Modern marriage
TV and outdoor adverts of the "Arab family" invariably show a lovely, pleasant-faced woman, with slightly rounded, motherly features, subtle makeup, her hair tucked neatly away in an abaya. Next to her is a handsome bedishdashed husband, generally with a closely cropped Bedu shadow-beard. With no physical contact, they are both smilling at an impish sheikhlet in an unfeasibly pristine dishdash.
What they don't show is the handsome husband with two, or three, or four lovely ladies. Nor do they show him with a greying beard and withered face, next to a twenty-something bride. Nor do they show him with a foreign lady, of any nationality. Nor do they show him with several dozen children.
Because, thankfully, society is changing. According to Dubai-based charity Beit Al Khair, the Arab-advert family is becoming the majority reality. A drop in polygamy, cradle-snatch marriage and intermarriage is resulting in less widows, less single mothers, and less fatherless children:
DUBAI — Marriages between older UAE nationals and young foreign women have seen a 50 per cent decrease this year compared to the number of such marriages solemnised during the same period last year. Consequently, there has also been a fall in the number of single young mothers bringing up their children after ending up as widows following the deaths of their aged husbands.
Of course the huge decrease in elderly cradle-snatchers may have something to do with the Federal law proposed a year or so back:
""The draft law states that a UAE man aged 60 years and above will not be allowed to marry an expatriate in her twenties, because it was found that such women marry old local men to get residence visas or for their money."
What they don't show is the handsome husband with two, or three, or four lovely ladies. Nor do they show him with a greying beard and withered face, next to a twenty-something bride. Nor do they show him with a foreign lady, of any nationality. Nor do they show him with several dozen children.
Because, thankfully, society is changing. According to Dubai-based charity Beit Al Khair, the Arab-advert family is becoming the majority reality. A drop in polygamy, cradle-snatch marriage and intermarriage is resulting in less widows, less single mothers, and less fatherless children:
DUBAI — Marriages between older UAE nationals and young foreign women have seen a 50 per cent decrease this year compared to the number of such marriages solemnised during the same period last year. Consequently, there has also been a fall in the number of single young mothers bringing up their children after ending up as widows following the deaths of their aged husbands.
Of course the huge decrease in elderly cradle-snatchers may have something to do with the Federal law proposed a year or so back:
""The draft law states that a UAE man aged 60 years and above will not be allowed to marry an expatriate in her twenties, because it was found that such women marry old local men to get residence visas or for their money."
Labels: marriage
14 Comments:
oh crap, we won't be able to see Dubai's version of Anna Nicole Smith...
That's reality :)
The modern family is 4 to 5 members only because of the lifestyle, expences, etc.
what happens when you solemnise a marriage? sounds painful ...
thinking aloud...lot of wife beating going on..could it be the one-wife husband's venting their frustrations...
switching channels one fine day and 2 or 3 channels i happened across all seemed to have shows where a woman gets slapped around.
i thought women are supposed to be protected n stuff. what gives ?
no society is free of wife abuse. it's to quite an extent an individual thing.
and whoa! they actually "found" out that the 20 somethings married the 60 somethings for money/visa? Its more like the girls parents selling their daughter off. There areother cases too:
This family we know thru someone. The father took a huge loan from an oldy arab. He oculdt have taken it form the bank. SO he invited the oldy for dinner one day to thank him for his help and says he's willing to do anything to have the debt paid off (apart fro mpaying the money back). Thats when the dudes TWELVE year old daughters walks in to set the dinner table up. And guess what the oldy says? haha. no prizes for guessing. He asks for the little kid to be married to him. Her poor mother fainted on the spot. The girl did get married off to the oldy, coz, her father had given his word to the man.
So the gilr now plays with her husbands grandkids coz they are her age.
Andim wondering, isnt it illegal? To get a 12year old married? But such is the power that money wields.
sigh.
And hey dont we see this in hollywood too all the time? Its again a reflection of their society. Filthy rich geezer with a hot blonde.
