I feel reluctant to generalize about Indian family life and marriage. But at least I have some impressions!
First, families are still important to many Indians. While many young Indian women seem to be marrying later (we've met lots of women college students who aren't married yet, at an age when they likely would have been a generation ago), I think most assume or hope that they will marry someday. And I think most still expect to have children, though perhaps fewer than their grandparents might have, especially for those who expect to provide graduate education for those children and/or to live in a city where housing is expensive. As in most places around the world, women getting more education and planning to live in a big city will likely marry later and have fewer children.
On the other hand, my impression is that perhaps most of the women university students we've met probably still live "at home," with their parents. We've met some mid-20's women who live with women roommates away from family, but that seems less common. I think single young women are often still seen as needing family, perhaps for economic reasons but also sometimes for reasons of protection or reputation, if they are to be most marriageable.
And it may be difficult to resist the expectation of one's parents to live with them until marriage. Even for young, educated, "modern" young people, there still seems to be some expectation that parents will be involved in the choice of a spouse, whether in using their networks of relatives and friends to locate possible partners (to be accepted or rejected by their children), or (in the more traditional sense) to actually arrange a marriage. Some young women hope to convince their parent that a young man they've found or fallen for is suitable (once they've checked out his background); others have said they don't feel they can hold out against their parents' choice once they reached their later 20's.
Such dilemmas are, of course, often the focus of romantic Bollywood films--in which falling for the wrong boy, or simply falling in love, goes against the parents' plans or their wisdom that it's best to marry first, then fall in love with the spouse who is after all best for you as the parents have known all along. Often, as in "Monsoon Wedding," things end happily when the young bride realizes her own choice wouldn't have worked out, and that she could care for her parents' choice even more; sometimes the conflict can end in tragedy. The hope and expectation that a big wedding will be the finale remains common, either because of or in spite of family traditions, as we see in the photo of a Big Wedding near where we were living in Delhi:
I think my newest insight about all this is that the logic of arranged marriages has made the most sense in the context of "joint" or "extended" families. One family we met, for example, includes the older married couple, their son and his wife (who moved into the joint household upon marriage), their two teenaged daughters, and the older couple's still-unmarried daughter who's working as a highly-educated professional. The role of the senior couple in helping arrange (or assist) the matchmaking makes logical sense if the extended family is actually going to be living together and will need to be a good fit; the young will also be the ones who will care for the aging parents, who in India are still rarely moved into an American-style care facility.
Some of this logic can break down in the long run, especially when highly-educated Indian couples move to Britain or America for professional work and success (not uncommon according to India Calling). If these "children" establish successful lives abroad, and also raise their own children there, they are unlikely to return to India to complete their end of the implicit bargain to care for their aging parents.
Sharing food is something that seems to gather families together. This is perhaps not surprising, at least for the few families we spent time with: they appreciated good Indian cooking and food, and could afford it, and enjoyed eating it together, in a way that seems to have largely faded in many American families of a comparable social class who are now "too busy" to cook from scratch or eat their meals together (and of course many middle-class Indian families have a cook). See the photo below of what started as a last-minute, impromptu, mid-afternoon "lunch" (additional foods and tastes kept getting pulled out of the refrigerator and heated up), ending in a very nice meal (probably enhanced by the family's hospitality to us visitors). (In deference to privacy, the photo shows only the food and not the family.)
Before I close, I include an interesting note on food. Two young Indian women, well-educated, in their 20's, mentioned that their parents, especially their mothers, used to feed them. That seemed ordinary enough--don't moms usually feed their kids? But they meant something more--that their moms, even when the women were in their teens, would often put nice morsels of food directly into the girls' mouth, by hand. I asked how that felt, wondering if this might have been embarrassing for them, or perhaps embarrassing to talk about--they were hesitant to answer, and I could imagine they would think we would think they were a little strange. But one said, softly, "it was nice." It sounded like a situation of care and intimacy.
And one more note on food and moms and daughters. I'm back at the Minneapolis airport, the day we are leaving for India. I'm meeting the parents, who are wishing us a good trip, giving their kids one more hug. But one mom asks me something special: "Please take care of my daughter. Keep her safe, and bring her home to me." She is an immigrant mom, and doesn't yet speak enough English to ask me this directly; her daughter has to translate her mom's request. She's asking me to make a promise I cannot refuse to make, yet am unsure I can keep--how can I know what may become of us, when we are strangers in a strange land? But I do promise.
Later, the families having departed, we have gone through ticketing and security and have gathered at our departure gate. Our departure has been postponed several times, as ice storms descend on the east coast airports where we are supposed to make our connections. The students get restless, then bored, then hungry, and nearly all eventually wander off to see what sort of airport fast-food might await them. But the daughter, next to whom I'm sitting, remains, and she rummages around in her backpack for something. It is the package of food her mom has prepared for her. She opens it up: "ooh, the sticky rice is still warm!" And there's dense, chewy red pork too. She offers me some, and munches away happily on the choice morsels her mom has provided, and the love it contains. My heart is opening, and we have not yet left Minnesota. (And yes…we all returned home safely.
