Marriage Choice Research Articles

Understanding Child Marriage Among Girls in Nigeria: A Focus on Nasarawa Eggon Local Government Area of Nasarawa State

The right of choice in marriage is universal and it is enshrined in international human rights instruments. Yet, many girls under 18 years enter into marriage without a chance to exercise that right. This has proved problematic as the situation often results in negative outcomes including school drop-out, pregnancy risks, diseases and sexually transmitted infections, unhappiness, and even death. This study therefore examined the factors influencing child marriage among girls in Nasarawa Eggon Local Government Area of Nasarawa State. It specifically investigated the cultural and sociodemographic factors influencing child marriage among girls in the study area. The ethno-cultural theory of pedogamy guided the study. The mixed method research design was employed with structured questionnaire and key informant interviews utilized in the collection of data. Data was retrieved from 183 respondents, and it was analyzed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. The study hypothesis was tested using Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Results from the study showed that the practice of arranged marriage and beliefs that marriage brings honour to a girl and her family contributes to child marriage. Also, ignorance of fundamental human rights among girls and peer influence, as well as financial difficulties in families, illiteracy among parents and weak enforcement of legal sanctions against child marriage contributes to the practice of child marriage. The study recommends, among others, promotion of education and awareness programme that challenge cultural beliefs that perpetuate child marriage, and implementation of interventions that address poverty in Nasarawa Eggon LGA.

Private discrimination, marriage markets, and caste

AbstractAnti‐discrimination laws draw a distinction between two kinds of discrimination by non‐state actors. Intimate choices are protected even if they are morally wrong. For example, even if it is morally wrong to discriminate on the basis of race in deciding whom to date, marry or befriend, anti‐discrimination laws permit these acts. By contrast, commercial decisions are commonly regulated. I argue that the reasons for regulating commercial decisions also extend to an intermediate case, commercial facilitators of marriage choices. In the context of the caste system, I argue that commercial facilitators should be banned from allowing customers to filter by caste. The argument is based on two considerations. First, this could mitigate the harmful effects of such discriminatory marriages choices in the (re)production of the oppressive caste system. Second, even if the ban fails in changing behaviour, it serves as an expressive goal of communicating the state's opposition to the caste system.

Isabel’s Growth and Metamorphosis: The Spatial Narrative in The Portrait of a Lady

As one of Henry James’ best-selling novels, The Portrait of a Lady is also considered one of his most successful works. According to “The Third Space” proposed by Edward Suja, Isabel’s movements in the novel is not only the background of the article but also influences the characterization of her. The author reveals the conflict between European and American cultures through the depiction of Isabel’s choice of marriage, reflecting James’ desire to pursue cross-cultural conflict, and the third space in which Isabel is situated also demonstrates her growth from a naive girl to a mature woman, and ultimately realizes her self-identity.

Metaphor of Disease and Its Psychopathological Analysis in Eileen Chang's Novels

In modern Chinese novels, disease is a common theme, and different works also show different flavors. This paper mainly studies the metaphors behind the characters' diseases and the characters' morbid psychology in Eileen Chang's three representative works Flowers Wither, Golden Lock and Red Rose and White Roses. Through the research, the author can find that Eileen Chang's disease writing is related to her personal loveless family life experience, her love for tragic aesthetics and the aesthetic tendency of morbid things, and the popularity of medical treatment in society at that time. At the same time, this paper analyzes the cruel living situation of women revealed in the female diseases in his works. Whether it is arranged marriage or new-style marriage, women have lost the right to choice and autonomy in marriage, so the unhappiness of their marriage life is also the main reason for the disease. Finally, through the analysis of specific characters' diseases, the article shows the pathological psychological state of the characters' hearts under the disease in detail, and analyzes the relationship between them. Through the study, the author can find that the disease in Eileen Chang's works is not only as simple as the disease itself, but also shows a social style and the pathological state and psychology of the characters living in it.

