Parents, Allow Your Sons and Your Daughters Marry Right

Marriage is a tough institution. Let’s stop sugar coating it. It is also a life-time institution. Let’s stop making it look like a nine-day wonder. The more time we spend preparing our children for the emotional and other realistic challenges that come with marriage, rather than the frivolities and extravagancies of the day of the wedding, the better for our children's marital lives.

Many girls depend too much on their parents shoulders rather than discover the strength in their husband. In fact, some parents now say it openly that their daughter could come back home if they found their marriage uncomfortable. That was not the case in our time. You made your bed and were made to lie on it. Besides, what does not break you can only strengthen you. That's the key!

These days, the amount of emotional fraud that goes into getting our children to say: ‘I do’ are getting out of hand, too many negative influences here and there.

My appeal today is to our generation of parents to let our children marry in their own way. We should stop indulging in our fantasies. I wonder how many parents actually ask their children what they want before embarking on these grand schemes. In our youthful days, most of us financed our weddings and the marriages were successful. Most weddings today are failing because of parents interference.

Our marriages fared better on the long run than what we have today in spite of the millions of naira people are spending to get married today. And this is because the weddings were by us and for us. Parents and their few friends came as guests.

We must question the rationale in spending millions on a wedding when one of the couple hasn’t found a job (in most cases the wife) and may not even know her bearing in life yet. We must also worry at the pressure we are putting on the marriage itself. Many cracks which later on widened into chasms started during the frenetic and totally unrealistic preparations for grandiose weddings. Many parents make unnecessary demands and transmit their frustrations to the children. These frustrations seep into the young marriages and become toxins in their homes. It would have made more sense if bigger weddings meant more successful marriages. Unfortunately, the reverse seems to be the case.

Let your children be free. Free to find love and build on what they find. Let them be free to determine their expectations and realities. Let them grow together on their own terms and in their own ways.

Written by Muyiwa Adetiba