Arranged Marriage Culture

Arranged Marriages have been around since time can remember. An arranged marriage is a marital union between a man and a woman who were selected to be wedded together by a third party. Historically, arrange marriages were the main way to marry. In certain parts of the world, it is still the primary approach. There are two types of arrange marriages. The first is a traditional marriage where the children can, with strong objections, refuse to marry their soon to be spouse. In a forced marriage, the children have no say in the matter. Bread Givers shows an excellent representation of the pressures on children from their parents to be married against their will.

Arranged marriage is found in various cultures and countries around the world, including Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East; having an arranged marriage is thought of as an Afghani tradition and has been a part of life for many families. The practice of arranged marriage has advantages and disadvantages; it can create more family power and give more financial security. Sadly being forced into a marriage can disrupt the independence of the engaged, most women stop their education when they become engaged resulting in many women being illiterate. This makes it impossible for them to be successful without depending on their husbands. Arranged marriage is found in many cultures throughout the modern world, though in a lot of cases it results in a happy family it can also be very limiting on women and often girls are married before they can give consent.

Marriage is described as two people as partners in a personal relationship. There are two typical ideas of marriage that we know today. The first one that comes to mind is the one we all know, based on love, but there is another one that some may not even know of and its arranged marriages. Arranged marriage is not typically in our culture we know but in different cultures arranged marriages are their normal marriage. Throughout this essay, I will discuss the importance of realizing cultural diversity and how we apply the perspectives we gain from cross-cultural comparison to our own experience using central concepts about marriage to compare and contrast marriage in several cultures.

The Igbo tribe marriage process differs from family to family, but significant similarities appear consistently with each union. However, opinions on the concept of arranged marriage vary throughout the tribe. The parents of the bride and groom play a large part in every stage of marriage. In 1992, a study was conducted in a small, Igbo village in Nigeria. In this survey of 250 Igbo people, it was discovered that 55.2% of the participants’ parents chose their spouses for them. The remaining 44.8% selected their own significant other, but with parental approval. However, out of the 250 Igbos interviewed, only 14 of them were for arranged marriage (Okonio 343). In the slightly more common situation, parents “spy” out eligible women for their son based on desirable qualities

ReferencesAugust, P. (2005, October). Arranged Marriages in the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arranged_marriageBowman, H. & Spanier, G. (1978). Modern Marriage. McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Marriage practices vary across cultures. Every culture has its own way of conducting marriage according to their traditions and customs. Most cultures share common customs and practices, while some cultures have unique practices. Marriage refers to a social union agreed upon by the couples to unit as spouses. The union of couples implies sexual relations, permanence in union, and procreation. This research paper focuses on comparing marriage practices in American and Indian culture. There is significant difference between the two cultures in marriage practices.

For thousands of years, parents have chosen their children's spouses; hopefully with some success. Some countries still practice the tradition today. India turn most, if not all, of the wedding decision over to the Patriarchs of the groom. In other countries only a portion of the country's population practice it: even though the urban areas are controlled by the government many chinese dwelling in rural farming areas still practice arranged marriages. In the United States of America people have moved on to the idea of letting the young adults choose their own marriages, but do children make the same choices as their parents? It is often the idea that younger adults will make the wrong choices in marriage; however, marriage in today’s world

Kingston, many girls are forced into marriages by being told it is the right thing to do. In summary, underage arranged marriages are very dangerous and unfair to the children who are placed under those circumstances while they haven’t even reached the capacity to comprehend what they want.

In this story there is an ongoing struggle between following the rules and expectations of a strict society to marry the proper person, or get

She learns that her parents are planning an arranged marriage for her. It has been centuries since the practice of arranged marriages for political or personal gain had been outlawed.

Girls all over the world are forced into marriages due to financial necessity, tradition and to ensure their future. Most of these girls married are at a young age: “One third of the world’s girls are married before the age of 18 and 1 in 9 are married before the age of 15”( “Child Marriage Facts and Figures”). The young ages of those being married reveal how crucial it is to resolve this problem. When child marriage occurs the parents of the bride usually chose the groom for their daughters; and these grooms can be three times older than the young brides. Some children are brought into the world of marriage at the of 8 or sometimes less depending on their cultural views. The following can be used to help reduce the impact of early

Both Jhumpa Lahiri's “Going Ashore” and Anita Jain's “Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse than Craigslist?” discuss the prospects of arranged marriage and the processes involved in it, Lahiri suggests that arranged marriage is the answer to an unstable life, Jain's story suggests that arranged marriage and it's processes is just as unstable as a typical love marriage.

Child brides are a little voiced problem that occur around the world. Fourteen million girls become child brides every year, a number that is increasing due to the growing populations of countries where child marriage is common (Fisher). I chose to focus on child brides specifically in Africa and the Middle East due to the high instances of child marriages in those parts of the world. In my research I also found that child brides are very common in South Asia and South America as well. In Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic, Mozambique, and Nepal over half of girls are married before they turn eighteen (Fisher).This is largely due to traditional tribal practices, cultural norms, and an overall lack of education.

Marriage is a union that has been around for as long as humans have walked the earth. The human race depends upon the union of its members, and as such, the subject of marriage has been an issue that receives more intense scrutiny and attention than many would likely believe. In today's day and age, with humanity continuing to move in a modern direction, many argue that marriage is a union that should be entered into freely and should be based exclusively on the love between two people. However, I argue that arranged marriage, which has taken place throughout the ages and throughout the world, is a union that offers its observers a marriage based in support, longevity and love, and is an institution that should not be frowned upon.

Faced with evidence of an increasingly globalized and progressive human society, many Americans mistakenly assume the established universal predominance of the “love-based” marriage institution, often believing that the “antiquated” practice of arranged marriage has become outmoded in a modern age hallmarked by prevailing Western conceptions of individuality, personal liberty, and gender equality. This ethnocentric perspective grossly misrepresents the reality of the heterogeneous and heavily culture-dependent tradition of marriage, as the majority of marriages in India are still arranged and follow adapted mores of traditional, ancestral marriage praxes (Angeloni 85). In conducting a cross-cultural comparison of love marriages and arranged marriages, it is tempting to select the “better” of the two marriage forms—this, however, is an ideographically and culturally subjective parameter by which to analyze the potential merits and drawbacks of these two modes of marriage. Ultimately, the notion of cultural relativism—that “every culture is to be judged by its own premises [and] its own axioms” (Bohannan 33)—crucially pertains to the objective study of arranged marriages and love-based marriages which, upon reflection, appear equally well-suited and sensible within their own separate cultural contexts.