Marriage Choices and Traditions among the Sri Lankan Migrant Workers in Bahrain

Family and marriage in Sri Lanka have endured far-reaching changes in recent decades. Starting with the migration from Sri Lanka, particularly after the 1970s, is one of the contributing factors in such family changes. Given that Sri Lanka has been giving greater importance to family and marriage, the present paper attempts to investigate changes in marriage choices, traditions, and marital relationships due to migration. The qualitative research method was utilized, compiling data through semi-structured interviews with thirty Sri Lankan migrant families using a purposive sampling technique, which was analyzed on a thematic basis. Based on the findings, migration was the cause of change in marital choice and traditions since migrants become economically independent and cherish new cultures. The marriage contracts and couple matching among migrant workers had not been spelt out their ancient traditions of Sri Lanka, which leaned more toward love matches. The study has identified the women who migrated as housemaids had formed families with Pakistani and Indian migrant workers, even accepting religious exogamy after arriving in Bahrain based on self-desire. These migrants concealed their personal choice and married without their parent’s concerns and presence. The present study identified that wedlock without proper documents caused their children to be undocumented. Furthermore, the current study revealed that migrant workers who married other nationalities failed to establish fruitful families as their lives ended in divorce due to the lack of knowledge about marital partners and cohesive relationships with them. These findings are significant because of the dearth of literature on marriage migration among Middle Eastern migrants and the range of post-marriage challenges that migrants face in that particular destination. The information explored enriches the literature with a new sociological and empirical study.

Research in the Peoples Attitudes Towards Love and Marriage in Chinese Mainland

With the advancement of the economy and social development, these social changes would impact peoples attitudes towards love and marriage. This research is intended to investigate the factors that impact peoples attitude and their romantic relationship and marriage choice. The analysis uses descriptive statistics and empirical study. Empirical study is conducted by using OLS method. The research find that people would like to get into fewer times of romantic relationships as their age increases. Moreover, the research notice that people with a higher number of years of education would have slightly more positive attitude (expectation) towards marriage. Lastly, working in the public sector, such SMEs, would discourage peoples positive attitude (expectation) towards marriage. The study has practical significance for improving social practices, such as enhancing the marriage rate and birth rate. In addition, this research is advantaged by that the data is expand to all the age groups and all regions in Chinese mainland. As for policy suggestion, improving the overall level of education on the whole population and making a stable employment environment will be good ways to encourage people to hold positive attitude.

Identity negotiation of Han women in Han-Hui-Muslim intermarriage in China: A dialogical-self theory approach

Intermarriage between different religions and ethnicities can lead to diversity and conflicts due to differing social preferences and incompatible value orientations. This is especially true when a nonreligious Han woman (87% of Chinese mainland adults are nonreligious) marries a Hui Muslim man, as Islam requires religious endogamy. The strict conversion doctrines and Islamic rules can make family life more difficult and conflicting for these Han women compared to those who have not chosen mixed marriages. This study examines how this group of Han women negotiate their identities and handle conflicts in a multicultural context. Drawing on Hermans’ Dialogical Self Theory (DST), this study identifies four strategies the women use to negotiate conflicts between their identifications during interactions with Han and Hui families, and finds that the women develop new, hybrid I-positions, as a way to achieve internal stability, continuity, and belonging while resisting uncertainty, bi-marginalization, and insecuritization. By providing insights into understanding how these individual and micro struggles help to resist macro-societal prejudice and insecuritization for those whose marriage choices do not conform to mainstream standards, this paper holds that a combination of sociolinguistic analysis and psychological perspective can help us grasp the minute and complicated variations and struggles for identity negotiation and the construction of those in mixed marriages.

Marriage Choice of Immigrants in Russia: Main Characteristics and Relationship with Integration

Marriage Choice of Immigrants in Russia: Main Characteristics and Relationship with Integration

Love and Marriage: Reimagining Muslim female subjectivity in Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and saffron

Muslim women in popular Western imagination have usually been viewed as victims of forced marriages and suppressed individualistic rights to love/desire, and Islam as the primary source of it. The trend has intensified in the post-9/11 gendered Islamophobic spotlight. Anglophone literature by Muslim women writers has countered this monolithic narrative by exploring the multi-layered complexity and fluidity of Muslim womanhood. We aim to examine the subjectivity of Muslim women as explored in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Salt and Saffron regarding love/desire and marriage by drawing on the concepts of performativity and third space to intervene in the discourse of Muslim women’s gender subjectivity. We examine how the female protagonist (Aliya) transforms her consciousness of her rights and cultural norms into her battles for agency and expansive space for choice and decision in love and marriage without open confrontation against and submission to norms. This performative subjective position comes out as inclusive and agentive, re-signifying the norms and the individualist awareness into an indeterminate, third space of enunciation. We foreground the epistemology that interlaces mobility-shaped individualistic awareness and consciousness of norms to contradict the monolithic Muslim woman compliant/victim theoretical frame.

