Journal #3: Arranged Marriages Get a Little Reshuffling

In this article Lizette Alvarez, writer of Arranged Marriages Get a Little Reshuffling, talks about how arranged marriages in Britain are changing traditional standards. In Britain, young Indians and Pakistanis are pushing the cultural boundaries created by their parents and grandparents one step further by reshaping the tradition of arranged marriages. Arranged marriages are still the norm within these clannish, tight-knit communities in Britain, but, with the urging of second-and third-generation children, the nature of the arrangement has evolved, mostly by necessity. Now, meetings for arranged marriages take place in public venues without the family encounter first which many call speed dating. This very concept raises the hackles of some more old-fashioned parents, but many are coming around, in part out of desperation. But parents and elders, eager to avoid alienating their children, making them miserable or seeing them go unmarried, have shown considerable flexibility with arranged marriages. This is especially pronounced among the middle class, whose members tend to have integrated more into the British life (pg. 163).
I am not against arranged marriages, but I do think that people should get married because they love one another. In the article Alvarez also talks about how many people get divorced and argue that they should just have their family pick out their soul mate for them instead. I do not agree with that. People make mistakes and what if the arranged marriage does not work out in the long run either? It sounds more and more like the Indians and Pakistanis are mainly drifting away from arranged marriages anyway with speed dating. Speed dating to them is maybe some type of way of an arranged marriage, but to Americans, we do that as a form of dating for ourselves and do not call that a type of an arranged marriage. If people think that arranged marriages is the only way they can find love and their soul mate then let them think that. I personally think that these people are scared to play the field and scared to socialize.