First, families are still important to many Indians. While many young Indian women seem to be marrying later (we've met lots of women college students who aren't married yet, at an age when they likely would have been a generation ago), I think most assume or hope that they will marry someday. And I think most still expect to have children, though perhaps fewer than their grandparents might have, especially for those who expect to provide graduate education for those children and/or to live in a city where housing is expensive. As in most places around the world, women getting more education and planning to live in a big city will likely marry later and have fewer children.
On the other hand, my impression is that perhaps most of the women university students we've met probably still live "at home," with their parents. We've met some mid-20's women who live with women roommates away from family, but that seems less common. I think single young women are often still seen as needing family, perhaps for economic reasons but also sometimes for reasons of protection or reputation, if they are to be most marriageable.
And it may be difficult to resist the expectation of one's parents to live with them until marriage. Even for young, educated, "modern" young people, there still seems to be some expectation that parents will be involved in the choice of a spouse, whether in using their networks of relatives and friends to locate possible partners (to be accepted or rejected by their children), or (in the more traditional sense) to actually arrange a marriage. Some young women hope to convince their parent that a young man they've found or fallen for is suitable (once they've checked out his background); others have said they don't feel they can hold out against their parents' choice once they reached their later 20's.
Such dilemmas are, of course, often the focus of romantic Bollywood films--in which falling for the wrong boy, or simply falling in love, goes against the parents' plans or their wisdom that it's best to marry first, then fall in love with the spouse who is after all best for you as the parents have known all along. Often, as in "Monsoon Wedding," things end happily when the young bride realizes her own choice wouldn't have worked out, and that she could care for her parents' choice even more; sometimes the conflict can end in tragedy. The hope and expectation that a big wedding will be the finale remains common, either because of or in spite of family traditions, as we see in the photo of a Big Wedding near where we were living in Delhi:
I think my newest insight about all this is that the logic of arranged marriages has made the most sense in the context of "joint" or "extended" families. One family we met, for example, includes the older married couple, their son and his wife (who moved into the joint household upon marriage), their two teenaged daughters, and the older couple's still-unmarried daughter who's working as a highly-educated professional. The role of the senior couple in helping arrange (or assist) the matchmaking makes logical sense if the extended family is actually going to be living together and will need to be a good fit; the young will also be the ones who will care for the aging parents, who in India are still rarely moved into an American-style care facility.
Some of this logic can break down in the long run, especially when highly-educated Indian couples move to Britain or America for professional work and success (not uncommon according to India Calling). If these "children" establish successful lives abroad, and also raise their own children there, they are unlikely to return to India to complete their end of the implicit bargain to care for their aging parents.
Sharing food is something that seems to gather families together. This is perhaps not surprising, at least for the few families we spent time with: they appreciated good Indian cooking and food, and could afford it, and enjoyed eating it together, in a way that seems to have largely faded in many American families of a comparable social class who are now "too busy" to cook from scratch or eat their meals together (and of course many middle-class Indian families have a cook). See the photo below of what started as a last-minute, impromptu, mid-afternoon "lunch" (additional foods and tastes kept getting pulled out of the refrigerator and heated up), ending in a very nice meal (probably enhanced by the family's hospitality to us visitors). (In deference to privacy, the photo shows only the food and not the family.)
Before I close, I include an interesting note on food. Two young Indian women, well-educated, in their 20's, mentioned that their parents, especially their mothers, used to feed them. That seemed ordinary enough--don't moms usually feed their kids? But they meant something more--that their moms, even when the women were in their teens, would often put nice morsels of food directly into the girls' mouth, by hand. I asked how that felt, wondering if this might have been embarrassing for them, or perhaps embarrassing to talk about--they were hesitant to answer, and I could imagine they would think we would think they were a little strange. But one said, softly, "it was nice." It sounded like a situation of care and intimacy.
And one more note on food and moms and daughters. I'm back at the Minneapolis airport, the day we are leaving for India. I'm meeting the parents, who are wishing us a good trip, giving their kids one more hug. But one mom asks me something special: "Please take care of my daughter. Keep her safe, and bring her home to me." She is an immigrant mom, and doesn't yet speak enough English to ask me this directly; her daughter has to translate her mom's request. She's asking me to make a promise I cannot refuse to make, yet am unsure I can keep--how can I know what may become of us, when we are strangers in a strange land? But I do promise.
Later, the families having departed, we have gone through ticketing and security and have gathered at our departure gate. Our departure has been postponed several times, as ice storms descend on the east coast airports where we are supposed to make our connections. The students get restless, then bored, then hungry, and nearly all eventually wander off to see what sort of airport fast-food might await them. But the daughter, next to whom I'm sitting, remains, and she rummages around in her backpack for something. It is the package of food her mom has prepared for her. She opens it up: "ooh, the sticky rice is still warm!" And there's dense, chewy red pork too. She offers me some, and munches away happily on the choice morsels her mom has provided, and the love it contains. My heart is opening, and we have not yet left Minnesota. (And yes…we all returned home safely.
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