Curse of Arranged or Forced Marriages

#11 Posted by tahmed32 on October 30, 2007 5:59:54 pm
It all depends on who arranged the marriage.

21 Posted by tahmed32 on October 31, 2007 6:48:37 am
jang #18 Is it true that as an innocent 16 year old child, you are being forced into marriage with a 70 year old woman out of economic necessity?


#20 Posted by tahmed32 on October 31, 2007 6:47:04 am
"Basically they can provide you a pool of deserving candidates to evaluate for mating,"

So, do you interview these "deserving candidates" one by one as they sit in the waiting room?
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Ahmed
You sceptic who and why did you marry .As an Adult Paki male Marriage was forced on you.There is always a third option not to marry. if youdont want to

#19 yar we are talking about survival of the species here..evolution is at stake. this kinda tinkering is worst than green-house gases. let the prospective mates sniff each other and decode those mysterious pheromones.

The article reminded me of the way arranged marriages took place in Delhi during the 1960s. Fortunately, the model has evolved a lot since then. Going by what is happening in the circle that I am familiar with in India, it seems that their are two models working now; either it's a boy-meets-girl in college or at workplace, fall in love, and present a fait-accompli to their parents who, then, present it to the society as an arranged marriage, or what one might call a post-arranged marriage. In the other increasingly popular approach, the parents search for a suitable match through family and friends and increasingly through matrimonial ads. and after making their selection, introduce the boy and girl to each other. In either case, the boy and girl seem to have the final say in the matter. This model is perhaps limited to the middle class and urban society.

The author's relating arranged marriage to his experience with his students seem to be somewhat far-fetched.

In all the years in uk I have not yet met a white couple who have married outside their class, even though there are ostensibly no barriers for them to marry outside their class, there must be some unwritten rules whereby they tend to stick to their own class.

BTW I have met a sikh couple who are first cousins and their’s was a love marriage.

jang #18 Is it true that as an innocent 16 year old child, you are being forced into marriage with a 70 year old woman out of economic necessity?

"Basically they can provide you a pool of deserving candidates to evaluate for mating,"

So, do you interview these "deserving candidates" one by one as they sit in the waiting room?

Re:jang#18
Jang, marriage is very similar to recruitment, except that it is a much more binding and long-term commitment. It makes no sense to do that on your own without a support system. Parents are like the HR department that screens resumes before a hiring manager starts interviewing. That way the riff-raff doesnt show up and waste the manager's time. Basically they can provide you a pool of deserving candidates to evaluate for mating, thus reducing the irrationality, but also enabling you to avoid making disastrous decisions in your life.

Just as a HR department cannot force the hiring manager, parents shouldnt force anything and leave the final choice to the person getting hitched.

#14 ranjit, what parents bring is codified rigid baggage collected over generations. this is what is the big problem. what is necessary is natural mutation occuring out of "irrational" choices and associatd responsibility grown out of that. with arranged marriage the couple only has a partial responsibility ..many are not even financially independent of their parents and procreating.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287211,00.html


Because Mom Said So: Are Arranged Marriages the Next Big Trend?

Still looking for "the one"? Ask your mama.

The best way to find your partner for life could very well be the oldest: the arranged marriage, according to one trend expert.

“Today is the era of the arranged couple who fall into love around the birth of the first child," said Marian Salzman, co-author of "Next Now: Trends for the Future."

"It sounds traditional, but in some ways so much of the future is back to the past, turbo-charged,” she said.

Arranged marriages have been part of many cultures for thousands of years, primarily born out of the desire and/or need for a financial, political or property-based partnership. As America expanded multi-culturally, this custom filtered through as certain ethnic groups sought to preserve cultural and class traditions.

But, contrary to the "old" arranged marriage, in which children are forbidden from choosing their own partners, the modern arranged marriage is not about being forced into federation. It’s about relying on the matchmaking mastery of Mom and Dad.

“This is about picking a marriage partner — not about falling into bed for a world-class romance," said Salzman, whose trend forecasts are based on pattern recognition and what stylemakers are talking about.

“There is a newfound interest in letting someone else solve the love dilemma,” she explained. “We’re on option overload, and we’re maxed out in terms of time, and we’d all love a partner. So it makes sense to enlist those who know us best to forge a proper and satisfying match.”

But are parents really the best people to hook up their children? They can be, says Sloane Veshinski, a Hollywood-based marriage and family therapist.

“Your parents usually know you best of all and are aware of an adult child’s likes and dislikes, habits, peculiarities, turn-ons and turn-offs and other factors that would determine a suitable and acceptable mate,” she said.

According to Salzman, the first stage in the modern-day arranged marriage involves meeting the partner put forward by the family for a limited time in a controlled environment.

If these initial meetings go well, the next meetings are designed to elevate interest.

“In the best case there is a seamless and joyful transformation of two extended families as the romance and energy of planning a wedding heats up,” said Salzman. “The bonds between son and parents and daughter and parents are often very much strengthened through this type of involved courtship.”

One such woman who has been happily hitched for 14 years — thanks to her folks’ marriage pick — is 38-year-old Tomoko Chibana.

“I always knew my parents would find me a lovely gentleman, so I was able to concentrate very hard on my professional studies while at university,” said Chibana, who was born in Japan and now lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.

