Dear Parents, Please Stop Pressing Your Kids To Get Married

In India, the minute a girl or a boy enters the proverbial ‘suitable age bracket’ to tie the knot, it is as if an ' I-can't- keep-calm' switch flips in the brains of their parents. After that day, both the child and the parents know no solace. This phenomenon of losing all chills, especially, holds true for Indian parents with daughters of marriageable age. What happens when you give your parents a time frame as to when you planning to get married is another story, deserving a book of its own.

SOME TAKEAWAYS

• Indian parents can't keep calm when their kids enter the marriageable age.
• Perhaps it is the sense of responsibility which kicks in the urgency.
• Someone needs to tell these parents that millennials are becoming increasingly sceptical of matrimony.
•  In fact, the first question they need to be asking is if their kids want to marry at all. 

No sooner has their child, read daughter, completed education or warmed the cushion underneath them at their new job, the parents get possessed by the urge to marry her off. Every visit to the home, every conversation with parents, and every family gathering ends up becoming an interrogation. The hounding has modified a bit in modern times, as parents clearly give you a choice. You could either present them with a prospective life partner of your choice, or they'll take the matters in their own hands. All they care about is that it gets done before you cross a certain age.

Dear parents the times have changed and  marriage isn’t the number one priority of people of ‘marriageable age’ anymore. Now in hindsight, I feel it is especially tough for girls in our society because parents see a daughter's timely marriage as their ultimate responsibility. This is a duty which they must fulfill, and all the checkboxes need to be ticked.

It is a duty which they must fulfill, and all the checkboxes need to be ticked.

They must try to marry off their daughter at the soonest and the groom must be an ideal match, approved by distant relatives, friends they see once in a decade, colleagues about whom they know nothing about beyond their last name, the milkman and their maid, the neighbours and so on. Plus, they have to make sure that all the arrangements are top class and no stone is left unturned.

When it comes to marrying off a daughter, the amount of work carved out in front of them, gives parents a sense of urgency. Better get it over it while they still have a regular income, and functional knee joints. What their kids want, often doesn’t fit in their list of priorities and therein lies the problem. Isn’t it the kid who will have to start an entirely new chapter of his/her life? Shouldn’t they be at least willing and mentally prepared for the task ahead of them?

Millennials are certainly in no hurry to tie a knot.

Millennials are certainly in no hurry to get married. I doubt most of them even want to marry and who can blame them? The priorities of this generation don’t revolve around settling down at the first opportunity which presents itself. They do not see enduring the mundane married life for the remainder of their time on this planet as a mandate. They see it as an option. Women have a lot more to do with their time than procreation and devoting unpaid hours to housekeeping. Yes, they do understand that getting them married is your responsibility, but it is their life after all.

Picture Credit: indiiatcnews.com

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Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section. The views expressed are the author’s own.