Lost in Space
In the situations you're talking about, the children feel an enormous amount of family and societal pressure to obey their parents' wishes. It takes a very strong-willed individual to say "No" under those circumstances.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Even assuming pressure to go with the parents' choice is minimal or non-existent, there's still a problem if the prospective spouses have no other way of selecting a mate, if their choices are limited to either "someone your parents picked out" or "no one." I wouldn't trust my parents to choose a good match for me, because no matter how well-meaning they might be, they don't actually know me that well. My mom once said she'd met a guy who would be perfect for me, because he, like me, was Neopagan. As if that one point of similarity would be all it would take.
Heh, this one's mother tends to (jokingly) suggest any guy with long hair as a good candidate for this one to marry, knowing that this one has a fondness for ponytails.
Anyway, I agree that arranged marriage as the only possibility is unacceptable. But as one of possibilities it makes sense. That's why I am asking what are the safeguards from abuse.
If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common
Lost in Space
Parents as matchmaker is an ancient tradition even in societies without explicit arranged marriages. It has advantages and disadvantages like any other system.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Ahr river
Parents probably make better choices in the long run for a potential spouse than a 19 year old. I don't see too much of a problem with parents playing matchmaker. Obviously you have the bad eggs, but for the most part they do know what they are doing.
Read my stories!
Oh My
Unless you're gay/bi/pan and they think you're straight (or should be).
edited 24th Feb '11 11:58:04 AM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
If parental matchmaking is the extent of what one means by arranged marriage, yeah then there's no problem. Heck, we still have tons of those in North America by well-meaning parents introducing their friend's daughter to their son. But how is this system any different from the romance-based marriages we current have in NA where the son/daughter (who might still be romance motivated) makes the final decision.
Why don't we move this debate to a system where the son/daughter do not have final say and talk about that system, whether we want to call it arranged marriage or forced marriage.
edited 24th Feb '11 12:04:41 PM by nightwyrm_zero
OMG NO NOSECONES
My father-in-law, prior to him becoming that, basically threw his daughter at me and encouraged us to date and stuff. So yeah, match-making. I thought it was kind of cool, considering how fiercely protective he is of his daughters, usually - he is very quick to step in and intervene if some creepy guy is showing an interest in any of his daughters.
It may have helped that I knew him as a friend before I knew his oldest daughter existed as a dateable woman, though. When I first met her, she was only 13, I was 20, and I couldn't stand her at all. How time changes everything...
Not that I can see arragned marriages or matchmaking always working out. But with a divorce rate that sist at aroudn 1 out of 2, it makes me wonder if we're going about this the right way or something.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Zzzzzzzzzz
^^ Because there's not a whole lot of point in discussing forced marriages. I doubt that anyone here would try to defend them as anything but a devil's advocate..
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
^ So you got parents who are opinionated meddling matchmakers, so what else is new? What's there to talk about in this case? There's not a lot of controversy here either.
{Off-topic and inflammatory content deleted —Madrugada}
edited 24th Feb '11 1:41:14 PM by Madrugada
Dog and Pony Show
I'm going to need to hit the library for best access to arranged marriage studies.
Rott, much depends on setting cultural expectations and then sticking with them. If Indians are raised to expect that they will be in an arranged marriage and that this is a cultural norm, then there won't be any dissonance between their values and the actions expected of them.Yes, exactly.
The challenge for Westerners is going to be moving away from values that can't work in practice, like equality, to values we can live by without dissonance.
Out of curiosity, Rott, do you believe that spousal rape is possible?What a ridiculously loaded question.
"Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way."
— George Orwell
By some definitions, spousal rape occurs every time a husband and wife have sex after drinking alcohol, sobriety being necessary for consent.
In the situations you're talking about, the children feel an enormous amount of family and societal pressure to obey their parents' wishes. It takes a very strong-willed individual to say "No" under those circumstances.Which is part of the beauty of the system. In our society, everyone is given "choice", but "choice" very often leads to inferior outcomes. In India, the vast and non-violent power of what Emile Durkheim called "social facts" is used to guide people into accepting mates they can successfully live with for life.
We use the Durkheimian pressure to conform to accomplish feats like making most people wear the same blue denim pants.
“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard
OMG NO NOSECONES
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
Trivia Depository
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
OMG NO NOSECONES
See, that's not so much of a problem here in our culture, as we place a huge value on individuality and stuff like that. Moreso than India, which still has castes and dowrys and all that mess. Totally different cultures, so saying that [x] works in location [y] therefore it should work in location [z] as well may not be an accurate statement.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Dog and Pony Show
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
Trivia Depository
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
In most systems of arranged marriage there is a commensurate social structure and community that is sorta required to make it work. Arranged marriages outside of an insular community just wouldn't work. Traditionally it isn't just the parents it is an entire community that gets together and hashes out a exchange of both property and sons/daughters. These marriages tended to be successful not simply because kids are stupid and often have no clue who is going to turn out well in the end but because there is an enormous amount of social pressure not to fuck it up and if you do you just have to stick it out or divorce not only your spouse but the entire system.
Now you can argue that this degree of community is worth it in and of itself and there has been some studies that show that happiness=other people/community but in modern fragmented society you just can't rely on it.
When I was a younger man my mother once sat down and explained that a good marriage was based off of shared values and sex. She said to me if there isn't a strong sexual attraction then there is nothing that can hold it together but without the shared values things will grind to a halt. In an arranged system number you already have one of the criteria almost met by default.
Dog and Pony Show
@Karalora:
If you decide the price of wearing fashionable pants is too high, you can simply change your pants.Yes, and the fact most people don't demonstrate how "social facts" function as non-violent coercion. They're actually so subtle that most people internalize them.
"I'm not the stuffy sort of person who wears flannel pants and a blazer. I'm cool and casual!"
Change the social facts and you'd change people's personalities without having to force them to do anything. People today are not "free"; elites manufacture consent. So individualism is a red herring. Let's discuss which social pressures produce the best outcomes.
Unless you're gay/bi/pan and they think you're straight (or should be).I meant, what if you're gay?Sounds like homosexuality is subversive behavior.
@Shrimpus:
Now you can argue that this degree of community is worth it in and of itself and there has been some studies that show that happiness=other people/community but in modern fragmented society you just can't rely on it.That's true. You can't. We Anglos are stuck with our marriages of passion.
I'm saying we don't have the best system. But I'm not convinced it has to be as bad as it currently is: we could at least turn back the clock to the way things were before no-fault divorce.
edited 24th Feb '11 1:05:16 PM by Rottweiler
“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard
Sounds like homosexuality is subversive behavior.
Trivia Depository
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Or if we were pretending to be sane, we could remember why so many states instituted no-fault divorce to begin with. (Hint: it wasn't to pre-emptively piss you off.)
edited 24th Feb '11 1:16:04 PM by Karalora
Dog and Pony Show
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
Trivia Depository
This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.
Ah. I was under the impression that most arranged marriages were forced, a la shotgun wedding.
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian