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13. Arranged Marriages

What's Love Got to Do with It?

Monisha Pasupathi

In American culture, choice is related to happiness, independence, autonomy, and equality. We do what we choose longer, with more pleasure, and greater ambition (e.g., Cordova and Lepper 1996), and what we choose is to a great extent who we are. Or so it seems, looking both at the world in which we live and at the worlds of social and developmental psychology in which I work. What could be more self-evident, then, than the idea that arranged marriages, which deny the individual the power to make a very important life choice, are an anachronistic and oppressive practice?^[1] Further, newspaper and magazine articles (e.g., Lamb 1999) attribute rising rates of female suicide in countries like China and Pakistan partly to arranged marriage practices in these cultures. But a quick count of my own relatives and friends suggests that those whose cultural backgrounds provide them with both alternatives—a marriage of choice and one that is parentally arranged—don't always take the route of choice. The fact that people who are well-acquainted with and open to Western marriage practices do not necessarily adopt those practices suggests that there may be more to arranged marriages than oppression, depression, and suicide.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: WHAT HAVE I GOT TO DO WITH
ARRANGED MARRIAGES?

I am the product of a love marriage between two cultures, that of southern India and that of the southern United States. My father, the son of

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Brahman Hindus living in southern India, near Madras, was the only one of his siblings to select his own spouse. I was raised in the United States, with a European American mother and the assumption that I would choose my own spouse when I was an adult. However, many of my cousins in India and the United States (on my father's side of the family) have continued the family tradition of predominantly arranged marriages. So far, all my cousins remain married. Sadly, and perhaps ironically, some of my American friends have already divorced spouses they selected for themselves. My main goal in this chapter is to question the image of arranged marriages as necessarily oppressive and harmful for women. I do not want to imply that all arranged marriages are wonderful or to cast doubt on the real horror stories that have been told elsewhere (Haider 1995). My goal here is simply to show a more positive and less headline-worthy side of arranged marriage practices. Let me begin with a family story.

MY COUSIN'S STORY

My cousin told her parents she wanted to complete her MBA and work for one year prior to considering potential marriage partners. She wanted to enjoy some time as an independent woman without domestic pressures, although she always knew that she eventually wanted to get married. Her parents (my father's brother and his wife) were quite comfortable with this request. When the time came to search for a husband, my cousin contributed some criteria for the search process, stipulating educational level, asking for someone who would be flexible about whether she worked or not, someone easygoing with a sense of humor, who was vegetarian, and did not smoke. As is quickly evident, these kinds of criteria would not look out of place in an American personals advertisement, which supports the idea that most people seek someone nice as a spouse (Zeifman and Hazan 1997; Hazan and Diamond 2000). My cousin also met each candidate and spoke with him about her own preferences and expectations and about his. When the two prospective spouses found their views were incompatible, the matter of a potential match was immediately dropped. Eventually, one candidate was found, living quite far away (in the United States) but with a suitable horoscope. Due to the distance, my cousin spoke several times by phone with the prospective groom, and cousins living in the United States made an effort to speak to the groom by phone and to meet with him personally as well. In India, my cousin and her parents were able to meet the parents

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of the prospective bridegroom. When the match appeared potentially good, the prospective groom made a trip to India and after some meetings, he and my cousin decided to marry. My cousin reports being quite content with her decision, and her summary of her first months of marriage as requiring “adjust[ing] to each other's idiosyncrasies” also does not sound particularly different from any other new marriage in the United States.

Had my cousin met someone and fallen in love, her marriage choice would probably not have been opposed by her parents, according to both herself and her mother. When this did not happen, she chose to go with a modernized version of the traditional practice. Her situation is not unusual in India today and probably not particularly unusual in other cultures either.

My cousin's marriage is very new, less than two years old as this chapter goes to press. But her mother, whose marriage was also arranged, wrote me that “whether it is an arranged marriage or love marriage, when two individuals with…different backgrounds start living together, many situations will arise where each has to make compromises and adjustments.…The definition of a perfect marriage is: living together in good and bad times, providing children a good education, and raising children to be good citizens.” Such a marriage, my aunt suggests, requires the husband and wife to understand and respect one another without being excessively selfish. My cousin similarly notes that “any marriage calls for lots of adjustments by both the husband and the wife.” These abstract principles of compromise, respect, and understanding imply the kinds of communication advocated by American and Western European marital researchers, based on research and therapy with Western couples.

Clearly, arranged marriages in my family have been successful, at least if marital longevity and the apparent happiness of participants are any indication. Further, within my family, practices of finding spouses for children are largely similar for female and male children and in their modern form do not involve practices such as bride-viewing or child marriages (my paternal grandmother was probably betrothed prior to puberty, consistent with the practices of her generation, although exact knowledge of her age at the time of the betrothal is hard to obtain). The success and moderate nature of arranged marriages within my family must necessarily be seen as central to my own views of arranged marriage practices.

