Show Respect and Act with Dignity and Wisdom
What many parents and elders of Muslim societies often do not realize is that, as the years pass, their sons or daughters mature into adults who have their own opinions, preferences and wishes, which should be respected. This transition warrants a change in parenting style from that of “command and control” to “listen, advise, and guide”.
Parents should remember that, as a single person approaches or passes the age of thirty, he or she should be treated with more respect and dignity. They should not be scolded, ordered around, or talked down to, as if they were still an immature child or teenager.
Many parents, sadly, continue to treat their grown-up son or daughter the same way they treated them when the latter were an immature teenager.
All Muslims must remember that the greatness of parents’ right upon their offspring doesn’t justify their mistreatment or injustice of the latter, even if it is based on concern and love.
Update Your Thinking to Changing Times
Parents of adult singles should also realize that, nowadays, marriage is more about having the right educational degree, nationality and residential location, than about branded dinner sets and elaborate trousseaus.
Times have changed. Now, young women are more often expected to relocate to a new country, drive a car, and bring in a second income after marriage, than to intricately embroider table napkins, cook up traditional recipes, and knit sweaters.
Similarly, many new husbands are now expected to bring in much higher incomes, possess foreign citizenship, and provide a separate accommodation to their wives much earlier on in married life.
Parents should identify, accept, and adjust their mindsets to the many changes that have taken place in the how’s, do’s and don’ts of the institution of marriage since they got married 25-30 years ago.
One of them is, like it or not, that the marriages of younger people are now getting delayed until their thirties (and in the case of men, their forties) because of other goals being put first.
Hold a Mirror to Your Own Marriage
Parents should consider turning the fingers they are pointing at their supposedly ‘stubborn’ adult son or daughter who is not getting married, inwards towards their own selves, to see whether their own marriage is one that their child would want?
Are they really happily married? Do they put forward a picture of a loving, compassionate couple who respect each other? Or do they depict a picture that makes their adult child dread the prospect of getting married?
For example, many young girls might dread marriage because they do not want to “end up” living the way they see their mothers and aunts do: akin to overworked, unpaid “maids” whose financial dependence on their husbands doesn’t even allow them to take care of themselves, let alone enjoy life.
Many young men might dread marriage because all they see is their father come home in a foul mood and attempt to escape from the burden of the responsibility of providing for his wife and children, by “losing himself” in front of the television, or at recreational clubs with his friends.
Let’s face it: most marriages of elders nowadays are not the ideal scenario that the young singles nowadays would want as a vision for their own lives thirty years down the road.
The reality? Our marriages are not happy enough to be the coveted future ‘vision’ for our youth.
Conclusion: Listen to Them
In order to keep the relationship and cordial communication from crumbling just because the marriage of the singleton that the family so wants to see happen quickly is not happening yet, parents and family members should stop expressing their own views about the volatile topic and let the person in question do the talking.
Parents should remind themselves that once their offspring or sibling is married, they might be seeing much less of them than they already are, so they should cherish the time they have left together and spend it in cordially, having fun and being happy.
The singleton should remember that their parents and family members only want to see them enjoy the same family relationships that they have hitherto found so fulfilling, which came about only as a result of marriage.
They should also remember that their parents will not be around forever, looking out for them and going out of their way to help them stand on their own two feet in life.
Once these realizations hit home, mutual understanding and respect will automatically enter the picture, Insha’Allah.
(From Discovering Islam archive)
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