|
By Christine Oh  While tying pink ribbons to the umpteenth party favor for my older
sister’s fast-approaching walk down the aisle, my mom confesses she has
been secretly arranging meetings for me with Korean American
professionals of the opposite sex. “It’s time you begin dating
marriage-material men,” she advises officiously.My mother has been swept up in a swirl of frenzy since Karen announced
her engagement earlier this year. All this time, I thought this was due
to my sister’s nuptials. I didn’t realize she was in a panic, trying to
marry off her remaining single daughter who was meandering through the
twilight of her youth.
I’ve
never felt much pressure to marry. So what if I was 29 and happily
single? I’ve flitted by several interesting characters in my life, even
maintaining a couple long-term relationships. Never once did I
think I was near the end of prime marrying age, until my mom told me
that my “qualifications” did not pass the muster of an eligible
bachelor, a Korean American professor at a top university who felt his
title afforded him this swaggering determinism. And what ruled me out
as a candidate to bear the children of this man? It was my age! In his
early 30’s, this liberal-minded professor was quite narrow-minded when
it came to his private ménage. Having been the precocious one in
my family, I thought I would be ahead of the curve in most things in
life. After taking a step back, I realize when it comes to marriage, I
fall behind the bell curve. According to the most recent stats from the
National Marriage Project, an initiative of Rutgers University, the
median age of first wedded bliss is 25 for women and 27 for men.
In 1960, they were 20 and 23, respectively.
I never
received a memo in my early 20’s alerting me of this impending
expiration date. Since most of my girlfriends are like me –
highly educated career women and single, I was mostly insulated from
this reality. Now that I’m faced with it head on, many issues come up
to play. Why should I marry? For kids? For love? For
security? For companionship? Does the ethnicity of the
person I might wed matter? At my “stale” age, are there a ny good men
left for me? Do I even care?
“Marriage was originally designed
in many cultures as both a way to unify families and provide an
economic agreement,” says anthropologist Judy Tso of Aha Solutions
Unlimited. “It was an arrangement between families, often with an
exchange of money, dowry or bride prices.”
The notion of
marriage as an economic agreement between families seems so foreign in
today’s Western society where marriage is idealized as an expression of
love’s fulfillment. And for many of us career girls, we’ve been focused
on accumulating our fancy degrees beyond the traditional M-R-S
imprimatur. With the feminist movement on our side, we thought we could
have it all – a high-powered career and if we so choose, our soul mate
to wed and with whom to start a family. Are we expecting too much? With
so many choices, many women are waiting and some are finding that their
male peers have embarked on a search for a much younger, milquetoast
wife in their country of origin.
Although there is no empirical
evidence of the prevalence of this phenomenon, Laura Giles, a social
worker of Filipino extraction who also does business in the Middle
East, says that among the Middle Easterners and Filipinos she knows,
many have found their spouses this way. “Anecdotal evidence shows that
this is fairly common because it is expected by the men’s parents and
because the women from ‘home’ are going to have more of the same values
and customs, including being more agreeable and servile, that some men
desire.”
Mahalakshmi Ganapathy, a graduate student at Kansas
State University, agrees, adding that Indo American men who travel to
India to look for a wife are seeking “a conservatively dressed virgin
to conform to traditional standards, such as putting home before her
own career ambitions, taking care of the husband’s needs and cooking
elaborate Indian cuisine.”
This practice seems to hinge on the
source of the man’s values – whether it’s drawn from the Asian or
Middle Eastern country of his ancestry or from American or Western
values.
“For the men who wish to follow the
traditional values around marriage and gender roles, it will be more
likely that a woman from the country of origin will hold the same
values, whereas women here in the States are more likely to hold
feminist virtues, values of equality for women and equality in the
gender roles,” elaborates Tso. “Asian American women and even Middle
Eastern American women are more likely to adopt the values of
mainstream American society.”
