About Sweetmama Editor
Nadine Silverthorne’s love of journaling began in Grade One with the entry, “I am the greatest dancer!” Two babies (and countless diaper changes) later, she has found her home away from home as editor of SweetMama. Don’t miss her humorous bi-weekly accounts of the joys and pains of working while raising them fabulous.
Would You Let Your 16-Year-Old Get Married?
silver spoons: roma weddings and young brides canada
(Jun.06.11)
I spent Saturday night curled up with my friend Kate, totally engrossed in TLC's new series, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.
If you haven't seen the show, it's actually a popular English reality series that has crossed the pond. There is no way to watch the show without gasping in astonishment (or wondering where the money for these weddings comes from). This historic culture of nomadic peoples, that we often associate with fortune-telling babushkas, has taken a slightly different turn in the UK, where the girls wear next to nothing, except on the day of her wedding, where the bigger dress the better.
The culture has very old fashioned views about the roles of males and females. Case in point: Saturday night's episode featured a 16-year-old girl marrying a 19-year-old boy after only four months of knowing each other.
The Romany/traveller girls are taught that the only thing in life worth doing is getting married and having lots of babies (in a mobile home, no less). Prior to this giant wedding, many of them have an equally ostentatious first communion and then often drop out of school in their early teens to take care of their brothers and sisters at home. So they are encouraged to leave the nest early. (16-to-18-year-olds can get married in the UK with parent/guardian consent; the same goes for Canada.)
But here's what I was shocked to discover:
* Even though the girls dress and dance provocatively, they don't have sex until married. The community is so insular that word gets out easily. The scandal on the girl and the family would be so great that this acts as a deterrent for pre-martial sex.
* The families seem pretty tight knit and caring. All the girls wore belly dancer outfits for a bachelorette in Spain, even the girl's mother. Kind of sweet (even though, oh. my. gawd!).
* Weddings are often the only place single gypsy females can socialize with males of the same background (probably due to that whole potential for scandal thing).
* Girls spend much of their interactions with boys trying to avoid a culturally accepted game called "grabbing." This is where a boy "grabs" a girl and teases and physically torments her (with pinches and force) until she relents and kisses him. (Yes, this really happens.)
* The girls say they wouldn't have it any other way. They seem perfectly content with the status quo of their culture.
It's not like my strict Armenian parents raised me to be a feminist. My upbringing did reinforce old-fashioned ideas of women, including the pressure to get married young, however, the subtext in my house was different. Plus, I was always headstrong and so I can't even begin to imagine accepting this as my destiny. But maybe I'm missing something.
Did you watch the first episode? What did you think? Would you let your 16-year-old daughter get married?
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