Marriage and Family at Cross-roads

Marriage is a socio-legal licence for the two partners to enjoy sexual pleasures, procreate future generations of humanity and sharing each other’s pains and pleasures through living together. This whole process is known as raising a family. It is an essential element of human civilization to regularize continuation of human life on the planet Earth. No other species of life is known to have such a norm of one-to-one inter-gender relationship with a social sanction. In other species, sex is just for procreation process and might is right is the often decisive factor for a male to get opportunity of procreation through mating with a female. Bur it is ultimately the choice of the female that rules supreme in choosing a partner.

Why Marriages

The concept of marriage has two factors behind its genesis – pleasure of sex and emotion of love. When humans realized that sex means more of a source of pleasures rather than mere a way to procreate, desires to have more sex and its pleasures flooded in human minds. This led to violent fights in between aspiring males for a desiring female. These fights became more disastrous and continuous than those between wild beasts for the same purpose, the latter being just for the purpose of procreation, therefore, limited in extent. The inter-male fights did not remain limited to winning a chance for mating with a woman but to keep the woman as a kept until she became useless for the purpose, or the mighty male found some better alternative.

This was a great insult to women particularly in their old ages, while they were respected mothers of some youths – both male and female. These youths fought for safety, dignity and restoration of a normal life for women leading to a human decision of institution of marriage.

Humans evolved into being more emotional than other species of life for their being more intellectual due to a highly complicated and exhaustive neural network spread throughout their bodies under a centralized control of brain in their respective skull. Thus, emotion is proved to be an intellectual exercise rather than a weakness.

Emotion exerts on continuation on a relationship of every kind – parent-children, spouses, etc. – and is generally termed ‘love’. This signified value of family as an essential and permanent feature of life for every human-being. Thus, sexual pleasure with peace is the cause of institution of marriage its outcome is the institution of family. As is obvious, sexual pleasure and family are two faces of a coin called love made of the metal marriage.

Arrangements of Marriages

More a thing is needed, more it becomes essential, more it becomes difficult to acquire in a right way, and more it becomes problematic to sustain. This logic is true for marriage also. Humanity is still struggling to find a balanced way of finding right partners for a marriage in order for its sustenance for lifetime with an amicable co-existence of the two and raising of a happy family by them.       

Marriage is aimed at and considered a relationship of the life time of the two partners while in the fast changing world of today, perspectives of a person get altered many times in his/her lifetime. This puts a question mark on the longevity of marriages in general. Like the origins, problems of both types of marriages are also different. 

Eastern tradition of arranged marriages under parental management is still surviving for nearly 2,000 years with its origin in the form of ‘swayamvar’ wherein an eligible girl was given a right to choose her soul-mate for life from many suitors gathered at a place by the parents. Over time, this tradition is modified with a greater say to the eligible boys. The girl’s father contacts a suitor’s father and it is for the latter to accept the offer or not. The tradition, for its inherent problems, is gradually giving way to love marriages by boys and girls direct without any interference of parents. 

Another version of ‘swayamvar’ is ‘ghetto’ still followed by some tribes, in which all the eligible boys and girls are left free in a closed chamber, once in a year, to intermingle and choose their partners and come out as couples. This tradition is adopted by western societies without a closed chamber and a fixed time. Eligible boys and girls are free to choose their respective partners anytime and anywhere.

Marriage is aimed at and considered a relationship of the life time of the two partners while in the fast changing world of today, perspectives of a person get altered many times in his/her lifetime. This puts a question mark on the longevity of marriages in general. Like the origins, problems of both types of marriages are also different. 

Problems of Marriages 

In arranged marriages, there is a little consideration for the matching of personality traits of the two partners leading to mismatches very often. The marriages survive through suppression of any of the partners, leading to un-fulfilment of marital aspirations of the two. Most of the men and women suffer for this malady of their marriages but continue to remain in the relationship because of social taboo against divorce. Those who dare to come out of the relationship for a freer life, suffer social isolation.

In western style of love marriages, the main problem is attraction of innocent minds which they consider as their love. When coming into practice, they realize the wrong choice they made and the marriage is often broken in about a year’s time.

Another factor that works against love marriages is the open mindedness of the two even about their marital partners without an acceptance of them for the lifetime. With this outlook, both the partners keep on looking for better alternatives, and most of the marriages break down at about the age of 40 years, that is with 10 to 15 years of marriage. Those who marry late, and after a lot of considerations, succeed better in their marriages.