For physician Raj Dua, 30, finding
one’s match isn’t so black and white. He says that men who look beyond
the States for their wife are often influenced by their parents or
simply expanding their pool of eligible mates. “If the parents are
pushing them or if they have family and friends back in India who can
introduce them to potential mates, they’re more likely to try that
option,” Dua explains.
It has only been a year since his
relatives first suggested he look for a wife in India. Although he was
at first opposed to this notion because of the potential cultural
disparity, he is not ruling out the option and decided to put it on
hold until his mid 30’s. If he’s still single by then, he may entertain
that opportunity on one condition. – the introduction has to be made by
someone he trusts such as a relative or family friend. “You’d be amazed
that many women who are matched for these set ups are highly educated,
ambitious and cosmopolitan, so there shouldn’t be much of a cultural
gap,” Dua reasons. “They’re not servile domestics or less independent
than American women. If anything, they may be a bit more
traditional. For example, they are more likely to be open to living in
an extended family.”
However, being too influenced by
parents can be a problem for these men’s more Westernized counterparts.
In many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, the bride marries into the
groom’s family and lives with the husband’s parents. This can cause
much friction in the household between wife and mother-in-law. For that
reason, this option is unthinkable for most Americanized women.
Ganapathy
believes that many Indian mothers raise their sons to marry an obedient
wife who will take care of them. “Indian men are used to being pampered
by their mothers. They think it’s normal to go out and study, play,
work, eat and watch TV, while the wife does all household chores,” she
says. “This arrangement does not give Indian women freedom to live a
more cosmopolitan lifestyle.”
Is it possible that
American women with Asian and Middle East roots are outpacing their
male counterparts when it comes to adapting to the Western culture and
ideals? Tso intones, “There is a subsegment of Asian men who are
looking for people who hold traditional values, whereas more Asian
women are wanting an equal partner.”
There is no operational
definition of “traditionalism” for this subsegment of men. In a very
Bill Clintonesque fashion, their definition of a traditional wife can
extend from an equal partner of the same culture and religion who
understand the importance of family to one who labors over meals of
East West cuisine and lives as the servant/wife of the extended family.
Walid Haddad, 30, immigrated to the United States 14
years ago from Lebanon. Straddling both cultures, Haddad is looking for
a mate who can understand his dichotomy; he is too Westernized for
Arabs but too Eastern for the average American. While visiting
family in his native country three years ago, he met a Lebanese woman
with whom he dated for a brief period. He soon realized that the
cultural gap, let alone physical distance, was too great to sustain a
meaningful relationship.
Haddad believes
one’s level of acculturation and age is a significant factor. “If you
were born in the States, you’re less likely to go back to look for a
wife, and if you were born in another country and still have ties to
it, you may go back.” He adds, “If you’re 35 or older and want to have
a family, you may consider going back to your native country to look
for a wife if you’ve exhausted all possibilities here.”
Although
he knows of one successful marriage from this practice – his uncle, at
the age of 31, was set up by family members in Lebanon with a lovely
Lebanese woman and they’ve been wed for 29 years – Haddad has no plans
to go back to his birth country to find his mate. “My main reason for
marriage is to have children and a family with a woman who can
understand me. I want to be young and have energy when I’m with
my kids. If I’m not married by my late 30’s, I’m not going to pressure
myself. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
A man who admits to having a biological clock ticking away? If that’s not egalitarian, what is?
On
Karen’s big day, after well-meaning family and friends congratulated my
sister, they turned to me, the maid of honor, and bombarded me with
questions: “When are you going to get married?” “Seeing anybody?”
“How old are you again?” “I want you to meet my
fill-in-the-blank.”
I know that this
phat-phat-phat-phat continuous sonic wash of inquiries will follow me
until I tie the knot. But since when has a little bit of annoyance ever
stopped me? As much as my mother fears that I will end up all alone as
the crabbed, bitter woman in a brittle curl over her coffee if I don’t
marry in the next five years, I am in no rush. This former precocious
kid is fine being at the tail end of the bell curve.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