Philosophical Thinking on College Students' View of Love and Marriage in the New Era

The concept of marriage and marriage of college students in the new era mainly refers to the views and attitudes of college students on the nature of marriage and marriage and the standard of mate selection, as well as on marriage and study, life, morality and other aspects. It will have an impact on their choice of marriage and love objects and the handling of interpersonal social and emotional relationships, their future marriage and obligations in family life, and even on the harmony and stability of individuals, society and the country. Clarify "why to set up the correct marriage, correct marriage is how, how to guide set up the correct marriage view" problem, can make college students have clear behavior indicators and practice guidance, with the change of times, how to better guide the new era college students set up the correct marriage, is we face a reality and long-term subject.

DRIVEN BY INSTITUTIONS, SHAPED BY CULTURE: HUMAN CAPITAL AND THE SECULARIZATION OF MARRIAGE IN ITALY

AbstractWe show that in Italy the legalization of divorce unleashed the forces of secularization, making educated persons more likely to contract a civil instead of a religious marriage. This process, ignited by institutional change, is also shaped by culture: higher social capital or weaker family ties make the choice of civil marriage more responsive to education. These results emerge from both aggregate and individual data, and can be rationalized through a model of religiosity, education and marriage choices. In this framework, the option to divorce increases the relative returns to human capital ‐ thereby increasing the prevalence of civil marriage.

At the Crossroads of Marriage: Experiences of Young Urban Middle-Class Women Negotiating Family and Sexuality Within Heterosexual Intimate Relationships in North India

This paper critically examines the experiences of women in heterosexual intimate relationships. It aims to understand how women negotiate social structures of family, marriage choice, and community through intimate relationships. Young women are challenging gendered power relations, traditional family structures, and marriage norms in their everyday lives. By this, women challenge the old structures of patriarchy, caste system, and control of their sexuality. A qualitative research design using in-depth interviews with 12 working women in the age group of 25–30 years who were in intimate relationships was conducted. The study was based in Delhi and done over two months in 2019. Women were selected through snowball sampling. Narrative analysis has been used to evaluate women’s experiences in intimate relationships. The narratives show the struggles and negotiations that women do for love and how these struggles are becoming a way of challenging various structures like patriarchy, caste, class, and religion. Women choose their life partners or arrange for their love marriage. Still, the choice of the partner and the idea of marriage are influenced by the broader patriarchal, caste, and class structures. The women in this study have been able to move beyond the traditional norm of arranged marriage but have still not taken the leap of choice free of the broader institutions of caste, class, and family. The paper concludes by emphasising that although women choose their heterosexual partners for marriage, their choices are still influenced by their caste, class, and patriarchal structures.

Changes in wedding customs in Gornja Poljica in the hinterland of Split, Croatia, in the last hundred years

Aim: To examine how wedding customs have acquired unwritten rules over time and how much they have changed in the last hundred years.Methods: Semi-structured interviews with three respondents from Gornja Poljica (Split city hinterland) and a secondary analysis of sources with the aim of analyzing the course and customs of weddings over three generations in Gornja Poljica.Results: As in the past, there is a wedding procedure consisting of the gathering of wedding guests, the pick-up of the bride at her home, the wedding ceremony, the celebration, and the visit of the bride’s family to her new home. The new customs are a bachelorette party, a garter toss, a wedding cake and wearing a wedding dress all night. Of 28 customs from 100 years ago, nine (one-third) have disappeared, the wedding day has been changed from Monday to Saturday, the ceremony has been shortened from three days to one, the number of wedding guests has been increased, and the bachelorette party has been introduced.Conclusion: From the narratives, it appears that the wedding ceremony is primarily a personal event, one of the most important in the life of the bride and groom, especially for the woman, for whom it represents a permanent change in family and social status. Until the 1950s, women were more passive in the role of bride than they are today. Through the process of women’s emancipation, globalization and the possibility of free choice, the values and practice of marriage itself have changed.

