Arranged Marriage Part 2

Families use dowries to attract a son-in-law with desirable qualities, such as a particularly bright man from a poor but respectable family or a man with higher status but with less money than the bride’s family has. In societies in which the giving of dowries is customary, families with many daughters can become impoverished by the costs of marriage. For this reason, in Europe in earlier times some families sent “extra” daughters to convents. In India and China, where it is expected that every woman will marry, families have sometimes tried to limit the number of daughters born to them through infanticide (the killing of infants). An Arranged Marriage

In some societies, the groom’s family gives property (known as bridewealth or brideprice) not to the new couple but to the bride’s relatives. Particularly in places where bridewealth payments are high, the practice tends to maintain the authority of fathers over sons. Because fathers control the resources of the family, sons must keep the favor of their fathers in order to secure the property necessary to obtain a bride. The custom of giving bridewealth occurs primarily in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Anthropologists characterize bridewealth as compensation to the bride’s family for the transfer to the groom’s family of the bride’s reproductive capacities or her ability to work. They debate whether the practice should be seen as the actual sale of a daughter or whether it is a ritual—that is, a symbolic act—rather than an economic transaction.

Although arranged marriage persists in many cultures today, as modernization proceeds and many areas become part of the global economy, parental influences on marriage continue to decline. Young people who work for wages rather than on the family’s land no longer depend as highly on their parents’ resources. As Western popular culture—including motion pictures, television, music, and fashion—spreads around the world, many young people are drawn to Western notions of love, romance, and individual choice. In some places, such as Japan, people combine modern Western and older cultural practices. (Un)Arranged Marriage