Ukuthwala Custom

In certain communities in South Asia, the low status of girls has to be compensated for by the payment of a dowry by the parents of the girl to the husband at the time of marriage. This has resulted in a number of dowry crimes, including mental and physical torture, starvation, rape, and even the burning alive of women by their husbands and/or in-laws in cases where dowry payments are not met.

In recent decades, there has been a shift in the definition of a family to better suit the new emerging alternative family arrangements in today’s society. A family is defined as the natural and fundamental group unit of society especially in relation to the upbringing of children. However, this Eurocentric, nuclear family construct has evolved as alternative family arrangements such as de-facto and same sex relationships as well as adoptive families have become part of the term ‘family’. The domestic legal system has introduced and amended laws to deal with these contemporary issues. Similarly, there are non-legal responses such as the media and various non-governmental organisations, which advocate for various changes to the law in order to achieve greater justice for these families.

In traditional wedding ceremony the groom and bride families get in a singing battle about who the bride belongs to, the groom’s family often sing “Umakhoti ngowethu” meaning that the bride belongs to them and she will cook and clean for them and that she is welcomed. The cows that were got from lobola negotiation are often used here. The bride is introduced to the groom’s ancestors by walking around the groom’s family house with her white wedding dress, then the bride changes into her traditional wedding attire. The exchange of gifts occurs; the bride gives the groom’s family gifts according to a list that was written by the groom’s family. Traditionally the bride’s family should not attend this ceremony but now they are allowed to

Family law is the most complex aspect of the Australian legal system as it is constantly under review and reform pursuing to adopt society’s continual change in values and principles. The changing of laws in an attempt to be parallel with society is a strenuous process. Nevertheless, legislations are reflective of contemporary society’s values and ethics. Numerous legal issues arise in regards to family including, same sex relationships, domestic violence and divorce ideally on the best interest of the child, where family laws have been imposed to protect individuals and aim to achieve justice.

In the initial determination of parental rights the conceptual basis for removing a child from the custody of his/her parents is widely discretionary and the evaluation process involves the imposition of cultural and familial values which are often opposed to values held by the Indian family. Second, assuming that there is a real need to remove the child from its natural parents, children are all too frequently placed in non-Indian homes, thereby depriving the child of his or her tribal and cultural

The Basseri, a pastoral nomadic tribe from southern Iran, practice the custom of arranged marriage. Marriages are arranged by the heads of the households, usually the fathers of the prospective bride and groom. To the Basseri, a marriage is not primarily seen as a bond between man and woman, but rather as a transaction between tents. An arranged marriage brings many benefits for the involved Basseri families. In case of a marriage, the family of the bride will get a bride-price, which serves as a compensation for the bride that has to leave her family. After a marriage, the families have no ongoing obligations for each other, but they normally stay in contact. The motivation for this is that the families desire to interact and arrange more

Often the parents of the girl will have to check the kinship of their daughters future husband to make sure they don’t have the same name as her father or brothers,as well as other qualities that included the guy being able to hunt so that he can provide food for his wife and family in-law he also has to come from a good family. In the !Kung culture the exchanging of gifts between the two families is essential to the arrange marriage of their kids. In the book The Dobe Ju/’Hoansi one of the !kung females speaks about how she was sad when having to sleep with her husband in the Hut she says she didn't fight too much but she did cry a lot and ended up escaping to go sleep elsewhere. This happened often since many of these girls didn’t want to be with the men her parents had chosen for her. Divorce was an option and was usually because the women wanted a

The procedure for this particular tribe marriage is initiated once a young girl reaches the age of adolescence (hits puberty), if and when she decides to marry a boy/man, she gives him an invitation and a certain type of bread (loaf of Gomi). If he accepts the invitation for marriage, then he said to leave a bundle of fine clothes and white buckskin moccasins at the entrance of her door. The young man will have to option to either deny or accept the proposal which is a great thing. After leaving the fine clothes and buckskin in front of the door now the girl is said to have an option to accept or deny his acceptance. After the couple decides to

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.

Nowadays, the marriage customs changed because the man can find her by himself. Maasik and Solomon describe that how the American dating was which change in recent years. They say: “In the past, the gender myths that formed the rules of the Americandating game held that it is the role of the male to begin proceedings (he calls her on thephone) and for the female to react (she waits for him to call her).  Similarly, the rulesonce held that it is always the responsibility of the male to plan the evening and pay the tab” (1). While Maasik and Solomon are talking about how American dating rules was that shows how culture myths controlled people in the past. Men in Saudi Arabia now can find the future wife in many different ways like meeting in college and

Marriage plays an essential part in lives of !Kung women. Marjorie Shostack in depth describes each step of Nisa’s life in her book “The Life and Words of a ! Kung Woman”. Nisa, a fifty year old !Kung San woman, tells about her numerous marriages, husbands and lovers. Nisa vividly described the relationships between men and women. Furthermore, she states that children become aware of sex at a young age because the children share a single hut with their parents. In the !Kung society, first marriages are arranged by the parents. Girls at this point are rather young, whereas males are twenty to thirty. In order for a boy to get marred it’s necessary for him to gain a hunting skill. These marriages are called “trial marriages.” The outcome of the first marriages is usually a divorce, initiated by the girls due to pressure from their husbands to have a sexual intercourse.

Marriage in nearly all cultures is one of the most sacred celebrations and have many different practices. In the Afghani culture, a woman would be expected to be pure and never speak to another single man before marriage. It is also traditional

The groom’s father will introduce himself and his son and explain the purpose of his visit. Following this, the bride’s father welcomes the guests, invites his daughter to come and asks her if she knows the groom. After this first date, and several more after, some items are presented to the bride’s family from the groom during their final visit (Britannica School). If the bride agrees to marry her future husband, they will set another date for the actual marriage ceremony (Ogbaa) This process of arranged marriage is a very important piece of the Igbo customs. It is considered to be one of the three most important family events in this culture, accompanied by birth and burial (Onyemaechi). Arranged marriage is a topic within the group that separates them from almost the entire world. Despite the seeming change in the method of choosing a spouse, the Igbo culture has been sustained, where traditional marriage is concerned. Many cultures have arranged marriages, but nowadays marriage is becoming more of the individual’s choice in whom they marry (Han). This evolving in tradition has

However, this tradition has been embedded so deeply into the minds of these people that they would not accept anything that would go against it. Their arguments for defending their cultural practice is that it keeps their girls “pure” and worthy of the bride price placed upon them, to which they have absolutely no say in (246). What this means for the young girls is that if they have not been circumcised before, they will experience the practice once a man chooses them for their bride. It also means that since most girls get little education, they are mostly valued for reproducing and labor work, which the bride price basically gives the husband’s family full control over her (246). These young girls/women are no longer a person—a human being—in this tradition: she is more like an object. They see it as their way of life, not knowing how they have been reduced to nothing other than a

To conclude, Western societies have a societal structure in which the individual who is at the top of the organisation receive greater respect from those who are below him. Similarly, in a westernised society, the parents would be the one at the top of the structure and the children would be below them. Hence, this notion creates a conflict between the children’s individual autonomy and the social structure as the children’s freedom of speech and action are being ‘violated’ and not paid respect to when the parent is constantly the decision maker. In contrast, Lee illustrates that in order to resolve this conflict, many Aboriginal, Sikh and Burma societies approach child-rearing in a different manner. In those societies, individual autonomy is shaped by the cultural framework, the individual integrity of the child as well as the parent is respected by one another and the idea of self-governance provides freedom to everyone. Finally, in an attempt to reconcile this conflict, child-rearing in the societies explored by Lee,