The
sound of the camera, the flash going on and off and an image appears, a memory
of a family with smily faces, all full of hope and full of compassion. Ties
that hold it firm and yet fear deep down about how sustainable this state is. A
set dinner table with delicious food and around it all memebers of the family
smiling to the camera and then time wipes each figure one by one and what is
left is just an old dusted family photo. This as an idealistic version of a
great family life which is also doomed to fade away in time when new modals,
new families burgeon from young seeds and they also rise and fall in the tide
of life struggling to hold hands and keep this institution alive.
Everything
is rapidly changing. Technology has opened a big window to wisdom and to a
global interaction. When we look at 60s, we can see that women at that time were
regarded as inferior to men and they couldnt find proper jobs. Yet, having a
family was a popular concept. Women married for different reasons: For social
security, for giving birth, but rarely for love. Love was a taboo and was
regarded as unnecessary and even at
times a bad decision. Girls were advised to marry someone older with a good economical
situation. Getting divorced was so rare and society didn’t take divorced women
too well. Men met their future spouses in the parties, in the streets and so
on.
In the
18th century, we could see the influence of having a happy family life. Famous painters
of the time painted family lives wih colour and energy promoting how important
it was to have big families; However, we now know that those paintings didn’t
trully portrayed what was going on in the households. Men led a double life and
had mistresses in disguise and women heartbroken and lonely kept appearances. So
the well-known happy family life of “Good Sweet Home” wasn’t really true.
In
some rural parts of some countries like India, Yemen, Africa, Iran, Turkey etc child marriages are still very common.
Young girls even before the age of puberty are forced to have unhealthy
marriages; sometimes to men double their age. In some parts of Africa it is
thought that a girl only sets foot into womanhood by getting married. This type
of marriages are utterly repulsive and doesn’t really represent an ideal family
life.
Nowadays,
with the latest developement in technology and thus the rise in the number of
options, getting married is losing its popularity. Women work shoulder to
shoulder with men and they have high respectable positions and make good
income. They don’t need men to make them feel secure and opportunities of
meeting someone have risen. One can cheat on his wife on the mobile phone and a
woman can still meet someone on a laptop. Young people can easily get divorced without
making any sacrifice. But there are good news too. Gay people have finally
achieved their rights to get married in America and this may bring a new colour to family lives.
All in
all, do we really need to marry to have a good family life? There are examples
of happy couples sharing the same house without signing the paper; wheares there
are a lot of bondings through sumptuous weddings which has resulted in catastrophic traumatic endings. When we look
at our time we still see the dots like shadowy colour from the past. The
approach to marriage and family life in
the past still exist in our time with a little bit of change and difference.
But let us keep this in mind that a family life can not be a family life without
love, freedom, space, understanding, compassion and sacrifice and this can be
owned only if we can hone our ego and greed and learn to be satisfied with love
and love alone. Those that have it, are the most blessed people in this universe.
[GITA ASSEFI]
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