Getting hitched

NETRA KHANAL

The average age of boys and girls getting hitched has been going up each year in our society, mostly due to the feeling of insecurity in career and profession or anything that simply didn’t come about in their life. My dad, a decade younger than an octogenarian, says he got married with my mom at the age of twelve when she was just nine years old. But time has changed. The “pre-marriage” single life of modern men and women is going lengthier; a career man in his late thirties is accepted warmly as a bridegroom, and a lady in her early thirties, but doing well in her profession, might be welcomed unconditionally by any bachelor adult today. I got married in my mid twenties a decade ago after I drew many innuendos from the society regarding my single status for so long. But now one won’t be called “outlandish” just because of being unmarried even in his early forties.

The people in society are more concerned about the age of marriageable girls than the contemporary boys. In each family, even today, the younger sister is very often matched earlier than her several years senior brothers. I now recall the appalling situation of some twenty years ago when my parents were worried about my sister’s marriage when she was just celebrating her seventeenth birthday. Then people would be more concerned about the marriage of young girls as soon as she would begin her period. Women have begun to break the fettered chain of the household fence and hence have begun debuting in the wide avenues of careers. The attitudes and practice of some elite women have encouraged the rest too to emulate men in career and profession. The modern concept of including women equally in the mainstream of development has provided them an opportunity to prove themselves equal to their male counterpart. This has inspired many girls to obtain higher education and fight for jobs equally as boys.

Thus, due to education and the career development compulsion, the average age of “getting-married” of girls is also shifting up. The situation now is that until the late twenties or early thirties a woman has to finish her education, establish herself into a sound profession and also become committed to the marital relationships at the earliest, possibly with a very new man. She won’t have immediate respite as she has to take the challenging role of motherhood after undergoing a very new experience of pregnancy. The constant career building stress is always there. Carrying career and motherhood together might be a challenging job for a late-married modern lady. Women deserve a helping hand from male counterpart in their endeavor.