In this chapter, I review what psychological approaches have told us

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about arranged marriages. The distinction between arranged marriages and love marriages is not straightforward, but for simple convenience, I have adopted these terms throughout. By love marriages, I mean marriages based on romantic attraction, arranged by the bride and groom. By arranged marriages, I mean marriages in which people other than the bride and groom, typically parents or other family members, play important or decisive roles in determining who marries whom.

TOWARD A FEMINIST VIEW OF ARRANGED MARRIAGES

The overwhelming majority of people marry or participate in long-term, marriage-equivalent relationships (Zeifman and Hazan 1997; Hazan and Diamond 2000). Within these relationships, people bear and rear children, provide and are given emotional support, companionship, and instrumental support. Arranged marriages represent one class of procedures for forming such alliances, and by anthropological accounts, they are in widespread use. As many as 80 percent of cultures outside the Western sphere employ arranged marriage practices, although relatively few of these cultures rely exclusively on arranged marriages (Small 1993).

Because the procedures involved in arranging marriages lead to differences in the autonomy with which individual women can choose their spouses, those procedures bear some scrutiny from a feminist standpoint. Do arranged marriages give women an unfair share in their own self-determination? Arranged marriages could pose a particular problem if (1) they are arranged with less input from women than men; (2) they produce inequities of power between women and men; and (3) they are an integral part of a host of other practices reflecting and maintaining women's lower societal status, permitting treatment of women as commodities or property. If arranged marriages mean denying women choice and power and treating them as commodities, then arranged marriages are obviously a feminist nightmare. And if movement toward more choice in marriages would combat clear injustices of other types (less schooling for women, for example), then it is also clear that arranged marriage practices might be a target for feminist reform.

But the evidence, as I note below, suggests a more complex reality for several reasons. First, because of historical changes in arranging marriages and because of the variability of the practices in the modern world, it is difficult to generalize about arranged marriages in terms of their consequences for women's status. Certainly, not all arranged marriages

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involve less self-determination on the part of the bride as compared to the groom. Even in extreme cases, arranged marriages may simply result in different modes of self-determination and spouse selection than those Western women employ (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1993b). Arranged marriage practices are not monolithic rituals with no loopholes that provide the possibility of subversion and resistance. Second, when examined from a psychological perspective, differences between arranged marriages and other marriages are sometimes difficult to demonstrate, whether at the level of what sorts of people are chosen as mates or at the level of what ingredients make up a good marriage. Different procedures for forming alliances may not, in the end, produce different alliances. This similarity makes it difficult to argue that arranged marriages present special difficulties for women. Third, the degree to which arranged marriages produce inequity among men and women, or to which they are an integral part of the oppression of women and control of women's sexuality, is debatable; this is an issue to which I return at the end of the chapter.

historical changes and
cross-cultural variability

Although we think of arranged marriages as a feature of less-developed nations and more traditional cultures, such marriages were not unheard of in the Western world, particularly among the wealthy (Lasch 1997). For example, Lasch discusses the controversy over the British Marriage Act in the mid 1700s, which pitted a rather ideologically modern middle class (i.e., one that supported choice in marriage) against an established aristocracy. The aristocracy hoped to preserve control over marital alliances and, therefore, the distribution of wealth. The aristocracy lost. In more recent times in the United States, members of the “Moonies” underwent arranged marriages. The Reverend Sung Myung Moon matched pairs and conducted a group wedding ceremony. Severe restrictions on interactions between partners were enforced, including a prescribed separation period and cohabitation contingent on meeting religious obligations (Galanter 1986). Groups as varied as Hasidic Jews and immigrant Hindus in the United States also continue to arrange marriages, despite substantial exposure to Western norms and practices (Segall 1998). Looking at countries where the arranging of marriages is practiced more broadly, there are still considerable variations in how the procedure takes place and the role that the prospective spouses play. For

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example, in China at least through the 1980s, children typically did not have a say in spouse selection, and the matching might be done by parents or by professional matchmakers. The couple traditionally did not meet until their wedding, both a brideprice and a dowry were paid, and following the marriage, the pair normally resided with the family of the groom (Engel 1984). Although the children are now exercising more choice, relatives and/or matchmakers still play a role in selecting prospective spouses and arranging meetings; further, accepting a date has the implication of likely commitment (Engel 1984). Korean marriages among the working class are likely to have been formed by a matchmaker, who might have been a friend, relative, or professional. A first meeting was followed by a period of dating and then marriage, with romantic love playing a relatively small role in comparison to other considerations, like a commitment to starting a family (Choi and Keith 1991).

Sharper changes due to international and colonial influence can be seen for the Igbo people living to the west of the Niger River. The traditional system of marriage-arranging by families, with the prospective spouses playing little role in the negotiations at any phase, is giving way to a romantic love-based self-selection of spouses (Okonjo 1992). Even where families still do the arranging, girls may have more power to select or reject than is apparent from studying “usual procedures.” For example, Small (1993) relates the story of a Kung San teenager who did not like the first spouse her family chose for her. When she demonstrated her protest by refusing to share a sleeping space with the man, preferring instead to sleep in the bush, her family relented and found a second candidate, who was accepted.

