Mate Selection and Female Age at Marriage: A Micro Level Investigation in Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the process of mate selection in determining the age at marriage of 600 ever-married women drawn from rural (300) and urban (300) areas of Salem district, Tamil Nadu. Results based on the Multiple Classification Analysis show that both in rural and urban areas, time taken to initiate marriage process after menarche, caste background, age difference between bride and bridegroom and consultation of women for their marriage have played a greater role in determining their age at marriage in that order. Further, in urban areas, consanguinity has exhibited a highly significant effect on their age at marriage. While the role of payment of dowry has some effect on age at marriage of women both in rural and urban areas, the practice of horoscope matching has such an effect only in rural areas. Contrary to the expectation, first-born daughters enter into matrimony comparatively at higher ages than their later-bom counterparts only in rural areas. A weak support to residential propinquity theory of mate selection is also noticed.

‘Too many girls, too much dowry’: son preference and daughter aversion in rural Tamil Nadu, India

“…The bride’s family now must give a dowry in order to increase or even maintain the family’s status. Previous studies in southern India and elsewhere have posed several possible explanations for the increase in dowry, including a desire for economic mobility, changing marriage patterns, an attempt to mimic the behaviour of higher castes and the belief that dowry can purchase better grooms (Caldwell et al 1983, Dyson and Moore 1983, Malhorthra et al 1995, George 1997, Basu 1999, Amin and Suran 2005, Sheela and Audinarayana 2003, Srinivasan 2005). …”

Religion and Sexual Behaviors

“…Within middle-class and higher caste families, Hindu children are likely to marry after they complete their education (Fuller and Narasimhan 2008). For Hindus belonging to lower castes, however, marriage likely occurs much earlier, especially for girls, in part because of the group’s lower socioeconomic status (Sheela and Audinarayana 2003). Indeed, according to the 2005 to 2006 Demographic and Health Survey, Hindus living in India and Nepal have an average age of first marriage of 17 years and 10 months.…”

An Examination of Emerging Adulthood in College Students and Nonstudents in India

“…Therefore, our aim was to identify whether Indian young people in general would feel in-between adolescence and adulthood by examining the percentage of young people who consider themselves to be adults. As women and individuals from rural areas (all of the nonstudents in the current sample were from rural India) tend to take on adult roles such as marriage and employment earlier (Devi, 2006;Sheela & Audinarayana, 2003), we felt it important to also examine potential differences regarding perception of oneself as an adult based on student status and gender. Again, because nonstudents and women in India tend to take on adult roles earlier, it was hypothesized that students and males in this sample would be more likely to feel in-between adolescence and adulthood, and nonstudents and females would be more likely to feel they had achieved adulthood.…”