wedding happens once, to start a marriage that is for life. Pretty much the same as if our match had been arranged.
*That said, I was pressured into pressing long-term SOs for marriage at around the 2-3 year mark, the reasoning being that by that point, we presumably knew each other well enough to know whether we wanted to make a life together, and if there was, at that point, no shared vision of a future together, then carrying the relationship on further, was a waste of everyone’s time.
Angua,
Given your mother’s semi-orthodox views, how did she look upon dating and sex before marriage?
How about your father?
Dating was fine. Sex, is a completely different story. My mother (and yes, my father too) would be aghast if I ever confirmed that I had had sex before marriage. My mother kinda-sorta suspects, but always expects me to deny when asked.
Even today, despite the fact that we’re in the final throes of wedding preparation, I have to be really careful in letting my mum know that I’m spending the night with my fiancé’s; unless there’s a good reason (we’re going to a tournament together, we had an early start to visit family, etc), casual overnight visiting (and the implications of we’re sharing a bed etc) is still met with this reaction: :dubious:
So here’s the funny thing. I opened this thread this morning and just as I did, my cousin called me to tell me my half-brother is married - arranged marriage of course. I am not close to these half-brothers, but they are decent young men, and both of them are nurses. This half-brother is really fat and very shy, so I don’t think he would have ever been able to get married the old-fashioned way. He nearly has a heart attack at the thought of talking to a girl. I wonder how that wedding night is going to go. :eek:
I don’t know the details yet, but he never met her until he went to India recently.
No. You stay together until death do you part. I clearly remember that where I grew up, in the upstate NY area, I lived amongst a gigantic Indian community. One of the women there, her husband was committed to an insane aslyum. She had two wonderful children she was raising alone. He had tried to harm her and the children. After some years she applied for, and got, a divorce. And the stigma in the community amongst the elders was insane. She was ostracized and unloved. I know a lot of this because no one else would be willing to look after these sweet, sweet children, so I volunteered often, because I loved them and didn’t mind, and made a little money. But there was no doubt she was a second-class citizen.
It doesn’t work like that. It isn’t ever going to be “women don’t need to marry” even if all women make lots of money. It’s in the culture & religion that a woman’s ultimate fulfillment is to cleave to her husband, to make babies, to serve his family. Sita, the paragon of Indian womanhood, is held up to us as an example, and Sita left her home and her palace for fourteen years to go into exile with her husband! Then, she was kidnapped by the evil Ravan. When she was returned to Ram, her husband, the civilians were dubious of her purity, so her husband made her undergo the Agni (fire) test to ensure that Ravan had not touched her (he hadn’t). When the citizens of his kingdom still didn’t believe it, he dumped her and their twin sons into the woods! They were raised by swamis (sages) until teenagehood, at which point they returned to Ram and Sita returned to the Earth, her mother.
That is my role model! Be a good wife! Be a good mother! Be forever subservient to your husband’s whims! Pardon me if I take as my role model Jhansi ki Rani, the queen of Jhansi, who fought against the British and led armed rebellions and rode a horse as good as any man.
Even my rich cousins, who had money to go to college, both majored in Interior Design - a “wife” job if I ever heard one - and married at twenty-one. 21! That’s it! That’s your whole life and then you become your husband’s. Ugh.
As I have grown older, YogSogoth, I have realized that I am very much like my mother - had she been happy. My mother had a horrible, rough life. In comparison, my life, while not sunshine and roses, has been much better. Forget growing up in America, with better nutrition and not worrying about where every meal came from - I had love. I’m sure my mom had dreams of love when she was a teen - doesn’t everyone? And arranged marriages do work, if done well. By every indication, my grandparents were crazy about each other and worked well as a team. I’m sure my mom wanted the same. But her mom died, and then her dad died, and she slaved just to become a nurse and escape India, and then, she went back and married someone beneath her education level, who didn’t have the same work ethic as her, who hadn’t come from hunger, who didn’t understand the terror.
I was born, out of wedlock, to her baby sister, and so she adopted me, and she wanted to mold me into her and yet not her. She wanted an obedient, respectful, subservient daughter. Instead I had a lot of her personality! And a lot of my aunt’s…no woman in the family has that sort of subservient personality. They are all kind of strong.
I never asked her why. There was no “why”. This was a woman who considered that if I styled my hair differently than she desired it was a sign of willful and malicious disobedience and that I was doing it just to hurt her. Normal teenage rebellion was not exactly acceptable.
In the end, I think she was at least somewhat proud of me. She wanted me to stick with the old traditions, though. And just like my mother, I don’t take any traditions I don’t examine thoroughly to see why I would do them. I learned it from her, but she thought somehow I would turn out to be amenable to an arranged marriage.
Instead, I found love. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.