Marriage is an universal social institution. It is found in all societies. Sexual satisfaction is a biological of human beings. Every society imposes some restrictions on members with respect to sexual behavior. Absolute freedom is denied in the matter of mate selection. Every society provides social norm to regulate and control the sexual norms is called Marriage.
Definition of Marriage:
- According to Sociologists Gillin & Gillin, marriage is socially approved way of establishing a family of procreation.
- However, Sociologist Robert H. Lowie defines it as “Marriage is a relatively permanent bond between permissible mates”.
From the above definitions, we can characterize Marriage as a Social Institution which consists of Union of permissible mates with Social approval. Moreover, we can also consider that it is a permanent bond between husband & wife with certain rules and regulations catering various aims such as Sexual satisfaction, procreation and upbringing of children, socio-economic co-operation between husband and wife as well as between their parents’ families and kinship groups.
Formerly, marriage required religious and social approval. But now a days, it requires legal approval. The Register Marriage Act-1954, every marriage must be registered in the Government office.
Age:
Earlier there was no particular age limit for marriage. Child marriage was practiced in almost all communities (except some tribal communities) in India. But today Child Marriage is prohibited by legal provision. A girl below 18 years and a boy below 21 years cannot legally marry. Today, adult marriage or late marriage is preferred instead of child marriage by educated people for achieving higher education, economic self-dependence and career development.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Budget Speech 2020-21, announced to revise the legal age of marriage for women from 18 years to 21 years. In February 2020, Sitharaman announced to constitute a task force that will present its recommendations over this is 6 months time period. The task force will look into matters related to motherhood and marriage at an early age.
Constitutional Provisions:
- As per the Hindu Marriage Act-1955, interreligious and inter-caste marriages are permitted.
- As per the Hindu Marriage Disability Act-1949, man and woman who belong to same Gotra and Pravara can marry now.
Apart from this, marriages are broadly divided into Arranged Marriage and Love Marriage as mentioned below:
Arranged Marriage:
A typical modern Arranged Marriage works as follows, the individual’s parents or older family members screen for and find prospective mates for further consideration through their social circle, community, or by advertising or matrimonial websites or newspapers.
Love Marriage:
Love Marriage is a term in Commonwealth countries, generally used to describe a marriage which is driven solely by the couple, as opposed to Arranged Marriage.
Many Love Marriages result in failure or ends with divorce. Ego and responsibility taking. During love, before marriage, both don’t have that much responsibility in terms of their life. They will see only love with each other.
YouGov-Mint-CPR Millenial Survey:
A fourth of Millenials do not wish to marry a fifth do not want children, data from the latest round of YouGov-Mint-CPR Millenial survey shows.
Millennial refer to those who have attained adulthood in the early twenty first century, and grew up at a time when the world became digitally connected. Here, millenials refers to those born between 1981 and 1996 (aged 24-39 years now). Those born after 1996 (aged 23 years or below) are referred to as the post-millennials or Gen-Z. The rest (40 years and above) have been classified as pre-milennials.Compared to Milennials, a lower proportion of Gen Z aspires to marry, to have children.
The following two by two table shows the proportion of each combination of responses. For instance, 65% of millennial respondents (57% among GenZ) wish to get married and also wish to have children.
Financial insecurity appears to be a key driver of such decisions.
Poorer Milennials are less wlling to marry and have kids:
% of millennial respondents, given their household income, who said that they were willing\ unwilling:
The first chart is based on responses of 2,462 non-married millennials. The second chart is based on responses of 4,957 millenials and includes those who have children and want to raise more.
The YouGov-Mint-CPR Millenial Survey was conducted online between 12 March and 2 April 2020, and cities of these, 4,957 were millenials, 2,983 post-millenials and 2,065 pre-millenials. The World Health Organization declared Covid 19 to be a global pandemic just before the survey began, on 11th March 2020. The survey was conducted jointly by Mint, the Indian arm of Global Market Research firm YouGov and the Delhi- based think tank, CPR (Centre of Policy Research) to gauge the aspirations and attitudes of India’s digital natives.
% of unmarried respondents who said they wished to get married.
It is worth noting that the share of respondents expressing their desire for a love marriage is far higher than the actual share of such marriages in which people choose their own partners.
Among millennials, women were more averse to an arranged marriage than men. Of the non-millenials, 49% of women said they wanted to have a ‘Love Marriage’. Only 41% of men from the same cohort expressed a similar preference.
Among millenials, women more keen on love marriage:
(For 2,642 not married millennials 1,239 females and 1,223 males)
One reason of such gender-wise differences may be in the limited say that women typically have in arranged marriages. Many get married without even a basic introduction to their partners. Only half of the women in the age group of 15-32 years who were married as of 2011-12, had interacted with their spouses in person or through phone or email before their wedding, the India Human Development Survey (HIDS) showed.
Reason behind women opting for Arranged Marriages:
Trust:
The modern, progressive society has started seeing love marriages in a new light. It’s no longer a rebel wish nor against society. So why are women turning away from such an opportunity?
The answer is simple. Trust. Women love and trust their parents . they believe that their parents’ experiences and wisdom considerably count while determining a lifelong partner. They don’t even hesitate for once. Why will they even?
Indian parents prefer ‘digging up’ the prospective groom’s family, background, career or any past experiences. Many marriage consultants have agreed that often their clients would private investigators to know more about the groom. With such thorough knowledge, one would readily agree.
Career:
Women of age are quite busy nowadays; they don’t get the circumstances nor the time to meet guys and spark a conversation which might lead to future prospects. While office romances are a strict no-no, career and family life leaves them very little time to mingle with others. In other instances, failed relationships with former flames may give them the push to ask parents about finding a suitable guy for them. Arranged marriages can also be regarded as a ‘rebound’ in terms of lifelong commitment. Women are also really scared of going against their families’ wishes of marrying a guy of a different caste or religion. Since inter-caste marriages are such a stigma in India, women usually avoid such conflicts unless they really want to fight for it.
Trust-worthy Isntincts:
Trusting their parents’ instincts, women choose to go ahead and marry a stranger after some months of courtships. Sure, some arranged marriages do end but most women reported that their marriages was bliss and how lucky they were to have trusted parents decision of an arranged marriage. Women also want a lifelong partner who is financially stable as they are, or even better. Parents’ investigation perfectly analyses the core areas such as financial stability, societal reputation, outward behavioural characterstics and more.
Divorce:
In India, the divorce rate is less than 1%. Out of 1000marriages, 13results in divorce. This shows that Indians have the lowest divorce rate in the world.
Conclusion:
From above study, researches, constitutional laws, human mentality and so many other factors we could say that a person specially women prefers arrange marriage considering the factors such as trust-worthy to parents, career orientation moreover it is also a result of an impact created by the increased divorced cases specially in love marriages in India.
We could also state that many a times love marriages are not supported by the family or parents, and sometimes teens take decision in haphazard manner which also many a times result in hike to divorced cases.
Besides, Indian family institution is still patriarchal till some extent, hence women’s preferences are not taken into consideration.
Therefore, arrange marriages are not prevent and preferable then the love marriages.