Research on Intergenerational Transmission of Post-95s Generation’s View of Marriage from The Perspective of Locus of Control

In today's social background, people are always willing to pursue a better material life. In choice of marriage, parents and children have different ideas and standards in choosing a spouse, which would lead to parents' intervention in the choice of children's spouse. This paper analyzes and demonstrates the current situation of marriage and love among Chinese youth. It first introduces several ways to find a partner in China and expresses Chinese parents' views on mate selection through literature. By means of interviews with young people in marriageable age and their parents and literature analysis, this paper discusses and demonstrates the dominant role of parents in their children's choice of spouses, and puts forward suggestions on how to properly deal with the problem of parental intervention in the process of marriage.

Striving for Relationships and Appropriating Marriage Choices: Exploring the Inner Plight of Queer Women Across Select Cultures

Striving for Relationships and Appropriating Marriage Choices: Exploring the Inner Plight of Queer Women Across Select Cultures

Marriage Choices in Contemporary Italy. Couples’ Places of Meeting Between Individualization and Structural Determinants

Marriage Choices in Contemporary Italy. Couples’ Places of Meeting Between Individualization and Structural Determinants

On Isabel Archer's Growth in The Portrait of a Lady from the Perspective of European and American Cultural Integration

Henry James' novels focus on the theme of European and American culture. His ideal American culture is the integration of the cultural advantages of the two countries. This paper aims to show James' ideal culture and women's growth in The Portrait of a Lady by analyzing his criticism of Transcendentalism and analyzing Isabel Archer's psychological activities with the method of psychological realism. Isabel Archer's desire for European culture at the beginning reflects her willingness to accept European culture, which makes her better absorb European culture. Her choice of marriage reflects that she gradually recognizes and accepts the reality, and finds a husband who embodies the integration of European and American culture. She finally understands the significance of responsibility and morality and returns to marriage, which reflects Henry James' ideal of integrating two cultures.

Not your destiny: Autonomy in marriage choices and the intergenerational transmission of domestic violence among Chinese women

Objective This article examines how women's autonomy in marriage choices influences the intergenerational transmission of domestic violence in mainland China. Methods An original survey was administered to married women in Beijing and Chengdu (N = 1646). Seemingly unrelated regression models accounting for the association between violence perpetration and victimization were conducted. Results Chinese women's experiences of domestic violence in current marriages were associated with their exposure to interparental violence during childhood. Compared to women with no autonomy in deciding about their marriages, women with autonomy were less likely to show intergenerational transmission of domestic violence. Conclusion Women's rising autonomy disrupts the intergenerational transmission of domestic violence. The findings highlight the importance of designing relevant policies to further protect and improve women's autonomy in marriage decisions to avoid domestic violence.

Experiences of Autonomy in Marriage and Divorce Within the Chinese Traditional System

The Chinese traditional system features a hierarchical familial culture. When confronted with individualization and autonomy in choices of marriage and divorce, the system remains resilient and intervenes in the lives of young families. To analyze the discourses of divorced urban young adults, 46 participants (23 women and 23 men) aged 24–39 years were recruited from various regions in China. Through an analysis of the stressors involved in marriage and divorce, the concrete values and the conceptions shared in a unitary system of traditions were elicited. The promise of stability in a marriage was the appeal of this system while the focus on offspring was the general interest with evolutionary elements that justify this system. The concept of the individual autonomy of divorce grew from marital experiences and would be confined to the traditional system if its appeal remains unchallenged.

«Созидательное устройство совместной жизни»: путь семьи ученых-геологов

The autobiographical tale of geologists, the Negrutsa spouses, “The Path of Love” (2002) is an informative source on the history of Russian geology, the everyday life of field researchers, and the social history of the family. The main significance of the book is that it is a socio-anthropologically valuable autodescription of a married family belonging to the scientific intelligentsia and to a certain professional group. The work contributes to the study and understanding of the processes of the formation of Soviet urban families in the second half of the twentieth century. The content of the book is considere in the context of the problems of marriage choice, matrimonial relations, the organization of extended kinship communities, family crises and conflicts, the relationship between professional and family aspects of life. The Negrutsa family belonged to the type of married families, whose unity is based on the personal interaction of husband and wife and is supported by immanent values. At the same time, the married family is influenced by the traditions of parental families, which in this case differed significantly in socio-cultural properties.