Ajaya Sharma

Kathmandu:

When I look around there are some parents and some guardians who are worried of their daughter’s marriage rather than her educational and professional career. Not that worrying is a healthy activity altogether. But this practice exceeds its rational or even sane limits when parents forbid their daughters in their twenties from going abroad for study just due to the reason that they may not get a suitable groom when they return because they would grow

“too old for marriage” or might adapt well to the environment there and marry by herself in which case they have to relinquish their ritual of forcing their daughter into marriage willy-nilly with a person of their choice. I don’t take sides of a daughter or son, for that matter, ruining the dreams of their parents but would it be good judgment to ruin a daughter’s life and work and career just to prevent one’s own expectations from being lost? Can they be that selfish and yet call themselves caring parents?

I may sound biased to parents because I have not stood in their position. But even when I put myself in their shoes, I would say and believe the same things and these things are not partial to any group or generation but really good for both sides, if one bothers to just open their mind to them. Parents should act as a facilitator in their children’s life. They should ease their children’s burdens and not stand as obstacles in their children’s lives to come across and struggle against. When I say children I mean both boys and girls, both sons and daughters. But perhaps the condition is not the same for a male and a female person and girls have extra hurdles. We have done a lot to create gender equality in society and achieved a lot on our parts but we still have a long way to go. We have not been able to create an environment that would be as sound to a girl as to a boy.

I have some friends who have experienced hopes of studying abroad fall down like a pack of cards just because they were of the female gender and, according to their parents, that was reason enough for them to forbid them from going abroad. They could even study here in their own country living with their parents but then here they don’t have the chance to study the subject of their choice and take up something they are really good at. Besides, they have their boundaries, curfews and limits and are actually forbidden even if they are adults from doing even trivial acts and positive trivial acts at that. So there is a constant psychological threat of turning into a monster because they are intelligent and able and strong, whatever their parents and others perceive them as, yet they cannot ventilate their energies in good, wholesome acts that are good for all and for themselves and are encouraged and often forced to become mean, jealous, petty and cowardly, shying away from assurance, clueless in the slightest danger.

So, I think it would be better if parents understand their children’s feelings and their daughter’s aim sand help them achieve their goals the way they have planned to and not obstruct the steps of their children just because she is your daughter and not a son.

And I would again state what I have stated earlier. Marriage should not create an obstacle in our educational careers. Marriage is a part of our normal life. It shouldn’t be a compulsion to live with. It is something that comes in our road naturally. We should not deviate from our road to find marriage blocking our education and work. That way, we’ll marry badly as well. It’s not necessary that marriage should happen exactly as soon as we cross 18 or 19 years of age. We can take our time. Marriage should not decide what we are going to do. Instead we and our education should determine whether it’s the time to give time to marriage or not. Marriage just a part of our life. It’s not the sole aim of our life. Marriage is not anti-education. It is complementary to work and study and each helps the other.