Saudi Arabia, too, shows signs of shifting marriage practices. A sample of older Saudi women (ages fifty-five and over) were in predominantly prearranged marriages, often taking place at very young ages (twelve to thirteen), involving matches between cousins, and with absolutely no input from the prospective bride (Alsuwaigh 1989). In contrast, the marriages of their daughters (ages thirty-five and under) took place at later ages and were more likely to be only partially arranged or even to involve personal choice. A recent study in Turkey found approximately half of current marriages to involve some degree of family selection (Hortaçsu and Oral 1994). The degree of personal choice in such marriages, however, varied broadly, ranging from very little (family selection of the spouse) to almost total self-determination with the family simply supplying prospective dates.

Historical variability in practices is complemented by variations between

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what is stated to be the case and the actual ways in which marriages are contracted or resisted. Ethnographic work on Bedouin women highlights this very complex picture (Abu-Lughod 1993a, 1993b). In principle, men arrange marriages between daughters and sons, often between first cousins. However, there is ample evidence for women's resistance and exercising of choice, both in the older generations examined by Alsuwaigh and in the youngest generation studied by AbuLughod. Mothers may intervene in marriages they see as inappropriate or potentially harmful, and daughters can pose as temporarily insane to avoid alliances (Abu-Lughod 1993a, 1993b).

In India, details about the practice of marriage-arranging vary considerably across history, region, and subgroup. At present in northern India, among Hindu families with relatively high educational levels, parents often act as matchmakers by selecting appropriate possible spouses and conducting introductions for their children of marriageable age. Although this practice seems like a parentally facilitated version of dating in the United States, it is not. As in the case of China, multiple meetings carry strong implications of commitment. If multiple meetings occur and no commitment follows, the respective families may be very disappointed and relations between the offending child and his or her family can be quite strained. Among the tribal peoples of Kerala, things are slightly different (Kattakayam 1996). The maternal uncle may be appointed to find a suitable bride. He negotiates for consent from the bride's parents, following which the marriage can be arranged. Lack of consent from the bride, groom, or either set of parents means that the entire arrangement is dropped. Although not practiced historically, dowries have become relatively more common since the 1970s and signal an acknowledgment of the “worth” of women.

In India, early (e.g., preindependence era) matches tended to emphasize parental choice, with some input from the boy but little from the girl. Marriages were contracted relatively early, sometimes when the bride was prepubescent. The bride then moved to the house of the husband, sometimes playing a servantlike role. Marriage contracts also involved a practice called “bride-viewing.” During this event, the bride was displayed to prospective suitors and their families so that they could view her attributes before making an offer. The occasion highlighted her abilities in cooking and fine arts and her ability to serve guests appropriately. She might have been asked to sing a classical song or play a musical instrument. Finally, the bride historically had no ability to veto a marriage. Although there was substantial pressure on sons to accept

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the parental choice, sons were somewhat more able to reject potential brides. All of these practices reinforced a system in which women were chosen like any other item that might be purchased or contracted for. This past practice, which may still go on in some parts of the world (e.g., rural Pakistan, Lamb 1999), leads to obvious inequities between the male and female children involved and treats women like property in a painfully obvious way. However, in many cases, the modern practice is substantially different.

The arranging of marriages today that is typical in traditional Hindu families like my own, a southern Brahman family, may first involve the selection of a suitable boy, followed by matching horoscopes (based on the birth date of the child) for both boy and girl. Selection of initial candidates may rely on matrimonial advertisements as well as word-ofmouth and personal recommendation. A meeting is then arranged between the two sets of parents, and often between the girl and boy. These meetings are quite brief but allow for a mutual assessment of one another by both parties. In many cases, and perhaps increasingly so, there may be phone conversations, email, or other communications between the prospective spouses, all with the aim of allowing the two to make a relatively informed decision about marrying one another. This was my cousin's experience. She was able to provide a list of qualifications that guided the search for a husband, she did not have to perform for prospective suitors in any way, and she retained at all times the power to veto any candidate.

As can be seen in this very sketchy overview, differences across countries and over time suggest considerable variability in practices for arranging marriages. Two conclusions can be made. First, movement within cultures is generally away from practices that treat women as property to be exchanged in the course of familial alliances and toward practices that endow both daughters and sons with more say in the matter. This has been empirically examined for Saudi Arabian women (Alsuwaigh 1989) and for African Igbo women (Okonjo 1992), and anecdotal evidence within my own family and among Indian friends suggests similar changes from the time of my grandmother's marriage to the marriages of my cousins in recent years. Second, variation within and across countries makes it very difficult to have a single perspective on arranged marriage; developing a feminist framework for viewing such marriages will require an adequate assessment of practices in their culturally contextualized form.

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Thus far, I have concentrated on outlining basic practices in the arranging of marriages over time and across space. This broadly painted picture provides a sense of the breadth of practices in arranged marriages and the historical changes occurring in the past century. It does not, however, provide comparisons between love marriages and arranged marriages.

CHOICE IN LOVE VERSUS ARRANGED MARRIAGES:
HOW DIFFERENT?

Are love and arranged marriages fundamentally different in terms of degree of choice and criteria employed? Friends and family often introduce us to the people we eventually marry out of personal choice, and those having an arranged marriage often exercise some choice in the selection of the future spouse. Such facts complicate this division between arranged and love marriages considerably. Perhaps the most accurate distinction is one between personal and collective choice as methods for selecting spouses.

As seen above, the relative degree of personal choice exercised by individuals in arranged marriages can, in fact, be substantial. But even when the bride and groom have had extensive contact prior to the marriage, they have not usually had the kind of acquaintanceship and dating that leads to romantic love. Given that this is a central criterion for marriage in the United States and other Western industrialized nations (Levine, Sato, Hashimoto, and Verma 1995), the logical conclusion is that arranged and love marriages are based on different criteria for selecting spouses (i.e., romantic love versus pragmatic or family concerns). As I demonstrate below, however, even this assumption proves too simplistic.

In fact, the psychological literature suggests that there may be fewer differences between arranged marriages and love marriages than is apparent on the surface. In the remainder of the chapter, I focus on two questions: (1) whether arranged marriage practices and love marriages employ different or similar selection criteria; and (2) whether arranged marriages and chosen marriages lead to different outcomes (e.g., marital satisfaction). The literature reviewed here is by no means exhaustive, and I have concentrated primarily on the relatively sparse psychological literature on arranged marriages rather than on the substantial anthropological literature.

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CHOOSING A “SUITABLE BOY”

Social psychological views of finding a spouse, based predominantly on Western samples, have shown that the most central factor is proximity, which often comes about by chance (Hazan and Diamond 2000; Bandura 1982). We marry the people we encounter. Still, whether those looking for their own spouse are seeking the same qualities desired by those who select spouses for their children is a different issue. Arguments for cross-cultural variability in the qualities that make for a good mate, as well as arguments for cross-cultural universality, have been advanced. Below, I address these differing arguments in turn and then examine whether comparisons of arranged-marriage cultures and love-marriage cultures support universality or variability.

Different Cultures, Different Goals, Different Practices

It may seem obvious that different cultures will consider different criteria in mate selection, particularly when the cultures differ in marriage practices. Love-marriage selection criteria seem to reflect individuals' personal concerns, such as personal and interpersonal qualities of the prospective mate and compatibility issues, while arranged-marriage selection criteria, not surprisingly, reflect concerns of the total family unit (Blood 1972). These family concerns include socioeconomic status, health, strength, fertility, temperament, and emotional stability of the prospective spouse. This may be because arranged marriage practices are associated with residence patterns and are more likely in countries where a new couple lives in an extended family dwelling (Fox 1975; Lee and Stone 1980). All of the qualities important to the family not only contribute to collective well-being they may be particularly important when the new spouse moves in with the extended family.

One Species, Similar Criteria

Alternative perspectives suggest that mating practices may be more similar than different across cultures because of similarity in shared historical pasts or the pressures of evolution upon mating behavior (see, e.g., Hazan and Diamond 2000). In fact, some researchers argue that the formation of romantic pair bonds depends on attachment processes exapted^[2] from the mother-infant relationship over the course of evolution (Hazan and Diamond 2000; Zeifman and Hazan 1997). Thus, people

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should report preferences for qualities that enhance or increase the likelihood of secure attachment. The available and relevant data come from two sources: people's preferences about hypothetical mates, and criteria that appear to govern actual mate selection.

Preferences

In a study of thirty-seven cultures, male and female college students reported the qualities of (1) dependability, (2) intelligence, (3) kindnessunderstanding, and (4) emotional stability as most important in a prospective mate (Buss et al. 1989). Mutual attraction and love were also considered quite important in all cultures sampled. Thus, data on preferences for hypothetical spouses showed few differences across cultures sampled, consistent with shared history or evolutionary arguments. However, in African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries, where arranged marriage is still practiced, love was ranked somewhat lower than in Western industrialized nations. Similar findings about the importance of romantic love for establishing a marriage in the industrializing Eastern/Asian world were also demonstrated in another study of college students across eleven cultures (Levine et al. 1995). This study bears a closer look because it asked specifically about the role of love as a decision criterion. Respondents from Asian countries (particularly Pakistan, India, and Thailand) reported a willingness to marry a person they did not love, but who possessed all their desired qualities in a mate. They were also unwilling to consider divorce when love is not maintained, in contrast to Western and South American countries. Thus, Eastern/Asian respondents view love as somewhat less important at the beginning of a marriage and regard the absence of love as a less adequate criterion for divorce. One explanation for such findings could be that Eastern/ Asian respondents believe that love develops during the course of a marriage, a view that would be consistent with existing evidence (Gupta and Singh 1982). But, as Hazan and Diamond (2000) point out, selfreported preferences are an inadequate source of information regarding actual selection criteria. For actual selection criteria, looking at the procedures for arranging marriages or the characteristics of mates that have been selected is more revealing.

Choosing a Spouse in India

In Kerala, India, the criteria for marriage partners are multidimensional and include (1) religion/horoscope matching, (2) character, (3) education,

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(4) dowry, (5) appearance (girls/women), (6) employment, (7) caste/subcaste, (8) geographic distance between families, (9) financial status, and (10) family status, tradition, and reputation. A minimum of five characteristics must be of a suitable nature (i.e., similar across both parties or acceptable given that family's expectations) for a match to be considered by the parents (Yelsma and Atthappilly 1988). My own relatives, from the state of Madras, report similar considerations: educational background, social background, and family qualities of the prospective bride and bridegroom are all at issue. These considerations are important in many countries other than India where parental or matchmaker-driven arrangement of marriage is practiced.

The result of these criteria is that arranged-marriage practices tend to pair spouses who are similar in terms of major background characteristics like class, economic status, and education. Arranged-marriage practices also take into consideration character and physical health, perhaps particularly so when the new couple will live with the entire family. On first glance, such criteria seem far removed from romantic love and mutual attraction. However, as discussed earlier, those from cultures where love marriage predominates also consider character when choosing marriage partners. The desirable character qualities such as kindness or a considerate nature tend to be similar across cultures. In addition, when probed, couples who do marry may give both romantic and pragmatic reasons for getting married, whether they enter into a love or an arranged marriage, as has been demonstrated in Turkey (Hortaçsu and Oral 1994). Further, as will become clearer below, the same factors considered important by families in selecting a spouse may be the factors that contribute to whether individuals fall in love and get married in cultures where individual choice predominates.

Love versus Demographics

Despite the prevalence of love as a self-reported reason for marrying, Americans tend to date and marry those who are similar to themselves across a wide range of qualities (see Berscheid and Reis 1998 for an extensive review). We fall in love with people who are like us in terms of socioeconomic status, education, and age (Houts, Robins, and Huston 1996; Waris 1997), as well as with people who are like us in terms of psychological qualities like personality characteristics, leisure interests, and the complexity with which we think about topics (Burleson, Kunkel, and Szolwinski 1997; Hahn and Blass 1997; Keller and Young

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1996; Klohnen and Mendelsohn 1998; Thiessen, Young, and Delgado 1997). Some findings even suggest that we tend to date and marry those who are physically similar to us (Keller and Young 1996; Thiessen, Young, and Delgado 1997). Thus, we who choose our spouses think we choose them for love, but outside observers (who do not hear our professed internal feelings of love and adoration) might think we choose our spouses because they are like us. At this level of analysis, arranged marriages are not, in the end, all that different.

Proof for the idea that similarity functions to direct marriage choices, whether family or personally driven, would involve demonstrating that arranged marriages and love marriages lead to equivalent levels of similarity between spouses. In one study of more than seven hundred couples in Turkey, spouses in love marriages were as like one another as those in arranged marriages (Fox 1975). So similarity appears to be a powerful force in marriage making, whether selected by families or by the individuals themselves. If two different selection methods lead to relatively similar pairing outcomes, on average, then why should arranged or love marriages have different outcomes? The assumption of the importance of personal choice in determining happiness has frequently led researchers to question whether partners in arranged marriages will be as happy as those in love marriages.

is happily ever after equally happy
in arranged marriages?

In this section, I focus on marital satisfaction because this has been the outcome variable used in most psychological studies comparing arranged and love marriages, as opposed to divorce rates or other potential indicators. Unlike divorce rates, which are affected by factors such as laws governing who may seek divorce and for what reasons, marital satisfaction indicates the subjective well-being of spouses. Are spouses who choose one another happier together than those who were selected for one another?

Consider some example findings. Israeli couples reported comparably high marital satisfaction regardless of whether their marriage was arranged or self-chosen (Shachar 1991). Perhaps even more surprisingly, the Moonies who entered into arranged marriages also report levels of marital satisfaction typical of community samples (Galanter 1986). Were the Moonies simply representing themselves and their unusual lifestyle positively without actually having similar levels of marital satisfaction?

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Because their general well-being was lower than that of community samples, a self-presentational bias seems unlikely to account for the findings. Galanter notes the importance of the religious community context in reinforcing and supporting these marriages. Given the right context, choice may not always be the paramount issue in marital satisfaction (see Sethi-Iyengar and Lepper 1999 for research making a similar point in a very different domain). In India, in fact, those in arranged marriages sometimes report higher marital satisfaction than their compatriots in love marriages and equivalent marital satisfaction to Western comparison samples (Kumar and Dhyani 1996; Yelsma and Atthappilly 1988).

There are many limitations in the types of studies that look at marital satisfaction in arranged versus love marriages. Perhaps one of the most difficult to resolve is the selection of appropriate comparison groups. Comparing love marriages and arranged marriages in India, for example, often means comparing marriages where partners have more disparate social backgrounds and less family support^[3] to marriages between very similar spouses who receive enormous family and community support. This seems not a fair comparison, but the alternative of choosing an American or other Western European comparison group is no more optimal, as then a wealth of cultural differences comes into play. However, if we take the sparse available evidence seriously, then systematic relationships between marriage type and marital satisfaction cannot be found.

