By Mohammed Chahbi
By Mohammed Chahbi
Morocco World News
Khouribga, Morocco, December 29, 2012
At any given time in one’s life, there is something that you are likely to be consumed in . For example, when you are a child, you would play alongside your peers and sleep at the end of the day. When you attend school, your degree consumes all of your efforts. After your graduation, you start looking for a job, and after you’re recruited, here comes the stage that all of us is waiting for: Marriage. This progression is not as easy as it appears.
Marriage is the step that requires much more thought than any of the previous life stages. It is the beginning of a life with a partner, which necessitates care, respect, tenderness and all the positive qualities that can come to mind.
As both a conservative and modern society, would we still marry and live after marriage the way our parents did? In other words, can we still keep our traditions and customs? Or would modernity make our traditions vanish?
To answer these questions, we need to first state that the rate of marriage in our society is decreasing because of many factors–among which is the unaffordable dowry and ceremony. Our parents used to marry with nothing but “Baraka & Niyia” (God’s blessing and good intention). The dowry and the ceremony were affordable because people were not that materialistic, they were rather looking for a man full of respect and a woman full of love. For marriage, you need to buy many presents, go shopping now and again with your future wife to be considered generous. You also need to rent a big hall for the wedding party, which is very exorbitant and empties your already-poor-pocket. All of these things are nothing compared to the furniture and the house that you will have to buy. The expenses seem to never end.
Before marriage occurs, there are many things which are not traditional but modern that are required. To make it crystal clear, we will provide some examples, to name but a few, marrying working-women, living with your parents.
Nowadays, some if not the overwhelming majority of men who are about to marry deem it crucial to marry working women because “two salaries” are better than one. Meaning a man working in the public or the private sector cannot alone afford the heavy necessities of life with the poor salary he earns. This drives him to look for a working-woman sometimes regardless of beauty, origins and behavior which leads to a more liberal society in which woman is on equal footing with the man either inside, or outside the house. This wasn’t the case for most of our ancestors who used to marry mostly housewives.
I was told by some of my friends who married working-women that you would have problems if you want to play the role of a dominant man, because dominance is related to how much money you earn and spend. I think that this is true because if you are both working, the term “dominance” is related to permittivity if not mania. In this case, you can replace dominance by partnership because you are like a shareholder in an enterprise, not the boss.
Having a working-wife may be tolerated by you but not by your family and your society not in terms of outside work but of house work. You will hear things about your fake manhood and the authority of your wife though this may not be the real situation. That’s why most women these days want to live alone far from her husband family’s eyes to have some rest from their eyes and mouths.
Among the indispensable conditions of today’s wife is house-autonomy which is an additional expenditure for the husband. She wants to be alone with her husband and try to solve her family’s problems in a small sphere not a big one like her family and her husband’s. Women used to marry and follow their husbands wherever they went, not like today’s wives who are prone for consultation rather than command.
To marry is not an easy task because it needs altruism and respect which most of today’s couples forget. These values should exist in all times and places, in both traditional and modern societies. So, be a good man to have a good woman and vice versa. Finally, I have a plea to parents to facilitate marriage procedures for young couples to marry and bring up a generation that is worth-sacrificing.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
