Hudaibia Iftikhar
PESHAWAR: It’s better to take time in decision making about marriage than to regret it later, says Musarrat Jabeen, 35, who lives in Peshawar.
Mausarrat Jabeen is a highly qualified woman who is still waiting for a right proposal as she believes in perfect match of couples, and also her parents find it difficult to get an ideal person to be the life partner of their daughter.
It is the desire of every educated girl to have a life partner who is well-off, attractive and intelligent as well. This kind of match keeps them holding up till late throughout everyday life and keep them in a disadvantageous position, and they reach at the stage where proposals stop coming and their future life pattern becomes uncertain.
Marriage is one of the significant social establishments in Pakistani society which is making strong bonds among families. Pakistan is dealing with the issue of late marriages, especially in urban regions. By unfolding some of its reasons we will find out that the first and the most reason behind the late or delayed marriages is joblessness after education for a long duration. Due to this reason our boys and girls are facing problems in getting reasonable life partners.
Both genders in Pakistan are facing such issue in the same ways. In our society, boys are raised to share the burden of their father and help him in running the affairs of the home, and also they are asked to earn well to bear his marriage expenses on his own and in this context boys usually get married late. Also the presence of unmarried sisters at home becomes the cause of delay in brother’s marriage.
Delayed marriages happen not always because of above reasons, but these also happen sometimes due to a person’s own will. According to a recent survey, in a larger part of the city young ladies are not in a rush to get married. They need to firm up their profession. Regardless of the fact that their parents stress them for marriage, these young ladies are neither stressing over the score of their relationships nor are they feeling blame about it. They need to contemplate each part of wedded life before venturing into the responsibility of marriage. For them, the solitary point of womanhood doesn’t at all is the consummation into marriages.
The present age is slanted towards lavish life, what’s more, for satisfying this need they burn through the greater part of their time in bringing in cash even at the expense of disregarding perhaps the main social institution of life. Subsequently, this disregard later on becomes the reason for some difficult issues in their later lives.
One of the main disadvantages of delayed marriages is the increase in the infertility rate. Many studies also reveal that age at the time of marriage is one of the important factors which effects fertility.
Another impediment is that if someone is single for quite a while, he/she thinks that it’s hard to change life following someone else’s necessities and likings. It gets difficult to conform to another person since you have been living all alone for a really a long time.
There are also many other side effects of late marriages upon boys and girls. For example, more focus on career and less on married life is complete injustice. If someone gets married at an older age there might be the possibility of dying off while children’s are too young to be independent.
If late or delayed marriage has a negative side then there are some positives as well. Most importantly, our religion is in favour of early marriage if a good proposal comes.
While talking to TNN, Noorul Huda, a resident of Peshawar, said that she doesn’t see any benefit in delaying marriage though if marriage is the reason for not completing your degree than delaying the marriage is alright, but one should not delay marriage in waiting of finding a job.
“It takes years for being financially independent women in Pakistan as there is a tough competition in a job market,” she said.