On the one hand, it may seem obvious that when different procedures result in similar pairings, the outcomes (e.g., marital satisfaction) will be similar. On the other hand, different processes might support marital satisfaction in different cultures.

Processes Underlying Marital Satisfaction

Western marital researchers emphasize the processes of communication about conflict areas as the critical factor in marital satisfaction and longevity (e.g., Clements et al. 1998; Gottman 1994; Gottman and Levenson 1988). In fact, they suggest that “the positive factors that draw people together—love, attraction, perceived and actual similarities, trust, and commitment—are indicative of marital choice, but not marital success” (Clements et al. 1998, 352). So what exactly does it mean to say that the way couples handle conflict is a critical factor in whether

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they maintain high marital satisfaction over time? For Gottman (1994) it means that couples maintain a relatively high level of positive emotional expression (as compared to negative emotional expression) when discussing conflicts. The ratio of positive to negative emotion must be high, regardless of the degree to which a couple is emotionally expressive. Clements and colleagues (1998) suggest that not escalating the conflict, not withdrawing or avoiding the conflict, and not attacking the partner personally when angry (“invalidation”) are the keys to good conflict resolution. How does one avoid such behaviors? By engaging in conversational techniques that minimize distractions, ensuring that both partners are engaged, and ensuring that both partners respect one another's time to speak. In addition, employing time-outs that help prevent unfruitful escalation of the conflict or invalidation behaviors can be important. Put differently, this means a problem-focused, respectful, and compromise-oriented approach to negotiating issues where partners disagree. Although I was unable to find scientific work on the ingredients of success in arranged marriages, my own relatives' comments, presented earlier, are consonant with ideas about compromise, communication, and positive attitudes toward the spouse and imply that conflictresolving processes will be important in all cultures, regardless of marriage type.

But, as noted, similar levels of marital satisfaction could also mask differences in marital processes that would be very interesting to examine. Even among American couples, there are multiple ways to achieve good (and bad) relationships (Gottman 1994). For example, spouses in instrumental marriages, with an emphasis on the separate roles of the individual partners, may be satisfied when the husband is a good wage-earner and the wife a competent homemaker (see, e.g., Kamo 1993; Rubin 1976). Spouses oriented toward the expressive socioemotional features of marriage may not be satisfied with the adequate fulfillment of role responsibilities but may require good communication and companionship as well.

There is, in fact, evidence that different processes might be important in other cultures. For example, in Japan, as in the United States, marital satisfaction is related to housework sharing and equality. However, for Japanese spouses, the income of the husband is also an important predictor of marital satisfaction, while in America this is not necessarily the case (Kamo 1993). In India, spouses in arranged marriages show different patterns of adjustment to marriage over time than those in love

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marriages, although sexual satisfaction contributes similarly to both partners' overall adjustment to marriage in both types of marriage (Kumar and Dhyani 1996).

Another type of difference includes verbal communication. Indian arranged marriages report the lowest level of communication, while Western love marriages report high levels, and Indian love marriages are between these two groups in terms of communication (Yelsma and Atthappilly 1988; see also Hortaçsu and Oral 1994 on Turkish marriages). Relationships of various types of communication (verbal, sexual, and nonverbal) to marital satisfaction were lower in Indian couples. The authors concluded that satisfaction among Indian couples may be better predicted by variables different from those traditionally assessed in the West, where communication about conflictual issues seems critical for marital outcomes (see, e.g., Gottman and Levenson 1992, 1988). These findings of different determinants of marital satisfaction contrast with findings suggesting cross-cultural similarity (e.g., Hooely and Hahlweg 1989; Rabin et al. 1986; Sharlin 1996). Much about the processes for attaining and maintaining marital satisfaction in different cultures and in different types of marriages remains poorly understood.

Who Is Responsible for Marital Satisfaction?

Gottman and Levenson (1988) have noted that the responsibility for managing the emotional climate of U.S. marriages falls largely on the shoulders of wives; it is wives who must initiate conflict-related discussion and wives who bear the health costs of unhappy marriages. My family members report similar pressure on women in Indian arranged marriages, noting that “the wife is expected to make more adjustments to make the marriage work” and that this pressure arises from family members and the culture as well. In Western love marriages, women maintain satisfaction by initiating discussion of conflicts toward resolution. In arranged marriages, women may do so by suppressing their own needs and desires in order to maintain a good emotional climate, but this remains largely unresearched.

