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A grand wedding to please society, and tons of jewellery to please the in-laws should not be the parameters to decide a daughter's happiness. Their education should be.
A grand wedding to please society, and tons of jewellery to please the in-laws should not be the parameters to decide a daughter’s happiness. Their education should be.
Since the time a daughter is born, most Indian middle-class parents plan to save a chunk of their income every month or every year for their daughter’s wedding and marriage. They buy jewellery whenever they have some extra money. When they have limited money, why don’t they save it up for their daughter’s higher education?
Still, if not all, most Indian parents believe that marriage is the ultimate goal of happiness for any girl.
Girls often are studious, talented, hard working, have the skills and dedication to excel, yet the limited money that the middle-class parents have is saved for their wedding and not given for their higher education.
Why not rather invest in her education? Who knows if the marriage is going to be successful in the future or not? What if the daughter is widowed, tortured, or doesn’t want to stay in a bad or indifferent marriage? What if the daughter decides to stay unmarried?
Why is it taken for granted that marriage of a girl means a secure future? So many women out there are stuck in bad marriages due to lack of financial independence. Money of her own and an education doesn’t just give financial security, it also gives a woman the power to decide her own future, to be her own person.
Jewellery might get sold or taken away by the in-laws. A lavish wedding is remembered by no one in the future and doesn’t necessarily mean a happy marriage. Giving dowry is a crime and doesn’t ensure happiness at all, as the ever-greedy in-laws and husband will ask for more!
When the Indian middle class spends their limited income so judiciously and carefully throughout their life, what happens to this thinking when it is about their daughters? More than their marriage, priority should be given to education and financial independence. A grand wedding to please the society and tons of jewellery to please the in-laws should not be the parameters to decide a daughter’s happiness. Rather, a strong and financially independent daughter should be the parameter to raise a forever happy daughter.
Think about it…
Image source: shutterstock
I am a travel expert by profession and an avid blogger by passion. Parenting and women's issues are something that are close to my heart and I blog a lot about them. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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