Arranged Marriages Research Paper

818 Words2 Pages

Arranged marriages promote and reinforce family bonds and values. In the Dravidian speaking southern regions of India, families tend to seek and arrange marriage bonds between blood relatives (Marriage). They do so to literally bring the family closer together, as well as strengthen existing kin ties. In the south marriage consists of multiple daughters being exchanged between few select families. This ensures that the couples marrying and their relatives will be blood kin (Marriage). The process of marrying second cousins and other family members bring families closer physically intertwining them, providing more opportunities for the family to gather at weddings and see extended family more often when the bride moves in with her in-laws. “The …show more content…

As much as possible, they try to arrange marriages between cousins and in some cases uncles and their nieces (Marriage). This allows women to get to know their extended family, since they will most likely be living with them after the wedding. It also creates an opportunity for family to get together at the wedding ceremony which is a process over many days. The kin relationship is further strengthened because the family members that are being married will most likely have known each other for several years. Since the families are so closely knit together their values are relatively …show more content…

William Cornell points out that with arranged marriages the hope is that love will grow, but if it does not the marriage is set up in a way that will improve the lifestyle, ideally, for both the groom and bride. Cornell makes the point that if a person does not rely on love to conquer all, then when it is not present or begins to diminish from the relationship the impact will be less detrimental (Traditional Arranged Marriages). The main idea is that love, something that can come and go, is not a good enough reason to dive into marriage. This causes women and men to look for more in relationships, which leads them to have more reason to want to be with a person, beyond the fact that the person could be the love of their

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