Happily Ever After: Summing Up

Arranged and love marriages do show similar levels of marital satisfaction in the few studies available, and it seems that women in both types of marriage assume more responsibility for the emotional quality of the

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marriage than men. It is not clear whether similarity in levels of marital satisfaction is due to similar factors across cultures, like superior conflict-resolution skills, or to different factors, such as fulfilling culturespecific expectations for a good spouse, and this represents an area with rich potential and large pitfalls for psychological research.

choosing between in the “modernizing” world

In modern India, marriage for love is becoming more common. Many children of upper-middle-class Indians can choose either type of marriage. In the case of one friend, parental consent and approval for a love match were contingent upon the prospective spouse being Indian in ethnic background though not on caste or other more traditional considerations. Survey results also suggest that compromise between personal and parental choice in marriage is quite popular in India today (e.g., Umadevi, Venkataramaiah, and Srinivasulu 1992). In the United States, according to news reports, immigrant populations may also be moving toward more moderate forms of arranged marriage but without excluding parental involvement entirely (Segall 1998). My cousin reports that arranged marriages have shifted toward providing much choice for the prospective spouses, both in terms of who is selected and when the search for a spouse takes place. She also notes that love marriages in India are still met with some resistance, especially if the marriages are between people of different caste backgrounds. Not surprisingly, such resistance is particularly strong among religiously conservative families. Love marriages seem to have higher pressure to work well, while also receiving more disapproval from parents. The end result is that such couples may experience more difficulties, perhaps through no fault of their own. Still, the clear trend is for children to express more choice even as their parents arrange marriages.

arranged marriages: what can we conclude?

As suggested above, both social science and personal experience suggest that (1) arranged marriages are heterogeneous across and within cultures in the degree of choice that spouses exert, (2) the factors in selecting spouses may be surprisingly similar regardless of whether marriages are arranged or self-chosen, (3) outcomes like marital satisfaction seem quite similar across marriage type, although it is not clear whether this is driven by underlying similarities (in choices and in the demands of married

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life) or by underlying differences (in expectations and interaction patterns). Further research may help us understand how the larger cultural context in which a couple lives may determine more everyday facets of their lives, in a relationship that seems to be a human universal in one form or another.

feminism and arranged marriages

Having reviewed some of the empirical work on arranged marriages, it becomes clear that there are few simple perspectives on arranged marriages from a feminist standpoint.

Lack of Choice for Women

First, consider the matter of choice. Though historically, girls/women have had less say in their marriage arrangements than boys/men, that appears to be changing not only in India but also in many other places. In many of the cultures reviewed above, both men and women are denied freedom of personal choice in marriage partners, and the inequity observed revolves around power differentials between children and parents, not between men and women. In fact, Small (1993) found that in 106 societies that practice arranged marriage, only three give prospective grooms more choice than prospective brides. Brides very often (50 percent of the societies examined) had the power to reject a potential marriage. She points out that lack of choice in picking potential candidates doesn't necessarily mean coercion. Further, as suggested above, arranged marriages need not unfold very differently from Western ones once the marriage begins. From some evolutionary standpoints (e.g., Hazan and Diamond 2000), what is required for the formation of attachment bonds between two individuals is the kind of daily physical and psychological interchange that seems part of both types of marriages. Finally, Small problematizes the idea that Western women are totally free to select their own partners—after all, we want our families and friends to like and welcome our new spouses.

In fact, the power of self-determination that is lost for daughters may be the gain for mothers. The power accorded older women in some cultures in arranging marriages for their sons and daughters alike is not necessarily trivial as such alliances can be important determinants of wealth and property (Coles 1990). Derné (1994) notes the way that men and women together engage in strategic interactions to preserve existing

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inequities between spouses. Expanded to a generational view, this could well include the maintenance of arranged-marriage systems; frequently mothers-in-law achieve greater relative power, particularly in patrilocal cultures, when their sons marry. It is in their best interest to choose daughters-in-law who will support, rather than challenge, their authority. A daughter-in-law who is too well loved by the son might represent a potential problem for a mother. The son might not enforce traditional divisions of labor in which the daughter-in-law must care for or serve her mother-in-law. Further, the mother may be neglected in favor of her daughter-in-law—something considered appropriate in U.S. culture but not necessarily so elsewhere.

Finally, prioritizing choice in the domain of marriage partners may be undesirable in a country like India, where, as my cousin wrote, “parental approval is still considered quite important and children cannot easily walk away from that.” In fact, the idea of personal choice is a relatively individualistic notion of what equality of self-determination means. Research on motivation suggests that culture plays a big role in how important and desirable autonomous choice may be (Sethi-Ingeyar and Lepper 1999).

Power Inequities in Marriage

There are obviously power inequities in arranged marriages. Are the power inequities observed in India necessarily greater than those in Western marriages? As noted above, wives have been pinpointed as bearing more of the burden of marriage management in the United States (e.g., Gottman and Levenson 1988); women do more housework, make greater career sacrifices, and ultimately have less negotiating power in the marital relationship (Mahony 1995). In fact, Mahony argues that the key factor influencing gender inequity in American marriages is genderdifferential educational and career achievement. She suggests that American women who are less well educated and have lower paying jobs than their husbands (which may be true even given equal educational attainment) are at a clear disadvantage when it comes to negotiations about household responsibilities. Are women in arranged marriages likely to experience even larger educational inequity and therefore even less power? In my own family, educational inequities between women and men tend not to be larger than those in the marriages of my Western friends. But stereotypes of cultures that arrange marriages, with images of child brides and of vast numbers of women kept uneducated,

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suggest that arranged marriage and larger inequity between spouses, in terms of education, go together. Research findings also show that moreeducated women appear more likely to have love, rather than arranged, marriages (e.g., Hortaçsu and Oral 1994), implying that arranged marriages disproportionately involve less-educated women, vulnerable to greater power inequity in their marriage.

