Am I actually in an arranged marriage?
My parents began mentioning marriage to me when I was a toddler.
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One of my earliest memories is my mom telling me that someday I would go to Brigham Young University and find a wife.
I was probably only two or three years old when this first happened1 and over the years she brought it up many more times. Both my parents were BYU grads, and they got married and had me while still in school. So it made sense that they’d want to see me follow in their footsteps.
I suspect some people will cringe, at least a little, when hearing this. College is supposed to be about education, not matchmaking. And charting out a 20-year life plan for a two year old feels, let’s say, a bit heavy-handed. I say this because I’ve cringed myself when, as an adult, I’ve overheard other parents make these kinds of comments.
But in my own case, I did eventually grow up and attend BYU. And I did get married to someone I met there. And while I’ve come to see attending BYU as overall a professional error, my marriage is working out well so far. We’re still married, we have two kids, and while I’m not totally sure what “happiness” means exactly, this is maybe the closest I’ve been to it.
I think this anecdote is a good segue into my thesis today, which is this: Maybe parents taking a more active role in their kids’ lives shouldn’t be so cringey. Despite a general sense in Western countries that people should come up with romantic partnerships on their own (the idea of “soulmate love”), maybe family involvement in major life choices such as marriage is underrated.
I think the place to start here is by pointing out that when it comes to marriage, there’s a spectrum of how much personal choice people expect to exert. On one end of the spectrum, there’s forced marriage, which is what it sounds like. It should go without saying that this isn’t a good thing2.
The other end of the spectrum is, I suppose, what the majority of people in places like the U.S. do, which is figure out their relationships on their own. There’s nothing wrong with this. It works for lots of people.
But there’s a lot of middle ground too. Another point on the spectrum would be arranged marriage. In the West, as I’ve written before, arranged marriage was practiced in Ancient Rome3 and into the medieval period4. Religious and economic trends eventually pushed the West away from arranged marriage5, but the practice continued in other parts of the world, and still exists today. I’ve seen varying statistics, but arranged marriage is still very common in some parts of the globe.
I say this not to argue that arranged marriage should return as the main method of matchmaking in the West. But rather because it’s worth challenging preconceptions about how to build a successful relationship. When I talk to fellow people from Western countries — or countries that psychologists sometimes call WEIRD6, which stands for “Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic” — the relative scarcity of arranged marriage is sometimes touted as a benefit or even as evidence that the West is superior.
But I’m not so convinced.
As it turns out, the divorce rate for arranged marriages is quite a bit lower than the divorce rate for marriages in the U.S. generally7. And the internet is peppered with writing from contemporary practitioners of arranged marriage who are quick to point out that it’s not forced marriage, and that it works for many people.
Again, the point isn’t to advocate for arranged marriage. It’s just to highlight that there’s a spectrum of personal involvement in marriage decisions. And one approach isn’t necessarily better than all the others.
That brings me back to my own experience. Obviously, my marriage wasn’t arranged in the conventional sense of that word. My wife and I met on our own, and our parents were 700 miles away as we fell in love and decided to get married.
But my parents (and my wife’s parents) did orchestrate a situation in which I was looking for a partner in a place where my prospects were limited to people they might have chosen if they were arranging the union. My mom didn’t just tell me to go to BYU when I was two, she told me continuously my whole life growing up. My academic performance, my extracurriculars, my religious involvement and loads of other things were explicitly framed as leading me to an environment where I could get an education and a wife.
In other words, my parents spent 23 years (my age when I first met my now-wife) moving me around a chess board, so to speak. And when it was time for me to make the final move on my own, my options were mostly ones they approved of.
I don’t know if there’s a name for this kind of thing (other than just “parenting”)8. But I think of it as “situational arrangement,” or a situationally arranged marriage. The set up the situation.
I recently mentioned this to a friend and he said that it “sounded manipulative.” To which I replied, “does it matter?” If the outcome is happiness, is it wrong?
The kind of orchestrating my mom did is also common, even if it’s less explicit in many families. Researchers have long documented a phenomenon called “assortative mating,” which is basically the idea that people tend to find partners with whom they are similar. In practice, this means people tend to marry within their own social, economic, and educational classes. The rich marry the rich. And this happens because people have been moved into spheres where they’ll encounter mates they’ll see as acceptable.
I suspect most parents think about this. The question is just how proactive they’re willing to be. It’s an issue of where on the spectrum they fall.
In any case, I’m not here to advocate for the approach my mom took. Like arranged marriage, it’s just one option. And I think many of her specific strategies — for example focusing so intensely on one particular and very niche school — were errors9 10.
But in terms of relationships, my experience suggests that a “situational arrangement” philosophy in general, or parents pushing their adult children to a specific outcome, isn’t necessarily a disaster. In the end, I don’t think I’m less happy today because my parents stepped a little bit on my personal choice.
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Headlines to read this week:
To Have Kids or Not: Which Decision Do Americans Regret More?
“29% of U.S. adults either do not want to have children or wish they had fewer. A third (34%) have children and are happy with the number they have and another third—the largest group—wish they had more (37%), whether currently parents or not. In other words, those with no apparent regret or reluctance outnumber the rest by more than 2 to 1.”
A pandemic love story you haven’t heard before: Parents and their adult children
“The pandemic pushed millions of young adults to live with their parents as college campuses shuttered, businesses reduced their hours and social isolation wore down people’s mental health.
[…]
The experience wasn’t always easy, as families forced together also grappled with financial struggles, domestic strife and the threat of contracting an illness that has killed nearly 600,000 Americans.
But for some lucky families, the unexpected time together often felt like a gift, a bonus year to bond with parents and siblings. And for the luckiest, like the Andersons, that time was a revelation.”
The first time I remember hearing this was in our condo immediately after we moved to California. I was two when we moved, and we didn’t live in that condo for long, which is how I’m able to date this comment.
I’ve had a chance over the years to talk to a handful of people who spent time in what basically amounted to forced marriages. These conversations were part of past reporting projects I worked on. It’s been years, but this reporting and the heartbreaking stories people shared left a lasting impact on me.
Growing Up and Growing Old in Ancient Rome: A Life Course Approach. By Mary Harlow, Ray Laurence. 2001. Page 59-60
Family and Household in Medieval England (Social History in Perspective) 2000th Edition. Peter Fleming. Page 56. See also: Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz and The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich.
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan. Page 248. Also (and primarily) Jack Goody’s The development of the family and marriage in Europe.
The WEIRDest People in the World. Joseph Henrich. 2020
There are of course many people in arranged marriages in the U.S. But it’s safe to say that they are very much in the minority of overall marriages. There are also a number of other factors at play here, such as stigma surrounding divorce. I’m always somewhat uneasy about citing divorce statistics as evidence that marriages are or are not working; divorce was uncommon in the 1880s but very common in the 1980s, so who was happier? Which relationships were working better? I think divorce rates are a part of the conversation, but there’s a limit to how much they mean. In any case, here’s some further reading on arranged marriages, divorce stigma, and relationships in the U.S.: The divorce rate is falling. Here’s why that’s bad news for some Americans.
If there is a term for this, please do let me know.
I enjoyed my time at BYU. But in retrospect, and in terms of later opportunities, it would have been a wiser choice to attend any of the UC schools most of my friends went to. Of course that would have meant not meeting my wife, but I think it’s worth evaluating decisions on their own merits, rather than on the long chain of events they lead to.
For what it’s worth, I have a 3-year-old daughter now, and I’ve never told her what she should do for college or future relationships. I guess I am a prisoner of modernity.