:-/
gotta gree with pol tho, most families are small coz they just cant afford to be otherwise. And all locals arent filthy rich as in misperceived by many.Heck most are just living a hand to mouth lifestyle. But thats coz the govt used ot feed em and they beame lazy and never bothered to do aythign themselves. then the govt ecided to not feed them. and they are all poor now how sad? :-)
This is sick. The root of this problem is that Arabic society accepts marrying children and doesnt find anything morally wrong with it. And I find it hypocritical how they blame the foreign wife marrying for money. How about the Arab bedou just takign advantage of her poverty and offering false promises. Ofcourse the poor parents think that this is their daughter's ticket to a better life and get her married to him. They have no other options to give her a better life!
The solution is to deal with the men who marry these kids. As soon as it is found out these guys should be jailed. Perhaps even stripped of their citizenship because they bring a bad name to their country and culture.
Worst is that "marriage" in this case is usually just a legal/ moral justification to get a screw. Why else are there stories of girls who are "married" and then packed off or abandoned in some hotel in India.
This practice is most common in Saudi than anywhere else.
baptizedlucifer,
couldn`t agree with you more hurricane , seems that it is a piece of bapti`s imagination , i am not local but have been working with the concerned dept. (social affairs) for a long time and can confirm that 100% of the time it is foreign women and their families from all nationalities and walks of life looking for a juicy local especially if they are already residing in this country happen to meet him here be it westerners , asians ,arabs, east europeans as most will be drooling for the benefits , through documents we find out ,they sweet talk the men or embezelle money ,houses in their countries & most defenitely NO. 1 goal setting up businesses here funded by the local, getting jobs for family members here , HITTING THE JACKPOT i would say , offcourse their schemes are well too obvious despite what those foeign wives claim , in all honesty some of them take the local for a ride,,, as an english language speaker there , i came across foreign women coming to finish paperwork for other issues ask me how it is like to be married to a local (as the rest of the employees are local men ) ,easy ride instead of full time job , few thousand dirham pay ,sharing with flat mates , it totally blows me when they ask me as such. if both parterns happen to have met in the west most of the time the marriage was geniune with no ill intentions . Brides coming over from asia and arab world basically for money . No body is forcing them in almost all cases to marry older men , infact in many cases the women or their families (younger brides) chase after the locals to ensure the marriage..
hurricane, u want their home address, i can give it to ya, :D both the old geezers, the little girls and my family friends. :-) im not really big on discllising peoples names and locations otherwise.
uhmm, im not saying its always the old geezer who does this. we all know that quite a few foreigns females come here simply to marry a rich local dude. just coz they wnana lice a luxurious life. and they know their looks are the key to it. :-|
btw, what i stated earlier in my comment, was a unique case. not to be generalized. :)
i still believe that stuff like this happens everywhere. not just here in the uae. men abuse women. women abuse men.
fuck it. Those mojos should set the age from 60 to 50. The current laws are doing nothing for thousands of abuse crimes that go unheared of. I probably know someone and know nothing about what the hell happened to them. Its still a kindship style government.
I think there should also be laws restricting women of certain engagements until a certain age, and some rights granted to women right when they hit puberty.
btw: any public executions lately?
it's actually the problems concerning many Muslim males..
all i can say is it takes two to tango
if the foreign (usually white) female is a heartless gold digger out to plunder some poor besotted 'sheik from araby', this is matched equally by local men desperate to 'taste' that exotic foreign flesh..and then they both wake up in the morning and it's downhill from there.
The reality is that a lot of emirati women face the threat of spinsterhood because their men want foreign wives for some reason. Not surprising, given that emirati women cover themselves culturally, while foreign women in most public places of entertainment are tarted-up to their ears.
their men want foreign wives for some reason
The main reason appears to be financial. If the man marries a local woman, he has to spend at least Dh50,000 to Dh100,000 just on the wedding.
Which is why the rulers of some emirates organise mass weddings to help lower income couples get married - a nice idea.
Its all about education and parents teaching their kids morals and values.
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