There are several problems with such conclusions. First, it may be that arranged-marriage practices go hand in hand with less education for both spouses. Further, the assumption is that if women were liberated, they would choose their own partners, and thus women who accept an arranged marriage are not liberated women. This is not necessarily true. One of the most obvious confounds is that women who go on to higher education may have more opportunities to meet and fall in love with men of their own choosing. Further, there are many exceptions to the rule—many women are highly educated but still prefer to have some parental involvement in the selection of their spouse. Still, connections between educational attainment and marriage type raise a third issue, which is the role of arranged marriages in upholding sets of inequities within a culture.

Arranged Marriages Are Part of a Web of Inequities

Arranged marriages can be viewed as part of a system of inequities, with movement toward self-determination in marriage a route to improving other inequalities. Unfortunately, changes in marriage practices do not always result in improvements in other aspects of women's status. Alsuwaigh (1989) reports on changes in women's status in Saudi Arabia. One of her most striking findings, in a study of mothers and daughters from various economic classes, is a decline in prearranged marriages and the beginning of unarranged marriages (which must be carefully justified to avoid the implication that chastity was violated, something that is implicit in the presence of an emotional preference for a particular marital partner). She concludes: “Women's life in Saudi Arabia has been influenced by socio-economic changes, particularly in the structure of their marriages.…However, women are still locked into their traditional roles by the limitations of job opportunities on the one hand and considerations of traditional norms on the other” (77). Thus, increasing freedom in choosing a marriage partner may not be accompanied by improvements in women's status overall. As these other improvements

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in status may increase women's power within marriages (see Mahony 1995), it might be less important to take a stand against arranged marriage and more important to take a stand against inequitable educational and career opportunities.

Arranged Marriages Perpetuate a Notion of Women as Property

A final critique of arranged marriages is that they open the door for massive abuse of women by setting them up as property (Haider 1995). From the review above, it is clear that arranged-marriage practices do not necessarily treat women as property, although this can be the case. Some modern versions of marriage arranging, however, are better characterized as treating both sons and daughters as parts in a collective whole—that of the family. As parts of a family, sons and daughters should not select their spouses independently of the concerns of the family as a unit.

A second concern is that rates of spouse abuse are difficult to compare across cultures. Stories about battered women in arranged marriages may not be driven strictly by the way that marriages are arranged because spouse abuse occurs in love marriages in the United States and other Western countries, as well. In some cases, however, arranged marriages may make it easier for women to be abused or treated as property, in part because marriage practices reflect a general societal view of women as possessions. This may be especially true when religious systems and other ideologies within a culture reinforce the idea that women are of a lesser status.

Clearly, arranged marriages can be practiced in ways that demean, demoralize, and mistreat women. And women may be driven to extreme behaviors, such as suicide, to avoid arranged marriages. Whether these darker aspects of arranged-marriage practices are best handled by actively fighting the tradition of arranged marriages or by attempting to place safeguards against such behaviors within existing systems for arranging marriages is not an easy question to answer. Certainly permitting women (and men) to veto marriages seems a workable solution, and is one already implemented in many families. A more collective system of choosing mates may also imply more collective responsibility toward the welfare of the married. Such a perspective does not imply that either women or men are “property” but views the union between two people as collectively chosen and collectively maintained.

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FINAL WORDS

One of the controversial conclusions of the present chapter is that the practices of arranging marriage do not necessarily lead to the oppression of women. In fact, arranged marriages are but one of many practices that require Western feminism to confront and resolve issues of cultural variability and heterogeneity in their striving for gender equality (see Abu-Lughod 1991). Without such confrontation, Western feminism will remain Western, at best ineffective in achieving its aims for benefiting women worldwide and at worst clumsily harmful. Unlike other culturally particularized rituals involving women (e.g., female circumcision), arranged marriages do not inherently require that women are injured or oppressed. Some of the existing gender inequities I discussed above are not, in the abstract, different from inequities that are part and parcel of modern American culture. The modernization of the arranged marriage occurring at present in India and elsewhere may maximize the benefits of personal and collective choice. Arranged marriages offer some unique benefits in comparison to love marriages; they are embedded in a strongly supportive context and tend not to be related to unrealistic expectations and demands. Combining these benefits while accommodating those who do meet a lifetime partner on their own may produce a very good alternative to the individual choice practiced in other cultures.

NOTES

Thanks are due to my aunt and cousin for their open and informative discussions about arranged marriages and love marriages and our own family; to my mother, Laura Carstensen; Lisa Diamond; Frank A. Drews; Marilyn Yalom; and Leigh Shaw for discussion, comments, and/or thoughtful criticisms on earlier drafts; and to Alexandra Freund for general encouragement. Finally, thanks are due to my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute and to the funding from the Max Planck Society that supported initial work on this chapter.

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