Arranged Marriages

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Arranged marriages in India

For this paper I decided to research the practice of arranged marriages in the south Asian country of India, something that bas been considered a norm within their culture and society for years. It seems crazy to think about an arranged marriage, probably because I grew up in a society where it is not a norm. It is frowned upon to get married to someone whom we don 't actually love, yet people in India do it all the time. 95 percent of India 's marriages were arranged and according to a 2012 study, 74 percent of Indian people actually prefer arranged marriages over freely chosen marriages. It is certainly a much debated subject among different cultures because each might view the insitution of marriage
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Most are now able to actually determine whether they want to marry that person and because of the emergence of modernized marriages in India, but there are still some, especially in select villages, where they do not give them a choice. The three distinct patterns of arranged marriages are traditional, modified traditional, and cooperative traditional patterns. What would be considered the most common feature amongst them all is that the parents are the decision makers and the only way they all differ is in the amount of participation and veto right is given to the person who is marrying. For example, in tradional arranged marriages the marrying individual has zero participation and doesn 't actually get to meet the other person until the day of their wedding. In a modified traditional arranged marriage pattern their input is at least somewhat considered during the search for their furture partner, but their power in the decision is very limited. In the cooperative traditional pattern they are able to join their family in on the decision making process and they are able to deny or accept the choices. They also get to meet the spouse before marriage, compared to the traditional mattern. At least in the modified arranged marriage pattern they formally meet beforehand, but are still given little …show more content…
People growing up in India grow up understanding that they need to be open to the idea because they know it is something that happens in their culture. Since in modern India arranged marriages are becoming more open, the marrying individuals usually get a lot of time to get to know eachtoher and spend time as an engaged couple before actually marrying eachother. So although they don 't actually date, that time in their society is kind of like their dating period of their relationship. The Indian society looks at arranged marriages as having many advantages or else they probably wouldn 't practice it. For starters it keeps their divorce rate low, something that is very frowned upon within their culture. Their divorce rate remains especially low compared to other cultures, like the people in the United states where 40-50 percent of married couples end up divorced leaving the divorce rate at 4.3 as of 2012. Divorce in India is seen as shameful and although the option of divorce is technically there, to them they feel like it isn 't actually there. They see the option for a better

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