Who needs a husband?
Young women and the idea of marriage

Solmaz Separy
June 2, 2005
iranian.com

Women are changing personal beliefs about the age at which they decide to get married. If there is such a change, what in general has affected the transformation of such beliefs? The issues I am presenting are mainly speculations and questions. I am not a feminist; I am a young, curious woman who is merely providing you with a female perspective.

I have stumbled across one main difference between highly ambitious women and women who are generally successful in life, but at the same time don’t set very high standards for themselves in terms of their education or career path, and I have found that the manner in which these women choose a life partner is very different because of the diversity in the circumstances related to the professional nature of their lives.

It is a fact to state that women are getting married at a later age today. There is a certain promotion of these new ‘Sex and the City-esque’ women in the west: these are single, attractive, ambitious, and highly successful women in their 30’s defying all societal convention known to humanity; or ‘superwomen’ as I like to call them. But maybe due to their successes & presumably polygamous personal lifestyles, they are all missing one thing: a husband.

I’m sure we all identify with, or know someone who lives the life of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, or even Samantha! It’s powerful and very intriguing, but frowned upon by our Iranian cultural restrictions, and lets not forget the opposite sex. Nonetheless, there are far more doors open to women professionally today, and these women are increasingly opting to delay marriage for some time in order to pursue personal goals and achievements. But there is a problem with the latter in our culture traditionally and I have spoken to many different women my age or older who seem to feel the pressures of the same social restrictions.

In the Iranian culture, it is believed that when a young woman reaches a certain age, it is time to get married and start settling down. I believe that by today’s standards, the age could be anywhere between 19 and 25 depending on how traditional or liberal families are. From my experience, it seems that most people believe 23 or 24 to be the prime age this should occur.

Many young women I know, including myself, would have a problem with that proposition if they are in the middle of completing studies that they have worked very hard for, or in the midst of establishing a career for themselves. Many of these young women tend to also have mounting pressure from family and friends regarding this matter when their main focus should be on their achievement.

Luckily I come from a very liberal family that doesn’t force their views on me; the latter being true most of the time. My mother called me today, and told me a story about my second cousin in Los Angeles who didn’t get married before thirty, and who is now she’s forty-five and still single. I didn’t know how that was relevant to anything I was talking about, but I think it was her way of evoking some kind of fear in me. She failed to mention that my second cousin is a very beautiful and successful individual who could probably marry whomever she set her sights on; but who am I to say? God bless all our mothers.

So why is this occurring? Is this a strictly cultural issue that Iranians face due to tradition? Is it because it is instilled in our culture that if a girl doesn’t get married by 25 she never will? Does that notion arise because about the value we place upon aesthetics in our culture; that the age-clock is ticking and we as women better act fast or we might miss the boat? Or, is it because we as women are changing; is it because we in this century have much more to look forward to?

I think all of the latter questions can be affirmatively answered. Yes, tradition does play a great role in all of this. We are a culture of great custom and marriage is one of the most significant aspects of our heritage. However, I sincerely do not believe that if a young woman does not marry by 25 she never will or that it is important that she does at all.

I believe that marriage is one of the most individual and important steps anyone can take in their life. Education is important, but the reality is that very few people spend the rest of their lives studying. But we do spend the rest of our lives with the person we choose to marry. That person has the ability to change our lives to a great extent.

Either our lives can flourish with love, wealth, education, and happiness; or by making the wrong choice in a partner we can bring great misery to our lives; I like to view the latter as form of self-destruction. It might be a highly pessimistic view, but in a day and age where fifty percent of marriages end up in divorce, I won’t take any chances. It is important to think about this choice long and hard before we make it, or years and years of education and career success can be flushed with a few simple words such as ‘I do’ to the wrong person, at the wrong time in our lives. An optimistic train of thought this is not, but it is quite realistic; I don’t like to gamble with my life.

The latter has to do with the notion that women in general seem to be changing these days; ambitious women that is. My experience is that women who aren’t so ambitious tend to marry young either because they themselves want to marry a great deal, or because of social pressures upon them.

The many ambitious women that I have met these days seem to have a clear idea about what they want to accomplish: they want to complete their studies and reach a level of success in their careers, and then maybe establish some kind of relationship with someone that may or may not lead to marriage. These women know that they will be, or are socially desirable, educated, and financially stable and that is what I believe will allow them to make the right decision about whom they will marry or whether they will choose to marry at all.

Theese women will make the decision based on true feeling rather than material resources that would be available to them if they do marry, and the few years that it would take to achieve their goals and aspirations would be available to them. I believe that it is financial stability that young powerful women possess today which gives them the upper hand and the ability to have a choice of when they will marry, whom they will marry, or whether they will marry at all.

Although I am not at all experienced in this area, I have been thinking about these issues lately because I have had this discussion with many women around my age or a little older and wiser, who aren’t married and have had the same questions that I have. It was nice to sit with a few of them and pose these questions and try and come to a conclusion, and these conversations have allowed me to conclude that no matter what I have mentioned in this article, marriage remains a very personal issue and in turn, the timing and situation must be judged on a very individual basis.

But it also allowed me to conclude that women are changing, and wanting different things out of life before they choose to head to the alter, and luckily for other young Iranians that hold the same views as I do, it appears as though the older generation of Iranians in the west have changed over the years to adapt to a more western approach to the idea of marriage.

About
Solmaz Separy is B.A. law student and columnist for Iran Javan magazine in Toronto.