“I never had to waste time looking for love. After graduation I started working, got married and had a family.”

Chibana believes that one of the primary misconceptions of arranged marriage is that just because it is a traditional concept, it must mean traditional male/female duties.

“I am more than just a housewife,” she declared. “I am a career woman who has traveled the world and built my own fortune independent from my husband as well.”

But despite Chibana’s happy ending, arranged marriage is not for everyone, Veshinski warns.

“For those individuals who are independent-minded, lack a truly close relationship with their parents or who believe that it is their job to pick a future life partner, this is not for them,” she said. “There should never be a pressure to be a part of an assisted marriage situation if you trust no one's judgment but your own.”

Carlo Machado, a 42-year-old businessman who was born and raised in California by Venezuelan parents, has no regrets about backing out of an arranged marriage, even though he's been divorced twice since then.

“Thirteen years ago I was engaged to a lovely young girl my mother and father had chosen on my behalf,” said Machado. “But she was just 18 and getting ready to come all the way to America. The few times we had met she just cried about leaving her family, we had no common interests and it was clear we were worlds apart.”

Despite Salzman's prediction, most experts believe arranged marriages will never be commonplace in America.

“We're too individualistic, too much into personal freedom," said Dr. Robert Epstein, a visiting psychology scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and host of the satellite radio program "Psyched!"

"On the other hand, I think the way we seek love will change, in part because of what we can learn from arranged marriages in other cultures. We leave love entirely to chance, but in many arranged marriages, people deliberately learn to love over time."

So is it really possible that just by giving it a go, a solid relationship can grow out of an arrangement?

“There have been many arranged marriages that started out as being for the family, power, property and procreation, and love grew out of that bond,” Veshinski said. “It is believed that assisted marriage is about having others help to go through the stack of potential spouses to find those that meet the criteria for top-10 status, so that the potential bride or groom can have a smaller but more appropriate pool to choose from.”

Salzman said arranged marriage makes sense in a world in which the search for "the one" has disappointed so many people.

“I think of so many of my friends who married for lust or ‘true love,’ and most are now divorced, cheating or lost in therapy,” said Salzman. “Who knows what true love is? Thus we seek true partnership — and we rely upon others to help us pick suitable partners.”

But Machado is glad he nixed his arranged nuptials.

“At least the mistakes I've made are ones I made of my accord,” he said.

Long time back, my prof's daughter got married. He was rather elated that his girl got married to the right kind of guy etc...etc etc....

There was however, a back ground to this ...... Jean his wife had a great role to play in the whole affair.

She went round her friends and relatives and sort of made a short of guys she invited and introduced to her daughter. This was then reduced and over a period of a year( this according to the wags in the department) sort of guided the daughter into matrimony "With Jean's Preferred boy". (which was not the preferred boy og the daughter (at the start of this whole get a groom affair!)

This is a 100% WASP family -

Now was this an arranged marriage? Was this a forced marriage? Was this a guided marriage?

Both the prof and jean will never ever say anything else other than this was the daughters choice.

Dr. S. Das Gupta of Mannavi has pointed out that arranged/forced marriages negate the responsibility and accountability of decision making and choice

(i.e Do I want to get married? Do I want to get married at this point of my life? What do I want to support in myself? In a potential partner? Are our values and goals compatible? Am I being supported by him, his family in my endeavors? What is the culture of his family? etc.)

for the people getting married and that is a very important component of a functioning, full adult.

I'd also add that some of the values and behaviorisms we force on females in situations of arranged marriages do not necessarily prepare them to take care of themselves once in a marriage. Negotiating and advocating for herself and her well being, let alone the myriad and complex issues of a familial system and greater cultural-social system, cannot be easy.

This article is completely wrong. The author thinks that young, impressionable adults can make better decisions on mates than their parents. Nothing can be further from the truth. Young adults are inexperienced in the ways of life and tend to fall for whatever suits their fancy for that fleeting moment. Their decisions are impulsive and driven by emotions rather than a calm dispassionate analysis of compatibility. As a result, people are unhappy in love marriages too as disillusionment sets in soon after marriage. The high rates of infidelity and pornography in western societies showcases this situation.

Parents bring in their longer life experiences to the table. They can evaluate a potential mate not just based on physical beauty but also non-tangible qualities like nature, cultural compatibility, temperament etc. They try to conduct background searches to make sure that the potential mate doesnt have a bad history or bad habits to watch out for. After all, parents are your best well-wishers on this planet. They are watching out for you because they care about you and your happiness.

Parshuram, talking of corrupted gene-pools...

Are you aware that - as per legend - your namesake - the parshuram - once took responsibility for curing the warrior castes of their aggressive tendencies by (1) killing off the males, (2) ensuring that the females could only have sex with the Brahmins, and (3) repeating this process over 21 generational cycles.

PS: the Kaal is probably more knowledgeable on the subject and can perhaps clarify on the efficacy of the approach - being from the same Brahmin lineage!

Interesting. Please don’t call it forced marriage, that comes across as a “rape”. Call it “imposed” marriage, which comes across as a “rape with strings attached”. Things are changing in our society, albeit slowly. This social phenomenon is not going to go away anytime soon. It takes time.

We should follow the example of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) who chose his own wives.

It all depends on who arranged the marriage.

thought provoking piece